The Architect

by Connell, Brendan

  Nachtman sat in front of his tent, listening to the sounds of Res Schmid and sipping at a heavily iced gin and tonic which was crowned with a sprig of mint. A woman kneeled before him, massaging his naked feet.

  Nesler appeared. The hems of his trousers were covered with dust. A tie hung limp around his bloated neck and his face looked as if it had been rubbed with oil. He seemed like a man who had traversed a desert—walked over dunes and suffered in storms of sand.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said in an agitated voice.

  The architect waved the young woman away, slipped his feet into a pair of clogs and led the other into his tent, where three or four fans were whirring away, creating a pleasant breeze.

  “A drink?”

  “A glass of water if you have one,” the other said, wiping sweat off his forehead with a dull-coloured handkerchief.

  Nachtman poured the other a glass of water and refreshed his own drink.

  “So what seems to be bothering you my friend?”

  “I have tried…”

  “Tried?”

  “I have tried, tried so very hard to pull together the money for the completion of the project. And many millions have I brought to you.”

  “You have done very well.”

  “But I am at the end of my resources. The structure has devoured the savings of just about every member on earth.” Nesler waved his arms around in the depths of his sleeves. “But now our coffers are empty. We have no money—not even enough to buy the stone needed to finish this building!”

  Nachtman was silent. The blades of the fans spun. He tapped his fingernails on his desk and looked thoughtful—his eyes narrowing, the gear teeth of his mind biting one against the next.

  “Then other materials will have to be found,” he said presently.

  “Other materials?”

  “Yes. Something for which we will not need to pay and which, far from diminishing this great structure, will add to its glory.”

  “But I cannot think of…”

  “There is dirt, wet earth, out of which adobe could be made.”

  “Not a very noble substance.”

  “And one we shall not use, for there is another, just about as common, that appeals to my artistic sensibilities much more—one which I have dreamed of using since my youth when I was despised for being a genius.” His eyes gleamed like the blade of an axe. “Endowed with an extra-keen sense of vision, I have seen humans as they really are. Our ancestors built their dwellings out of mud and brush. Inuits use ice to make their igloos; African tribesman grasses to make their huts. Resources are always at hand—if one will just look for them. The temple of Huaca del Sol was made entirely of dirt and straw. Tiles. Bricks. Thoughtless entities whose only material fault is being suffused with water like sponges. As I see it, we have over 100,000 dedicated followers. If all their bones were piled up, if their flesh was desiccated and cubed…”

  “You mean to say…”

  “Yes! We shall complete the structure, complete the dome with human flesh, with skeletal tissue, give this creature I have dragged from my mental womb the blood it needs to wet its veins and expand its lungs.”

  XXX.

  There were many volunteers, many who wished to entomb themselves in this monument—to immortalize themselves in that great building. Brick plants were set up in Sri Lanka and South Africa, in South America and Australia, and thereby, for a very low cost, the bricks were transported by a Chinese shipping company aboard five-story 4,250 ton cargo boats to the ports of Genova and Trieste from where they were trucked to the building site.

  In Columbia, after attending an all-night candlelight meditation, the applicants convened at the factory. Presently they were moved through a gate, moulded into a single-file line. One by one, after joyfully hugging each other, convinced they would be meeting each other shortly in a plane of great refinement where there was nothing but spirit, without materiality to hinder either love or progress, they entered into an aluminium structure where they were required to take up a captive bolt pistol and self-apply it to their foreheads. They were told to visualise a cross between their eyes and apply the barrel of the pistol there. Upon pressing the trigger, a pointed bolt was propelled forward at a velocity of 75 m/s by the power of pressurised air, penetrating the forehead and destroying the cerebrum and part of the cerebellum. They were then fed into a large machine which reduced them to a pulp, a mixture with the appearance and texture of oatmeal. After being mixed with straw they were placed in molds and set out to dry in the tropical sun.

  Back in Switzerland, a new momentum was added to the work—it seemed that it had taken on a new significance. Never had the feeling of brotherhood been stronger. It seemed indeed that humanity was finally progressing, finally ridding itself of its egoism, and men were at last learning to give themselves for the common good.

  Up there on that high mountain, the people worked, placing the bodies of their comrades on that noble structure, mumbling prayers and humming lugubrious melodies, intoxicated by the scheme they were taking part in. Those strange pieces of adobe that represented countless dreams—the hopes of mothers, the pride of fathers—whole populations reduced to oblong cubes—those bizarre objects in which, upon close inspection, fingers and toes and strands of hair could be seen, were stacked one atop the other, wedged together, and in this process one could almost see the crowding together, nose pressed against nose, cheek crushed against cheek, beings mashed together in claustrophobic tightness, no space even for their tears, no room for them to so much as gasp.

  XXXI.

  The third winter was a mild one, without snow, frighteningly warm.

  In late February lightening ripped the sky and down came the rain, forming sheets of water which dashed themselves against the structure and the wind gave shrill cries while earth was swept away and tents collapsed.

