Crematorium for Phoenixes

by Nikola Yanchovichin

  The corn reduced its stalks, making noise with every gust of wind.

  Its dotted yellow stems threw down lanky shadows on the others, stooped plantation crops such as munched beans that scraped by. Slide three hundred and sixty degrees and pumpkins came into view. They had been mellowed by time with potatoes.

  Between them, overshadowed by the heaps and perched on the accumulated stones where inclined plums were growing, Victor Drake, Amos Oz, and the rest of the group were walking. They thrashed like fish while stepping on sugar-white pavement.

  They had relaxed a little in the bars and returned again and again to the cobblestones that gushed from the heat like boiled wine. Then they would return once more to the inns, exchanging their fashion for European clothes. And still they moved forward.

  They hadn’t spent a lot of time in Yucatan. Only moments before, they had hidden in the firth, overgrown like the hairy, reedy mouth of a river. They left their boat, and now they were here, riding recently imported horses that prophesied in the old ways the palefaces from the East, who would conquer this piece of the globe and briefly name it “New Spain.”

  Now oranges were hanging side by side with other trees. The sweet fruits were in front of them and easy to reach, mixed with the low, pudgy type of cocoas.

  And nothing, it seemed, could threaten their way. Their journey was facilitated by wearied cloth bags of gold for the too talkative or suspicious strangers.

  Therefore, the group walked forward and were overtaken by caravans of Spanish mules. Their harnesses were lined with animal sweat that soaked the cotton. They managed to sway the leaders who were watching the goods of their masters: bales of manipulated tobacco and raw lumps of sugar.

  Thus, each arrival was an important crossroads. Divided as armlets, they were built or had been built as fabulous caravanserai, an arabesque inn with wide, square yards that mushroomed cities in the late Middle Ages; they were layered and offered amenities for people on the rush who choose them for their good location.

  Indeed, many farmers had given up the old cultures and the rural life. They had instead welled up in these centers, showing their skill and savvy in new goods and crafts.

  And the soap factories were steaming from the chemically scalded fat, while forges and farriery echoed in the surrounds with the rhythm of their work. They were rivaled only by the mills that were processing the wool from the barely decades-old long wool of Castilian sheep. To top it all off, there were the sawmills and copper shops where smoking mountains of timber could be found in cubic meters.

  It was not hard in this manufacturing boom and brisk trade area to find transport. What they could have gotten for penny went against a whole silver coin, which the men gave with a smile, thinking that they were playing the receivers the peasants. After that, the group climbed on bogies that carried them through the agricultural lands of central Mexico.

  Yet they were careful in their chats with the country folk; the zeal of the Inquisition was something with which they could not compete.

  Those representing the Inquisition, like in the Old Continent, had won the sinister and exclusive right to “investigate” completely innocent, often sometimes mentally ill people.

  And the mercy that Jesus gave along with the full right to choose had been replaced with that obscurantist force that repelled many of the realm who were of faith.

  Whether exaggerated or not, the structure of this powerful institution was something that had to be taken into account and the company presented itself as resellers and searchers of healing herbs. They did not want to be accused of gadding about by the vigilant civil authorities.

  As they went from market to market and moved further southeast, the loose areas driven by extensive farmed lessened and the forests thickened, giving them only a brief example of the upcoming impenetrable thickets of Central America.

  They often left missionary settlements untouched. Such places were piled with straw and mud hamlets in which, besides the healer resins, bark, seedlings and fruits could be found. They carefully inquired numerous times about the scrolls of eneken, which had been depicted by many of the old traditions as ascending like fire from the banned chariots of gods of old times and temples that were now forever forgotten in the jungle.

  But this information was very, very rare.

  So this fellowship moved from one village to another, going to the tucked away deposits that existed as slivers of sugar cane plantations only to hear uttered talks of how the pale conquerors had taken away thousands of the gems. In return, they were offered oily, soaked rosaries that may as well have been bathed in dirt. The real value of anything came with the gems, although the locals swore (if they had somebody to hear them) that their true treasures, still hidden, were real gems themselves.

  The men diverted such offerings and secretly gave a few coins to such people. They gave no more than would predispose the old men who like all adults were lifted tales of those times when they still had land and hadn’t forgotten what it could produce.

  In these interminable monologues, punctuated by the hoarse cough, the elderly recycled the same descriptions of ancient cities and cultures. That cliché, “No, no, they could only be seen with the eyes,” was heard time and again.

  So filled with the descriptions from dozens of meetings, the group felt they were coming upon the old cities. They expected them to be shining as white as unspeakable amounts of poured silver, but more importantly, the roads were clearing up in the jungle as they led them to their target.

  And the men were taking them. They were walking through the mottled shadows of vegetation and leaving behind the brick-red civilization.

  They spent the night under the studded colorful sparks scattered across the sky, sleeping in porches in front of the jungle, which like the forests of fairy tales grew up and down into infinity.

