The Power of One (61 page)

I walked back to the wall at the end of the ledge and peeked over the edge, hoping to find a small ledge that would take us further across the face. About three feet below me a small ridge of rock, no more than six inches wide, ran for two or three yards and then took a slight turn so I was unable to see whether it continued. I swung my body over the edge of the ledge, dangling my feet until they reached the narrow ridge of rock. With my stomach against the cliff I edged my way along it. I'd hardly moved more than three feet when I found myself looking directly into a hole in the cliff, about two feet wide and three feet high. I was able to look some ten feet down the tunnel before it turned to darkness. It was quite clearly an entrance to a cave, and not simply a tunnel worn into the rock. A firebush grew from a crack in the rock to the right of the opening and concealed it from being seen from below. Suddenly a bat flew out of the tunnel and blurred past me, and I heard the unmistakable squeak of bats deep in the rock face. I was certain I had found a cave.

“I've found it! We've found our cave!” I yelled. My voice, hugely magnified, echoed down the valley. It would take very little effort to lift myself up into the hole, but holes have a habit of containing surprises infinitely worse than a few hundred harmless bats. So I edged back to where Doc was waiting. Helping me back up onto the ledge, Doc too was excited. “So, I am right, Peekay,” he said triumphantly. I explained that if we could secure a rope handrail it would be possible for him to follow me into the cave.

We discussed a way of doing this for some time. Then, hammering a couple of spikes into the floor of the ledge, we secured one end of the rope through the eyes of the spikes, both of us pulling on the rope to make sure the spikes were firmly bedded into the rock. Next we tied the rope to my waist and I tucked three spikes, the hammer, and Doc's torch into the back of my belt, where I could reach back and get them comfortably. Doc played out the rope as I slid backward, down onto the thin lip of rock below the ledge. Had I fallen, it was unlikely Doc would have been able to haul me back again, but I was very sure on my feet and unconcerned by heights. In less than thirty seconds I was in front of the cave entrance. I lifted myself through the hole with comparative ease and commenced to crawl along the narrow tunnel, which continued in a slightly upward direction for about twenty feet, then widened out. I untied the rope from around my waist and removed the long silver torch from my belt.

The daylight had disappeared by the time I'd crawled to the end of the tunnel, so I switched on the powerful Eveready to find that the tunnel led into a cave that appeared to be about fifteen feet long and equally wide, while being high enough for me to stand upright.

The cave smelled powerfully of baboon and bats. As I played the torch around the walls, I could see hundreds of bats hanging from the roof and the walls. I returned down the narrow passage to the cliff face, and sticking my head out yelled at Doc that I'd found a big cave. My voice echoed down the valley as the barking of the baboons had done the previous evening and again that morning.

“It's not too hard, Doc. I'll hammer a couple of spikes into the tunnel wall and tie the rope and you can use it as a handrail to come across.” I set about this task, drawing the rope tight so that it made a firm handrail from the ledge into the mouth of the tunnel. Doc was a fearless old coot and, dropping himself backward onto the rock ridge and holding the rope, he quickly edged across the cliff face to the mouth of the tunnel. I pulled him in, and he lay on his belly looking into the dark tunnel.

“Wunderbar
; Peekay, a cave. How big? A big one, yes?” he panted.

“You'll have to crawl, it's slightly upward. Follow the torch, it's only about twenty feet in.”

The cave was not high enough for Doc to stand upright, so he squatted, holding the torch, while I lit the hurricane lamp he'd brought with him in the rucksack strapped to his back. I placed the lamp in the middle of the cave, where it threw a dim but adequate light, and Doc started to examine the walls with the torch beam.

