The Architect (6 page)

After the meal, Maria, who needed to give a ylang-ylang treatment to a prominent auto manufacturer from Milan, took her leave of the doctor and he strolled along one of the main thoroughfares, and then to the park, letting his digestion do its work, thinking over their conversation.

“That man is undermining me,” he thought. “As ugly as he is, he still seems to fascinate, to have some arcane variety of charisma which enchants the less wise. I fear indeed that he will bring ignominy on the Society.”

Ducks swam in the lake and boats floated. The grass was a bright emerald green. The trees stretched out their branches dramatically and beneath one some men sat, drinking large bottles of beer.

The doctor knew a good many people in the town and nodded to these as he walked along, casting glances of recognition at old women whose fingers slumped under enormous diamond rings and young suited men with gorged wallets bulging from their back pockets.

One gentleman, around forty-five years of age, short and slightly balding, with a thick moustache and glasses, stopped.

“Ah, Dr. Enheim, so nice to see you!” he said, grasping the hand of the Commander Adeptus Magus.

“Signor Uccellini.”

This was Signor Pietro Uccellini, member of the National Council in Bern, an elected representative of Canton Ticino.

He wore the broad, confident smile of the politician. A smile that had, just a few months previous, instilled so many voters with confidence, despite the fact that its proprietor was an acknowledged womanizer, a man who had been arrested for driving while intoxicated and was said to be a user of certain white powders. But only fools, radicals, those who have no confidence in democracy, judge a man by how he lives rather than by the fluidity of his speech and the precision with which he knots his tie.

“I was just up at the building site today, and I must say that I am very impressed. I cannot tell you how much I admire your courage for going through with such an ambitious project. It will no doubt bring great glory to our region and economic benefits in the form of tourism. Ah, a brilliant fellow that architect you have working for you! When you get finished with him up there on the mountain, we’ll find some things for him to do down here, for there are still a great many old villas to tear down and replace with apartment complexes and lots of public funds which desperately need to be routed away from social services, from immigrant benefits and the like, into more useful channels, such as the building of new roads, parking lots and industrial piazzas.”

“Yes, um, we will see this project through in the grandest style,” Enheim said, flourishing his hand in an oratory manner.

After this brief encounter, he continued on his way.

“But maybe Herr Nachtman is not such a bad fellow to have as an ally,” he thought.

XI.

Summer gave way to fall, to rain and denuded trees, and fall to winter—short days, and the equinox passed.

With limited daylight, the workers found themselves in the early evening working by the light of huge floodlights, their bodies casting bizarre shadows.

In the middle of January a huge storm came in. Mounds of snow fell from the sky. Down below, the cities were paralyzed. Trains did not move, cars did at their own peril. It was the heaviest snowfall in fifty years. Over 90 cm fell in 22 hours. Trees, heavy with snow, collapsed across roads and railroad tracks, impeding movement. Though it was almost impossible to get materials to the site, Nachtman still insisted that the men continue to work.

Dispirited, wrapped in huge coats, they went about their business—clearing the construction site of snow, building fires to keep the mortar from freezing. No longer did they sing and show their naked chests and at lunch it was not wine they drank, but hot broth which they chased down with abundant brandy. They smoked continuously, seeming to fancy that those tiny cherries, those cigarettes that they held between stiff, trembling fingers, would keep them warm. And, indeed, their hands were so cold that they could barely clutch their tools and the rock they chipped away at seemed as if it were great blocks of ice, it seemed as if they were building an enormous igloo for the worship of some Inuit deity of cold weather systems.

And for those who had to work on the western side of the structure it was even worse. A freezing cold wind came incessantly with such force that it could easily sweep a man away, make him lose his balance and send him spiralling off the cliff.

“If you lose your life, it doesn’t matter how much they pay you.”

“I’m already giving my last blood.”

“It’s a dirty story.”

“Yes, I’ll be damned if I kill myself for a few thousand lousy francs a month.”

