As I rode back through the beautiful Ardèche in a cab I had hailed in Vallon, I thought about my situation. At first, it seemed impossible. But then I started to think, really think. Grandpa often said there was always a way to do something, no matter how difficult it was to accomplish. All you had to do was work at it and use your imagination. Perhaps that was what he was trying to teach me right now.
It took me almost all the way to Arles, but eventually it came to me.
The cave was heavily fortified and protected. But there were people who did get into it. The scientists or the other experts, the men and women who worked in those buildings lower down in the gorge. They went in and out every day.
There was only one way to enter the Chauvet. I had to go in with them.
When I got back to my hotel I started to consider how I could possibly do that. Then I remembered the blond guy, the one who seemed so different from the others, so unconcerned about the rules.
By the time I went to bed that night I had a plan. I’d bought a few postcards in Vallon, so I wrote one to Vanessa. I’d do the one for Shirley later, and the one for Leon. I needed my sleep. I set my cell-phone alarm to wake me very early the next morning and slipped under the covers.
Despite the early hour, my waitress was at the café when I arrived. She was wearing nothing but a very long white T-shirt with some kind of a design on the front, a skinny belt and tennis shoes and just a dash of makeup to make her look fabulous. As she approached, the drawing on her shirt became clear—The Little Prince. She had worn it for me.
She smiled at me and said, “You are still alive and not in jail, so you must not have tried to enter la Grotte Chauvet?”
“No. I’ll do that today.”
She looked concerned. “Remember, you do not have to do it.”
“Yes, I do.” I tried to say it with conviction, but it didn’t come out that way.
She leaned down and squeezed my hand. “No, you do not.”
I wanted to kiss her. Not on the mouth, not like she was my girlfriend or anything, but like she was a friend. Despite my relationship with Shirley and my interest in Vanessa, I wanted to kiss this French girl in Arles. It was kind of confusing.
I was in the cab on the highway up to the Ardèche before eight o’clock, so nervous that I couldn’t keep my legs from shaking. This time, I had the cabdriver drop me at the Pont d’Arc parking lot. As I had suspected, there weren’t many people there yet. Tourists aren’t exactly early risers. So I sat down and waited. The people I wanted to see arrived about an hour later.
“Hey!” I called out to the two Canadians, who seemed to be wearing the same shirts they had on yesterday.
I cut to the chase. Last night, when I was going over the events of the day trying to figure out how the heck I might get into the cave, I had thought about these guys and the fact that the scientist they had been drinking with had told them stuff no one else would talk about. I believed that they’d been speaking to the guy with the long blond hair, and that he was perfect for me and my mission.
When I described him, they agreed that it was the same guy and told me where they had met him.
I walked to Vallon and found the café. By the time I got there, it was past prime breakfast hour, but not so late that my target wouldn’t be there. I guessed—correctly—that he liked to take his time in the mornings. Sure enough, there he was: long blond hair falling toward the table, yellow-and-purple-rimmed sunglasses on, lenses black as night, low on his nose. A thick, well-thumbed paperback sat on his little table in front of his drink, and he had his head down, writing in a lined notebook. His long goatee actually touched the pad as he wrote.
I noticed that almost everyone in the half-full café kept stealing glances at him. The waitresses paid him particular attention.
I wasn’t surprised to find out that he was friendly. When I came up to introduce myself, he whipped off his glasses, looked up and instantly asked me to join him. (I didn’t give him my real name, just to be on the safe side. I called myself Bernard McLean.) He was younger than I expected, but the most notable thing about him up close was his eyes. They blazed at me, even though I had said nothing remarkable to him, nor was I—obviously—remarkable myself. It was as if his eyes were always lit up like that. An extraordinary energy came from him, an undeniable charisma.
I also wasn’t surprised that he spoke English. His cool French accent didn’t make his conversation difficult to follow: he had a way of almost caressing words. I imagined he could make them sound interesting in any language. He was a man of quick movements and thoughts. He examined me closely, as if learning every inch of my face, penetrating it and getting into my brain.
“So you are doing some work up at the Chauvet Cave?” I asked.
Those eyes twinkled. “How do you know that, American?”
“I saw you.”
“Yes, you were hiding in the bushes, watching.”
He had seen me.
“I have something I need to do there.”
“Need to, eh? Sounds like a mission.” He grinned. “Une mission dangereuse?”
“Yes, in fact.”
“Tell me.”
As I’ve mentioned, I’m a pretty good storyteller, just like Grandpa. And I really gave this tale all that I had. The heartbreaking story of a grandfather who desperately wants his dying wish fulfilled, for all the right reasons. What was interesting about this guy’s reaction was how intrigued he seemed to be, and not just by the story, but by how I told it. He looked not only fascinated but genuinely amused. Those eyes sparkled and his eyebrows seemed to go up and down with the rhythms of my story. He looked like he knew when the climax was coming and anticipated it with great excitement.
“Merveilleux!” he exclaimed when I was done, so loudly that the whole café turned to him. I gave him a look that indicated I wanted us to be quieter.
