Crematorium for Phoenixes

by Nikola Yanchovichin

  “Well, it appears that you’re welcome,” Sharukin said.

  The place, as we have said, was filled with the usual sort, and a bearded guy with yellow, decaying teeth giggled hoarsely and blabbed loudly, saying, “Oh, that scum is greedy. He will violate his own mother for a nickel or two,” and in that moment a dagger appeared in his hand, smeared with blood and everything sharp. The man’s harsh voice, as relentless as a demonic torturer rasped, “I’ll kill you, false brat. I will violate the principles of my mother” and the room echoed with laughter; it awakened the dead come straight from hell. In no time there were subtle outlines of people, people who were shadows of the dead, standing and waiting for redemption.

  “I will not equivocate, I need a crew . . .” offered the calm man.

  “And what do you suggest? We already have your money, and we can profit as well by gutting you and selling you to the cannibals.”

  “I can give you the most valuable thing in the world,” the stranger said, “I can take away those memories that lay like layers and layers of dirt in your hearts. Thus you can create a new life.”

  Many of them laughed. The words of the stranger held that clownish delusion that gave some comfort in a place like this. Dissipated in eternal boredom, the men had long ago been jaded by the existence of sin.

  “Tell us what constitutes the work and what you suggest,” said Sharukin, commanding instant silence in the room.

  “I propose to erase every moment of your previous life—perhaps the greatest gift that can be given. I’ll give you a chance to start from scratch.”

  Many of them again wrinkled their lips and stifled their laughter; outwardly the men were silent and devoid of emotion.

  “Okay, do it, but as you know, you are playing with more than just our good moods,” Sharukin finally said. His words were spoken with that dullness that occurs after the hard-hearted cruelty of life and pain have been rendered.

  “Well then,” said the man, rolling up his sleeve and revealing strange shells of tattoos that covered his elbow with ink; they were done in blue shades and depicted fairies like smoky souls merging into people swimming through a stream or river that had no beginning or end.

  The stranger stretched out his hand over a globe and tightened his arm, outlining all of his muscle groups and sinews.

  Then he began to rotate his fingers, gently shaking them as if they were caressing words that should not be uttered.

  Both of his hands began to smoke.

  The smoke drifted around the room until suddenly it formed a pillar that changed into a snake. The slithering creature tore into the nostrils of the men, shaking them like electricity.

  After a moment, the smoke came out of them. Exhaled from their nostrils, it was now blackish and compressed. The man instantly drew it back into his hand.

  The men blinked, as if shaking off their sleepiness. They looked at their own hands, which seemed to them uncharacteristically clean, and then turned toward the stranger.

  “Gentlemen, this is just the beginning,” he told them.

  They all then exited the building as a bunch, looking like a cloud that constantly changes its shadowy form, clustered then scattered. They walked in the deaf, crooked streets, which were as silent as pensive, vicious creatures.

  This maze had been created like a prison for monsters, where each individual was chained so that his primal urges merged into him. These individuals existed only to represent the darkness in society. Among the nations, they were penned in by the walls and hunted like animals, exiled, and branded. But Cain’s race had been revived as an indestructible hydra and now emerged like a phoenix from the ashes of the sin.

  All the while, the company continued walking down the alleys. They passed by as life passes, hearing screams of laughter fade away into screams of anguish only to return as maniacal laughter. Eventually, they were out of the town.

  One world had ended, and another instantly began. Fields with sprouted wheat, barley, and millet marked white-sanded pathways that lay before them.

  This oil-black soil with its crops was shaded here and there by the trunks of palm trees, clustered together and spread far, far ahead into the horizon. Wrinkled from time to time by terraced hills of unidentifiable greenery, the Greeks in later centuries would call this place “paradeisos.”

  Here in the fallow, fueled by a grid of channels and dams, the water moved like it was being boiled. It fed the men that sum of feeling that ultimately accounted for their existence.

  The group walked these dams whose headstone weirs held thousands of cubic meters of water and passed barn silos. Standing in a grove of palm trees, they made dugouts and despite the warm weather created fires in order to boil milk.

  After several more hours of walking, they entered the desert, which spread in wavy manner with coffee-black spaces that stretched into infinity.

  Here, within a few more hours, they found a limestone cave in which the corroded, membranous skin of a snake or creature had been left behind. The cocoon left thousands upon thousands of elbows of fabric hanging and pleated around in hoops.

  From here, the men take actions they do not understand and soon everything begins to swell, squirming, quivering, and throbbing like a giant insect’s metamorphosis. Then before their amazed gazes appeared a hovering airship.

  “Well, folks, welcome to the Behemoth,” said the stranger.

  Chapter Three

  Frozen ash-gray ridges were lit by the first rays of the sun, which shone over the ancient bastions as if it were casting a dim, contemptuous look at the ravines.

  Here and there among the silent mounded hills and emerald-turquoise fields sheep grazed; they resembled the scattered pearls of a forgotten necklace.

  Between the sinuous meanders of the river, birds were singing, awakening the forests of willow.

  In the overgrown tracks near one of the ravine, the slight crackle horse tracks could be heard.

