Shibumi (30 page)

Hel stood at the narrow crevice of the
gouffre
mouth. He could hear Le Cagot down there, his limp body scraping against the shaft walls. Notch by notch, the lads brought him out with infinite slowness so as not to hurt him. The sunlight penetrated only a meter or two into the dark hole, so it was only a few seconds between the appearance of Le Cagot’s harness straps and the time he was dangling free, unconscious and ashen-faced, from the pulley above.

When he regained consciousness, Le Cagot found himself lying on a board bed in the shepherd’s
artzain xola,
his arm in an improvised sling. While the lads made a brushwood fire, Hel sat on the edge of the bed looking down into his comrade’s weatherbeaten face with its sunken eyes and its sun-wrinkled skin still gray with shock under the full rust-and-gray beard.

“Could you use some wine?” Hel asked.

“Is the pope a virgin?” Le Cagot’s voice was weak and raspy. “You squeeze it for me, Niko. There are two things a one-armed man cannot do. And one of them is to drink from a
xahako.”

Because drinking from a goatskin
xahako
is a matter of automatic coordination between hand and mouth, Nicholai was clumsy and squirted some wine into Beñat’s beard.

Le Cagot coughed and gagged on the inexpertly offered wine. “You are the worst nurse in the world, Niko. I swear it by the Swallowed Balls of Jonah!”

Hel smiled. “What’s the other thing a one-handed man can’t do?” he asked quietly.

“I can’t tell you, Niko. It is bawdy, and you are too young.”

In fact, Nicholai Hel was older than Le Cagot, although he looked fifteen years younger.

“It’s night, Beñat. We’ll bring you down into the valley in the morning. I’ll find a veterinarian to set that arm. Doctors work only on Homo sapiens.”

Then Le Cagot remembered. “I hope I didn’t hurt you too much when I got to the surface. But you had it coming. As the saying is:
Nola neurtcen baituçu; Hala neurtuco çare çu.”

“I’ll survive the beating you gave me.”

“Good.” Le Cagot grinned. “You really are simpleminded, my friend. Do you think I couldn’t see through your childish ploy? You thought to enrage me to give me strength to make it up. But it didn’t work, did it?”

“No, it didn’t work. The Basque mind is too subtle for me.”

“It is too subtle for everybody but Saint Peter—who, by the way, was a Basque himself, although not many people know it. So, tell me! What does our cave look like?”

“I haven’t been down.”

“Haven’t been down?
Alla Jainkoa!
But I didn’t get to the bottom! We haven’t properly claimed it for ourselves. What if some ass of a Spaniard should stumble into the hole and claim it?”

“All right. I’ll go down at dawn.”

“Good. Now give me some more wine. And hold it steady this time! Not like some boy trying to piss his name into a snowbank!”

The next morning Hel went down on the line. It was clear all the way. He passed through the waterfall and down to the place where the shaft opened into the great cave. As he hung, spinning on the cable while the lads above held him in clamps as they replaced drums, he knew they had made a real find. The cavern was so vast that his helmet light could not penetrate to the walls.

Soon he was on the tip of the rubble heap, where he tied off his harness to a boulder so he could find it again. After carefully negotiating the rubble heap, where stones were held in delicate balance and counterbalance, he found himself on the cave floor, some two hundred meters below the tip of the cone. He struck on a magnesium flare and held it away behind him so he would not be blinded by its light. The cave was vast—larger than the interior of a cathedral—and myriad arms and branches led off in every direction. But the flow of the underground river was toward France, so that would be the route of major exploration when they returned. Filled though he was with the natural curiosity of a veteran caver, Hel could not allow himself to investigate further without Le Cagot. That would be unfair. He picked his way up the rubble cone and found the tied-off cable.

Forty minutes later he emerged into the misty morning sunlight of the
gouffre.
After a rest, he helped the lads dismount the aluminum-tube triangle and the anchoring cables for the winch. They rolled several heavy boulders over the opening, partly to hide it from anyone who might wander that way, but also to block the entrance to protect next spring’s sheep from falling in.

They scattered stone and pebbles to efface the marks of the winch frame and cable tie-offs, but they knew that most of the work of concealment would be done by the onset of winter.

