The Cave

They slept in a chicken coop under a mango tree. Barry was woken just before dawn by something scurrying at the bottom of his sleeping bag. He hopped to his feet and shook out a cockroach, stamped it into the dirt. He put on his jeans and fleece and sat against the chicken-wire. He lit a cigarette and looked at Chris. Sleeping like a lamb. Breathing gently through his nose, wearing a saintly smile. The bastard could sleep through anything: even the racket from the fucking hippies in the barn. Maiming guitars ‘til three in the morning; torture by out-of-tune Dylan. Jesus! Had they never heard of house music? Burn their guitars and make them wear industrial club gear. Force feed them burgers.

Barry shivered and breathed into his hands. How could you be cold in the bloody tropics? They had to get off this farm. “An oasis” the guidebook said. “Sleep under the stars. Chill out away from the gringo trail.” Barry had stayed at The Oasis, Bali. That had the only stars he cared about, five of them.

The sun came up, stretching shadows across the meadow. The orange light was soon burning white, heating one of Chris’s pink cheeks. He sat up and smiled at Barry.
“Morning,” Chris said. He looked at the clear blue sky and lush green of the land. “Looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day.”
“Yeah,” said Barry. “Maybe we should head for the beach.”
“What about the cave?”
“Great,” said Barry with a snort.
“We’ve paid, um… Miguel. Thirty dollars.”
“I’ll pay double not to go.”
“Oh come on, man. It’ll be fun. It’s different. We’ll go to the cave, do the waterfall thing, come back and go to the coast. By ten o’ clock tonight you can be sipping a Margarita by the pool, if that’s what you want.”

Chris took his clothes out of his rucksack and spread them out flat. He rolled each item as tight as he could, fixed it with an elastic band, then squeezed them all back into the bag. He filled a plastic cup with sterilised water from his canteen, cleaned his teeth, drank some water, then added some muesli which he kept in a little Tupperware box.

Miguel came at nine-thirty. He had straight black hair to the shoulder and deep brown skin. He was about five feet five and wore a pair of blue running shorts, flip flops, a yellow T-shirt stretched over his belly, and a blue baseball cap. He had a small rucksack over his shoulder.
“Nos vamos, rubio?” Miguel looked up at Chris without a smile.
“What did he say?” Chris asked.
“He called you blondie,” said Barry.

They left their rucksacks at the farm and walked for two hours through scrubby grassland. Miguel had a slight limp which became more noticeable. He had a scar on the back of his knee. Chris and Barry tried to keep pace. Their shadows hugged their feet more closely as the sun climbed. Barry wore a red T-shirt and a baseball cap turned backwards over his brown locks. He was past wearing sun-tan cream. Let the sun burn him browner and browner, he thought. Chris wore a straw hat and long grey trousers – light-weight, vented, draw-stringed and toggled. He stopped every now and again and applied thick lotion to his fair arms and face. The third time Miguel shook his head, pointed at Barry’s arms and said “crema.”
“What did he say?” asked Chris.
“Cream,” said Barry.
“Want some?” said Chris, reaching into a pocket.
“Nope.”
Chris offered round his canteen. Miguel swigged with a “gracias”. Barry didn’t drink.
They walked on. Every now and again Miguel would stop, raise the peak of his cap and point at a particular plant, explaining its use to Barry.
“What’s that one for?” asked Chris.
“Toothache,” said Barry.
“Tell him I’m a doctor,” said Chris, grinning.
“Es médico,” said Barry to Miguel.
“Tiene pinta de médico,” said Miguel nodding, looking at the ground.
“What did he say?” asked Chris, trying to catch Miguel’s eye.
“He looks like a fuckwit,” said Barry.
“What did he say?” said Chris.
“He looks like a doctor,” said Barry.
“Ask him how much further it is to the cave.”
“Ask him yourself,” said Barry.
“I can’t,” said Chris.
“You had lessons. Try.”
Chris blushed. “Cuanto… distante… es...”
“Tres kilómetros, más o menos,” said Miguel to Barry.
“He said three­­—“
“Three ks,” said Chris. “I got that.”

Presently, they walked up a hill and into rainforest. The path was wide and there were bright butterflies and bird calls. Chris thought he heard the buzz of a hummingbird. They climbed a ridge and descended into a ravine. The air was dark now, and seemed to darken as they approached the mouth of the cave which opened into one side of a slope. There was a sound of running water.