  Abandoned in the middle kingdom bowels of the mountains, which lay on the pagan tombs of rulers by the ruins of old fortresses in the north of Zipangu, or what is modern-day Japan, a group of people lived simply.

  Carrying the blood of long-forgotten warriors, these men were tough and hardened; they made their livelihood among these ancient fortresses.

  They had become well-acquainted with oblivion in their shelters and huts, existing among the lifeless debris of the crumbled bones of former kingdoms.

  The men assembled in these dank valleys were almost mythic, and this vast expanse of land, with her incised gorges between tall peaks, was slowly returning to that timeworn, uninhabited land that she once was.

  Rarely did salesmen travel through these regions. When they did, they looked like lonely birds, cawing in distant echoes the news from the southern islands of Zipangu.

  They spoke of strange things, rumors that troubled this pristine, calm region with their descriptions of innovations that were changing the fate of the continent.

  Not that these people believed them. Here any news sounded like faint twitters. They were listened to with pleasure in the inns by those people who gathered around fireplaces. But the real reason for such attention was the simple fact that listening to the stories was enjoyable. Sitting at battered oak tables while contemplating the crackling logs in fireplaces and smoking wooden pipes created an air of mystery (and of course, red balls of smoke). Such an evening was topped off with drinking from all sorts of beer mugs, and those who listened were invited to take strange journeys.

  It is that streak that makes sedentary people travel abroad and wander, looking for a place to settle. Because the stories of unexplored wilderness, of sleeping under the firmament, wrapped in a cloak while watching flames dancing like a fairy whisper the strange witchcraft that then fills the human heart.

  Thus mankind is displaced across all corners of the planet, discovering the truth that everything moves, everything is looking, and the soul is in actuality a bunch of separate pieces that have been scattered li
ke the stars. We are looking for meaning, love, and God to supplement ourselves.

  In this way, today’s homebody can become a sailor or buccaneer; the peaceful, quiet gentleman can become a mercenary. People who have disappeared and then reappeared become inexhaustible sources of wonder, gossip, and rumors.

  And this particular region, always on the edge of Zipangu’s wilderness did not differ much in its thought, and the love of living is what drove these people to look back and forth; they continued to exist like a slowly dying fire that only needed a small breath of air to crackle again.

  Therefore on this morning, with its bisected twilight rays and heated micaceous cliffs glowing to portend a glaring change, you will see the unanticipated outcome.

  It all started with a visit from the traders of the southern islands. Periodically—every lunar and solar cycle, when the need increased, this armada headed toward the north to collect the tanned skins of sheep and even more importantly, the highly regarded sharkskin, coarse cloth, and wool; salted meat and dried fish; fat cheese and pressed wild tea and herbs; plane boards and metals; the feathers and down of poultry and other wild birds; wax and honey; and all kinds of ceramics and tiles; the traders sought all the products that could be found or produced on these lands. In return, they drove up with ropes, all kinds of agricultural implements and metal containers, fine jewelry, sour milk, beer, fragrant and healed oil, other formulations, and the most highly coveted item of all, people. The latter were self-taught teachers and dentists, veterinarians and healers.

  Even in those archaic times, tribute was paid to these crafts. The proof of which could be found in the cloth bags that these people carried around to fill with gold nuggets, ears, rings, and bracelets.

  But these doctors, whether you want to describe them as advanced with their knowledge or antediluvian, were powerless against the progressive deterioration and fragile mortality that accompany mankind. Our life stories are little more than bypassed roads; at intervals there appear points where rising towers can be observed. The people themselves are chained in such places by suffering and despair, and their guards, in the form of hope, have taken a leave of absence from whence it seems they will never return.

  So in this vast world, grown like smelled or poisonous mushrooms, hospitals, asylums, and prisons arose where the guards of pain and eternity stood ready to hit with their batons in hand. Even while hiding their faces with their hands they come out of nowhere in the hours of darkness, dragged as heaps across a cement floor.

  Similarly here in Zipangu, like a crumbling cemetery of rocks near the shore, there existed a leper colony.

  “Powerless” is the sometimes the pen that outlines the characters in the emotions of the soul, and some words are not meant to be expressed (as might have thought the first engraver who etched a message into a gravestone). We will again repeat that there was a leper colony on a cliff. It rose as a cloistered monastery, and every day food came elevated in a basket. In return, from time to time, corpses wrapped in canvas would be cast down.

  It was just a waiting room for the afterlife—a republic of ghosts waiting for the appointed hour that breeds them together and uses all of us. Guarded by the walls, the overwhelming disease took one life after another, while the great dispenser of cards, of life, continued to distribute new decks of them.

  Every night, one of the sick stood guard in a tower overlooking the colony. A system of mirrors and fires cast a yellowish headlight while the guard waited for the traders to arrive and sometimes the rest of the sick citizens would find him dead in the structure the following morning.

  This deathly rhythm was propagated along the coastline, where the dead were waiting to be healed.

  Sometimes, a few of them would leave the rock—the healing powders from the outside world had helped, but the recovered one didn’t tell of what had happened to them. Like passengers coming from a long, exhausted journey in a land of shadows, they wanted to forget about their past.