The floor was covered with bat shit. “It should smell worse than this.” Doc took out a box of matches and struck one on the side of his pants. The match flared, momentarily lighting his face. “A wind! In here is a wind, from someplace else there is coming a wind.” Doc was right, the flame from the match was flickering and then went out. He shone his torch into the left-hand corner of the cave, where a sharp buttress of rock protruded. The torch light played on the rock, and as Doc swept the beam to the top of the buttress the light disappeared into a void. We realized that there was an opening beyond it from which came the unmistakable sound of water dripping. We both moved round the back of the rock to discover the opening about four feet above the ground and reaching to the ceiling. Doc lit the opening for me to scramble through, and he passed the lantern to me and then the torch before following. As he dropped to the ground, I swung the powerful torch into the black void.

“Holy Molenski!” The torch showed a huge chamber, from the ceiling and the floor of which grew stalactites and stalagmites. The roof of the cave must have been at least forty feet high, and the snowy white calcareous structures falling from it, some of which had reached the ground, looked like an illustration from a fairy tale. Pools of still water on parts of the cave floor mirrored the grotesque shapes, creating an enchanted world that appeared to be carved in crystal.

I handed the torch back to Doc and took up the lantern as we moved forward to explore. Doc kept stopping to train his torch on one or another of the beautiful crystal columns. “Absoloodle, absoloodle
wunderbaA
” he kept repeating. It was certainly the most amazing natural phenomenon I had ever witnessed, and I followed Doc as we explored the huge chamber. We found several fissures in the walls, none of which was wide enough to climb through; we traced the source of the water to a point high in the ceiling from which a constant drip of water fell. Doc pointed out that this drip was too rapid for the formation of stalactites. The gradual movement of water seeping through rock collects a load of calcium carbonate. When it finally squeezes through to the ceiling of the cave and reaches the air, it sheds its load of calcium carbonate and an infinitely small part of a stalactite is formed. Each drop adds its minute contribution. He pointed to a massive stalactite to our right. “Perhaps three hundred thousand years, maybe more.” Doc's voice was filled with awe. On the far wall, some sixty feet into the cave, a ledge of rock protruded about fifteen feet from the floor. Above it hung huge spikes of stalactite and clumps of glittering crystals, while directly under the ledge, like grotesque legs to a giant table, stalagmites had grown. A buttress of crystal stalagmite had grown to the one side of the platform, to resemble steps leading up to it, so the effect was that of a magnificent slab held high by crystal shafts with huge spikes of crystallized light suspended above it.

“Look, Doc, it's like Merlin's altar in the crystal cave!”

Doc sucked in his breath.
“Ja,
in such a place went Merlin for sure.” He pointed to the throne. “To lie on this altar and in a hundred and fifty thousand years maybe the body would be a part of this cave. A part of the crystal cave of Africa. Imagine only this, Peekay.”

I grinned. “Can you hold off for a while, please, Doc? I still need you here.” The thought of Doc dying had never entered my head. I often thought of him growing old, unable to do the things we'd done in the past; but I never thought of him as disappearing, not being there, not being a part of my life. I understood death, it could happen at any time. It was a brutal accident like the death of Granpa Chook or Geel Piet or Big Hettie's flyweight. Even Big Hettie's death could be explained in that she was freakishly big and thus fell into the category of unexpected death. Doc did not fall into any of the criteria I had set aside in my mind for death. Doc was calm and reason and order, and the kind of death I knew had no part in the expectations for our relationship.

He had walked ahead up to the crystallike structure that formed the steps to the platform. As he climbed them, his boots made a scrunching noise on the hard calcium deposit, and soon he stood on the platform. Suddenly, without warning, he squatted and then stretched out full length, so his body was lost from my sight.

“Ah, come on, Doc! That's not funny,” I said, suddenly a little scared. Doc's torch shone upward, lighting the stalactites falling from the ceiling above him so that they looked like crystal bolts of lightning frozen in place above him. It was the most frightening and magnificent effect I have ever seen.

Doc's voice came back to me, sounding serene. “It is beautiful, Peekay. We must never tell any person about the crystal cave of Africa.”

“C'mon, Doc, you're giving me the creeps,” I said, not fully taking in what he had said.