  The workers trudged through mud, water running down their faces. People slipped. One man broke his arm and lay there in the brown muck screaming. Groups of humans clustered together, shivering, their hair plastered against their skulls.

  And then, after some days, the storm exhausted itself, the clouds and mist disappeared.

  Around the building all was sludge. All the trees had been chopped down. The place looked like a battlefield. The humans were filthy, cold, their clothing reduced to rags. They spoke almost exclusively in grunts and monosyllables and loped along rather than walked, occasionally electrified by the commanding voice of Nachtman, who looked on them more like stones with legs than creatures of bones and meat. Tears rolled down their faces and they smiled like idiots—fools who could not differentiate misery from joy.

  They piled up those bricks of their brothers and sisters from foreign parts, but soon those worthy beings abroad willing to sacrifice themselves were exhausted, old and young alike, from the tip of Tierra del Fuego to the heights of Greenland, from the grasslands of Mongolia to the Cape of Good Hope. Whole families had given themselves and, in one case, an entire village in Bangladesh, and shipload upon shipload of bricks had been transported to the mountain and hoisted up—to block out the sun and sky, obscure the stars at night and shield the world below from moonbeams.

  “It seems our supply of bricks has almost come to an end,” Nesler said to the architect.

  “Well, the work is not far from finished. We only need another forty or fifty thousand.”

  “But where are we to get them? I have been canvassing all over, and I swear that—”

  “But just look around you.”

  Nesler’s eyes shifted from right to left, and then turned themselves upward, taking in a scene of men and women by the thousands, lurking along the base of the walls, crowding the scaffolding, toiling high, high up on the dome and towers which were not far from done.

  “The workers…?”

  “Precisely. We will simply bring their functionality to the ultimate conclusion.”

  And so it came to pass that the workers themselves were called on a
nd, starved, brainwashed, desperate, were more than glad to sacrifice themselves, to throw themselves bodily into that rising volcano, the Meeting Place. Tales were told of the great dimensions they would visit once their souls had been purified, had been converted into a highly ethereal substance which could travel at light years a second—visit alien races—frolic through the skies like comets. Enheim lectured them on the beauties of the higher dimensions, where cities were built atop huge lotuses which rested on crystal lakes and gentle clouds of nectar encircled the spires of luxurious edifices where the inhabitants might relax, distending themselves on cushions of sweet-smelling moss while listening to the melodious music of cosmic harps.

  “On the twelfth plane which, due to your sacrifices, you will soon visit, there is no sorrow, sickness or pain. You will be endowed with a luminous body which itself will have fourteen senses, including moral receptors, receptors that can communicate with sub-atomic particles, and others that can sense ultraviolet light. There are plants there of exquisite beauty the fruits of which are sweeter than any substance known on earth and contain certain subtle nutrients which your light bodies can feed off of with great joy. You will leave behind a dark ugly world, corrupted by greed and egoism, to enter a place where all live together, bathing in ponds of harmony.”

  Trudy, who was there, listened to her father with a far away expression in her eyes. The old Swede pushed himself forward with the utmost eagerness, so as to be first of those present to become an eco-friendly building material that would take almost nothing from the earth and this gentleman was followed by many thousands. Then there were some few others who were less eager, and the weaker of these, those who were almost useless, were herded into open pens and made to do what they would not do by free will. But by and large, the people gave their lives eagerly, pushing against each other so as to be at the forefront of the horrible surrender, eagerly forfeiting the forms their mothers had given them to become cubed—to become blocks that would make up the edifice—mere material without either personality or thought—without the ability to move or breath—without life.

  Nachtman’s bizarre dreams seemed to have pushed themselves out of his cranium and grown exponentially into this dark and brooding thing that jutted up out of the earth, fed on prayers and derangement and groped at the heavens as if trying to claw out the entrails of the very gods themselves.

  XXXII.

  “She can serve a period of apprenticeship and then we will see,” the architect said.

  “But she is a good girl. She would make a wonderful wife. Her desserts are excellent.”

  “As, I said, I am willing to give her a trial.”

  And so it was that Enheim’s daughter washed the feet of the architect, made him sweets, sacrificed her lips and even attempted to give him her heart, but he, who had so many of the opposite sex at his disposal, was anything but entertained—found her insipid and, in the end, determined that a marriage with the young lady would be a dull and unnecessary business.

  “I think being a bachelor is my destiny,” he said to the doctor.

  “But…”

  “The structure needs to be completed. She would be more useful putting her hands to good use instead of baking me cookies.”

  The next day Enheim informed his daughter that, at least for the present, she was to remain single.

  Trudy took her father by the hand. He leaned over and kissed her forehead, caressing her young face with his thick beard. Together they gazed at the structure before them—at the workers who were in the process of finishing the great dome with the fleshcrete of their recently accepted comrades—at the works near at hand, where others were queued up to be processed, transformed into building material.

  “Ah, it will not be long before it is finished,” he said.

  “I am proud of you father. You have done so much.”

  “I have done what I can.”

  “Father, I wish to be amongst their number.”

