The Architect

by Connell, Brendan

  The architect ratified the statement with an affirmative grunt.

  XL.

  The mountain was tranquil.

  Peter, having parked his car below, hiked up the trail, the small road that had been carved in the side of the natural elevation. He had been informed that the Meeting Place was to be completed that day, the capstone put in place, and he could not resist venturing to the site.

  It was spring and flowers pushed themselves up out of the earth. A bird sang timidly in a tree and down below, in the valley, one could faintly hear the sound of the church bells of the distant villages strike the noon hour.

  And yet this calm seemed somehow false—seemed to be tinged with a grim whisper and the sleepy trees and lazy grass seemed unreal, especially for one whose mind was constantly on man-made things, who had been brooding for long over that acropolis on the mountain from where he had once been banished.

  He made his way up, and as he ascended, noted that all the trees at the higher elevation had been done away with, the earth ravaged, ripped away at—strewn with dislodged boulders and mutilated stumps.

  As he rounded a bend, he looked up, was confronted by the site of an edifice such as the world had never known—a thing extracted from the wildest dreams, a nightmare harnessed and dragged into the physical world. He adjusted the glasses on his nose and for a moment stood there gazing at that gigantic place in the distance, violently coloured, as if it had been decked in the vestments of some scarlet woman, painted with blood, strewn over with the guts of its victims. It stretched out of the mountain top like some monstrous claw looking to snatch God from the very heavens. Strange spires sprang and lurched off from the sides, some of them looking like horns, others like tentacles. Its massive doors, which stood open, were like the gaping mouth of some obscene beast which could have swallowed entire four or six elephants at a time. The whole was capped by a dome, negligently clothed in strands of cloud, out of which jutted several snouts at the ends of which were rounded windows, like the eyes of a chameleon.

  Peter could vaguely make out a small group of figures standing before it, and hurried his pace, putting one thin leg before the other, panting as he gained altitude, as he made his way up the steep and lengthy incline.

  The trail was strewn with bizarre objects, the origin of which was difficult to determine: a plastic comb, the leaves of an old Bible, a large bone, the body of a dead cat;—and then pieces of broken, junked machinery—huge springs and sidecutters, tractor canopies and crankshafts, trapezoidal screws and nuts.

  The young man mounted the trail as quickly as he could, drawn forward, not so much by his own will, as a necessity to be close to that great structure, to touch it—as certain foolish individuals are compelled to show themselves before angered bulls, even at the risk of being gored.

  Out of breath, sweat dripping from his high forehead, he finally arrived at the south side of the building. The various dramas it had gone through could be seen like the various strata of the earth’s surface, and it seemed as if the entire history of the universe, the entire history of the human race was written there, from its transformation from tadpole to its illusion of godhood—from the time when eukaryotic cells first appeared, to some distant future when men will have evolved into brains with wings, whose only link to other living beings will be their ability to defecate and procreate.

  Instead of going directly to the entrance, which was on the east side, he decided to go around the building the opposite way, so that he could take the whole of it in undisturbed—which was a simple matter indeed, as the place was all but abandoned—like some zone that had been ravaged by a plague, the only beings presently apparent being those invested in the structure itself.

  High up, in the form of gargoyles, the faces of its victims peered out, looked over the earth they were no longer a part of with apparent horror, sickening grins, twisted lips and hands that scraped against the atmosphere, seeming to search for their hearts which had long ago been vended, sacrificed at a blood-soaked altar wrapped in the tails of demons and dragons; and the whole scene was striking, for down below, to the west, sparkled the blue of Lake Lugano, while to the east a dramatic strip of Lake Como could be seen; and to the south Valle di Muggio, beyond which, in the distance, was the city of Milan covered with a dark sheet of pollution.

  The structure was not beautiful. But powerful it was, in the same way that certain compositions, such as those by Hieronymus Bosch, though far from pretty, fill one with awe—an incongruity of fire and flesh, of knives dancing with naked limbs and featherless birds making love to the ears of dilapidated whores.

