The Architect (2 page)

Huge edifices, megastructures, poured from the leaves. Bridges which spanned oceans, towers which stretched into the clouds, huge fortresses which looked as if they could withstand the destructive force of an Armageddon. Vertical cities rose up from desert plains in startling anaxometrics, while spatial cities, cities built fifteen or twenty meters above their counterparts, stood forth as visions of utopian architecture, only to be outdone on subsequent pages by floating cities, vast nests of hexagonal pods resting atop lakes and oceans. Structures which straddled the earth and others which burrowed under it. Buildings which brought to mind lost civilizations or seemed to be the habitations of beings from another world.

Maria Venezuela’s eyes gleamed with an enigmatic light. Nesler licked his thin lips greedily. Borromeo stood solemn, his face noble—like that of Alexander gazing off towards the unknown lands of Asia that he felt impelled to conquer.

Dr. Enheim turned towards Peter. “What is this you have brought us?”

“It is a very rare book, privately printed twenty years ago in an edition of only fifty copies.”

“And who is the architect?”

“His name is Alexius Nachtman.”

“I have never heard of him.”

“Very few have. It is only chance that brought this book into my hands at a flea market in Milan. You can imagine how it fired my enthusiasm!”

“I can.”

“When I first saw it, I was left speechless.”

“The designs are magnificent.”

“True mystery and grandeur,” Borromeo commented, flexing his arm.

“The language of this book, a language without words,” said Maria in a soft and charming voice, “strikes me as the language of deep spirituality…”

It was only Nesler who objected, straightening his back, repulsing his initial attraction to the fascinating designs with a scepticism that seemed pronged with arithmetic, prickly with narrow logic.

“This is all very fine, as far as science fiction goes,” he said, “but I do not really see what it has to do with the subject at hand, that is the Meeting Place.”

“I was under the impression that you were accepting proposals for the design,” Peter calmly stated.

“And we are. We are accepting serious proposals from serious architects.”

“And how would you define serious?”

“That which does not incite laughter. Free from extravagance.”

“Great men, great artists, are never free from extravagance. And, though it might be bold of me to say, Dr. Körn himself was not without this quality and was in fact accused by his detractors of many follies.”

“What the young man says is true,” Borromeo put in. “Maybe it is because I am Italian, but I must say that I would prefer to have with us someone with a certain artistic flair. A sense of adventure is not a bad thing.”

Peter pushed his glasses to the back of his nose. “When I suggested to my aunt that you might consider Herr Nachtman, she was not opposed to the idea.”

“I was not,” she said. “And, seeing that there seems to be some measure of interest, I propose that we ask Mr. Nachtman to submit a design for the Meeting Place.”

“But this is the work of a madman!” Nesler cried out, waving his thin arm at the great book.

“No, it is the work of a visionary!” Peter responded.

“The only difference between a madman and a visionary is that the latter creates what the former only dreams of. After all, what has this man actually built? Theoretical architecture is one thing, reality another.”

“It would be interesting to see the physical work he has done,” Enheim added.

“My understanding,” Peter replied, “is that his actual portfolio of finished buildings is, um, somewhat limited due to his, um, political beliefs.”

“Ah, then we cannot waste any more time on this nonsense,” Nesler cried in a sharp voice.

“Mr. Nesler,” Dr. Enheim said, “I understand that you consider yourself to be the voice of reason in this assembly. But I fear you are forgetting one of the principal tenets of the Society. We are open to all. Surely if this Nachtman were to be interested in, were to be willing to submit a proposal, we should condescend to consider it. We must follow our own divine impulses and not let our egos impede us on the path to knowledge.”

II.

Dr. Maxwell Körn had been born the son of a the German composer Arthur Carl Körn, better known as Hans Johann, a figure virtually unknown today but who, in the 1840s, had a brief celebrity for his work
Salmoneus
, a series of linked sonatas for arpeggione and piano. Little is known of his mother, though Körn himself stated her to be an extremely pious woman who, while in church, was often taken with fits of trembling. She died while he was still young, of an overdose of strychnine which had been prescribed by a homeopathic physician.

