Crematorium for Phoenixes (2 page)

They had not yet revived when from the sea
there could be heard a great roar. The black waters were cut by a
submarine, which appeared like a giant whale.

“Gentlemen, welcome to the
Leviathan,” said the stranger as he rubbed his swollen
head.

Chapter
Two

Curly foam from the waves sparkled like a
thousand gems; the transparent silver salt water carried the smell
of the Great Sea.

Swarms of birds floated in the blue sky and
danced with the wind like open flowers, while below, spreading
their sails, dozens and dozens of ships were venturing into the
mirrorlike sea.

The city of Gebal, or Bible, the most
beautiful city in the country Haru, or Phoenicia, had started a new
day.

In the fortress, which was like a stout
skeleton of granite, scurried caravans to and from far off nations
in Africa, Asia, and Europe.

The city’s workers had gone out to nearby
fields or more accurately, to the carved terraced hills that were
covered in green hanging gardens of vines and fruit trees.
Shepherds drove immense herds of grazing cattle.

Inside the city, hundreds of meters of dyed
purple fabric had been hung to dry. They waved with the breeze and
looked like terrestrial creatures sent by a perfect being.

Elsewhere the glass factories were already
crowded with traders come to buy the artfully designed crystal,
glass, and amber, which glistened like angel tears and had been
polished under the utmost craftsmanship.

Other shops had also started their daily
trade, carrying in front of the eyes hundreds of products.

All this activity “crowned” the port and
shipyard, which were a necklace of light that echoed from the
crowd.

Here in the dry docks, like the bones of
mastodons, rose galley that poured boiled tar and were insulated
with hemp.

And in all the piers, down to the very last
one, ships from the old world cast anchor.

Numerous crew members and passengers—a
kaleidoscope of languages, dialects, and costumes—were constantly
ascending and descending.

So it was that by a ship a figure descended
quite unnoticed despite the warm day and the person’s conspicuous
long, hooded robe.

The figure’s silhouette whispered a mystery
that was hidden in an otherwise inexplicable mysticism, the kind
that begins any adventure—spotless or unclean.

It belonged to a man whose physique was
incongruous. He was not that strong, slightly hunched, and tall;
stared often at the ground; and had a slightly staggered gait, but
within him seemed to be hidden strong physical attributes.

The stranger walked through the maze of
streets as if he held prior knowledge that would keep him from
being confused by the alleys, which resembled tunnels; the huge
squares of carved stone temples; and the markets with thousands of
people spread before him.

He walked on, pausing from time to time, and
headed toward the poorest slums of the city.

Here in this hideous, demonic realm called
“Pandemonium,” partially as a joke, and partially not, lived a
plethora of people. Its residents often mutilated themselves and
lived as beggars, drunks, prostitutes, swindlers, thieves,
murderers, sodomites, hunters, cannibals, and traders of human
flesh. It was an abode of disillusion and chaos, which prepared its
future citizens while they were still embryos living on the blood
and milk of their mothers.

In this bunch, called by some, “pieces of
human garbage,” there was no spirit and no gods. Only despair and
pain reigned as deities in myriad hues.

Here is where the man was walking in the
heat of the day – the copper-red rays had created ashen-gray
shadows that blended with muted sounds into a crescendo of screams
in this dream of delirious nightmares.

Soon, he seemed to find what he wanted: an
adobe building that had been stooped low, just layers of clay and
beams with the wall thickness of a tank. It was smoked and narrow,
with bloodstained walls and plenty of bed bugs.

Here, things of questionable value and
origin were traded, eaten, and drunk. Ungodly deeds transpired, and
the location was known as the headquarters of demons and
monsters.

In this place, as in any other, there was a
man who was the leader of all of them; in Pandemonium, he was
called “Sharukin.”

It was not known what he had done before he
took up leadership, but rumors of all sort were told about him, as
occurs with people who are mysterious.

Sharukin was the dog that had turned into a
wolf, an individual who had spent too much time in solitude.

