The Freedom Building

by Martin Kendall

  ‘Mr Gowan?’ Fielding asked.

  John realised Abdul had stopped talking: ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is it true you had this in mind when designing the building?’

  John tried to appear relaxed: ‘No, it is not – in the sense that I didn’t have any political intentions when designing the building.’

  ‘I realise that,’ Fielding said, ‘and nobody here is suggesting you have any role to play in the political nature of these discussions. I merely ask whether you had Christian architecture in mind when it came to designing the building?’

  ‘But Christian architecture is a term which suggests I wanted to put Christianity into the building I was designing. The answer to that is no. Firstly, I’m not a Christian—’

  ‘And neither am I,’ Wilkinson said.

  ‘But Christianity is symbolic of the West’s fight against Islam,’ Abdul said.

  ‘And secondly,’ John said, pushing on, ‘many design features that were first created for cathedrals and churches in medieval times are used in modern, secular buildings today. Therefore, the Zenith building may have such features, but in no way was it built with religious intention.’

  Wilkinson nodded.

  ‘But what of the iugIH *&Yv,’ Abdul asked, looking at John.

  John didn’t know what to say: ‘What of it?’

  ‘Well, the JKhjkhb U7ybjh…’

  John felt dizzy. He stopped listening and waited until Abdul’s mouth stopped moving. Seconds later it did, and Abdul and Fielding stared at him expectantly.

  ‘Well,’ John said, trying to think what to say, ‘it’s inevitable that there are designs in today’s architecture that originated in Christian architecture from earlier ages, and the same goes for Islam, too. Take the example of the gothic arch. It was used in Christian churches, but one doesn’t necessarily associate it with Christianity if one sees it in modern, secular buildings. Anyway, I had no intention of designing a Christian building – Blanworth already has one cathedral and very close to the Zenith site. It doesn’t need another!’

  John spoke the last sentence with an air of authority, because he knew it would make him appear naturally defensive and bitter against Abdul’s attacks on his building, and it might, therefore, seem unkind of them to continue questioning him.

  ‘I don’t mean to denigrate your building in any way,’ Abdul said, ‘but I do take issue with a building that has Christian influences and is supposed to be symbolic of the West’s stand against terrorism. That brings about connotations not of a modern country defending itself against terrorism but of an old Christian country crusading against Islam.’

  ‘But the examples you use of the building’s design are not valid,’ Wilkinson said.

  ‘I’ve heard other architects say they are,’ Abdul said, ‘and I can’t say I disagree with them. Take the (*789hub, for example, the UIUYh& ...’

  John stopped listening and waited for Abdul to stop talking, which he did almost immediately.

  ‘I simply don’t agree,’ Wilkinson said, shaking his head. ‘The (*76gbg Yygb…’

  Again, John felt dizzy and stopped listening, desperately hoping he would no longer be involved in the discussion. So far, Abdul and Wilkinson seemed content that he wasn’t commenting directly on the examples Abdul was using, but John feared that he would. He looked at his watch to see how much time was left for the interview – at least three more minutes.

  Wilkinson stopped talking, and Fielding turned to the television screen.

  ‘Well, as we can see here,’ Fielding said, pointing, ‘there is (*&69h IOUhgjb uhh… Would you agree, Mr Gowan?’

  ‘What?’ John said, looking up.

  ‘Would you agree that, here, the UIgh *(&gH…?’

  John had to stop listening. With so many words he couldn’t understand, he was feeling very dizzy. Fielding was now staring at him, her mouth frozen in the shape of a squashed circle. The studio began to appear threatening in an indescribable way, as it had done earlier. He was at risk of exposing his problems to the world.

  ‘No, I can’t say I do agree,’ John said.

  ‘But why, when—’

  ‘I think he’s answered your question,’ said Wilkinson, who knew John didn’t want to be involved in the political discussions.

  John outstretched his hand towards Wilkinson in a gesture of agreement.

  ‘But with respect, Mr Gowan,’ Fielding said, ‘you must have an explanation for your answer. It’s all very well saying no but why “no”?’

  The producer had promised John, before the interview, that he would not be involved politically with the others. Dianne Fielding either believed John’s involvement was not political so could defend himself against Abdul’s accusation that this particular architectural feature, whatever it was, was Christian, or Fielding just couldn’t help herself.

  ‘I think I’ve answered your question,’ John said, repeating what Wilkinson had said.

  ‘But if you cannot answer the question without explanation,’ Abdul said, ‘then it shows I’m correct about it being Christian.’

  ‘No, you’re wrong,’ Wilkinson said and looked to John.

  Wilkinson nodded to indicate John should answer Fielding’s question. John was very afraid and noticed that the appearance of the three people’s faces seemed somewhat alien. Wilkinson’s deep blue eyes and uncharacteristically anxious expression, Fielding’s dissatisfied countenance and rectangular head, Abdul’s great bushy beard and tensely stretched lips all seemed to threaten John’s consciousness. He glanced down at the glass table with half-closed eyes to try to steady himself, before raising his head again.