Possessed of piercing black eyes and a mane of chestnut coloured hair, young Körn had an intensity about him that few failed to notice. When he entered a room all eyes turned to him. Even those who disliked him admired him, and those who liked him loved him.

He studied under Professor Brockhaus at the University of Leipzig, and also under Schelling; was highly interested in comparative mythology and is said during this period to have been heavily influenced by the
Philokalia
, particularly those portions written by Saint Gregory Palamas. Undoubtedly these early Christian writers provided him with inspiration and set a foundation upon which the mighty fort of his philosophy would later be built.

Through unhappy speculation pertaining to the Ottoman Empire, his father went bankrupt and was unable to support his son. The latter took up the life of a poor student, maintaining himself by translating, giving lessons in Hebrew and Greek, and writing newspaper articles.

At the age of twenty-one, out of necessity, he published a short novel titled
Die Toten Augen von Mars
, which dealt with themes of spiritualism and romance, describing a visionary journey made by a young couple around the solar system and talked of the spiritual inhabitants of other planets. It was an immediate success, particularly amongst society women, launching young Körn, giving him entrance into fashionable Thursday evenings and opening the doors of the better clubs for gentlemen.

For the next few years he lived the life of a bon vivant, became passionately fond of gambling and developed a taste for fine horseflesh. He wore a coat with a thick fur collar and bought himself a number of rare paintings by Altdorfer. He visited houses of prostitution, fought duels, kept mistresses, and spent greatly beyond his means, so that he was soon deeply in debt, was forced to hide himself. It is said that at times he went about disguised as a woman, at times resorted to wearing a false beard.

No longer was he seen at the fashionable soirees or in his box at the opera. For most it seemed as if he had disappeared completely, gone up in a puff of smoke or been taken up on a gust of wind like a djinn. Unceremoniously, without pomp and to the muffled drumbeat of rumour, a veiled period of his life was inaugurated. Some say he worked for the Prussian secret service, others that he smuggled diamonds, while a few averred that he had become involved in the slave trade.

According to his own accounts, he was studying under a master in Amsterdam, whom he was, for spiritual reasons, unable to name but who was a direct descendent of Paracelsus. After receiving certain occult initiations pertaining to the Order of the Hermetic Brotherhood from this gentleman, he left Europe, travelled in India, China and Tibet. He lunched with swamis and drank tea with Taoist sages, studying under no less than one-hundred different masters. He became adept at the art of snake charming, an expert in Unani medicine and entered a secret society of adepts where he studied the anatomy of the soul.

Upon returning to the west, he set himself vigorously to the task of writing articles and books, systemising the entire universe, both physical and spiritual, drawing from every science, culture and religion, contributing to numerous periodicals, including
Neue Welt
,
Die Gnosis
and
Die Sphinx.
He did phrenologic investigations of select individuals and espoused theories of cerebral inheritance. Attracting the attention of many wealthy patrons, most notably Franz Salvator, Archduke of Austria-Tuscany, he was soon provided with an annual stipend which allowed him to continue his studies with more leisure.

The consummation of his spirituality seems to have occurred on April 3rd, 1894, when, at the age of forty-two, he was sitting on the last wooden bench on platform number 3 of the Lehrter Bahnhof in Berlin. He had eaten a plate of roast beef an hour earlier. It was around 6:30 pm. Over the next twenty minutes he became spontaneously enlightened and understood the workings of the entire universe, from its creation to its future destruction and saw both the purpose of mankind and the purpose of life, the celestial scheme of things.

On March 5th, 1896, he declared that he would form a Universal Brotherhood of Mankind and, indeed, spent the rest of his days attempting to establish the new supramental consciousness on earth.

Unequivocally inspired, he lectured all over Europe, but found particularly strong welcome in the intellectual circles of Switzerland, Austria and Italy, where he addressed some of the largest audiences ever gathered to hear one man’s thoughts on the religious meaning of life. In the year 1903 alone he was said to have given 291 lectures. He spoke on a vast variety of subjects, ranging from music to gardening, from Greek mythology to alphabetic dance. Occasionally during his discourses, he was known to slip into glossolalia, which he would afterwards apologize for.

