The Architect (11 page)

†…beyond the scourges over my thoughts which are like planed columns, clinging to knowledge of the truth…

Through a sort of mass hypnotism, all obeyed him who was referred to as Brother XII blindly. He had a private cook, a man from Bavaria, who was able to work miracles with a sauce pan and prepared him liver of burbot and omelets of ambergris, partridges stuffed with frankincense and batter-fried eel larvae. Designated colony females, married or single, were to mate with Brother XII up to nine times, and roll with him on beds of verbena—an activity which Maria herself fully approved of, convinced as she was of the architect’s saintly qualities. And indeed his spectacular vices had something grand about them—something truly supramundane which recalled those ancient Roman emperors who claimed themselves to be descendents of gods and spat upon morality and temperance alike as with drunken laughter they set men aflame, dined off the naked backs of prostitutes and demanded obedience from both moon and sun, shoving stars into the facial orifices of their lovers while reciting long and dreary poems that put their page boys to sleep.

Sometimes he would stroll about in a long white gown humming the refrain from Übere Gotthard flüget Bräme. He drank expensive whisky by the gallon and ate the genital glands of sea anemones stewed in white wine. He seemed to relish his role as mystic and, claiming himself to be the embodiment of transcendent reality, declared that he was the Knight of the Red Eagle, Grand Inquisitor Commander, who would lead people to fabulous lands.

“Listen to me my friends,” he said to the disciples. “I am your guardian angel and will guide you straight up there to the sky, to the ethereal dimensions. We are building something more than just a shield from rain and sun. We are building a ladder on which to climb to the stars. This is the tabernacle—you have arrived!”

Maria kissed his every part, and Nachtman, thinking to make her a worthy queen, fashioned her Madame Why, Inspectress of Rights and Degrees, and she would go about in a dress dripping with fringe, followed by an elite group of her Sisters of Future Well-being, who attended to her every want. She fumigated the building site regularly with lichen and cassia bark and dispensed oils of cardamom and evening primrose in abundance.

Enheim, propelled forward on this tide of the occult, braided his beard and wore a burnoose and walked about with a rope around his waist like a Capuchin monk, lending his voice to the adherents, offering words of encouragement to those sons and daughters of men as they struggled against hunger and huddled at night around fires of twigs.

He and the architect threw off all modesty, proclaiming themselves geniuses, emissaries of both space and time. Enheim, in the end, had gladly let himself be cast in a slightly subordinate position, for even there the heights he stood at were dizzying, the rarefied atmosphere of power intoxicating.

Nachtman mounted the podium of supremacy with the naturalness of a king, usurping the individuality of those around him with a kind of stolid glee, a greediness as profound as the universe itself—vast and seemingly endless.

Enheim, concerned about the well-being of his daughter, put forward the possibility of a marriage agreement with the architect.

“But a man likes to maintain his freedom,” the latter said.

“Yes, but you are no longer young. It is time that you thought of settling down.”

“She likes older men, does she?”

“She needs a man who is spiritually developed.”

“Well, I’ll think about it,” Nachtman said, caressing the tip of his bulbous nose with one finger.

XXIX.

It was August and the heat extreme. The sun shone, hot, violent—shooting its rays to the earth like arrows. The mountain seemed as if it had been shoved in some great inferno and enveloped in flames. Several of the workers had died of heat stroke. Tongues hung from open mouths and naked torsos glistened with sweat.

Due to the fact that there were so many perspiring men, an unpleasant odour filled the air, like that of rotten fruit. Flies buzzed lazily about, sometimes falling exhausted to the earth where their wings and labella agitated disagreeably. Birds were just about cooked in their nests and moles and other burrowing creatures dug themselves deep underground.

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 and, 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.