a diary
"We all want to believe in Magic," muttered Mr Monkfish. "And stories are magic."
"The very act of watching – or listening, or reading – is magical, alchemical, transformative, a ritual, one we can perform only once, transubstantiating the unknown into the known. That first time is always different. When we are explorers, detectives, discoverers. That's why we have twists and spoilers, foreshadowing and clues. As we try to riddle out what kind of a story we are in: Romance or Thriller? Memoir or Travelogue? Whodunnit or Horror?
"In every story we find that delightful liminal moment when we ask is it real? Is it true? Or is there a man behind the curtain? Are the spirits genuine? Or just light on glass, all done with mirrors? Trick or truth? That is the question. As though pulling images from invisible magnetism wasn't magical enough already. Sometimes illusion can be true at the same time."
I had, of course, asked him to explain about television.
"Do we draw these phantasmagoria from dreams of other Worlds, other times?" he went on. "Or are they memories uncovered, recovered, from impressions in stone, or wine, or spice? Shakespear traded in dreams, on a Midsummer Night. Carrol's Alice wandered her Wonderland, finding its echoes in Lilly and Lana's Matrix. Goya drew his Sleep of Reason. Gail Nemo – ah, we'll get to her – her comic books inspired our little television series.
He asked me to draw a card from his deck, and it was the Magician.
"I have found you, Mr Monkfish," I said gaily.
"Indeed, my dear, indeed. I am a jolly conjurer. But the magician is only a servant of the elements, a pupil in the higher collage, and only the first step on the journey…"
After Paris, we had gone south to Limoges and the Dordogne.
According to Mr Monkfish, we were heading for London so obviously – at least by his interpretation of "obviously" – this was "on the way". Monkfish said he was making for Bordeaux where he had an "arrangement" – a typical squalid deal to supply terror weapons to Algerian separatists – but I think he just wanted to show me the cave paintings at Lascaux.
The French government had closed the caves to the public since the Nineteen Sixties, to protect the paintings from the lichens and crystals whose spread was caused by the circulation of the air and the breathing of the visitors. That was what they claimed, anyway. This, of course, did not stop Monkfish getting us in using dubious academic credentials and a forged police warrant. Mr Sole, on the other hand, used a crowbar.
"You may find the air a trifle chill and a little thin," warned Mr Monkfish, "but the anoxia is very much the point. To our ancestors, this was a remarkably sophisticated observatory. They came here not merely as artists but as explorers and thaumaturges. They may have come looking for gods but they came in a spirit of inquiry. They came down here to watch, to observe, to see."
"To see? To see what, precisely?"
"To see with the mind, kind heart. The high carbon-dioxide mix in the atmosphere induces a mild euphoria – do tell me when you start to feel it – raising our proto-alchemists to a heightened state. And in said state, they would dream. And draw what they dreamed."
"They recorded their experiences."
"Like a modern scientist. Our doctors of science with their method have more in common with the ancient witch-doctors and their shamanistic rituals then we may care to remember."
"Here, Messer Monkfish. Show her." Sole hung on the edge of our torchlight, blinking, his eyes tearfully huge.
Monkfish raised the torchlight to reveal the astonishing fresco that ancient man – or woman! – had stencilled onto the ceiling, a host of animals, a stampede, and largest among them, four great aurochs.
"The Hall of Bulls," said Mr Monkfish with suitable gravitas.
The caves consist of two long arms, north and south, linked by a wide but low-ceilinged passageway. It is thought that originally both galleries would have had an entrance in the hillside, but both had long since collapsed and only the north entrance was reopened when the caves were rediscovered.
Monkfish led us to the passageway that would link the Hall of Bulls and adjoining Ceiling of the Red Cows to the Nave and the Chamber of Felines to the south, pausing at the low arch to pay brief homage to the great bull depicted there.
He pointed to a cluster of seven painted spots above the beast's shoulder.
"See the winter rising of the seven stars, the Pleiades," he said, "the Seven Sisters, daughters of Atlas."
Later, when studying my sketches of the Lascaux caves, of the Seventh Gallery and the huge shapes the ancient artists had put there, the red and the black, the eyes, the wings... I would compare the painted dots with an atlas of constellations.
"The stars were not right," I would remark.
"Pray they never are, gentle dove," Monkfish would reply softly. "Pray that they never are."
Bowing his head, he went under the arch and into the passageway. Sole slipped in behind him before flickering ahead like a disturbing shadow.
To the right, the domed chamber of the Apse led, via an old, iron ladder, to the Shaft of the Dead Man, but Monkfish did not go this way. The cavern here continued south through a gallery called the Nave beyond which was another cave with stalagmites but no paintings and finally the Chamber of the Felines. Here the passage was cut by the well of the southern shaft, over which we passed by a metal bridge, before the tunnel narrowed to end at a plug of gnarled black rock.
Monkfish indicated six more spots of paint on the wall.
"The Pleiades again," he said.
"But there are only six this time."
"Precisely, my dear," he said, brimming with pleasure, and he reached forward to place his thumb firmly to the place where the missing seventh star should be.
I suppose I momentarily expected the grinding of ancient machinery and the shifting of some huge door in the rock face.
Nothing happened.
"Give her a moment, Mr Sole," said Monkfish.
"Of, uh-huh uh-huh, of course, Messer Monkfish," Sole replied.
I stared at them, perplexed.
"The passage," hinted Monkfish.
The cave gallery continued for several metres before turning another corner. It...
"Ah! She sees it!"
"I thought there was... That plug of rock. I see, it's an optical illusion."
"A little more sophisticated than that, but substantially you are correct. A French lad of no more than twelve discovered it quite by chance, and the Seventh Gallery that lies beyond, in 1963. He vanished from his tour party. Oh, picture his distraught parents, scouring the caverns for hours. And then, he simply reappeared."
"It took, uh-huh uh-huh, the French simply ages to, uh-huh uh-huh, figure it out."
"And they had help, Mr Sole."
"Oh, of course they did, Messer Monkfish. Of course they did."
I realised I was drumming my fingers and, by an effort of will, brought myself under control. Monkfish was clearly bursting to explain. Irritatingly, I found that I very much wanted to know.
"Very well, how could I not see before?"
"There's something very, very old and very, very slightly alive in the rock. You can't see it because you don't want to. It's an atavistic instinct. You cannot help yourself. Only the most naïve are not warded away. Consider yourself complimented on your sophistication, my lamb."
"And how can I see it now?"
"The genius loci responds to the, ah, correct stimulus. It relaxes ever so slightly. You perceive less of a threat, so you perceive more of the cave. It's ingenious. I must say I'm ever so impressed."
"You're not telling me that cavemen made that."
"Of course not. It's a relic of the ancient powers. Your cavemen, our ancestors, built their observatory to try to understand it."
"And what conclusions did they reach?"
"One of the earliest iterations of our story. This is magic, my dear. The ritual that transforms."
"Watching transforms the story. That's what you said, isn't it? Turns dreams into memories."
"More than that, heart of mine. Observing transforms the observer also. We are all made of stories. That's how the magic works."
"I see," I told him. "Shall we go and be transformed together, then?"
"I should be delighted if you would join me," he replied.