  They went on, oriented by the small clearings that were entrenched with wooden prop mines. These places were like badger holes that went into the river slopes and were often surrounded by hundreds of locals. These people were extracting the bars of wealth for their masters until they themselves ripped and could not continue on.

  The thicket in front of them was twisted with saplings that had formed an impenetrable hoop. It was surrounded by only a few goat paths that ended up being dead ends.

  To reach their goal, the men often faced ravines and waterfalls that were surrounded by crumbling, fragile soil. They would carefully peel down the obstacles and once transferred to the other side would again continue on. Sometimes they came across small broken totems, which like chips dusted in savanna meadows protruded up in the middle of nowhere. They were often surrounded by small gnomes that wiggled their eyes and were hardened like monstrous beasts.

  The fellowship jumped those high places that froze the hearts, but they became more and more frequent, filling the entire jungle with millions of lizard eyes that stared like mummies on All Saints’ Day.

  And unlike the trick and requests for candy, there was nothing childish about this journey. There was only a frozen force that had been processed by the hands of evil, which started with a holy omnipresent force; it felt as if such a thing had emerged in their very own souls.

  No matter how hard they sought cover in this eternal game of hide and seek, something had found them and it flowed into their hearts like the poison sting of a spider. They felt despondent because no amount of conversation, no kidding, not even a prayer could drive it away.

  However, the man destined by the Creator to be the two most difficult things in the world—a saint and someone who is loved—will not find any convenient alcoves in life, only anguish.

  And the men walking on him just hope that the end will be worth it.

  Thus, whether walking or sailing in boats that they made for themselves, with that compressed time that occurs equally, they traveled hundreds of miles inside the jungle. And somewhere out there, a stone’s throw away, barely protruding its head, ranging, risen, and perched upon by flo
cks of crows, were the ruins of a city.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The reeds trimmed each other at their stems and made noise like locusts.

  Before them, the sapphire-blue waters were dragging and being cut by dozens of small fish that deviated here and there, scared away by the herds of hippos that were entering to chill themselves.

  Slightly further, like a dozen venflons, Archimedean screws were mounted in the water. Like an insatiable creature they were pumping it out, creating systems of irrigation facilities.

  They were like blood vessels invigorated by liquids that they then poured into the black as bitumen soil, giving it life—and what a life!

  Emerging beside the gateways that guided the water, the fields were growing with abundant fruits that were harvested, threshed, crushed, and served “as food for man and his children,” a statement that would appear in one manuscript from another era.

  And among that grace that sprouted green leaves all the way up to the horizon, ending in the Nile, there stood obelisk-yellow fishing villages. They were filled with people stretching their nets like sails on a ship. Nearby other activity was plastered everywhere. Barns and cowsheds stood among frayed canvas workshops that were courted by foreigners who had come from overseas islands and even from the Faiyum Oasis. Step by step Tammuz, Sharukin, and the others proceeded on to the threshold of what historical geographers would call Lower Egypt.

  They had heard much of this country, so probably just as you, dear reader, they now admired its beauty since they stood before it.

  For this reason, but perhaps also somewhat from those precautionary measures taken by foreigners coming from abroad, they presented to the vendors abundant fragrances, making expeditions within commercial districts. They even went to the countries of Kush and Punt, into the marketplaces located next to the large temple complexes.

  And in front of each stall covered with samples of that attracted flies, sun-baked pots with a capacity of up to several hundred pounds stood filled with various spices, freshly caught and slaughtered pink birds, livestock, poultry and fish, heaps of grain, clusters of garlic, and leeks—I would say the environment was similar to Scheherazade’s stories. Everything was available to the company, along with the buggies that were carrying straw to the ships that sailed through the thousand miles of the Nile.

  They refused to be pulled in by the frequently shouting vendors. Instead, they gave such people a copper penny, and the traders, stunned for a moment, would then press them to take a cargo of goods.

  Strange in abundance, the man thought of scarcity, but here in almost every corner, counting the songs with beating breasts, were singing beggars huddled in rags. Some leaned on a stick and had a caged bird at their feet. They stretched their free hand, requesting charity in a country that buried the dead with untold riches.

  And because of that, the more the men looked, the more signs of weary work and scour seemed to fill the face of the locals.

  Some men stretched their arms for hours in the curved claws of shadufs, irrigating the heated as sinister ceramics land.

  A little further on, in large stock breeding farms in the Delta, thousands of bred oxen pairs were driven for the large-scale construction in the south.

  Beyond that, in the salt oases of grass, looking a lot like mill dams, countless villagers gathered the works of the poor soil, taking them and giving them cheaply, as we have already mentioned, in the rush of the big city.

  Widespread rumors about extraordinary taxes and services accrued from squads of Nubian and Libyan warriors. These people made callous from the desert and worried from labor just wanted to survive.

  It was said that the south had begun construction on a new pyramid, an event that, in the words of Herodotus, for the most religious people on the planet created an irrevocable debt, associated with many tears, deprivation, and death.

  Indeed, buyers of labor in the pubs were making the drunk sign over their lives. The alcoholics would not last a week at work but that did not matter because the mega construction required a steady flow of labor. Excavated trenches ended uply being rivers of mass graves.

