The minute I got back to my hotel, I put the rock in the suitcase with the painting and opened the third envelope. It wasn’t as thick as the other two. This is what it said:
Dear Adam,
Wow! You have reached the third level! If I am in any way conscious right now and aware of what is going on down (or up!) on earth, I am certain that I am dancing in the air.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Grandpa.
You are ready for the most difficult task of all. Read this and make your choice. Do not feel compelled to try it. In fact, I am reluctant to ask you. There is danger involved.
Here it is.
The Noels were not, as I mentioned in the first letter, a literate family. But like so many people (or peoples) who do not write, they loved to tell stories, believed in legends and had many superstitions. I remember Yvette throwing a pinch of salt over her shoulder at every meal because she was certain it would help her and her husband live long lives. And when they had had a great deal of wine, their stories would become more and more fantastic. During the month I was with them, they told me tales—using gestures, drawings and what little French I could grasp—of ghosts and giants who, they claimed, used to roam southern France long ago; and of lions and rhinoceroses that, in their imaginations, were the French beasts of bygone days.
They also liked to talk about caves. I understood from them that many other people in the region did as well. The area they lived in, and more exactly the land to the north and northwest, was very hilly and rocky, actually mountainous in places, and prehistoric passages ran into and through these elevations. Jean’s stories often started in such caves and told of ferocious men with superhuman powers emerging from them to do extraordinary things. Those men, he said, had the power to create wonderful art. They were, Provençal folklore insists, the world’s first artists. They drew fabulous depictions of themselves and of animals on the walls inside their mountains. Jean’s yarns sometimes started from that artwork—stories of incredible beings stepping out from the stone and coming to life.
He said that several ancient caves with drawings had been found in the past half century. But he was fond of predicting that THE cave, the GREAT cave, had yet to be discovered. In it, the world would see history’s oldest art—and when modern people viewed it, they would be astonished. This work, he often said, would be magical. It would show the world the meaning of life. He insisted that this was not a dream—one day such a place would actually be uncovered. The discoverer would be a local person, because they can almost “smell” the caves.
I, of course, took what Jean said on these subjects with a pinch of salt even more substantial than what Yvette used to fling over her shoulder. In other words, I didn’t believe him.
But when I returned home, I decided to read a little about French caves and learned that much of what he had been trying to tell me was true. In the early twentieth century, several remarkable caves had been located in France, all with ancient drawings on their walls. Perhaps the greatest was the Lascaux Cave, stumbled upon in 1940, just four years before I ended up with the Noels. It was situated just a few hours northwest of Arles. But no respected writer, no scholar, ever said anything about the great cave that contains “the meaning of life.”
Until 1994.
I distinctly remember the day I picked up a copy of the New York Times and read of the groundbreaking discovery of a new cave in southern France that had the worldwide science community stunned. It had been found by three local people, one named Chauvet, who had been walking along the side of some cliffs in a semi-mountainous area. It was near Vallon-Pont-d’Arc on the Ardèche River. I looked it up on a map. It was about an hour from the Noel farm.
And as I read more about it, it began to fill me with a longing to see it. I don’t know why, but I started to believe that it might, somehow, contain the meaning of life.
Inside the cave, accessed through a tiny hole, were the oldest drawings ever made by human beings. Scientists believed that this cave had been sealed for more than 20,000 years! Their tests showed that some of the art was as old as 32,000 years! It was mind-boggling. On the walls were depictions of animals that had lived there, and among them were lions and rhinoceroses.
Of course, I wanted to go there immediately. But several things held me back. First, stupidly, I was always too busy. Secondly, just as (or perhaps even more) stupidly, I didn’t want to return to that area, near the Noels and the one great shame of my life. And most importantly, I couldn’t get into the Chauvet even if I went there. The Lascaux Cave had been open to the public for many years, and as a consequence, some of its drawings had been damaged and in some cases destroyed. Over the decades, scientists determined that it was the presence of human beings and specifically their breath that had been the cause. So it was decided that the Chauvet Cave should not be accessible to the general public. Only select scientists and a few academics and historians would ever be allowed into it.
No one, other than that handful of people, has ever seen the drawings inside that marvelous place.
Here, Adam, is your task, the most difficult task of your adventure…an impossible one, I think.
Get into the Chauvet Cave.
See if it contains the meaning of life.