The Freedom Building

by Martin Kendall

  ‘I got angry at what you said on television – that you had never felt free in your life, not until the terrorist attack.’

  John vaguely remembered talking about freedom, but it didn’t concern him anymore: ‘Oh, yes.’

  The kettle clicked and he poured the teas.

  ‘I think you were telling the truth about your not feeling free for much of your life, though.’ she said. ‘The overall reason I left you was because, to use your word, you didn’t feel free. And it was damaging our daughter, too.’

  He sat opposite her with the drinks: ‘Well, I’m sorry about that.’

  ‘But, even though you are to blame for breaking up our family,’ she said, ‘you are not to blame for harming yourself.’

  John smirked: ‘Thanks.’

  ‘And from listening to you on the radio subsequently, it sounds like you’ve tried to understand the problem.’

  John was remembering things properly now – the television interview, the radio interview and all his problems related to the building – truly awakening him from his apathetic slumber. The kitchen became a more fearful place as the darkness revealed itself to him again: ‘Well, as you said, it’s a lack of freedom that’s always been the problem for me.’

  ‘But what do you mean by it, and why did it destroy our marriage?’

  John stared at her, the darkness, that had always been there, distorting her rounded cheeks and her perfume into something strange and depressing.

  ‘Was it work? Was it the architectural world, the bureaucracy and red tape? Was it the way we lived as a family? What was it?’

  John lit a cigarette and concentrated on the pleasure of addiction to help him overcome the odds: ‘The answer begins with losing my freedom the night before construction of the Zenith building began. As you must have heard in the television interview, I fell that night and awoke in hospital. Since then, Pete has worked at the site, and I’ve not really done anything more on the building. I had problems, you see, problems that I tried to conceal because whenever I did come close to telling anybody about them, those problems would get worse, and I feared they might consume and take me away.’

  ‘John, what are you talking about?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now because I’ve lost everything – the building, my family, my business, my essence… There is no worse place I can go. Initially, I believed these problems were exclusive to the building, because they were all connected to not being able to see or understand it properly.’

  ‘You can’t see your building?’

  He contemplated whether he should tell her. The reality of the room, though oppressive, remained constant. There was no threat of it taking him anywhere else. He didn’t feel dizzy or about to faint.

  ‘No. Whenever I look at it, I see a blur, and I have realised that the blindness to the building, with all the associated problems, has exposed a problem I have had all my life.’

  ‘And what is that – the problem you have had all your life?’ she asked, seemingly taking the blindness to his building for granted.

  ‘The inability to feel, see or experience freedom – or, at least, what freedom means to me.’

  ‘The problem you had when I was living with you?’

  ‘Yes, I could not see freedom then, and I can’t see it now. Only, then I was more ignorant of that fact. I felt trapped in a pointless and sometimes horrific existence – a reality from which I could not escape.’

  ‘And your family couldn’t help you in any way?’

  John shrugged his shoulders: ‘If I’d known exactly what I didn’t have but felt, at least, I was on the path towards freedom, then I would have quite happily lived the family life. Indeed, I would have desired it. I would have loved myself, loved you and loved Gemma.’

  ‘But you didn’t?’

  ‘No, but I found what I was looking for when Blanworth was attacked. The atrocity seemed to open a gateway to something deeper inside me, something that was more profound in life and something that overcame my general condition of dissatisfaction and mind decay. Perhaps, this is deeper inside us all.’ He paused and sighed, remembering the moments before he crashed the car: how the road and the fast-approaching bend united to reveal an overwhelming surge of energy. ‘I may be verging on the spiritual. I don’t know, but I’m sure I found something more to life than what we know or think we have.’

  ‘You sound more like the man I married, John.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Her large eyes relaxed, and she smiled: ‘When I first met you, there was something inside you that you wanted to express or seek. And architecture seemed to be your means for doing it.’

  John thought back to the early years and remembered being happy with his new business and new wife: ‘That was something different. I was young then, with my whole life ahead of me. It was natural to be happy and express that in my designs.’

  ‘No, that’s not what I mean. Don’t you remember that there was something more to architecture for you than just the superficial designs?’

  He remembered Hillary, in the last years, trying to convince him that he’d changed from the person she’d married. He was tempted to stop listening, as he always used to do. But now, he felt she was kindling old memories inside him: ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I look at the Zenith building now, and I think: You actually did it!’

  John was excited by her memories of his younger self and that connection to the Zenith building: ‘Can you explain a little more?’

  ‘Wait a second.’

  She walked out the front door, said something indistinctly to George and returned to hover above him with her large eyes: ‘Where are your old things? Your old paintings and writings that you had when we first met. Have you touched them since I last saw you?’

  He remembered the things she was talking about as being some pictures he’d painted and some poetry he’d written in his teenage years and early twenties: ‘No, not that I remember. They’re probably still in the basement. I’ve always meant to clear it out.’

  ‘Yes, and I didn’t let you – not after you burnt all your old architectural designs from college.’

