Here Were The Lips
...I kissed so many times...
These words belong to Hamlet, but they could very well be said by Andrew A., a digger whom I met on a business matter. I had to interview him for our newspaper. Andrew, a forty-year-old man, told me a lot about caves. It was his hobby, something he couldn't live without. During the interview, I noticed something interesting: some ten years ago, Andrew traveled mostly with his friends to different mountains, but lately he would go alone to one and the same cave. He told me its name, but I cannot reveal it. Let it be the New Afon cave.
When I asked Andrew about such an obsession, he kept silent for a moment, and then said that he could spend hours describing the beauty of that cave, and that would be enough. But he had promised he'd tell his story to someone else, if he or she should ask.
His story was so unique, that we couldn't publish it. So I've made it into a story.
When a student, he became a digger. Just by accident he joined the digger club at the university, and then had his first adventure in the caves. He realized he wouldn't live without it.
After the graduation, Andrew didn't drop his hobby. Each summer he would go to the caves with his friends. Soon he met a girl, who was also a digger, and who later became his lover. He didn't tell much about her, but it was evident he loved her more than anything in the world.
"Ann and I, we were like ancient people. We couldn't live without each other, and the caves."
They decided to get married. They wanted their wedding to happen in the caves. Andrew had some important business to do at work, so Ann with friends left to the New Afon without him. When Andrew arrived, there was terrible news waiting for him: Ann had gone in the cave alone and never returned. They had looked for her, but couldn't find her.
"When they told me Ann had got lost, I decided to go in the cave immediately, although it was night and I was very tired. Nobody tried to stop me."
A week passed, but there was a small hope that Ann was still alive. Three weeks later they tried to convince me it was all in vain. But I stayed.
After the friends left, Andrew spent about a month in the cave. But it was no use. Returning to the city, he found his hair was gray.
"I couldn't talk to anybody. I quitted the job. After all, my boss is to blame. I could go together with them, and Ann wouldn't have died."
Since that time he took any chance to go to that very cave. He said he had explored everything there. All the dead ends, all the rooms, everything. He was looking for a place he hadn't noticed before.
And he was lucky. Behind a large stalagmite, he found a crack. It lead into a small hall, in the middle of which was a hole: a small well, about four meters deep. Andrew climbed down inside it. There he found Ann.
"When I saw that thing... I realized it was Ann. My Ann."
It was evident that she had lived long after her fall in the well. Andrew found a carving which read, "Find me. I love you." Despite the cold, the mummy was naked. The clothes lay next to the body, in a tidy heap.
Andrew spent days near the body. He wouldn't tell me about what he thought about. He said he was mesmerized. He thought Ann was alive. He kisses her, and she answered him! He made love to the dead girl.
"My soul split in two. One part understood that Ann had been dead for a long time, but the other couldn't agree with it. For that part, Ann was still alive, so I talked to her, I caressed her, I loved her... It was me and not me at the same time. I couldn't understand what was going on. And I couldn't leave. Because Ann asked me to stay with her..."
Andrew left eventually. He was shocked when he remembered what he had done in the cave. But some time later he went to New Afon again.
"She was alive. And I couldn't but answer her appeal."
So it lasted until last summer. Andrew arrived to see Ann, but the well was filled with water.
"I had no equipment, but I kept diving although the water was ice-cold. I had no idea of what I wanted to rescue from the bottom of that damned well."
He brought something from that last adventure. A skull.
Copyright by NightInGale (2002).