And, as if in answer to these words, just then a man was seen slipping, falling off the building, being dashed against the rocks. He had slipped on some iced-over scaffolding.

Nachtman, in a pair of huge, fur-lined boots approached the foreman.

“The conditions are horrible,” the latter said. “If we could halt work until early spring…”

“Impossible. The building must go up. We cannot stop work every time one of the men feels a little chilly.”

“But the danger—another man has just fallen!”

“Well, that is something we can take care of in spring. In this weather his body will certainly be well preserved.”

XII.

A wood stove dispensed heat throughout the tent. Herr Alexius Nachtman sat at a table, beneath the light of an electric lamp, refining certain details of his plan, altering a line, changing a measurement. To one side of his diagrams sat an ashtray, in which burned a cigarette. To the other, a half empty bottle of beer.

He heard a scratching at his tent door, as if an animal wanted to be let in.

“Who is it?”

The flap was lifted. An exquisitely white face peered out from beneath an ermine hat and the luxuriant collar of a sable coat. It was Maria.

“Do you mind if I come in?”

“Are you here to disturb me?”

“I hope not. I am only here to talk to you.”

“It is rather late.”

“I was able to find my way in the dark.”

He rose from his seat and advanced to greet her. His nose inhaled her perfume, sandalwood oil, as his hand shook hers.

“May I offer you something to drink?”

“Yes. A Scotch. Neat.”

“You know how to drink!”

“When the weather is chilly…But, it’s cosy in here,” she murmured, settling down in a chair near the stove. She watched the architect as he poured two drinks. “I always find it exquisite to sit by a warm fire when it is cold outside. It makes me feel very young and happy.”

“Well, you are not old,” he said, handing her a glass, a third full of gold-coloured whisky.

“But I am no longer young.”

“It is a matter of perspective. From my point of view…”

“But you are a man in the prime of life!”

“I am not much under sixty. Of course, my virility is more intact than many much younger beasts.”

“I believe that a man like you needs…”

“Yes, tell me what I need.”

“I believe that a man like you must need a very strong woman.”

“A strong woman. An oxymoron. I have yet to meet a strong man. Is there such a thing as a strong woman?”

“There is.”

“And what would I do with her?”

“Anything you wanted.”

The tone of her voice was so naked that her meaning could not be mistaken. Nachtman was not a shy man. He grinned. His maxillary canine teeth, capped with silver, let off a slight sparkle. His shadow stretched off to one side, a distorted mass. His face, in the rather weak light of the tent, appeared manifestly infernal. A huge nose that seemed in the process of being swallowed by a jutting bottom lip, below which rested a grotesque mound of chin and neck. Maria moved towards him.

“Come as close as you wish,” he said boldly.

She mixed her lips with his, devoured his ugly face with kisses.

XIII.

The next morning he awoke rather late. He was alone.

“Ah, the little bird has flown back to her own nest.”

He threw a few logs into the wood stove, which still had hot coals from the night before.

Then, after dousing his face with water, oiling his mouth with a coffee mixed with schnapps, he put on his boots and left his tent to look over the project. A fierce wind howled, blowing about the strands of hair that fringed his skull. Snow was piled up on all sides and, driven up against by the wind, let off wisps of crystal which swirled about. He trudged forward, his breath forming puffs of white vapour.

Surprised by the silence around him, he looked both right and left. No men clung to the sides of the structure. No hammers resounded. The machines lay dormant, their engines grown cold. The place was abandoned.

Two figures made their way towards him.

It was the foreman and Peter.

“They have left,” Peter said gloomily.

“What’s that?”

“Just like he said,” Fabrizi added. “The work has ground to a halt. The men won’t go on in these conditions. They say you need to raise their pay by at least forty percent if you expect them to continue through the winter. Otherwise they will be back towards the end of February, when the weather starts to warm up and the snow to melt.”

“Why didn’t you stop them?”

“Because I agree with them.”

“Ah, now I see how things are,” the architect said with an ugly twist of his lips.

