Perspiration coated his body and sweat drops covered his face. He stopped, lowering the backpack onto the hardened mud floor of the cave. With a rolled-up forearm sleeve, he wiped sweat beads back over his nose and forehead, into his hair. The man took a little water into his mouth from the canteen and moved it around slowly with his tongue; then he swallowed half while letting the rest fall from his lips.
There was another reason for stopping where he did. Around him was a large clearing, perfect for the night’s camp site. Although he was not tired, it was getting late. Ahead stood two tunnels and rather than choose immediately, he chose to pitch his tent and decide when he awoke.
The cave was surprisingly warm. The sun had gone down a couple of hours ago; but variations in outside temperature aren’t supposed to matter in the constant cool of caves. The lantern barely lighted a ten foot area around him. He peered down the one tunnel, then the other—equally dark. The man looked back along the tunnel he had just traversed. Very odd! The walls were a light reddish color where dampness had rusted the dolomite deposits and nondescript shades of brown otherwise. From the ceiling hung large stalactites and some large and small stalagmites jutted up from the floor near the walls. Where the floor of the main tunnel was not muddy, it was pebbled.
It did not take him long to make his way through the passage, from the mouth of the cave; but he had started late and it was even later now. He laughed lightly at this last thought. How could it be earlier now? He laughed a little more, and the echo of his laughter sounded like company.
The tent was very small, just large enough to arch over his body. It was only for sleeping. The man set the lantern nearby, detached the tent from the pack, and quickly assembled it. He then untied the sleeping bag and unrolled it along the nylon floor of the tent. After leaning the backpack against the post to the right of the tent’s zipper, he left the zipper open and went over to the two openings again with the lantern in hand.
This being a cave, the man figured the two tunnels would be just as dark at dawn as they were now. How would he decide? He decided this was tomorrow’s problem. For now he would sleep, or try. The man walked back to the tent, placed the lantern next to the post on the zipper’s left, opposite the backpack, and clicked off the light.
His eyes readjusted before he crawled into the tent and the man realized he could see, although dimly, by the moonlight which entered through a few crevices in the cave’s ceiling. If the roof of the cave is that thin and cracked, this journey could end in disaster, he thought briefly. Dismissing the thought, the man headed back to the two tunnels for another look. But it was no good. With the lantern, he could see ten feet nicely; without it, he could see somewhat farther, but less distinctly. He went into the tent hoping sunlight would be more beneficial.
When he was not tired, which was often, it was impossible to fall asleep. This night promised to be no better. The man tried to empty his mind, to clear his head of all thoughts. Of course, the harder he tried, the more there was to think about.
Then he considered thinking himself to sleep. One side of the brain would ask the questions; the other would answer. The asking side began with a deep, philosophical question: What the hell are we doing here? The answering side stalled: Do you mean in this tent, this clearing, this cave, or just in this world? The askers became indignant: We ask the questions here!
He hated when his brain took sides. It seemed several little guys were inside his body somewhere—in his head, he guessed—fighting it out while he was just a hulking mass with less control over these little guys and their quarrel than a basketball court has. When the notion struck him that it was as if he were a house in which a family was arguing, he carried this to the next convoluted step: Weren’t my little guys like houses, too, with microscopic guys inside their heads?
Realizing the infinite trap, the man shifted emphasis to just as much of the cave as he had covered so far. At the mouth of the cave, he had looked up the mountain out of which the cave was cut. An all-female expedition was scaling the side, determined to make it to the summit before dark. The leaders were making terrific headway, as far as he could reckon. But the stragglers were close enough to him so he could call to them and they could answer as they pleased. It was from these stragglers he learned something about their expedition. He wished them luck and they wished the same, although neither clearly understood the other’s mission.
On first entering the cave, he was at once pleased and amazed at the variety of sights and colors. Yet all attractions were similar: the stalagmites, the stalactites, the pebbles, the stream down the middle, spots where the stream cut around the bigger, smooth rocks. The moisture. The warmth. This is natural perfection, he thought, like a continuous truth making new facts fall into place.
But as he continued through the opening tunnel of the cave, he became disappointed by the absence of things he expected to be there. Where were the pretty animals? Bats and bugs are not so aesthetically satisfying. But what could he expect? Unicorns? There were other things absent he would have enjoyed experiencing, but since they were not present, he did not know what they might be.
Before long, the trail became monotonous and made him anxious. Before much longer, he had arrived at the clearing where the main tunnel ended and just before the two began.
Thinking about the road he had covered made him anxious. Worrying about the choice to come increased his anxiety. Should he choose the left one? Or the right? If he chose one, would he ever find out what the other was like? One tunnel looked almost the same as the other from where he stood and he assumed they went differently a little farther on, but he did not know. It was the not knowing that bothered him most.
Why make the choice at all? He could stay right where he was. This isn’t bad, he thought, except for the insomnia. He could remain a cave man. But the choice was truly inevitable. Even making no decision was a choice. Although it was pleasant, he knew he could not remain in the clearing forever. He did not have all the necessities required to do so, nor could he have them.
This line of thought fomented the man’s anxiety, which abetted his inability to fall asleep. He reverted to his original decision to leave the choice for morning. He elected to fall back on his fail-safe cure for insomnia—thinking of former girlfriends. Beginning with the first girl he had ever dated and working up to the woman he had recently broken up with, he recalled each in turn as slowly and vividly as he could conjure. The man recollected the best times with each—those frames of his life he would have liked to freeze. Moments so brief, yet so special, they defined all the rest and made it worthwhile.
