‘To get the camera.’
‘What on earth for?’
‘We are going to take some photographs.’
I had two rolls of Kodak Ektachrome Aero-film type 8443 in the small refrigerated cabinet which housed my stock of films. I had ordered this infra-red film to experiment with photographing the unexcavated foundations of the city from the top of the cliffs, but the results had not been encouraging. There were too many rock strata and too much vegetation confusing the prints.
I filled my Rolleiflex with a roll of the infra-red film, and I fitted a Kodak No 12 Wratten filter over the lens. Sally pestered me while I worked, but I replied to all her queries with, ‘Wait and see!’
I took up two arc-lights, and we arrived back at the cavern a little alter midnight.
I used a direct frontal lighting, plugging the arc-lights into the switchboard of the electric water-pump beside the pool. I set the Rolleiflex on a tripod and made twenty exposures at varying speeds and aperture-settings. By this time Sally was on the point of expiring with curiosity, and I took mercy on her.
‘This is the technique they use for photographing canvases and picking out the signatures and details overlaid by layers of other paints, for aerial photography through cloud, for photographing the currents of the sea, things which are invisible to the human eye.’
‘It sounds like magic.’
‘It is,’ I said, clicking away busily. The filter takes out everything but the infra-red rays, and the film is sensitive to it. It will reflect any temperature or texture differences in the subject and show them in differing colours.‘
There was an hour’s work in the dark room before I could project the images onto our viewing screen. All colours were altered, becoming weird and hellish. The king’s face was a virulent green and his beard purple. There were strange dapplings, speckles, and spots which we had never noticed before. These were irregularities in the surface, extraneous materials in the paint pigments, colonies of lichens and other imperfections. They glowed like outlandish jewels.
I hardly noticed these. What held all my attention, and set my pulses pounding, was the grid of regular oblong shapes that underlaid the entire image. An irregular chequer-board effect; they showed in lines of pale blue.
‘We’ve got to get Louren here immediately,’ I blurted.
‘What is it? I still don’t understand. What does it mean?’ Sally pleaded, and I turned to her with surprise. It was so clear to me that I had expected her to understand readily.
‘It means, Sal, that beyond our white king is an opening in the rock wall which has been closed off by a master mason with perfectly laid blocks of sandstone The white king has been painted over it.’
Louren Sturvesant stood before the rock wall in the cavern and stared angrily at the white king. His hands were clasped behind his back. He was balanced on the balls of his feet, with his jaw thrust out aggressively. We stood around him in a semicircle, Ral, Sally, Leslie and I, and we watched his face anxiously.
Suddenly Louren tore the cigar out of his own mouth and hurled it onto the paved floor. Savagely he ground the stub to powder, then he swung away and went to the edge of the emerald pool and stared down into its shadowy depths. We waited in silence.
He came back, drawn to the painting like a moth to the candle.
‘That thing,’ he said, ‘is one of the world’s great works of art. It’s two thousand years old. It’s irreplaceable. Invaluable.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘It doesn’t belong to us. It’s part of our heritage. It belongs to our children, to generations not yet born.’
‘I know,’ I said, but I knew more than that. I had watched Louren over the months as his feelings towards the portrait grew. It had developed some deep significance for him, which I could only guess at.
‘Now you want me to destroy it,’ he said.
We were all silent. Louren swung away and began pacing, back and forth, in front of the portrait. All our heads swung to watch him, like spectators at a tennis match. He stopped abruptly, in front of me.
‘You and your fancy bloody photographs,’ he said, and began pacing again.
‘Couldn’t we—’ Leslie began timidly, but her voice faded out as Louren spun around and glared at her.
‘Yes?’ he demanded.
‘Well, could you sort of go round behind it, I mean, well—’ Her voice faded and then grew stronger again. ‘Drill a passage in the wall off to one side, and then turn back behind the king?’
For the first time in my life I felt like throwing my arms around her neck and kissing her.
Louren flew up one of his mine captains with a crack team of five Mashona rock-breakers from the Little Sister gold mine near Welcome. They brought with them an air-compressor, pneumatic drills, jumper bars, and all the other paraphernalia of their trade. The mine captain was a big, ginger-haired man, with cheerful cornflower-blue eyes, and a freckled baby face. His name was Tinus van Vuuren, and he threw himself wholeheartedly into the project.
‘Reckon we will be able to cut her fairly easy. Doctor, This sandstone is like cheese, after the serpentine and quartz that I am used to.’
‘I want the smallest opening you can work in,’ Sally told him sternly. ‘I want as little damage as possible done to the paintings.’
‘Man,’ Tinus turned to her earnestly. ‘I’ll cut you one no bigger than a mouse’s—’ he cut the word off, and substituted another, ‘—ear-hole.’
Sally and I taped the outline of the mouth of the shaft on the wall of the cavern. We positioned it carefully to avoid the most beautiful and significant paintings. Though we took Tinus at his word and made the opening a mere
