“It shall be as you wish. But…”
“Yes?”
“Mr. Nachtman, are you a member of the Society?”
“I am not.”
“The one stipulation we have, is that you become a member.”
“And what do I need to do that?”
“Initiation and payment of member dues, five-hundred Swiss francs annually…Naturally, the latter could be deducted from your pay.”
“And what is my pay?”
“The pre-determined sum is seventeen thousand francs a month throughout the duration of the project and an additional four-hundred thousand upon its successful completion.”
“Then initiate me, by all means,” the architect said, with a sudden unpleasant obsequious note in his voice.
V.
Nachtman’s past was clouded in obscurity, was like some tattered document, illegible in places, with bits torn off—dog-eared and smelling faintly of the sewer.
Some facts however were clear, from phrases the man himself had uttered, from comments Peter heard made by others‡.
He had been born in a small village near the Swiss-German border. His father had been a civil servant who collected books. As a child, he had been very manual and enjoyed working with wood. In school he received poor grades, which seemed due to laziness rather than a lack of intelligence. At a young age he was apprenticed to a neo-functionalist furniture maker in Bern and, wandering beneath the chilly arcades, influenced jointly by the fine old buildings around him and the modern work he was being trained in, he let his mind plummet into the past while carrying with it bomb-like fantasies of the future.
‡A teacher at the architectural school in Mendrisio, who had studied with Natchman at the Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences: “I remember him. He was a very good-looking young man. I have no doubt that he won the hearts of many ladies. He was the sort of fellow one both admired and hated…I lost track of him completely. Then, years later, I saw him again. I did not recognize him at first. He was overweight and had lost most of his hair. Undoubtedly he had been living a life of recklessness and debauchery. I talked to him. He was haughtier than ever. His views were far too anarchistic and dark for me. I had no desire to renew my acquaintance and, pleading a pressing appointment, wished him a good day.”
• He became further interested in architecture after reading Hermann Muthesius’s Das Englische Haus.
• He began making little models of buildings out of scraps of wood—beautiful towers, castles with egg-shaped turrets.
•A rich man saw his work and supplied him with a grant to go to school and he went on to study architecture at the Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences.
In school, instead of basing his designs on standard geometrical shapes, he often imitated the shapes of plants and animals—of flowers and birds, studying nature’s angles and curves and transposing them onto buildings—towers which rose up like giant mushrooms, housing complexes in the shape of bee-hives. Places that looked as if they had been shaped by wind and waves. Public buildings without doors and houses that were like labyrinths with hallways like intertwined ribbons. He dreamed of building hyperboloid places, hallucinogenic structures, towers which dived down into the earth and crypts which rose into the air, integrating the fluidity of water into his designs and energetically studying catenary principles.
Stimulating his young brain with glasses of schnapps, he snatched inspiration from the recesses of his soul and laboured to transfer these chimeras to paper. He read a great deal, devouring everything from the best known works to the most obscure, everything from Pugin’s Chancel Screens and Rood Lofts to Shen Kuo’s Dream Pool Essays.
His peers, for the most part, hated him, as mediocrity hates genius. His designs were laughed at and scorned, making lips curl in disdain and drawing forth blunt insults from the mouths of those young scholars who in general could not see their value and were glad to make them a running joke around the school. Others, the more intelligent, could well perceive their merit, but ridiculed them all the same—out of jealousy and fear. They considered him perverse and took whatever opportunities they could to slander him and he, hypersensitive to criticism, rebelled and let invectives pour from his mouth like filth from an overflowing sewer. As he had no friends at school, he made them at the local bars—drunken old men, women of pornographic virtue, thieves and brutish labourers who shared with him their vices, as some saints might their crusts of bread.
He could well enough have got on without the love of his fellow students, but difficult indeed is it to be despised by one’s teachers.
One day, near the end of his second term, he submitted a series of designs to his professors—ideas he had developed through long meditation—through sleepless nights and potions of liqueurs. There was an apartment complex shaped like an amoeba, a house in the shape of a blade of grass, and an office complex shaped like a pebble. This adoption of biomorphic forms won him no sympathy from his teachers. They felt affronted, challenged—and the young man’s attitude did little to cure them of this impression.
“These ideas are the most original,” Nachtman said.
“Somehow they strike me as being vaguely communist,” one teacher commented.
“Black anarchist is more like it,” another growled.
From that time forward he was looked on with great suspicion, and the professors themselves were glad to expose him to the taunts of his comrades, happy to try any means to defend and preserve their linear ideas.
It was indeed with great wonder that young Nachtman one day saw a shopping centre rising up at the edge of town that strongly resembled his amoeba plan. Upon enquiring who the architect was, he was surprised to learn that it was none other than Herr Schlindt himself, the very teacher who had derided his idea.
Propelled by feelings of anger and rebellion, he finally left school and, armed with abstraction, went out into the world, into the deep forests of concrete and across the deserts of asphalt. He expected to be received as a genius, to be at long last recognised as a true artist, but the doors he knocked at would not open, those he met were without faces—without speech and their cold skin let off the subtle resonance of capitalist horrors.