  Peter walked along, fascinated, horrified—for this was indeed the building of his dreams, of his nightmares—a thing of mad grandeur, of ogee arches and umbels of carved stone—a thing of tortured flesh in ashlar masonry which made him dizzy to look at, so high were its walls, so soaring its towers.

  He rounded the corner and was soon there at the main entrance with the board members, who were just finishing up a complex ritual which consisted of the sacrifice of a pair of doves, Nesler clumsily strumming on an acoustic guitar, and Enheim speaking an incomprehensible litany, responses being provided by those present, in syllables that tried their best to be enthusiastic.

  Despite the warm weather, the men all wore thick overcoats over flowing dalmations, the hems of which were embroidered with scarlet silk, while Maria wore a thick coat lined with white wool, in which her body, all skin and bones, was lost. Her hair, cropped short, was oily and caked with bits of plaster. Her eyes were two dying embers glowing in sunken holes—suns which had lost all heat and were ready to consign themselves to oblivion. A violent streak of white appeared in Dr. Enheim’s once pitch-black beard and his eyes had a distant look in them, as if he were gazing off into other worlds. Borromeo’s face, not long ago so well preserved, was marked with fissures and his lips were unnaturally swollen. He was unshaven, his prominent chin covered with tiny white bristles. He wore a pair of sunglasses and smoked a cigarette nervously.

  It was only Nachtman who seemed to have grown younger. His face glowed. His small eyes twinkled. He walked about, gazed at his creation, swinging his large arms energetically and moving with agility his thin legs which were mounted in thick-heeled boots, giving him the look of some Venetian Duke from times gone by.

  He greeted Peter as the latter approached.

  “Ah, you are here to acknowledge my victory,” he said haughtily. “I feel sorry for you—that you were not more obedient. But today is a good day, and I will bare you no grudge. Come, let us enter, so you can see what architecture truly is!”

  The young man surveyed his aunt, said hello, and she cast on him a rather cold, lost glance, but did not speak or respond—seemed indeed not to even recognise him as the little party passed through the giant doors, from the outer sunshine to the inner chill. For though it was May, the inside was cold as a February night and Peter now realised why everyone had been dressed so warmly.

  He shivered and looked before him. At first glance he could not perceive the boundaries of the interior, which seemed as if it went on forever—a place one might traverse for weeks on end without coming to its limits. And, due to the natural irregularity of design, to Nachtman’s mania for splicing together organic shapes, the whole seemed a confusion, a chaos of moons and a conflagration of water. Some walls dripped with odd-coloured paint and others were ornately decorated with jutting hexagons, dug-in octagons, and optical illusions which gave a false sense of limitless depth. The floor tiles were modelled after those in the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano, making it seem like endless steps receding into the distance.

  The place was huge—a world of its own which, though just built, seemed already haunted—by wandering souls, hungry ghosts—dispossessed spirits who wept in the walls and gazed from the ceiling through shadowy lenses. This vast mortuary chest was strung with horrible vibes and Peter felt as if his skin were being caressed by the soft hands of the dead—which were mo
re subtle than cobwebs and lingered about his heart and soul, gently touching their ethereal chords.

  The party wandered through a forest of columns, each one as large as the trunk of a five-hundred year old sequoia, with bases immense, mammoth pedestals on which rested those great fluted shafts. Maria seemed to float along, almost weightless—a dandelion clock carried along by atmospheric currents. Nachtman, Borromeo and Nesler spoke, their voices echoing through the vast space. Dr. Enheim stroked his beard as he walked, his steps somewhat unsteady. His belly sagged and Peter could hear him breathing through his nose and took note of his glassy eyes and quivering hands and indeed felt some pity for this man who was like one fallen from the sky, a being who had tumbled from the lofty clouds of his ideas to the lonely maze of the earth.

  Peter gazed about him in amazement. Though most of what he saw had already been apparent in the plans he himself had helped to draw up, seeing them made reality had a profound effect on him.