  People came and went, counted the days, and tossed and turned in anticipation one of those days when one of them might perhaps be gifted with a new life.

  So it was one morning, when the sky was as black as graveyard dirt and lightning was illuminating the colony with its opal arrows, that the disturbed water began to smash into the solid stone.

  At first came the usual sea trash: pieces of wood and chips mixed with membranous algae, while the ocean gradually began to bring barrels and boxes up until finally it was wearing a canvas of bundles.

  The winds hit the coast of Zipangu and formed a powerful typhoon.

  Dozens of ships were caught in ashen, murky waters. They bent in the wind and toppled like puffs of dust.

  Some of the natives rushed forward to rescue survivors. Some were there for the more precious cargo.

  But no one noticed—or actually, it was very difficult to see—an unusual egg-shaped box of polished metal, tossing against the rocks and ringing like a small bell with each beat . . . .

  After the last coastal resident was fetched out of the water and returned home, the chest came to life; it opened its cobwebs and its hemispherical walls split like a flower blossoming. Out of this mysterious structure arose a man who went forth into the colony.

  Chapter Four

  The Leviathan was really huge. Around giant titanium rods, like whale ribs, were riveted hundreds of steel sheets, and it boasted a diamond-hard keel. The ship was like a huge beehive or an anthill, immersed in water, whose complex cobweb-like maze of compartments had been in the spirit of a golem.

  And although the crew that had been miraculously “collected” had learned all of the information necessary to control Leviathan, they needed time to get used to it. They were like children who had entered a huge, monstrous fair in which attractions and pavilions greeted them with grinning demonic and protruding faces.

  Therefore, after passing through numerous funnel-shaped corridors and coming to the command bridge—a spherical Plexiglas bubble—each and every one of them had the feeling of being inside of a beast.

  Amos Oz stared at the clicking equipment and the cooling fans. He was the first person who dared to question the stranger, “We can talk as important, super smart professors in which case I would say that we no longer belong to our time or yours. Will you explain what happened here?”

  “The truth is among us,” smiled the man. “Six years ago, or six centuries ahead, people found a way to travel in time. But the body is far more fragile than we can imagine. Time traveling modifies it, giving a man strengths and weaknesses. People sent into the past become monsters or gods. I’m just at the final stage, which should fix this.”

  “I do not understand, for what kind of monsters are you talking about?” asked Amos.

  “Rightly said. I speak of monsters that are not weak, mutants that would not die outside their incubator containers. They are, in fact, creatures with unimaginable power; they will tear humanity apart before it is ready to oppose them . . . You’ve heard the legends?”

  “But they are nonsense used to put children to bed.”

  “Well, my friend, I understand where they are coming from and you are right not to wake up. My name is Victor Drake, and I will take you through stories while you yourselves become legends. That is if you stay alive, of course. Now, gentlemen, northwest is the course that lies ahead of us.”

  All of the chairs creaked; the submersible sank its flaps and the propeller drove around its axis, leaving a trail of gurgling, bursting bubbles.

  Then the adventure really began with one single step.

  The Leviathan moved with many nodes per hour, emerging from time to time on the surface, and before they knew it the body-brown waters of the Atlantic Ocean were in front of them. It was full of slimy algae and pieces of drifting ice from the Arctic shield in the north. The waters were also marked by the passage of fish, chased by predators like thin clouds in the wind.

  That’s the old truth that reveals the ocean as a place with no memory, a
n object that will invariably carry the pain in our hearts.

  On that surface, even in the coffee-black rocky islands that comprise an ever-rising and -sinking archipelago, every one of us could find the peace that humanity seeks while wandering between spirit and matter.

  This is because the human has been created to wander until he finds the parts of himself, the parts of others, and God in the very end.

  And here, in the space before them, water, land, and air—all the threads of the tapestry of life—were intertwined and created precisely those pieces that make up the horizon.

  It was here, among the elements of the northern hemisphere that simultaneously quickly and slowly, like a train running through the endless prairie and taiga, the Leviathan moved. The great vessel passed over the abyss and its unlimited creations, overlooking sunken remains of galleons full of caskets studded with gold and silver. It ignored these deposits of precious metals, these treasures beyond the imaginations that created the stories about Samarkand and Bukhara, Cairo and Alexandria, Damascus and Baghdad. Such actions caused the crew to look at the sights through Victor’s eyes and realize the folly and vanity with which they had recently lived.

  Those who are going through life, real life, are no longer the same, really, because beyond the darkness of the horizons are those things that lured unfortunate souls like Sinbad the sailor.

  We will be doing it, dear reader, because these dreams are built in those halls that exist in the crowns of treetops, in the floating cities lodged within unfamiliar waters, in the unending bastion of pinnacles whose masonry crypts lie forgotten and filled with gold. These are the dreams that shine like torches, flaring in our lives.

  The men in the Leviathan were in the shadow of the Nordic coast, passing through the watery depths of the Northwest, which in antiquity humanity portended to be paradise and in the Middle Ages was hell on Earth.

  They walked hundreds of miles, separated continents from continents, and before them rose a bluish, smoke mirage: the land of the ice—Iceland.