Prehistoric Times by Chevillard Eric & Waters Alyson

Author:Chevillard, Eric & Waters, Alyson [Chevillard, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781935744306
Publisher: Archipelago Books
Published: 2012-07-10T04:00:00+00:00

THE RED thumbtack is preventing me from concentrating. I find it impossible to focus fully on the map, hypnotized like the rabbit trying to find its way through the puzzle-maze that quickly learns by heart the only route leading to its carrot, on the upper right of the page – just try to train it to take another route. Yet I must conscientiously explore every direction on paper before I venture into the cave, I will not wander about at random, if you think I would, you don’t know me, I’d probably get lost and never come out. How could one not lose one’s way in the twisting, turning, infinitely branching galleries, so dangerous it’s as if they’re booby-trapped, with sudden slopes in the ground or ceiling and the unanticipated retrenchment of the practicable path between the rough walls that scrape my shoulders and sides and bruise my bones, and the passageways, dark despite the electricity that’s been installed, and the rolling mills, the swallow holes, the ventilation shafts where I slip feetfirst, dead already, ignorant of what lies in wait on the other side, perhaps the void, a hole, a precipitous drop, perhaps the tumbled, crumbled wall of a blind alley, or else a bright, airy room where the sun abseils through a narrow shaft and cools off in a natural lake, miraculously round, that glimmers more appropriately, and tinkles like glass when suddenly a fat, warm drop falls from the dark vault pierced by the violet sparks of the stalactites; you’ll see that this thunderstorm, petrified for millennia, will awaken today, now: it’s breaking out behind me, I run aimlessly, shoulders hunched, back rounded; count the ridges on my carapace to see how old I am, I think I’m retracing my steps, all I do is step on my own feet, a child slips away from me and climbs up the steep path ahead of him on all fours while the old man for whom I was also responsible slides down into the lower galleries, I form a crowd, the lions are let loose, I spread myself in all of panic’s directions, but the lake in spate catches up to me wherever I am, submerging me, my lungs explode, my rosy cheeks fade, I float with the eyeless, memoryless transparent fish, the last living contemporaries of all the fossils, liquid specters of the Precambrian Era that still haunt the watery depths. I belong among them, from now on their future is mine, and all that because I ventured into the cave without proper preparation: madness. Obviously I shall do no such thing until I know the premises perfectly. I shall devote the time it takes to a preliminary study of the map. I shall learn how to move about the cave on paper, as if I were at home, eyes shut, hands behind my back, with steady steps, a blind homeowner circumventing every obstacle, stepping over crevices thanks to the reflexes I’ll have acquired, all will be second nature.

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