  ‘Well, broadly speaking, there are many architectural features derived from cathedrals that are not, nowadays, considered to be Christian in the slightest. Take the gothic arch, for example. In medieval—’

  ‘You’ve said that. How about the example shown?’

  Fielding pointed her thumb behind her to the screen, and Wilkinson looked at John with concern. Abdul began to smile, clearly beginning to believe John incapable of defending himself. All three people stared at him, the cameras too, along with, inside those cameras, millions and millions of viewers. What were they beginning to think? That John could not answer the question? That John didn’t know his own building? That John couldn’t even describe the intention of a particular design feature?

  John could feel his fear – of the world discovering his problems – bulging inside him. His eyelids fluttered a couple of times, like a trapped insect trying to escape a spider’s web. The light from the scaffolding apparatus above suddenly seemed to increase in intensity and heat. He glanced briefly at the television screen with the picture of the Zenith building and was tempted to stare at it to deliberately faint. The television screen, the people and the lighting apparatus began to move and to spin; images of spinning – of crashing his car into the ditch off the road – flashed before his eyes.

  The moving stopped almost as quickly as it had begun, to be replaced by a terrifying darkness that flashed before him – on and off. Was he being transported back to that time – the aftermath of the crash – because he was unable to prove his worth as architect of the Zenith building?

  ‘No!’ John suddenly exclaimed.

  ‘No?’ Fielding said, eyebrows raised. She was evidently shocked, and so, too, were the others.

  John desperately tried remembering the other night when he had stared at the building and confronted the same darkness. The tramp had saved him, but not before he had gained some kind of insight – some truth. His heart started pounding as it always did when he looked into that memory, stopping him from remembering properly, but his heart rate did not reach its normal level of intensity.

  Suddenly, the words he saw at that time broke through and appeared to him again: Freedom… Freedom from the terrorist attack… And with these words, he made a mental breakthrough. It was so powerful and so profound that he forgot the need to be careful on television and spoke it aloud: ‘You are all
trying to find meaning behind the building,’ he said in a steady, resonant voice in tune with his truth. ‘Hassim is accusing me of its Christian connotations. Wilkinson says it portrays the freedom of our society – as do some newspapers and politicians – but the truth is something far, far different. Indeed, the very antithesis of what you think.’

  There was silence for a moment, and Fielding then said: ‘And what is the truth of the building, Mr Gowan?’

  ‘How do you think the building was designed? Where do you think the innovation came from?’ John asked, almost euphorically.

  ‘You said freedom inspired you creatively,’ Fielding said.

  ‘Yes, but not in the way that you think! On the day after the terrorist attack, I went to Blanworth to survey the wreckage. I’d never seen anything like it, and I felt good from it. Something real had happened, away from the mundane experience of normal living. The people, the energy, even the air seemed different. Two and a half weeks later, this good feeling unwittingly had an effect on me as I realised, with certainty, that I would be the designer of the next Zenith building.’

  People were looking at him, slightly gormlessly, not fully comprehending what he was saying.

  ‘Many people see the design qualities of the building as an expression of the free society in which we live, but the great irony of the building – a building seen as a defence and glorification of our society – is that it was creatively inspired by the attack on our freedom!’

  A sudden silence hit the room, as if a shock wave had passed through it. All people were looking at John.

  ‘Are you advocating terrorism?’ Fielding asked, finally.

  ‘No! I’m just telling you the inspiration for the building’s design.’

  ‘But, you mean that the sheer horror of the attack inspired your design?’ Wilkinson asked, looking threateningly into John’s eyes and clearly wanting him to amend his comments.

  ‘No, not the horror of the attack, but the freedom from the attack!’

  ‘But what do you mean by that?’ Wilkinson asked.

  ‘I mean the way I felt as a result of the attack, and the way Blanworth appeared to me as a result of the attack. There was danger in the air, excitement, shock and, indeed, horror, but it was all free. For the first time in life, I felt free. Everything was suddenly natural and loose. Something real had happened, away from the contrivances of normal living. And with this freedom available to me, I designed the building.’

  Wilkinson appeared shocked as he stared at John with eyes which weren’t particularly open or closed but fixed and still, as if they had been stuck in ice. Hassim remained quiet but looked at Wilkinson with a smile. John realised he may have gone too far and damaged Wilkinson and Zenith, but he didn’t care, because he felt that his new understanding of the building would reassert a connection with his true self and overcome his problems. Indeed, the threatening environment and consequential darkness had disappeared.

  Fielding appeared shocked and said: ‘I’m afraid, gentleman, time is up, and we are going to have to leave it there, unfortunately.’ She looked at the camera: ‘I hope you have enjoyed this discussion, and if you’d like to comment on our website, then…’

  11

  Wilkinson didn’t speak to John after the interview: he simply walked to another room where he collected his things and left quietly with his bodyguard. John exited the building from where he entered it hours earlier and looked into the night sky. A cloudy darkness pressed heavily onto the artificially lit landscape below. He chose an arbitrary direction in which to walk – any would do – and proceeded. He felt a liveliness, walking the streets in the night, and remembered how, sometimes, the city’s environment could become exciting and fresh: the way it felt when he first left the hospital several months ago and saw a future world for the first time. His phone rang.