  John reflected a moment and remembered something he hadn’t recalled in a very long time: how much pain his old architectural designs had given him. He’d achieved high marks for them in college but decided to burn them because they seemed to be too free, too painful. He was about thirty when he did that.

  ‘Come on. I want to show you something,’ she said.

  He followed her from the kitchen into the dining room, which was located at the front of the house on the other side – completely dusty now, with a walnut table and ornament cabinets – and through a door, at the back of the room, which led to the basement. She switched on the light at the top of the stairs and stepped briskly into the depths. As he followed, the concrete steps were cold through John’s socks, and the air was thick with age. She switched on another light at the bottom and walked past the wine racks to a large blue chest in the corner on the ground. John hadn’t drunk the wine for a long time, content with the whisky upstairs in the drinks cabinet.

  ‘You have the key on you?’ she asked.

  He walked to a wooden shelf that had bits of metal and wood strewn across it. He lifted an empty clay pot and saw the rusty key beneath. He walked back to the chest with his head lowered, so as not to scrape it on the ceiling, crouched down sideways to the chest, so his shadow wouldn’t darken the lock, and clicked the old key into place. The lock opened, and he pushed the lid up and over so that it rested on the wall behind, with its golden hinges exposed.

  ‘So, what do you want?’ he said impatiently.

  She crouched down and looked into the chest. Inside was a huge heap of notepads and drawings contained in cardboard wallets that were tied with string. She pushed her hand into the chest, foraged down a few inches and randomly pulled out a cardboard wallet. She turned to let the light shine on it and unravelled the string. Upon opening it, a painting
fell out into her lap and then onto the ground. It was upside down from where John was crouched.

  Despite its awkward angle on the floor and the many years since he had last seen it, John recognised it instantly. It was a painting he’d done of office buildings in Blanworth on one sunny summer afternoon when he was about sixteen. Light reflected off their windows, and people walked on the pavements. The buildings were erected in the sixties and still standing today, not far from the city centre. They were poorly constructed, built of grey and brown brick and seen by John today as hideous. But he remembered that day well: how he sat opposite the buildings, uncaring of what passers-by might think, and painted the picture. He remembered finding them beautiful. How odd, he thought.

  Hillary picked up the painting, smiled and gave it to him. The colours on the page were faint and delicate, yet they were expressive and evocative. He felt something as he looked at it, almost mesmerised now: how things seemed on that day in his youth, and how everything seemed perfect. A feeling, resonating deep within him, rose into his consciousness and burst like an air bubble on the water’s surface.

  ‘You may wonder why I wanted to come down here, John,’ she said, placing her hand beneath his chin and raising his head to her eye level. She seemed very pretty in the bulb light, her eclectically coloured eyes glinting like the windows in the picture. She looked at his eyes, his nose, his mouth and glanced down at the painting: ‘This is why.’

  ‘Because I liked to paint once?’

  ‘Because you believed in something.’

  ‘In painting?

  ‘You enjoyed painting, poetry and especially buildings, but it was all for an underlying reason. I never quite understood what you meant in our chats when I first met you, but you used to tell me things which seemed exotic – things that you saw. You wanted to do something: to replicate the things you saw in architecture. This, at least, was what you told me.’

  John vaguely remembered the chats when he had told her how he wanted to design great and wonderful buildings. As he did so, he remembered how, in his youth, he would see occasional glimpses of a world that was far more real and elaborate than the normal world he was used to. At that time, these glimpses made him want that world and search for it. It was almost an unconscious searching which was only ever vocalised when he talked to Hillary. It almost sounded stupid to him when he spoke it aloud, but he felt he could tell her because she loved him, so it didn’t matter how stupid it sounded. His reason for pursuing architecture was to somehow recreate this world through his designs.

  He looked at the painting and glimpsed the experience of that world again. The environment glittered in radiance. He looked at his wife who seemed even more beautiful than moments ago – her eyelashes, her hair and her reason for being here in the cellar – and he felt the urge to touch her.

  Spontaneously, he said: ‘It was a different way of seeing things. And I wanted to replicate that world, which I occasionally glimpsed, in the design of buildings.’

  She smiled.

  He felt the words with the physical intensity that revelations can enable one to feel – mind and body uniting and trembling with energy. But suddenly, a blur started to overcome the exhilaration; and immediately, he began to feel deflated again: ‘But something stops me from experiencing it.’

  ‘What is it?’ she said.

  ‘A dark, heavy void. A few years into our marriage, it came from seemingly nowhere, insidiously affecting me and permeating my life. When we lived in Blanworth, I began to feel it there, so I decided to work in Toxon where, in the bricks and the roads, life seemed more real and free. That helped for a while. And when we had enough money from my business, I fled from our house in Blanworth to move to the countryside, thinking I would escape it for good. But, no matter where I went, it found me and ate into my life. With nowhere left to go, I didn’t feel I could fight it because I didn’t know what it was, and I plunged into darkness as my halcyon reality became a forgotten romance.’

  ‘Do you know what it is now?’

