The sounds below were louder and closer when I saw it at last: the entrance to the cave I'd seen from the road. I hauled myself up over another ledge of limestone, slipping a bit as I did so, and then, with a quick few steps, I was in the cave. It was a spectacularly large space, the forefront of which was reasonably well lit due to the sunlight outside, but rapidly disappearing into darkness toward the back. I scrambled my way in to a large stone and crouched behind it. If someone was following me, I reasoned, they would be caught in silhouette in the entrance to the cave. I knew I was trapped, but by now I'd assembled a little pile of rocks beside me which I was prepared to use if pressed, and I had the advantage of having become accustomed to the dim light at the back of the cave, something a new intruder would not.
I sat there for what seemed an eternity, but was maybe ten minutes, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. No one came. No bats swooped over my head. No cave bears roared. Nothing. So gradually I let my eyes slip away from the entrance and had a look around. I was in a huge chamber, maybe 150 feet deep with a roof that tapered up to a point, like a vaulted ceiling. I could see that this would be a place where people could live. Several families could survive and make their home, however temporary, here. The roof was high enough that fires could be lit against the cold, and up on the ridge it would be possible to watch for game. This, then, was the place where Piper had toiled in what he referred to as considerable inconvenience. Not this specific cave, maybe, but one just like it. And it could not have been easy, climbing up here every day. Light must have been a problem. For a few hours a day, perhaps, if the opening were situated just so, there would be enough light shining into the cavern, but otherwise there would be only this gloom. And this was 1900: no flashlights, no floodlights, only torches against the dark.
This cave, or one just like it, must have been the find spot for the Magyar Venus. I found this thought extraordinary, that people who had lived under these conditions had managed to create something as beautiful as the Venus. Like everyone else, I suppose, I thought of cave dwellers as primitive creatures of subnormal intelligence. But they couldn't have been. They must have been able to see beyond the walls of the cave, in their minds at least. The people who had lived in this cave at the time the Venus was carved had brains the same size as ours. They must surely have loved and cared for their children, and found some way of working together, or we would not have survived as a species. And if that was true, then maybe I would have to rethink my idea of progress, that Darwinian idea, or at least everyone's interpretation of it, that we were becoming increasingly advanced and civilized. What, after all, made us more advanced? Was it technology? Perhaps we should be judged not just by the fact we had it, but by the purposes to which it was put. Were we increasingly more generous toward our fellow man? I hardly thought so. Were we any less superstitious, for example, than the people who had lived here? Not if daily horoscopes and such were anything to go by. There was a lot to think about hiding in this huge cathedral in stone, ideas that became, as I sat there, an absolute conviction that the Venus was real.
This little riff on the Venus, however diverting for me, was not going to solve my immediate problem, which was how to get out of here. My eyes flicked back to the cave entrance. There was nothing to be seen but rocks and trees. The cave had no back entrance in sight, and while I could sit there for days, I supposed, thinking philosophically about cave dwellers before I shriveled up and died, it wasn't a particularly entertaining idea. There was nothing for it but to head out, and hope my fevered imagination had been at work, nothing more.
I carefully edged my way back to the entrance and peered out. Nothing. I looked up, but no face hanging over the top of the cave entrance looked back at me. I went out to the ledge in front of the cave and scanned the terrain in all directions. Still nothing.
I picked my way back along the ridge, face to the rock, a rather unpleasantly exposed position, until I was back at the edge of the woods. I waited there for a minute, heart in mouth, listening as carefully as I could.
Then, my face still to the rock wall, I stepped back and down, one foot suspended for a moment feeling for the ground below. The surface found, I shifted my weight down and on to—something squishy. That something was an arm, and it was attached to the body of the former Mihaly Kovacs, antique dealer. I hurtled down the path, stumbling and falling most of the way, got into my car, and drove away.
CHAPTERNINE
August 19
This cave is proving much more fruitful than the last. The work, while slow, has gone rather well this month, with much progress being made. We have continued to dig down and have reached a depth of approximately six feet now. We have found some potsherds near the surface, and some crude implements of stone lower down. We have also found some indications of fire, and a skull that I believe to be that of a cave bear, but no sign of human bones. We have not yet reached bedrock, and so I remain optimistic that we will find the evidence of early man I so devoutly hope for. I hope so. Summer is wearing on, and my time here is limited to fair weather.
I have some help with the digging at last, the excavation team now being constituted as follows: Zoltan Nddasdi, second son of my landlord who is interested, as I am, in science, Peter and Pal Fekete, sons of the redoubtable Fekete Neni, and of the same good character, and S. B. Morison. Peter's wife, a lovely girl from the village by the name of Piroska, brings us our midday meal so that we may continue working.
While the others rest after the meal, I walk. I find it calms me, although today I came to a place where it is said that lovers, fated to be apart, leap to their deaths. If one can forget that, the vista is spectacular. I wonder how desperate these lovers must be to cast themselves off the cliff.
September 17/18
Mihaly Kovacs's green Camry was found two twists and turns away from where I'd parked my car, after I'd led police to the spot where I'd found him. His head had been bashed in. I suppose if I hadn't spent a half hour or so huddled in the cave, it might have been possible to save him, but I doubt it, given the good thirty minutes or so it took me to drive back down to a village and make myself sufficiently understood that police were called. After I found the spot again, with some difficulty, the police had a good look around, while one of them, who spoke a little English, sat me down on a log and asked me a lot of questions. I couldn't understand a word the others were saying, but I could tell they'd reached the same conclusion I had. Kovacs had tried to edge along the rock face, just as I had, but in his case, he hadn't quite managed it.
I was in a turmoil of conflicting emotions, and thoughts that ranged all over the map as well. My first thought was that I'd been very lucky. Those unnerving feelings I'd had weren't just paranoia after all. Kovacs had been following me. I just wished I knew why. Given he'd been prepared to track me all the way into the Biikks and up the side of a hill on to a narrow rock face meant he must have been pretty serious about it. Had he come to do me in because he believed I really had found some anomaly in the records on the Venus and was going to get him sent to jail? That could only mean that there was something wrong, and so far I hadn't found it. Given the developments in my love life, I wasn't sure I wanted to.
The other thought I had, and one that there was no point in trying to discuss with anybody in my immediate vicinity, was that there seemed to be rather too many people taking headers off high places. Yes, the ledge was very narrow, and yes, it was slippery. He hadn't had the shoes for the expedition, that I knew. His city shoes were the second thing I'd seen, right after I'd stepped on his arm. He hadn't known where I was going. Even I hadn't known only a few hours before I left. I hadn't told anyone where I was going, either. He couldn't have come prepared.