Miguel sat on a rock and massaged his knee for a while. He opened his rucksack and took out tomatoes, a bunch of tiny bananas and a cloth bundle from which he unwrapped maize tortillas. From one side pocket he took a packet of cigarettes and a pair of black-rimmed spectacles. From the other he produced a book: Las Uvas de la Ira.
“What’s he reading?” asked Chris.
“Grapes of Wrath,” said Barry, and they raised their brows.
Delving into the very bottom Miguel pulled out two sealed, clear plastic bags, each containing a torch. A loop of string was fixed to the top of the bags. Miguel put one round his neck and turned on the torch. He mimed the breast-stroke and pointed into the cave. He grinned and told them to swim to the left. He said it was half an hour to the waterfall.
“Jesus,” said Barry.
“Ask him if it’s safe,” said Chris.
“Safe? Jesus!” said Barry, examining his torch-bag.
“Con médico, sí,” said Miguel to Barry, before he could ask. “Con médico, todo está seguro, siempre.”
“He says it is with a doctor,” said Barry. “Everything’s always safe with a doctor.”
“Well, the book said it was,” said Chris.
“Fuck the book.”
Chris wanted to say “fuck you,” Barry could see it.

They stripped to shorts and trainers and hung the plastic bags around their necks. They checked the torches worked and left them switched on inside the bags. At first, the water felt beautifully cool after the heat of the walk. The guide book had said there would be a short swim and then a scramble along a stream into the depths of the hill towards the waterfall. Sure enough, after about fifteen yards, they could put their feet on the ground. They walked and swum and waded along the cave, flashing the torches onto the walls and the roof. They could hear only the splashing of feet, the running of water over rocks, drips falling from the ceiling twenty feet above. Sometimes there was rock beneath their feet, shaped in places into razor edges. At other times they walked in pink-brown mud which squirmed into their shoes. The tunnel twisted down, further from the world. After forty minutes there was still no sign of the waterfall.
“This isn’t funny,” said Barry.
“Go back, if you like,” said Chris.
“Look, I’m not being difficult,” said Barry. “Look at these things. What if water gets in? What if we get lost?”
“We can’t get lost, we’re in a tunnel. We just go back the way we came.”
“If we can see which way that is.”
“We can see.”

Barry could feel his heart beating, fast. His flesh was pimpled from cold. A chill was starting to creep into his spine. Chris’s torch flashed on the walls as he scrambled on. Barry followed.
At last, after an hour, they came to a huge cave. The water they had followed swept past their feet, over the edge of a shelf and into a pool of water fifteen feet below. They stood on the edge, shining their torches down onto the swirling surface.
Chris gave Barry a great big smile. “Hey-hey! We made it! Look at that! It’s awesome!”
Barry tried to smile, but his cheeks felt tight.
“It’s great,” he said. Instead of fear and mounting panic, he felt relief with an undertow of fear. He looked at his torch. He could swear it was getting dimmer. More yellow, less white. Calm, calm, he thought. Let Chris enjoy it for a moment, then we’ll go. In an hour it’ll all be over. In nine hours we’ll be watching the stars over the sea. To think how hard he’d been on the beautiful stars.
Chris moved towards the edge.
“Chris—”
“Come on,” said Chris. “Let’s jump.”
“Don’t be an arse. Come on, mate. I think my torch is going. We’ve seen it now, let’s head back, seriously.”
“No way! When did you ever jump off a waterfall in a cave? Not in Bali, that’s for sure.”
“It can’t be safe, it—”
“The book said it was.”
Before Barry could argue, Chris was flying through the air, plunging to the echo of a mighty scream. Then a big splash and a champagne fizz of bubbles as the torch and Chris found their way to the surface. Chris yodelled as he broke into the air. Barry shone his torch on him as he swam to the edge of the pool.
“Come on, man! It’s amazing! Jump!” said Chris.
Barry moved towards the edge.
“If I jump can we go?”
“Just do it!”
Barry leapt. He fell with a shriek into the cold, cold water. Bubbles lit up before his eyes as he scrambled to the surface, pulling air hard into his lungs, his face breaking into a smile.
He swam to Chris and they both got out, grinning.
“Let’s go back up,” said Chris. “I’ve got an idea.”
“Look,” said Barry, “I think­—“
“One more jump and then we’ll go. Scouts honour.”
“I bet you were a scout …”
They climbed around the side of the cave, up to the top of the falls.
“Stand next to me,” said Chris. “OK, give me your torch.”
“Fuck off!”
Chris took Barry’s torch and turned it off. Then he turned off his own.
“Chris!”
“Shhhhhh! Just chill for a second. Feel the darkness. It doesn’t get any darker than this.”
Chris left it what he thought was two minutes, though in a world without light it seemed like it could have been two years. Barry heard the chatter of his own teeth. He waved his fingers in front of his eyes but could see nothing.
Barry felt Chris spring. Then silence, silence, then the splash. It echoed from the walls and for a moment Barry felt his balance go. He started to sway and bent his knees to keep his feet on the ground, lest he fall over the edge, wherever that was. He listened for Chris, for the laugh or the scream, but nothing came.
“You’re really fucking funny,” said Barry.
Was that the sound of swimming, or the running of the stream?
“Come on Chris, mate. Don’t fuck with me now. I can’t see a thing. What if I fall over the edge? Then what? Come on… Chris.”
Only the water spoke.

