PROFESSOR Glatt steps in. This time I’ve gone too far, I’m not getting anywhere. Which one is it? Either I’ve gone too far or I’m not getting anywhere. The professor has to choose. How can I be going too far if I’m not getting anywhere? It’s either one or the other. One cannot, in all sincerity, reproach me for not getting anywhere and going too far at one and the same time — it would be disingenuous. I’m taking too long to open the cave, now that’s a criticism that could be leveled at me, that’s something I would have trouble denying. However, I have my reasons. It seems the way I am carrying out my duties is being judged more and more harshly on high. Even Professor Glatt, who usually takes my side, did not appreciate the thumbtack episode. Couldn’t I simply have pulled the plastic heads off the three yellow thumbtacks to find the requisite harmony? Obviously, yes; and if I didn’t do it, it’s because I had my reasons. What do they know on high about how my work is progressing? How do they measure progress? Still, they cannot be unaware of the fact that a story of this sort never begins abruptly, that it is impossible to know or to locate the beginning of a story of this sort before knowing the ending: it is the end of a story that illuminates in retrospect the phases of its evolution and that allows one to infer its origins. These origins, however, are at times much older than one suspected. In truth, there is but one origin and that is why a story of this sort can never come to an end; the same origin continually gives rise to new stories without, for all that, cutting itself off from all the other stories going on at the same time: the real interest of the flint tools dug up by Jacques Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes (born in Rethel in 1788, died in 1868) at Menchecourt or Moulin Quignon lies not in the fact that they are examples of Paleolithic tools among so many other, identical ones in our possession, but rather in the precise fact that they were discovered by the historical father of prehistoric sciences, and this is what makes them so significant.
So do not talk to me about dates, deadlines, passing time, the approaching tourist season; do not tell me I must get down to it quickly. Besides, I am already down to it. I am in the middle of it. If I weren’t, where would I be? This story began well before me, four billion years ago, about four billion years ago to be exact; it will carry on without me when I’m gone, with periods of respite that in no way will mean it has come to an end, as one could perhaps erroneously think. Some guy loses his precious knife, complains, gets annoyed, retraces his steps in vain, gives up looking for it, and two million years later, Jacques Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes’s foot stumbles upon it. Ever since, this flint has been in our archaeological collections, another respite before future adventures during which its characteristics as a universal tool will be rediscovered, why not, unless it is swept away with the rubble of the demolished museum where it was exhibited and returned once more to the earth, as if its mineral nature took over at regular intervals: we domesticate animals whose lives are shorter than ours — at thirty, man begins his third dog’s life — but it is not for us to make plans for stones.
(The Pales cave is famous for, among other things, its little black horse from the Steppe that appears at the back of a natural recess in the cave wall and disappears just as suddenly, according to the season and the climatic conditions. It is frightened of the damp that darkens the rock. It is at its best on dry ground. If there is a series of rainy summers in the region, it might not show itself for several years. In contrast, it remains visible as long as harsh winters follow summers without rain. It is in fact unpredictable, like the sky itself. Sometimes it is gone for so long that you believe it has left for good, erased forever. And then suddenly it reappears, and not only is it as distinct as it was before, but it even seems to be in better condition, refreshed, more clearly delineated. You think it has left prehistoric times for good. Wrong. It goes back there, and once again you are thrown.)
What’s more, the extreme fragility of certain paintings is yet another reason to protest the premature reopening of the site; Professor Glatt cannot dispute that. As long as effective measures of protection have not been put in place, is it really responsible to expose the cave’s frescoes to anthropic erosion and other human ravages? It would make sense to put in guardrails or dig trenches around the painted cave walls, which, according to the most recent reports, are so friable in spots that a finger can easily bury itself in them up to its second knuckle. Several clay panels were literally reworked in this way, behind Crescenzo’s or Boborikine’s back, by those fanatics who cannot come near a piece of art without touching it, as if they hoped to have some part in its everlastingness or leave a trace of their passage on this earth in a place where all traces are reverently preserved, even at the risk of being called iconoclasts and cursed for all eternity. Why not have a little electric train running through the galleries? When visitors ride on it they would not be tempted to sign the paintings. Nonetheless, such a measure would scarcely lessen the negative influence these ladies and gentlemen have on the temperature and hygrometry of the cave. By dispersing with their every movement a swarm of organic matter mixed with the dust from their clothing — produced primarily by the incessant decomposition of their live tissues — these same ladies and gentlemen promote the development of bacteria, fungus, and algae; and their whistles of admiration are spears of carbonic acid that pierce the bison’s flanks. (The painter’s breath was already corroding the figures his hand was forming at the very moment of their creation, for breathing man cannot look at the work he is creating and that will outlast him without terror, and his ambition to live on through it comes up against a vague, conflicting desire to destroy it, it is in his power to do so, he is still the stronger of the two. This is why works of art also end up dying, worn out or destroyed: they carried this death wish within from the moment they were conceived — but I only opened this parenthesis so I could wind up here, and here I am, so I’m slamming it shut.)