Too soon, he arrived at thoughts of his last girlfriend. Memories of their most special times together—like looking across the table with the dinner plates cleared away and the candle’s light sparkling off her wine glass and eyes—failed to produce the desired autoerotic stimulation in him. Rather, these forced antipodean memories of the circumstances of the break up. With great effort, he had managed to cauterize from memory the specific dialogue of their last night together, though the impact would ever stay with him. They had talked until the dawning sun cracked through the blinds, when the gist of all their words snapped into place: though he was the one pushing for commitment, she was the one ready for it. On the walk back to his apartment, carrying the diamond clenched in his fist, it took all his control not to fling it as far as the morning air could carry the ring. Finding his motives so convoluted made him feel worse than detached from this woman and distanced from marriage to any. He felt aimless, adrift. He was all rubberish putty, wondering a little less now why he was in this cave.
Having exhausted in turn the harem it took his lifetime to assemble, he fatuously began mixing and matching all their best features to create what he thought would be the perfect woman for him. This girl’s eyes. . .that one’s hair. . .her lips. . .her voice. . .her laugh. . .her breasts. . .no, hers. . .no, why not one of each. . .no, no. Wait. It was not passion, really; it was tension. He did not want to decide, or have to decide. He wanted release; he wanted only sleep. He got it, finally, and he did.
But the man did not sleep restfully and awoke after only a few hours. The sunlight did indeed pierce through the crevices, but was not much more intense than was the moonlight. He guessed it was just after daybreak as he crawled from his tent to click on the lantern. The man pulled a dry, light breakfast from his backpack and ate it with effort. He cleaned himself up as well as he could using canteen water, then put on a fresh shirt.
Looking over toward the two tunnels, he could discern the side by side shadows of their openings. His attention was then drawn to the floor of the clearing, just a few feet in front of him, where the man saw a fiddler crab pop out of one hole, scuttle across the muck, then disappear down another hole—its larger claw the last part out of sight. The man wondered how those things survive in the cave.
Realizing it was the only chore left before he had to move on, the man put away the sleeping bag and tent meticulously and languorously. He hefted the pack onto his shoulders, scooped up the lantern with his left hand, and walked toward the tunnels. Presently, he began to sweat.
The man came over to the left one first. He held his light before him, across the threshold. His first observation: although this tunnel’s floor was muddier than the cave’s had been, the pebbles were more numerous and larger. They were rocks. He moved to the tunnel on the right and poked in the lantern. The opening on the right was much larger than the left’s; the right tunnel was much larger in all respects. Just as there had been at the mouth of the cave, there was a stream running through the right tunnel. Whereas the initial stream dried up after a dozen or so meters, this one was deeper—a few inches it seemed—and appeared to run longer. But the man could not see too far by the lantern light.
He turned off the light. It was incredible that these caverns were side by side. The right opening was noticeably larger, yet the mouth of the left tunnel narrowly arched above the right’s. The walls of each tunnel seemed newer than the cave’s walls; they were more coarse and brown, with fewer bright pink rust deposits. From the ceiling of the left tunnel hung fewer stalactites than on the right, but the ones on the left were much thicker. The stalagmites which formerly lined the walls of each tunnel were not as smoothed away as those earlier in the cave.
Although the sunlight which would indicate the opposite end of either one could not be seen, the tunnels themselves were much brighter by sunlight than the clearing was. The crevices of the left tunnel were relatively large and emitted good light. There were many more crevices on the right, however, and this too allowed much sunlight to penetrate.
The man realized he could see farther into the right tunnel than the left. Then he realized why. The left was more windy; the right stayed straight. Its stream stayed straight. He looked at the stream again. On either side of the trickle he saw something he had not noticed before. He was disappointed both because he thought he was being so observant and because of what they were that he saw—footprints, many and varied.
He switched to the left tunnel; there were not as many, but they were just as varied. He turned. Footprints in the clearing, too. He thought he was the first in this spot, alone with his choice.
The man looked down one tunnel again, then the other. Then he stepped back far enough so he could look into both simultaneously. He was angry. It did not matter anymore!
If it truly did not matter, why was he being more careful than before in making this choice—and why did it annoy him? The man knew he had to make the right choice, but it was not so personally important anymore. He stood back even farther, on the spot where his tent had been, clicked on the lamp and stared at the light. He wished desperately for a joint—or better—a shot of whiskey. Something to make him numb. What’s the difference? The way that left one winds, it probably runs into the right one within a hundred meters, maybe even a hundred feet. And with all those footprints, I’ll probably meet a few people I know. . .or they could tell me later what the other was like.
The whole hike did not matter. He knew there was only one exit from the cave. And he was enjoying most of the trip until this choice arrived. The man knew he would enjoy the hike again, once his choice was made. But which side would he appreciate more? And how many forks were in each of these tunnels? He knew the tunnels converged somewhere, but how far down and how close to the exit he did not know. Not knowing bothered him most.
Maybe it was not such a clever method, after all the agonizing he had put into it, but the man based his decision on how he felt in the present as a result of the past. He squared the backpack on his shoulders. As the man walked into the tunnel on the left, he clicked off the light.
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