  Enheim looked at his daughter in astonishment.

  “I want to give myself to the cause,” she continued.

  “Absolutely not. I forbid it!”

  “But why, when you have spoken of the wonderful things beyond?”

  “Because, er, it would be unsuitable.”

  “I cannot think of anything more suitable than for the daughter of the Commander Adeptus Magus to sacrifice her meaningless body in order to receive a body of light on the twelfth plane.”

  The doctor threw up his hands in frustration.

  “The answer is no,” he declared. “And that is completely final. There are enough workers willing to do this without you. Your sacrifice is not needed. Not in any way needed!”

  XXXIII.

  Other members, those with the oddest figures—the ugly, the ridiculous—the hunchbacks and strange gaunt giants with lantern jaws, were chosen to be the grotesques, chosen to be mounted as gargoyles on the outside walls. These he, the Knight of the Red Eagle, invested, suffocated in latex and plaster and then burned out their bodies at high temperature before immortalizing them in bronze and aluminium—frightful statues that still retained the contortions of death, the grimaces of pain. These were then mounted high up on the outside in the hundreds. There were figures which cringed and figures which threw open their arms wildly, faces distorted, with wide eyes and sickening grins. Some with outstretched hands, others shrinking away; or with mouths open, into which gutters were inserted so that when it rained, the water would spew from their orifices, so that it seemed as if those horrible beings were vomiting endless streams of mucous.

  “You see, I also understand beauty,” the architect said. “Thus these human beings serve a double purpose. In a utilitarian manner, they give us the material we need to finish the structure. At the same time, they adorn it, giving it a final dazzle that would be difficult not to appreciate. We honour their sacrifice, and entomb them in the building they helped to create, where respects will be paid to their memories for a long time to come.”

  To add to the wildness, the architect took goats, cows and other farm animals and did the same to them—so a sort of hideous menagerie was formed, where crude bovines sat perched at great heights and chickens, melted together in dozens, appeared like nasty cherubim on the wall arcading.

  Then, to further the decoration, many strange beasts were carved in stone: Long worms with human heads; three-headed buffalos; lions with the breasts of women; and gorillas spliced with rams. A chaos of bizarre creatures crept out of the towers and facade, mutations, things that were half insect, half fish, or then again fish with legs and men with fins—an infinite variety of combinations, deformities hatched from nightmares.

  XXXIV.

  Dr. Enheim burst out of the little train. He rushed forward, following his belly rapidly towards the structure. Borromeo, wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, feet in sturdy leather boots, was there—talking in low tones to one of the few remaining workers, one of the Company of Good Men, one of those mountains of tendons and muscle.

  “Where is she? Where is Trudy?” the doctor cried out. “I have been away for a few days. A fundraiser in Zürich. And, upon returning…”

  Borromeo pointed to a pile of bricks.

  “But…” Enheim murmured in horror.

  “I tried to dissuade her, but she was adamant,” the athlete said. “And in the end, who am I to try and block someone’s spiritual progress.”

  “I am speechless.”

  “I knew you would come, so I set her aside. She is here…this one on the left.”

  The doctor looked at the brick. It was smaller than the others, about 20 × 12 × 6 cm, and in fact did somehow seem to be her, Trudy Enheim, and the doctor, gazing at its surface, thought he could see her soft brown eyes, which were like those of a calf, staring at him from out of its surface, and thought he could hear the thing whispering words and when he took it up, it seemed as if he were touching her small plump hands.

  He stood up very straight, his beard before him l
ike a shield. “Now, more than ever,” he said, “am I determined to see this project through to the end in a grand style.”

  “Yes.”

  “And I personally, with my own hands, will set this brick in place. And high, high up I will put it.”

  XXXV.

  Through self-depravation Maria’s luscious body had lost its contours, her cheeks had become concave, her complexion as white as snow. A pale blue tint was seen about her temples and a somewhat darker tone beneath her eyes. Yet this decay added to her beauty, made it profoundly striking, as in the paintings of female martyrs who, with red plasma spurting from open wounds, crowns of thorns and weeds resting on their heads, draw the interest of the opposite sex, who are most attracted to the female in her vulnerable state—a dependent creature that cannot run or hide, who minces forward in high-heels, her thin blood barely warming her meagre muscular tissue, her eyes glazed, languid.

  She smiled often, but weakly, pathetically. She had her hair cut short, cropped it like a boy’s, so that her long white neck showed. Lost in some sort of pseudo-spiritual cloud, a cloud of incense and self-imposed hallucination, she wandered from the cemetery of her past—where the corpses of her former interests and ambitions lay mouldering—into the dark forest of love, a place in which she shivered under chilly shadows and let her skin be pierced by the eager brambles of that man who would have sooner finished off a wounded fawn than wrestled with a bear; that man who needed flesh, red meat, and was happy that it was there warm on his plate without need to hunt hard for it.

  Great loves are disgustingly selfish, and leave room in the heart for none but the adored. The relationship Maria had with Nachtman was one of those bizarre anomalies of nature which would have left Darwin scratching his head.