  “Come this way,” Nesler said, stealing up to his side. “With this structure, my life finally has meaning and my only regret is that I was not able to work more vigorously towards its glory!”

  And he guided the young man towards the northern flank of the building, to a side temple decorated with complex symbols of numerology, to a place which seemed like some odd altar to the God of Accounting, with zero ruled by Pluto and three Jupiter, with six aligned with carnal man and seven the Enchanting Virgin.

  “This is the temple that carries my name,” the man said, “the Temple of Nesler. This is where, in the future, the holders of knowledge of our system will teach the art of numbers, lecturing on the great harmonic sum.”

  And then there were other temples, each one denominated according to a member of the board; and others again, more impressive still, such as the temple of the Hunter Spirit, the interior of which was lined with animal skins, draped with bones—the walls frescoed with sheep caravans, gazelles, aurochs stampeding over abstract patterns that seemed to represent the night sky, handsome lakes—primitive forests populated by birds;—and then the flooring, done in green rubber, was reminiscent of fresh grass. And the Temple of Isis, where the inverted triangle, the sign of femininity and water was worshipped—a place where the walls were bedecked with ankhs; a small altar with a cow carved out of lime; then false sheaves of wheat, cast in plastic polymers and painted to look quite real. And then there was the Temple of Amun, the walls of which were embossed with Coptic writing and strange hieroglyphic designs, a dizzying array of plundered, mutilated symbolism brought there to be ground between the palms of this new cult which claimed its inheritance of the entire universe, claimed to be the direct disciples of both Christ and Buddha, of Mohammed and Lao Tzu.

  After inspecting these for some moments, Nesler and Peter made their way back towards the centre, walking through a maze of male geometric energies, and rejoined the group. And soon together all arrived at the womb chamber, before the altar, which rose before them dark and fantastic, a thing that made Peter catch his breath in horror-tinged awe, his eyes fastened on the immense bronze statue of Körn, a monstrosity like that of the statue of Emperor Constantine which once dominated Rome, which looked on from the heights of the altar—an altar decorated with jacinth and surrounded by huge sticks of opoponax incense from which corkscrews of smoke spiralled heavenward. The face, though grave, seemed to be smirking and sneering through the smoke, and seemed vaguely infernal, a creature that had risen up from the bellows of the earth and, decked in the entrails of its victims, stood still hungry for further sacrifice. Horns of all sorts of animals, buffalo and stag, rhinoceros and narwhal, jutted out from the sides of the altar itself and the whole was painted with a red that made it seem like a waterfall of blood—a huge wound out of which poured so many lives, from poor Indian farmers to rich New York stock brokers, their life-force whipped together and used to propel forth this great motionless machine.

  Ostrich eggs also hung from the ceiling, for these would keep out spiders for the next hundred years. Chandeliers of fibulas and tibias hung on extravagantly long chains of beaten copper, and in these candles burned. Blotches of red and green, of lilac and Parma violet, fell on the floor, cast by those great stained glass windows, on which pseudo-biblical scenes were depicted, as well as mythological sequences.

  Enheim cast his eyes high up, to the dome, where his daughter, a single brick, rested, her plump little hands seeming to be beckoning to him, her little mouth seeming to be casting on him a sad smile.

  Far above, through the opening in the dome, a patch of blue could be seen. A large shaft of white light spilled through the opening. This was where the capstone, the last piece of the structure, would be laid and a few tiny shapes, mere ants, the Company of Good Men, were there dangling their legs from that magnificent height, waiting to put the stone in place.

  Maria clung desperately to Nachtman’s arm. She offered her lover a trembling smile and he squeezed her hand.

  The architect turned to Peter.

  “You see what I can do,” he said.

  “Yes, but at what cost?” the young man replied in a slightly irritated voice. “There is no one left to use the space.”

  “Disciples will come,” Borromeo said knowingly.

  “Yes, from here the message will be broadcast over the entire universe!”