  Having heard these rumors, which shook the millennia-rooted beliefs in the subconscious of religious veneration, the men decided after making some bribes to go that way. There was talk of the new nest of the gods that was being built on the plateau of Giza. The bribes themselves had been necessary because only the lit had the right to approach the divine abodes. They would pose as priests, sentenced to eternal asceticism with the inability to make a living another way.

  And as happens with the ease of narrative shows, they found a ship or a vessel that may be better described as a floating barge nudged from the staves of such passengers. The flowing river from the south to north splashed water about and created an exact copy of itself in the very sky.

  They passed threshold after threshold and often listened to songs around kindled fires in the camps. Bearing the singsong of the defeated man in the desert, they stopped here and there to buy new victuals of wheat bread and fish, and again they were tolerated by the river. It spread its mottled vermilion-yellow colors, a cosmic serpent that swallowed the sun on the horizon.

  After a few days that it seemed to have fused into a moment, they began to catch up with other barges that carried the tranquility of everything. It was a jammed parade filled with blocks of snow-white limestone and crippled piles of timber logs.

  Slipping between them, aware of all the shoals and sand bars, they passed the last few tens of kilometers and soon, revealed as a beetle, were the deep river quays and berths of Memphis, inundated with their multi-ton loads and crowds and crowds of people.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The sodium-yellow lamps with their wrap around safety nets were hissing with the directional flow of electrons. Several Geiger counters were doing their job as insects buzzed in the heat in the summer swelter.

  The corridors, trapeze, and escalator spaces were covered with protective props like pierced swords that branched and interfered with the clockwork perfection, rattling its parts.

  On them, wearing streamlined, pneumatic-assisted radiation suits, were Takeshi, Akuma, and the others. They were striding with that incredulity that only the fictional Aladdin who had stepped into the cave with treasures may have felt.

  They were, as we will recall, in the core of the spacecraft that had crashed into the heart of the jungle.

  Returning to our description leads us to the winding parallel escalators, which trembled like an excretory system. They descended like an endless chute, leading to progressive or millennia-old catacombs. We will say that here is where our heroes were timidly and uncertainly clustered, caught in the midst of a cathedral-like needle in space that had been lowered down and down.

  They descend into the aircraft, which obviously due to its staggering size was rather like an orbital colony whose presence here was a mystery that was necessary from them to unravel.

  So, piled in the orbital, bathing in lights like faded fireflies, the men were searching for any signs of life.

  Their way often collapsed, folded into tin can walls or it was impossible to extend due to the expiry radiation or thousand volts of electricity. They made a turn upon arriving at training rooms that had been paved with carpet and packed with all kinds of pulleys and benches. Everything there stood scattered all over like the torn rags of foams. They passed kitchens where destruction had occurred. The mess had a cold simplicity about it. They passed through common toilets that even now, after some time, still emitted a mint flavor thanks to the hygroscopic-resembling, tiled surface. Eventually they ended up in game rooms that were lined with psychotronic helmets. They were outdated and now resembled broken shower cabinets, but they were still capable of generating such dreams or delirious states that the strong-willed could live as he pleased. Ultimately, they circled back to the floor illuminated by elongated bottleneck corridors.

  From time to time, the cockroaches scrambling in the safety
glass that had become as enlarged as golf balls frightened the men. They cast their giant shadows at you as if sharpening one of their suckers. Sometimes capes of cobwebs, heavy like the draperies of the savanna also challenged the subconscious with horrors that powered all sorts of fantasies about the ceiling being full of hairy spiders that hissed from being baited by pokes.

  Fortunately, aside from the webs, their fortitude was entertained by a brief exchange of thoughts and holidays. They did not indulge in such things because of fatigue but did so to support the brittle, cracked bit of creamy chocolate that Takeshi gave them instead of answers.

  Yet they were being careful—alpha, beta, and gamma radiation sure were a lot more dangerous and real enemy than anything else they had come across. They moved at a sign from Takeshi; they weren’t loitering a lot.

  However, in one of those moments of relaxation, sitting in a cage as hazy and dark as a cave formation in space, they found something useful. Perhaps the room had once been a communication center but no disturbance had come from the outside or inside in a while.

  What they found was the name of the station.

  A nickel-plated piece of metal with bright, shiny skin, much like snake skin, read “Data Center.” Across its brownish magnetic bands, clearly written in neon-yellow letters was the name “Tiamat.”

  After the men discovered the name, they convened a council.

  “It is time. From the boiled substance, called our trip, to resurface any answers. What is this?” Akuma asked first.

  “The story you will hear is unusual because it is made up of thousands of events merged into one,” Takeshi said, tinkering with his tattoos that were playing with the eye by changing imperceptibly as illusions took shape.

  “After a long time, more than you can imagine, humanity will live beyond the heavens, where in the stars there are facilities like this one.

  “I say so with certainty, because I come from there, from a time when the last had died in battles that even the imagination finds difficult to reproduce.