Outside the cave Miguel finished the last tortilla. He shook crumbs from the cloth and folded it into a neat square. He put the cloth and the banana skins in the bottom of the bag. As he did so, he heard the crumple of plastic packaging. He chuckled as he reached into the bottom of the bag, past the damp banana skins, and pulled out two packets of fresh batteries.

From the pool below Barry a torch flashed, lighting a grimace on Chris’s face. Chris cackled a horror-film laugh.
“That wasn’t funny, you twat.”
“Your turn.”
“No way, man.”
“Just look at a spot on the water.”
“No.”
“I’m going to turn off. Just pick a spot.”
“No!”
“When it goes dark, jump.”
Chris turned off the torch. Barry swore and curled his toes around the edge of the rock and looked down. All was black. Barry could hear his breathing. Then he sprang with his toes and spread his arms wide. For an age he was falling through the blackness, unable to tell which way was up or down or if it was day or night or if he was alone or surrounded by a thousand faces. Then his feet hit the cold liquid of the pool, and the blackness all around looked the same as when it had been the air, except now he fell through something thicker, which ran over his invisible skin like iced silk. Then up again as the black air in his lungs forced him to the surface, where he swam in the void like a bat.
Chris turned the torches on and Barry swum over and they sat together on a rock by the side of the pool and screamed and shouted and beat their chests.
“Shit!” said Barry.
“I told you!” said Chris.
“Yeah!”
“Shall we go again?”
“Let’s do it! Together this time.”
“Now you’re talking!”
Up to the top they went and jumped in the dark, holding hands. Then again – bombing the water this time; and again – diving head first. And although they knew the water was there, there was always a stretching moment when they felt they might be falling infinitely.
They stood at the top one last time. Neither wanted to end the moment.
“Come on,” said Chris. “I can hear the call of the Margarita.”
“Let’s just feel the dark once more,” said Barry.
In the dark, Barry mouthed silent words at Chris, knowing he couldn’t see: “Chris you are a wonderful, wanker, son of a bitch, bitchin’, beautiful, barmy, boring, bountiful—” until Chris’s torch came on.
Barry laughed until he noticed that Chris wasn’t smiling.
“Is it me – or has my torch gone orange?” said Chris.

The coil of filament was indeed of a much more orange hue, and thinner. And though Barry’s torch was brighter, it didn’t seem as bright as it had been, though they couldn’t be sure, and before the debate about brightness had got very far they found they were splashing as fast as they could. Barry fell and cut his knee, but there wasn’t time to even think about blood or wounds because Chris’s torch went out and they were an age from daylight. The water was running against them this time, and seemed to cling to their thighs, slowing their legs, and mud sucked hold of their feet. They had to swim in one place. Had they needed to swim on the way? And as they kept close together, sharing the ever more orange light of the remaining torch, they tried to remember if they’d seen this stalactite or that stalagmite on the way, though there wasn’t time to doubt. And just when it seemed that the torch was finally going to die, they came around a bend and found they could see the walls way on ahead, and there was a whiteness there which grew and grew and they started to scream with joy. They hugged one another and fell down into a pool of sludge and whooped with joy. On they ran, as if it might be a mirage, as if the cave might suck them back in, until they came to the pool by the entrance which they swam through at top speed, doing front crawl, until they got to the other side, where Miguel was standing, grinning, smoking a cigarette.

Barry and Chris panted like dogs, devouring the tropical air, feeling the warmth of the afternoon start to comfort their shivering muddy skins. Barry sat on the rock, Chris cleaned his wound, and they both drank long from Chris’s canteen.
With a grin and a shrug, Miguel showed them the fresh batteries.
“Sorry, gentlemen,” said Miguel, starting to laugh.
“Gentlemen?” said Barry. “Hijo de puta—”
“Hijo de puta!” said Chris. “I know that phrase.”
“Si! Son of a bitch, médico,” said Miguel. “I’m a son of a bitch too.”

They laughed with thumping hearts, then threw Miguel in the pool at the start of the cave, taking care not to hurt his leg. When they all calmed down they smoked the rest of his cigarettes and set off back through the forest, chattering like schoolchildren, asking Miguel the name of everything and telling him he ought to be reading Steinbeck in English if he thought he was so clever. That night Chris slept like a lamb again in the coop and Barry, unable to sleep, mounted a one-man-mission against the hippies in the barn.