Doc stood up, shining the torch straight into my eyes so that I was blinded by the light. “You must promise me, Peekay. It is very important. You must promise, please?” He withdrew the torch from my face, and in the fuzziness the temporary blinding had created he looked just like Merlin, standing between huge spikes of crystal on the platform ten feet above me.

“Doc, please come down. I promise. Now please come down.”

“Ja,
I come. Remember, you have promised, Peekay.” He made his way down from the platform carefully, and I ran to give him a hand. He was breathing heavily, and as I helped him down I could feel the excitement in the old man.

We made our way back to the bat cave and Doc shone the Eveready back into the chamber. “Peekay, we have found a place in Africa no man has ever seen, the purest magic cave, the crystal cave of Africa.”

“Come on, Doc, let's skeddadle, what's the time?” He fished into his trouser pocket for his hunter and shone the torch on its face. “Half clock ten,” he said. Doc always told the time in this funny manner.

“We've got to go. If we get back to camp by noon it'll be dark by the time we get home.” Fortunately most of the way home was downhill and we knew we would gain a couple of hours on the way back. I calculated it would be around eight that evening before we would be home. Walking the foothills in the dark wouldn't be much fun, and Doc would be exhausted. My anxiety to get going had taken the edge off my excitement. Doc grabbed me by the arm. He was still shaking. “Remember, Peekay, this is our cave. The crystal cave belongs only to you and to me.”

“Okay, Doc, I promise. I already promised. Now let's get the hell out of here.” It wasn't at all like Doc to be so insistent, and anyway he knew he could trust me. The cave had had a tremendous effect on him, and I knew he'd want us to come back, though I doubted he'd be able to make such a tough climb for much longer. I'd cut the rope we'd taken into the cave but had left the rope handrail intact for Doc to use getting out. Once we were back on the ledge I began to retrieve the two metal spikes, as we'd already lost two by having to leave them embedded in the tunnel wall.

“No, leave them, Peekay,” Doc said suddenly. “There is no time.” It was unlike Doc, who was always very careful about equipment. We'd account for everything before moving on from a campsite or where we'd been collecting specimens. It was the first time he had ever been devious, and I realized how emotionally charged he had become over the crystal cave; the old bugger was determined to come back.

We arrived back in the foothills above the town just as a giant moon was coming up over the escarpment, flooding the De Kaap Valley in silver light. It was a full moon again, and that was always a difficult time for me. It had been a full moon when Granpa Chook had died, and while the memory of that funny old rooster had dimmed, when the moon was full memories came galloping through the silver night to sadden me. It had also been a full moon when Geel Piet had died.

I was right; this would be the last big trek with Doc, who was at the point of collapse by the time we finally reached his cottage. I laid him on top of his bed and removed his boots. He had two large blisters, one under each big toe, so I threaded a needle and cotton and ran a loop of cotton through each blister which I then tied, leaving them to drain the fluid overnight. It was a technique Doc had shown me years before and I knew that by morning the blisters would have flattened and there would be no pain. I washed his face, put Vaseline over a cut under his eye, and threw an army blanket over him. He was a tough old blighter, and I was pretty sure he'd be okay in the morning.

“Ours. The crystal cave. Africa. You, me, Peekay,” he mumbled and then seemed to drift off into sleep. I waited until his breathing was deep and even before leaving for home. On the way the moon was so bright that one could see the purple blossom of the jacaranda trees. I was saddened at the thought of never again being with him in the high mountains. Each time I came back from school Doc seemed a little more frail. We had found the crystal cave of Africa, but would I see it only once? Perhaps I would return, perhaps not. When you share things, as Doc and I had done, somehow it seemed wrong to halve the secret by returning alone. I thought of the rope rotting and perhaps in a hundred years they'd find the holes where the spikes had long since rusted out and observe the rust stains in the dolomite. They'd search and find minute metal fragments which they'd analyze, and then they'd propound all sorts of theories that would have nothing to do with a six-foot-seven-inch German professor of music and the future welterweight boxing champion of the world.