For this, he had won one great prize: the
right not to be asked questions.

Maybe an irreparable act, the kind that
raises disgust in the normal world, had earned him the privilege of
not having to worry about being disturbed by anyone.

So while debating heinous deeds, in a tone
like the peep of bloodthirsty bats, the stranger walked into the
adobe building and instantly the gloom and smoke of the room made
him nigh unrecognizable.

“My friend, how can we help you?” asked
a man, who for convenience we will call “the innkeeper.”

“Yes, I believe you can help me. I must
spend all of this before the evening is over,” the man said and
tossed a bag that rang hollowly as dozens of golden coins scattered
from it.

Silence ensued and innkeeper said, “You’re
either the most courageous or the craziest person I’ve ever seen .
. . .”

“Perhaps I’m maybe both,” replied the
man.

Snickers and barely audible growls from
predators spread through the room.

“Well, it appears that you’re
welcome,” Sharukin said.

The place, as we have said, was filled with
the usual sort, and a bearded guy with yellow, decaying teeth
giggled hoarsely and blabbed loudly, saying, “Oh, that scum is
greedy. He will violate his own mother for a nickel or two,” and in
that moment a dagger appeared in his hand, smeared with blood and
everything sharp. The man’s harsh voice, as relentless as a demonic
torturer rasped, “I’ll kill you, false brat. I will violate the
principles of my mother” and the room echoed with laughter; it
awakened the dead come straight from hell. In no time there were
subtle outlines of people, people who were shadows of the dead,
standing and waiting for redemption.

“I will not equivocate, I need a crew . .
.” offered the calm man.

“And what do you suggest? We already have
your money, and we can profit as well by gutting you and selling
you to the cannibals.”

“I can give you the most valuable thing in
the world,” the stranger said, “I can take away those memories that
lay like layers and layers of dirt in your hearts. Thus you can
create a new life.”

Many of them laughed. The words of the
stranger held that clownish delusion that gave some comfort in a
place like this. Dissipated in eternal boredom, the men had long
ago been jaded by the existence of sin.

“Tell us what constitutes the work and what
you suggest,” said Sharukin, commanding instant silence in the
room.

“I propose to erase every moment of your
previous life—perhaps the greatest gift that can be
given. I’ll give you a chance to start from scratch.”

Many of them again wrinkled their lips and
stifled their laughter; outwardly the men were silent and devoid of
emotion.

“Okay, do it, but as you know, you are
playing with more than just our good moods,” Sharukin finally said.
His words were spoken with that dullness that occurs after the
hard-hearted cruelty of life and pain have been rendered.

“Well then,” said the man, rolling up his
sleeve and revealing strange shells of tattoos that covered his
elbow with ink; they were done in blue shades and depicted fairies
like smoky souls merging into people swimming through a stream or
river that had no beginning or end.

The stranger stretched out his hand over a
globe and tightened his arm, outlining all of his muscle groups and
sinews.

Then he began to rotate his fingers, gently
shaking them as if they were caressing words that should not be
uttered.

Both of his hands began to smoke.

The smoke drifted around the room until
suddenly it formed a pillar that changed into a snake. The
slithering creature tore into the nostrils of the men, shaking them
like electricity.

After a moment, the smoke came out of them.
Exhaled from their nostrils, it was now blackish and compressed.
The man instantly drew it back into his hand.

The men blinked, as if shaking off their
sleepiness. They looked at their own hands, which seemed to them
uncharacteristically clean, and then turned toward the
stranger.

“Gentlemen, this is just the
beginning,” he told them.

They all then exited the building as a
bunch, looking like a cloud that constantly changes its shadowy
form, clustered then scattered. They walked in the deaf, crooked
streets, which were as silent as pensive, vicious creatures.

This maze had been created like a prison for
monsters, where each individual was chained so that his primal
urges merged into him. These individuals existed only to
represent the darkness in society. Among the nations, they
were penned in by the walls and hunted like animals, exiled, and
branded. But Cain’s race had been revived as an indestructible
hydra and now emerged like a phoenix from the ashes of the sin.