• He entered into ecstatic trances in which his astral body visited other planets and planes, met with other beings, familiars and archangels, the souls of great thinkers. He reported on the states of hell and transcribed the teachings of various celestial attendants.

• He lived with a circle of close disciples from whom he demanded absolute obedience.

• He was said to have read the Bible, from beginning to end, once a year throughout his life.

• Certain journalistic organs accused him of charlatanism, pointing to the fact that he was in the habit of profusely adorning his fingers with costly rings and was known to supply his table with the most expensive wines and delicacies. These accusations he categorically refuted in his pamphlet
Why Gold is God Too
.

• In 1899, England’s Society for Psychical Research (SPR), dispatched Dr. Richard Gibson to investigate the Society. Not only did this latter pronounce Körn to be absolutely innocent of fraud, but later went on to become one of his foremost disciples and was largely responsible for the introduction of Körn’s work to the English speaking world, establishing centres in both London and Edinburgh.

• The last years of his life he spent largely in seclusion, translating the Akashic Records and often spending weeks at a time in self-imposed silence. Though this work was left unfinished, it was published in sixty-three volumes (Buchverlag der Taweret, Frankfurt 1924).

III.

It was a mellow and humid day in spring, atmosphere thick, sky smeared with a white froth of clouds. Peter, after making many inquiries, had managed to find the address of Nachtman. A small, mountain village with cobbled streets which was bordered by cows on green slopes, sheep masticating dandelions. One of those places where everyone knows the most minute habits of everyone else, the tranquillity of the day only broken by the occasional creaking of shutters or the lonely steps of an old man making his way to the cemetery to deposit a handful of wilted flowers where his heart lay buried.

A somewhat seedy stone structure with moss growing on the slate roof—vaguely Italianate—a faded fresco of a saint adorned the outer wall. Rusty gutters crawled from roof to pavement. A lazy balcony stretched out its tongue.

Peter knocked on a small door which was painted turquoise, but no one answered. A fat old woman appeared at the window of the adjacent house.

“Excuse me,” the young man asked, “but is this the residence of Herr Nachtman?”

“A man lives there.”

“Is he an architect?”

“I don’t think so. A lecher maybe. A drunk most certainly. But an architect…no!”

“Are you positive?”

“I do not speak to him. I am an honest woman.”

“He is not at home.”

“Then he is undoubtedly at the bar,” she said, thrusting her chin in a southerly direction.

Peter, after following this signalling device a short distance, found the place, entered, was accosted by the smell of ancient yeast and frying sausages.

A few voluble young men. A lumpy middle-aged woman with bright red hair. A television mounted above the bar. Football: dots running around a green field. At a small table in the corner two thin legs jutted out from beneath the barrier of an open newspaper. On the table was an almost empty glass of beer.

A frowsy looking waitress approached Peter.

“Sit wherever you want.”

“I am looking for someone.”

“And have you found her?”

“I am looking for a man. Nachtman.”

“Nachtman?”

“Alexius Nachtman.”

“Ah, you must mean Alex,” she said, pointing to the corner, to the man who was foraging through the newspaper, now draining off the last of his beer.

Peter approached.

“Excuse me, but is your name Alexius Nachtman?”

The man looked up, shot a penetrating glance at the student.

“And if it was?”

“Then I would be delighted to make your acquaintance.”

“I do not doubt it. But would I be delighted to make yours?”

Peter took note of the empty glass.

“May I buy you a beer?”

“You may,” the other said, folding the paper in two and tossing it aside.

He was over fifty years old, had a large, compact torso, like the body of an owl, planted atop two spindly legs, like those of a stork. His arms were long and thick like an ape’s. His nose was bulbous, red, as wrinkled as a prune. And from a muddy complexion, two small, dark eyes emitted a gaze as sharp as a needle. A skirt of wispy white hair fringed his skull, which was as knobby as the trunk of a hundred-year old chestnut tree. He sneered more often than smiled, and his smile was more grotesque than his frown. It was a pit of irregular yellow rectangles, offset by two dull silver flashes, for his maxillary canine teeth were capped with a ductile metallic element. He had the appearance of a deformed root dug from the ground. He was remarkably ugly. But the greatest geniuses are rarely beautiful to look upon.