Back in the
artzain xola,
Hel made his report to Le Cagot, who was enthusiastic despite his swollen arm throbbing with pain.

“Good, Niko. We shall come back next summer. Listen. I’ve been pondering something while you were down in the hole. We must give our cave a name, no? And I want to be fair about naming it. After all, you were the first man in, although we must not forget that my courage and skill opened the last of the chokes. So, taking all this into consideration, I have come up with the perfect name for the cave.”

“And that is?”

“Le Cagot’s Cave! How does that sound?”

Hel smiled. “God knows it’s fair.”

All that was a year ago. When the snow cleared from the mountain, they came up and began descents of exploration and mapping. And now they were ready to make their major penetration along the course of the underground river.

For more than an hour, Hel had slept on the rock slab, fully clothed and booted, while Le Cagot had passed the time talking to himself and the unconscious Hel, all the while sipping at the bottle of Izzara, taking turns. One drink for himself. The next on Niko’s behalf.

When at last Hel began to stir, the hardness of the rock penetrating even the comatose sleep of his fatigue, Le Cagot interrupted his monologue to nudge his companion with his boot. “Hey! Niko? Going to sleep your life away? Wake up and see what you have done! You’ve drunk up half a bottle of Izzara, greedy bastard!”

Hel sat up and stretched his cramped muscles. His inactivity had permitted the cave’s damp cold to soak in to the bone. He reached out for the Izzara bottle, and found it empty.

“I drank the other half,” Le Cagot admitted. “But I’ll make you some tea.” While Beñat fiddled with the portable solid-fuel cooker, Hel got out of his harness and paratrooper jumpsuit specially modified with bands of elastic at the neck and wrists to keep water out. He peeled off his four thin sweaters that kept his body warmth in and replaced the innermost with a dry jersey made of loosely knitted fabric, then he put three of the damp sweaters on again. They were made of good Basque wool and were warm even when wet. All this was done by the light of a device of his own design, a simple connection of a ten-watt bulb to a wax-sealed automobile battery which, for all its primitive nature, had the effect of keeping at bay the nerve-eroding dark that pressed in from all sides. A fresh battery could drive the little bulb day and night for four days and, if necessary, could be sent up, now that they had widened the bottleneck and double dihedron, to be recharged from the pedal-driven magneto that kept their telephone battery fresh.

Hel tugged off his gaiters and boots. “What time is it?”

Le Cagot was carrying over a tin cup of tea. “I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Because if I turn over my wrist, I will pour out your tea, ass! Here. Take the cup!” Le Cagot snapped his fingers to shake off the burn.
“Now
I will look at my watch. The time at the bottom of Le Cagot’s Cave—and perhaps elsewhere in the world—is exactly six thirty-seven, give or take a little.”

“Good.” Hel shuddered at the taste of the thin tisane Le Cagot always brewed as tea. “That gives us five or six hours to eat and rest before we follow the stream into that big sloping tunnel. Is everything laid out?”

“Does the devil hate the water?”

“Have you tested the Brunton compass?”

“Do babies shit yellow?”

“And you’re sure there’s no iron in the rock?”

“Did Moses start forest fires?”

“And the fluorescein is packed up?”

“Is Franco an asshole?”

“Fine then. I’m going to get into a bag and get some sleep.”

“How can you sleep! This is the big day! Four times we have been down in this hole, measuring, map-making, marking. And each time we have resisted our desire to follow the river course, saving the greatest adventure for last. And now the time has come! Surely you cannot sleep! Niko? Niko? I’ll be damned.” Le Cagot shrugged and sighed. “There is no understanding these Orientals.”

Between them, they would be carrying twenty pounds of fluorescein dye to dump into the underground river when at last they could follow it no longer, either because their way was blocked by infall, or the river disappeared down a siphon. They had estimated that the outfall of the river had to be into the Torrent of Holçarté, and during the winter, while Le Cagot was up to patriotic mischief in Spain, Hel had investigated the length of that magnificent gorge where the torrent had cut a channel two hundred meters deep into the rock. He found several outfalls of underground streams, but only one seemed to have the flow velocity and position to make it a likely candidate. In a couple of hours, two young Basque caving enthusiasts would make camp by the outfall, taking turns watching the stream. With the first trace of dye color in the water, they would mark the time with their watch, synchronized with Le Cagot’s. From this timing, and from their dead-reckoning navigation through the cave system, Hel and Le Cagot would estimate if it was feasible to follow the stream underwater in scuba gear and accomplish that finale of any thorough exploration of a cave, a trip from the vertical shaft to the light and air of the outfall.