“Oui,” he whispered, “une mission très dange-reuse.” He winked at me.
“Can you help me?”
“Help you get into la Grotte Chauvet? That is impossible—”
“But I—”
He leaned forward and spoke so quietly that I could barely hear him. “Which is exactly why I think we should try!”
I could barely believe what he had said.
“Really?”
“Really. You are now in the hands of Mermoz!”
The name was obviously supposed to mean something to me. He said it almost like a kid might, if he were telling you that he was the best player on his football team. I glanced around the café again. Every patron in the restaurant, and the owner and waitresses too, were sneaking peeks our way. The women seemed especially interested. It was beginning to dawn on me that I was sitting with an important man, but an awfully strange one.
“What—what do you do, sir, for a living?” I asked.
“Anarchist!” he shouted. There were a few giggles around us.
“Anarchist?”
“Communist!”
“Communist?”
“Rebel extraordinaire. And I write books.” He smiled. Now a few people nearby laughed out loud.
“You are an author?”
“I prefer artist or storyteller.”
“Like Antoine de Saint-Exupéry?”
I thought his face was going to split with happiness. “Oui! Oui! Like le géant de la France! I am Mermoz! And you and I”—he lowered his voice again—“we have a wonderful story to create now. We are going to invent the story of the only boy to ever enter la Grotte Chauvet! But there is danger!”
“So I have heard.”
“And romance!”
“Romance?”
“Well, of a sort. This whole notion is romantic and thrilling and dramatic! Add to all of this the fact that, by good fortune, we have an added element that creates a good deal of tension.”
“Added element?”
“Time!”
“Time?”
“Tomorrow is the last day of a fifteen-day period when the scientists and special invitees are allowed into the cave. Human beings cannot be in there any longer than that or our presence, our very breath, might do damage to the cave drawings, you know. There will not be another such period for many months. And I, Mermoz, storyteller and documenter in literary arts, am one of those, invited by the president himself to tell the story of the inside of la Grotte Chauvet. Don’t you see? We, therefore, have a clock on our story, sir. Oh, that is always a delicious thing! We must get you in and out of the cave by tomorrow. We have but twenty-four hours! That is a fabulous ingredient in our tale! It creates tension, my young American friend!”
He said the last sentence with a loud flourish and then looked sheepish. “I am getting too excited,” he said quietly. “Now, this is how I envision this story, this tale of the American boy entering la Grotte Chauvet against all odds.” He paused for a second. “I must tell you, however, if this does not work out as we plan, if you are found out while on the way to the cave or inside it, you must promise me here and now—on the watery grave of St. Ex—that you will swear that you have never met me, that I in no way helped you and that you will take your punishment, whatever it is, like a man, and suffer whatever the French authorities decide to do with you, without accusing me…Mermoz!”
“I-I suppose so.”
“You suppose?”
“I-I promise.” I didn’t have any choice.
“I am the good guy in the story…but I can be the villain too.”
“Yes,” I said, though I didn’t like the sound of that.
“If you are caught, I shall disavow all knowledge of you. In fact, I will pursue you along with the authorities and recommend your arrest.”
“Really?”
“But I must! Don’t you see it? Ah, it would be a marvelous twist to the end of our tale! Very European!” His face grew serious. “But we shall not wish for that as our denouement. We shall do all we can to make this a happy tale, an American drama full of spills and chills with an American ending—which means a dull ending, but nevertheless, it must be done.”
“I hope so.”
“This, Monsieur McLean, is what we shall do!”
Though I was entering into this bargain with some concern, I was awfully pleased too. I had calculated correctly. I had stumbled upon possibly the only man who had ever been inside the Chauvet Cave who would find it exciting to break the rules and help someone else sneak in or, in this case, actually participate in such a crime.
“But,” he said, “before I begin, stand up please.”
It wasn’t what I wanted to hear at that moment. I was anxious to hear him tell our story—the spine-tingling tale of how he was going to get me into the forbidden cave. I wanted the details and I wanted them now.
But he insisted. He smiled and motioned for me to get to my feet. I stood up. First, he looked down at my shoes and put one of his beside one of mine, as if comparing. Then he leaned forward, his face coming within inches of mine. He had done almost the same thing while we were sitting. He was one of those people who like to get inside your personal space. It was a bit unnerving.
But this time, he didn’t say anything. In fact, after he examined me for a while, our eyes at exactly the same height, he nodded his head as if confirming something, slapped his spectacular glasses back onto his face, turned abruptly and walked away.
“Meet me first thing tomorrow morning, about eight o’clock, in the parking lot of the scientists’ buildings,” he barked over his shoulder. In seconds he was at the door. He opened it with a shove and exited. It sprang back and slammed. Many of the café patrons were staring at him as he left. I was suddenly alone at his table, left to pay his bill, suspended in that frustrating and yet fascinating moment, sort of like at the end of a chapter in a novel when the author has primed his readers into a state of excitement but then pauses before he reveals what happens next.