An emergency meeting was called. The architect’s tent was where it was held. The four board members were present, as was Peter and the foreman, who sat silently to one side—for he was there not so much to participate, as simply to answer any questions that might arise.

“The situation is serious,” Nesler said. “These men want more money, but we are going to have a hard enough time maintaining the accounts due as it is. Materials have cost more than anticipated. Several of the Society’s investments have recently proved the contrary of profitable. And now the workers want raises, but such a thing, from a financial point of view, is scarcely possible.”

“Indeed it is,” Nachtman added. “And these lunkheads who spend more time scratching their bellies and smoking cigarettes than labouring should not only accept their current wages, but should do so gratefully, for in all truth a wage reduction seems far more in order than a rise.”

“Yes,” Maria agreed, “they should be penalised.”

“They are men,” Fabrizi could not help but putting in, “not beasts. They have families to support.”

“Enough with the socialist clichés,” cried the architect. “Such high-sounding phrases have no place in a convocation of intelligent men…And while we are at it, I suppose you wouldn’t mind an augmentation of your salary also, would you?”

The foreman rose to his feet.

“I do as my men do. If their salary is increased, so should mine be.”

“You dog! You have scarcely got dirt under your finger nails these past nine months, and now you talk about additional money! Yes, you might be handsome, but that big square jaw of yours will get you nothing from me—from us. As it is you are only being kept on as a matter of charity—as a matter of formality, so that the great louts we have shovelling sand and chipping away at stone can have someone to lavish their idiocy on.”

“I would recommend that you be quiet.”

Nachtman bared his teeth.

“Quiet! I hardly need to be quiet before an inferior, a subordinate, a rebellious toady who knows as little about architecture as a—”

It was at that moment that his words were cut off by the fist of Fabrizio Fabrizi, a lump of bones and flesh which shot forward like a hand-drilling hammer striking at a masonry nail.

The older man lay sprawled on the ground, rubbing his jaw. Maria ran to him, kneeled down beside him, took up his hand and kissed it. Then, turning a flashing gaze on the handsome foreman, declared:

“Ah, you are really a very stupid person!”

“I defer to your judgement,” the other said and then turned, left the tent with his head held high. And proudly he followed his golden moustache into the unknown and the valley below.

XIV.

The next day another meeting was convened in Lugano, at the offices of the Society. The portrait of Dr. Körn looked down. That man of paint seemed almost to be chuckling to himself, his eyes, magnetically moving spheres, inhabited by some dark angel, manipulating men from unseen planes.

All present were seated around the large, glossy oak table but Nachtman, who stood erect, proud, a band-aid plastered across his chin.

“We have a crisis on our hands,” Dr. Enheim proclaimed.

“It is a problem, not a crisis.”

“Yes, it is only a problem,” Maria confirmed.

“We could still negotiate with the workers.”

“No,” said Nachtman. “That is out of the question. I will not tolerate those traitors on my work site.”

“Cheaper labour must be found,” Nesler said in a whiny voice. “We can no longer afford to pay outlandish prices for arms and legs.”

“We could bring in Poles,” Borromeo suggested. “I have heard that they work well for very little.”

“I have nothing against Poles,” Maria commented.

Nachtman waved the idea aside with a gesture.

“But why bring in Poles,” he said, “when we have an untapped resource. After all, worldwide membership to the Society is formidable.”

“I am not sure I follow you,” Enheim said.

“The followers of Körn are all loyal citizens. Let them, with my guidance, build their own meeting place. Why rely on outsiders, who we must pay, to do what so many would be grateful to do voluntarily.”

Nesler’s little eyes gleamed. “You are right. We would save a great deal that way.”

“But many of our members—the great majority—live abroad. Some in India. Others in China and Africa.”

“Then let them come—from everywhere let them come!”

XV.

And so it was that disciples poured in from the four corners and eight directions of the Earth to lend their labour to the vast project. They arrived in great numbers, rolled up their sleeves, and set to work.