  ‘I can see it indirectly because it hides the building. When I grew older, and my inspiration for life became too elusive in a society that did not reflect my inspiration, I consequently denied myself higher ways of experiencing life. The days became claustrophobic, constricted and oppressive. And I know I changed beyond recognition.

  ‘When Blanworth was attacked and a higher reality emerged, I designed a building from it. But then, society did what it does best, claiming my building, my freedom, even humanity’s freedom, for itself. And the darkness returned to me.’

  ‘Then, you just have to find a way of convincing people of the truth.’

  ‘I can’t. I’ve already tried.’

  She rested her hand on top of his head: ‘Don’t give up. It’s not even completed yet. Who knows what your building’s legacy will be, even a year from now.’

  There was a distant knock on the door from upstairs. She looked at her watch and stood: ‘Listen, I’ve got to go, but you can phone me anytime.’

  John stood, holding the painting.

  ‘So, do you have them?’ she asked.

  John walked out of the basement with the painting in his hand, through the dining room and into the kitchen. He collected the divorce papers from a chair underneath the kitchen table, and gave them to her. She kissed him on the cheek and left the house.

  He stood at the door and watched the car drive through the snow, up to the front gate and away. He felt a bitterly cold breeze on his chest, and the pale blue and white sky made him feel utterly alone. It seemed strange but, with the car now gone, it suddenly felt as if the wife had never come and that what had happened was just a dream.

  He bent down and crunched snow in his bare hand to feel more real. His fingers began to burn at the joints. He liked the feeling, surprisingly, and visualised flames emanating from them. Fire and destruction filled his imagination, and he remembered the destruction of the old building when he visited it for the first time – the rubble, the crowd, the firemen and policeman, the sunlight, the excitement ...

  He looked up and saw the thin line of distant trees marking the boundary of his property. The loneliness of the environment seemed to be dispersing, as if it were beginning to reveal its true, friendly identity. The trees seemed to wave back at him as the breeze tickled their leaves. The pale blue and white sky offered a blanket of soothing coldness, and he smiled as he began to experience the world he always looked for.

  But he knew it was only a glimmer. The trees had already begun to stop waving. The legacy of his new building would forever be a burden to his soul. In despair, he imagined pushing the shadowy image of his new building down into the ground with his hand and it shattering across Blanworth, just as the old building had done. A huge adrenaline rush of excitement overcame him, his heart pumping like a fist into the back of his chest. He liked the feeling so much that he imagined planning an operation, just like the terrorists, to destroy the building. His heart beat harder and faster.

  15

  A couple of months later, on the day of the Opening Ceremony, John said goodbye to his house for the last time and drove to Blanworth in the dark early morning, summing up his life as usual. He was fifty-three years old. He was an architect. He designed his house. He found the spot to build it in the leafy countryside between the towns of Blanworth and Toxon.

  He grew up in Blanworth and had a contented childhood, decent parents – now deceased – and happy memories of school. He met his future wife at college where he studied architecture and, a few years later, they had a daughter. As time went on, the marriage disintegrated and, when his daughter grew up, his wife left him but, a few months ago, his wife renewed some kind of friendship whilst finalising their divorce.

  He was proud of Gowan Partnerships: set it up with his friend Pete Williams after working for an architectural firm for six years. Pete didn’t have any cash, but John had money from his inheritance, so they used his name. As time went on, they handled bigger clie
nts; and eventually, they landed a deal with Zenith to design a large office block in the centre of Blanworth, replacing an old building destroyed by terrorists. Unfortunately, near the end of construction, Pete no longer wanted to work for Gowan Partnerships; and tomorrow, he would start a new company, taking most of their employees with him. Only John’s long-standing PA, Janice, remained loyal to John, but his lack of interest in a future company meant she would be finding work elsewhere.

  The city’s lit buildings rose from the horizon as the countryside became flat. Near the illuminated arches and tall spires of the impressive cathedral, John’s blurred building shimmered like a mirage.

  Inside the shopping centre, few shops were open, but John found a café where he ate breakfast and watched early risers walking to work. About now, a delivery firm should be entering the Zenith building with two identical packages. John had been assured by Ronald, Head of Security and with whom John had been in contact the last few weeks, that the packages, already wrapped in party paper and ruined if opened, would be taken to the proper places. One would go to the first floor where people would continue celebrations after the initial festivities in City Square, and the other would be taken to the top floor where the select few, comprising mainly of Zenith staff and politicians, would hold their party at the end of the day.

  John pushed through the doors leading onto City Square. The day was lighter now, and he avoided looking at The Freedom Building which lurked dominantly on the other side. Soon its pain would be over. A stage had been erected in front and had policeman and workmen around it. In a couple of hours, he would be sitting there with a few others giving speeches. Zenith wanted John to take part because, although they wanted people to believe that Pete solely designed the building which, indeed, many people did, neither John’s nor Pete’s contribution to the design had been proved, and omitting John would cause unnecessary controversy on a day that was supposed to celebrate the new building. The tramp was on the bench, staring at it.