All the while, the company continued walking
down the alleys. They passed by as life passes, hearing screams of
laughter fade away into screams of anguish only to return as
maniacal laughter. Eventually, they were out of the town.

One world had ended, and another instantly
began. Fields with sprouted wheat, barley, and millet marked
white-sanded pathways that lay before them.

This oil-black soil with its crops was
shaded here and there by the trunks of palm trees, clustered
together and spread far, far ahead into the horizon. Wrinkled from
time to time by terraced hills of unidentifiable greenery, the
Greeks in later centuries would call this place “paradeisos.”

Here in the fallow, fueled by a grid of
channels and dams, the water moved like it was being boiled. It fed
the men that sum of feeling that ultimately accounted for their
existence.

The group walked these dams whose headstone
weirs held thousands of cubic meters of water and passed barn
silos. Standing in a grove of palm trees, they made dugouts and
despite the warm weather created fires in order to boil milk.

After several more hours of walking, they
entered the desert, which spread in wavy manner with coffee-black
spaces that stretched into infinity.

Here, within a few more hours, they found a
limestone cave in which the corroded, membranous skin of a snake or
creature had been left behind. The cocoon left thousands upon
thousands of elbows of fabric hanging and pleated around in
hoops.

From here, the men take actions they do not
understand and soon everything begins to swell, squirming,
quivering, and throbbing like a giant insect’s metamorphosis. Then
before their amazed gazes appeared a hovering airship.

“Well, folks, welcome to the
Behemoth,” said the stranger.

Chapter
Three

Frozen ash-gray ridges were lit by the first
rays of the sun, which shone over the ancient bastions as if it
were casting a dim, contemptuous look at the ravines.

Here and there among the silent mounded
hills and emerald-turquoise fields sheep grazed; they resembled the
scattered pearls of a forgotten necklace.

Between the sinuous meanders of the river,
birds were singing, awakening the forests of willow.

In the overgrown tracks near one of the
ravine, the slight crackle horse tracks could be heard.

Abandoned in the middle kingdom bowels of
the mountains, which lay on the pagan tombs of rulers by the ruins
of old fortresses in the north of Zipangu, or what is modern-day
Japan, a group of people lived simply.

Carrying the blood of long-forgotten
warriors, these men were tough and hardened; they made their
livelihood among these ancient fortresses.

They had become well-acquainted with
oblivion in their shelters and huts, existing among the lifeless
debris of the crumbled bones of former kingdoms.

The men assembled in these dank valleys were
almost mythic, and this vast expanse of land, with her incised
gorges between tall peaks, was slowly returning to that timeworn,
uninhabited land that she once was.

Rarely did salesmen travel through these
regions. When they did, they looked like lonely birds, cawing in
distant echoes the news from the southern islands of Zipangu.

They spoke of strange things, rumors that
troubled this pristine, calm region with their descriptions of
innovations that were changing the fate of the continent.

Not that these people believed them. Here
any news sounded like faint twitters. They were listened to with
pleasure in the inns by those people who gathered around
fireplaces. But the real reason for such attention was the simple
fact that listening to the stories was enjoyable. Sitting at
battered oak tables while contemplating the crackling logs in
fireplaces and smoking wooden pipes created an air of mystery (and
of course, red balls of smoke). Such an evening was topped off with
drinking from all sorts of beer mugs, and those who listened were
invited to take strange journeys.

It is that streak that makes sedentary
people travel abroad and wander, looking for a place to
settle. Because the stories of unexplored wilderness, of
sleeping under the firmament, wrapped in a cloak while watching
flames dancing like a fairy whisper the strange witchcraft that
then fills the human heart.

Thus mankind is displaced across all corners
of the planet, discovering the truth that everything moves,
everything is looking, and the soul is in actuality a bunch of
separate pieces that have been scattered like the stars. We are
looking for meaning, love, and God to supplement ourselves.