After five hours of deep sleep, Hel awoke as he always did, instantly and thoroughly, without moving a muscle or opening his eyes. His highly developed proximity sense reported to him immediately. There was only one person within aura range, and that person’s vibrations were defuse, defocused, vulnerable. The person was daydreaming or meditating or asleep. Then he heard Le Cagot’s baritone snoring.

Le Cagot was in his sleeping bag, fully dressed, only his long, tousled hair and rust-gray beard visible in the dim light of the ten-watt battery lamp. Hel got up and set the solid-fuel stove going with a popping blue flame. While the water was coming to a boil, he searched about in the food containers for his tea, a strong tannic
cha
which he brewed so long it had twice the caffeine of coffee.

A man who committed himself totally to all physical activities, Le Cagot was a deep sleeper. He did not even stir when Hel tugged his arm out of the bag to check the time. They should be moving out. Hel kicked the side of Beñat’s sleeping bag, but he got no more response than a groan and a muttered curse. He kicked again and Le Cagot turned over on his side and coiled up, hoping this tormentor would evaporate. When the water was starting to form pinpoint bubbles along the sides of the pan, Hel gave his comrade a third and more vigorous kick. The aura changed wavelengths. He was awake.

Without turning over, Le Cagot growled thickly, “There is an ancient Basque proverb saying that those who kick sleeping men inevitably die.”

“Everybody dies.”

“You see? Another proof of the truth of our folk wisdom.”

“Come on, get up!”

“Wait a minute! Give me a moment to arrange the world in my head, for the love of Christ!”

“I’m going to finish this tea, then I’m setting off. I’ll tell you about the cave when I get back.”

“All right!” Le Cagot kicked his way angrily out of the sleeping bag and sat on the stone slab beside Hel, hunching moodily over his tea. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the Donkey! What kind of tea is this?”

“Mountain
cha.”

“Tastes like horse piss.”

“I’ll have to take your word for that. I lack your culinary experience.”

Hel drank off the rest of his tea, then he hefted the two packs and selected the lighter one. He took up his coil of Edelrid rope and a fat carabiner on which were threaded a ring of smaller carabiners. Then he made a quick check of the side pocket of his pack to make sure he had the standard assortment of pitons for various kinds of fissures. The last thing he did before setting off was to replace the batteries for his helmet lamp with fresh ones. This device was another of his own design, based on the use of the experimental Gerard/Simon battery, a small and powerful cylinder, eight of which could be fitted into the helmet between the crown and webbing. It was one of Hel’s hobbies to design and make caving equipment in his workshop. Although he would never consider patenting or manufacturing these devices, he often gave prototypes to old caving friends as presents.

Hel looked down at Le Cagot, still hunched petulantly over his tea. “You’ll find me at the end of the cave system. I’ll be easy to recognize; I’ll be the one with the victorious look on his face.” And he started down the long corridor that was the river’s channel.

“By the Rocky Balls of St. Peter, you have the soul of a slave-driver! You know that?” Le Cagot shouted after Hel, as he rapidly donned his gear, grumbling to himself, “I swear there’s a trace of Falange blood in his veins!”

Shortly after entering the gallery, Hel paused and waited for Le Cagot to catch up. The entire performance of exhortation and grousing was part of the established heraldry of their relationship. Hel was the leader by virtue of personality, of route-finding skills granted him by his proximity sense, and of the physical dexterity of his lithe body. Le Cagot’s bullish strength and endurance made him the best backup man in caving. From the first, they had fallen into patterns that allowed Le Cagot to save face and maintain his self-respect. It was Le Cagot who told the stories when they emerged from the caves. It was Le Cagot who constantly swore, bullied, and complained, like an ill-mannered child. The poet in Le Cagot had confected for himself the role of the
miles gloriosus,
the Falstaffian clown—but with a unique difference: his braggadocio was founded on a record of reckless, laughing courage in numberless guerrilla actions against the fascist who oppressed his people in Spain.