  ‘What happened?’ Janice asked, her raspy voice unmistakable. ‘Did you mean to say what you said?’

  He smiled, as if she could see him: ‘Do you remember what we were talking about before? Of how I seemed free during the design process, and of how I was trying to understand how I came to that state of mind which enabled me to design the building?’

  ‘Err, yes,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Well, I realised the answer whilst on television, and I needed to vocalise it.’

  He could see his darkness clearly in light of the terrorist attack. It had been with him all his life up until that point. It had the power to distort, suppress, manipulate reality and do all kinds of things that denied him his true self. It was a lack of meaning, a conflict, an unreal reality that thrived in society and in his soul. To identify the darkness specifically was impossible, because its identity was built on untruth and delusion – a symptom of the human condition; nobody was to blame; everybody was to blame. But whatever it was that had been inside him, inside his brain, inside his soul and perpetuated by society was obliterated by the attack on this society. The attack offered a doorway, a separation, a realness from the oppression at hand and, with this attack, his true self came forth to design the building.

  ‘I realise it was a stupid thing to do,’ he said, ‘but, at the same time, with everything that was being said about the building, I believed the world needed to know the truth.’

  ‘They certainly know now. The Internet is going crazy with people commenting on what you said. Zenith may well retaliate, although I don’t think you said anything slanderous, because you only told the truth, despite the fact you changed your mind from saying the freedom of this society influenced your design, at the beginning of the interview, to saying it was the freedom from the attack.’

  ‘You’re the one with the law degree.’

  ‘However, they still may retaliate in some way, so we’re going to need to be prepared for the consequences. Do you understand?’

  He tried listening and looked into the night sky, remembering the beginnings of the freedom he had felt on the night he crashed his car: of the fast road and the black fields rushing by. It was triggered by the terrorist attack, and the building’s design was its manifestation.

  ‘John?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said dreamily.

  ‘What did Wilkinson say to you after the interview?’

  ‘Nothing. He just walked out.’

  ‘John, I think, for the sake of redeeming your professional reputation at the very least, you’re going to need to be publicly apologetic for the way you surprised everybody at the end of the interview. I will draft a letter tonight, explaining how you were nervous on television and shouldn’t have said what you said in such a way.’

  John waited at a road for two fast Saturday night cars to pass: ‘Just as long as it’s clear that I’m not going to go back on what I’ve said now.’

  ‘What?’ Janice asked, ‘There’s noise your end.’

  The cars turned a corner, and John proceeded over the road: ‘I said to write the letter, explaining how sorry I am, but I’m not going to go back on what I said.’

  ‘No, I understand that, and I wouldn’t legally recommend it, either,’ she said with a soft voice. ‘So, please come into the office tomorrow morning when I’ll have your letter for Zenith, and we can take it from there. I’m sure they’ll contact you soon.’

  John continued walking with careless abandon. He didn’t care about the negative consequences of his actions; he’d found the truth behind the building, and he was enjoying the walk in the night. He ventured towards the centre of town and arrived at the Cathedral Close wall – a medieval construction of stone boulders, about six feet high. The back of the cathedral, supported by its buttressed exoskeleton, loomed large behind it. He passed beneath a Norman gate onto a gravel path, which edged the green in front of the cathedral’s West Face, and through another Norman gate into City Square. Beer cans, napkins and cigarette ends littered the place – all leftovers from the day’s anniversary. With no ignorance or anxiety as to how he came to design it, he looked at his building, expecting to see
it.

  At first, the construction seemed ordinary. There were upward shafts, horizontal shafts and sheets of plastic covering large sections. However, as he tried to ascertain exact materials, shapes and dimensions, the building immediately appeared shrouded in its own fuzzy haze – its lines and angles barely distinct from one another. As he stared harder, the whole structure began to circle in a vortex of confusion. A central blotch of darkness, like the eye of a storm, appeared before him, growing with considerable rapidity and flooding his eyes with confusion.

  Fear overcame him like last time, and he realised his mistake; he tried looking away, but the blurry configuration of parts streamed through his eyes and filled his mind. He didn’t know if he had fallen to the ground or was still standing, but the building was now in his mind, and he could not get away. It was inside him and invading his consciousness, deeper and deeper. Its parts began to break up, moving left, right and away in all directions, until there was nothing to see except darkness…

  A violent force yanked his upper body, and he opened his eyes to see a man looking down at him.

  ‘John!’ the man said, his voice nasal and deep.

  John tried to think, remember where he was. He was lying on the ground, looking up. The man staring at him was dressed in a colourful suit, and John realised it was Pete. He remembered staring at the building, and it then entering his mind. He must have fallen down. The building had fragmented, and a formidable darkness had appeared, similar to last time, except he hadn’t seen the words ‘freedom from the terrorist attack’: words that were no longer consigned to the unconscious, perhaps.