Nachtman was eloquent. But his eloquence was of that fiery type more suited to a prophet than a man in search of work. Riches are built of whispers, poverty of shouts—shouts which remind people of discontent, make them clutch their wallets nervously and avoid ill-lit streets.
No one was interested in his designs for giant inflatable buildings and only a few blind men, walking with canes, would bother gazing at his plans for subterranean housing complexes.
Truth be told, if we look at the lives of successful contemporary architects, it will be difficult to find a single one who is not an arrivista, a social climber. Enormous sums of money are spent on buildings. More often than not projects are consigned according to cronyism rather than merit. Blasé boxes are draped in the uncertain language of art and it often seems as if the entire world has fallen asleep beneath a perforated steel canopy—drugged by imbecility and a sick sense of utility—which is in fact nothing more than a useless attempt to pack an endless void with specks of dust.
• He wrote a short manifesto called Crimes and Barbarisms, a scathing criticism of his contemporaries which won him many enemies, but no fame.
• He had odd jobs: as a land surveyor, a draughtsman, a carpenter, but he could never hold on to work. Convinced of his own mental superiority, he was incapable of being a subordinate to men of modest intelligence. Having been blackballed from one profession after another, he was forced to assume pseudonyms to earn a living. Under the name of Max Costa he assisted Böhm on the Züblin Office Building. As Ludwig Mayner he worked with Makovecz on the Sárospatak Cultural Centre.
• Under the name “The Mole” he submitted designs to several important contests, and even was presented as a finalist for the International Architecture Decathalon. But when people saw who he was, saw him standing be
fore them, arrogant and smelling of strong spirits, they quickly excluded him.
• Later, he worked as a stage designer, painter and etcher. He briefly went in for underwater photography and spent several years as a short order cook at a restaurant that specialized in fried foods.
• It had been rumoured that, through a number of different women stationed in various corners of Europe, he had fathered dozens of children, none of which he was willing to acknowledge.
VI.
Due to the fact that several influential politicians were members of the Society, the summit of Mt. Generoso had been acquired for a building site.
The mountaintop was at 1,700 meters. To the south one could make out Milan, Italy, and on a clear day the Duomo of its central piazza glittering in the sun. To the north, Mt. Blanc—the fabulous Alps. From the peak, looking down, the lakes of Como and Lugano could be seen. A cluster of tall pines grew along one side of the ridge, while the other was bare. A narrow-gauge cogwheel train connected the summit to the nearby towns.
The south side of the mountain was overgrown with rich heather and touched with wild peonies, white asphodel and red lilies. Narcissus grew from dense grasses and narrow-leaved hellebore opened their eyes. The rich smell of goat droppings perfumed the air and the cry of the goat herders was often heard, whooping and lonely. There were chamois which sprang away at the approach of men and occasionally a bird of prey circled overhead.
The mountain was dotted with bolle—cisterns of slate to catch the falling rain water for the goats and sheep. Paths led up from the villages below and the place was frequented by hikers who wore shorts and broad-brimmed hats and sometimes, when the weather was especially nice, women from Como and Milan would appear and sunbathe right there on the slopes amidst the heather and dung, their eyes concealed behind sunglasses, their backs glistening with coconut oil.
The goat bells however were soon drowned out by the clang of machinery and those people who came there for leisure driven away by the guttural shouts of working men. Trees were cut down wholesale, trunks uprooted. Through ample use of dynamite, the top of the mountain was levelled into a flat plateau. Bulldozers carved a road in the side of the remaining elevation, so a continuous line of trucks could haul away the debris. Huge cranes extended themselves into the air, jack-hammers ripped away at rock and the groan of steel competed with the high-pitched whine of saws.
The mountaintop became littered with shirtless workmen, some with cigarettes dangling from their mouths, others bent over, their hairy backs resembling those of bears—warriors of the construction industry who thrust out their chests and formidable bellies, talking in exaggeratedly loud voices, spitting out humorous one-liners and peppering their speech with invectives. Many wore bright orange trousers, while the only clothing for others was a pair of shorts and heavy, steel-toed boots.
For the most part the work force was made up of Italians and Swiss-Italians. At lunch time they would lounge about on the south slope of the mountain, on the grass, eating sandwiches, drinking bottles of cheap Merlot, subdued noise trickling out through small hand-held radios. When they spoke, they moved their words about like bricks, using short, muscular phrases which fell to the earth rather than took to the wind.
“A nice place to work.”
“Not bad.”
“Porco cane! Wait till winter comes.”
“Money’s always money.”
“If you don’t have to pay to earn.”
“Pass the salami.”
“A handful of corn…”
“Anyhow, you aren’t getting paid to be at Play Motel.”
“Pass the red.”
“Caspita, you drink, don’t you?”
“Miracle water.”
“Soap water…”
“…and other beverages.”
Just then the foreman approached, signalling them back to work with a motion of his hand.