  Maria, in a voice hardly audible, spoke: “We only need to set the last stone in place, and all will be done.”

  “Only Peter and I are capable of operating the crane. I would like to witness the completion from within, so if my young friend would condescend to help us.”

  “Yes, I’ll do it,” Peter replied.

  He drew himself away from the others, traversed the lengthy interior, walked through the huge iron front doors, those doors which had been refined from blood, and encountered the clean light of day. He took a deep breath, had indeed never felt so glad to see the blue sky above him, to be clutched by the rays of the sun. He made his way to the crane, a huge machine which rivalled the Kockums Crane in height and had a lifting capacity of around 500 tons—and indeed this immensity was well needed for the task at hand, for the stone, on which it seemed an entire village could be built, into which were carved astrological signs, Saturn’s sickle and Jupiter’s thunderbolt—numerous magical symbols making the thing look like some object that had been uncovered from an archaeological dig—had to be lifted far above the earth and set atop that dome, in a manner not dissimilar to the cap stone of the Tomb of Atreus at Mycenae.

  Peter mounted the great machine, climbed into its cab. The hook was already attached to the great block of stone and the only thing necessary for the young man to do was to start the engine and manipulate the levers. The latticed boom stretched into the sky and soon swivelled on its slewing baring. The stone was gradually drawn up from the earth, taken high into the atmosphere. Then the load moved along the lengthy boom until it hung over the dome. And slowly, gently, Peter lowered it until those of the Company of Good Men who stood waiting guided it with their powerful hands, with their formidable arms pushed the stone this way and that, and, as it was lowered in place, adjusted it, worked it into position until it sat tightly where it belonged. Then the hook was detached. The men waved their hands, let out a series of grunts, a few cries impossible to understand, flexing their muscular necks and distending their huge jaws.

  Peter climbed out of the cab. He stepped back, raised his head, put one hand over his eyes and looked up at the structure, could see the Company scrambling up top.

  And then a strange thing happened. Those men, those steroid filled beasts, disappeared.

  The following instants dripped by, centuries, millennia seemed to exist in those seconds—the entire history of architecture, from brutish desert dwellers constructing their mud huts, to those mountains of glass which make up modern cities;—obsolete Mesopotamian settlements, Indo-Aryan temples and expressionist train stations all came toppling down together. The dome seemed to be opening its mouth,
eating itself—a rabid demon gorging on its own flesh. Wax melting in a flame. The building began to crumble, to fall away like the vestments of some prostituted woman.

  Indeed it could not withstand the weight of that huge stone placed upon its head, for, by the time the structure had reached this final stage of completion, the columns had been pushed far enough out of true to be of questionable usefulness and stonework had shifted.

  Peter watched with a strange lack of emotion as huge chunks of the structure, a hail of brick, plaster and broken glass, spilled over the side of the cliff. Spires descended, walls collapsed, pillars threw themselves to the ground. A large cloud of dust slowly rose into the sky, momentarily blocking out the sun before gradually disappearing, parting, floating away.

  And then all was still. Silence. In the distance the sound of goat bells.

  The young man was neither surprised nor stunned. Certain disasters leave one cold, without emotion, speechless as if the heart were expelled from the body.

  The structure was almost completely gone. Only the south wall still stood, reaching towards the sky out of a mountain of rubble like the hand of a drowning man. The great towers had dived to the earth. Those iron doors were on their faces, chewing on the ground and columns, all in pieces, lay sprawled out beneath piles of rubble.

  High up in the sky, a jet airplane passed overhead, scarring the heavens with a streak of white. A breeze came and blew up a little dust.

  Then, from that massive pile of ruins, which seemed like that of an entire lost civilization, there was a slight movement, like a rat in a heap of garbage.

  A few stones moved, and then a creature emerged, white with plaster and the dust of bones, he appeared like some bizarre phantom—a massive torso balanced on stork-like legs. Forward he moved. He held his head up high and walked with measured steps, like an intoxicated man endeavouring to appear sober.