This man, Fabrizio Fabrizi by name, was an Italian around forty or forty-five years of age, with blonde hair and a handsome, neatly-trimmed moustache resting beneath a rather prominent nose. He had a cleft chin and a broad chest and went about in button-up shirts, with the sleeves rolled up, and blue jeans. He had worked on many large projects and had the commanding presence necessary to make the formidable men in employ do what he wanted without needing to waste too much breath.
There was an air of excitement about the site, a constant coming and going of people, movement of materials, and machines of every description. Forklifts which stuck their fangs into pallets of materials, tractors which ripped at the hard surface of the earth, and hydraulic excavators which crawled along it, waving their booms and buckets. Men hugged jackhammers and let themselves be swallowed into the cabs of great trucks whose formidable knobbed tires crushed all in their paths, and whose exhaust pipes coughed up clouds of black smoke. There were huge bulldozers and aerial work platforms, pile drivers with diesel hammers and an enormous drilling machine whose bit was like some fantastic upside-down minaret. Graders worked at flattening the mountain, while grapple skidders did away with trees. A giant crane had been ordered for when the structure would begin to mount its way to the heavens.
Nachtman, wearing a white jacket and white pants, the legs of which were tucked into a pair of brown leather boots, strode about the building site, his large head covered by a pith helmet, a steady stream of orders flowing from his lips. Eyes glazed, body fuelled by alcoholic spirits, he worked tirelessly; thundered, chased his belly from one end of the site to the other, ejaculating orders, energising the work force and maintaining the strictest discipline, demanding militaristic punctuality from them.
Peter, who had been hired on as the great man’s assistant, worked conscientiously—copying out diagrams, as well as doing some microlevel planning. He did meticulous calculations and, when not glued to his desk, could be seen on the site, looking through the eyepiece of a theodolite.
On one such occasion, one warm day, made especially pleasant by a very slight breeze which blew from the east, he was doing just that, when Borromeo approached him. The latter had ridden his mountain bike up to have a look around, and his muscular thighs were invested in spandex shorts.
“Ah, it’s really invigorating up here!” the athlete said.
“Yes, it is a beautiful spot for a building.”
“And how are things getting on?”
“Excellently. Things are going far more quickly than anyone could have hoped.”
They did not speak for a moment as Borromeo took in the view and Peter continued his operation, measuring out distances and taking notes on a small yellow pad of paper.
Presently he stopped his work and looked up. On the opposite side of the site he saw Enheim, who was walking with a young lady of around twenty or twenty-two attached to one arm, and with the other was making broad gestures, clearly showing her the works.
Borromeo, following Peter’s gaze, explained:
“That is his daughter.”
“I didn’t realise he was married.”
“He isn’t. But she’s his daughter all the same. Born out of wedlock I believe. A Hungarian woman who later killed herself in a tragic manner.”
“Ah!”
“And the daughter lives with Dr. Enheim, who has brought her up. Her name is Trudy.”
Peter repeated the name under his breath and watched as the figure made her way across the piles of torn up earth, stepping carefully, lifting her dress slightly so that it would not get dirtied, showing an extremely white strip of calf.
When, a quarter of an hour later, he was introduced to the young lady, he held his own heart in his hands.
She was rather short, slightly plump and had a shy demeanour—and indeed it was apparent that she had been raised on the rich cooking of Enheim’s kitchen, where butter was used in abundance and a meal was never complete without a dessert of a few cheeses. Her eyes, which were large and dark brown, not unlike those of a young cow, fascinated Peter.
“This is a
girl I would like to know better,” he thought.
1. Monopan
2. Tinted concrete
3. Grey glass
4. Bituminous fibreboard
5. Weathered brass
6. Perforated steel
7. Mastic asphalt
VII.
The apartment of Maria Venezuela in Lugano was a model of elegant simplicity. A series of large, plate-glass windows gave a lovely view of the lake. A Tibetan tanka on one wall, a Russian icon on another. An Iranian felt rug partially covered the parquet floor in the living room. Furniture: a glass-topped table and a black leather couch. Huge cushions on which one could sit. Her mantle was covered with bric-a-brac—small Indian idols—a few grotesque Chinese figurines.
The dining room had a vaguely oriental feel to it. The table and chairs spoke elegant simplicity. The only decoration was an antique print of chrysanthemums which gazed on Maria placidly as she opened a bottle of organic French wine. She clicked glasses with her nephew. The table was laid: salad, whole-wheat pasta with wild Norwegian salmon sauce.
Peter twisted some noodles around his fork.
“Things are going marvellously,” he said. “It is really quite incredible to see the speed at which he works. He is indefatigable. And it is not as if he is a young man!”
“He is fuelled by his dreams.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. To me he simply seems like a man who is very true to himself. He looks towards the end result and is not concerned with money or fame. He has not sold out his ideals.”
“It seems that he has found at least one disciple.”
Her nephew shrugged his shoulders. “And what is wrong with that? I can learn a great deal from him.”
“Yes, but…there is something about him that…”
“That what?”
The Architect Page 3
