The Architect’s Elusive Gold

Chapter 2.


Now standing, he decided towards his study and started on his way. In the interim, he reveled at the culinary delights which had been the highlight of the dinner hour. Ratatouille and baguette for the main, and separate side dishes of grilled lamb, seared cod and trout, luscious, creamy polenta and a dish of fusilli�"there were other mouths to account for, after all. The possible pairings had been abound as magnificent to the palate. Aah, and the Côtes du Rhône. He preferred the southern blend because of its seeming amalgam of Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvèdre, which carried hints of reddish fruits, herbs, and a touch of spices which married well with the ratatouille. He could think of other varieties�"Conti Grand Cru came to mind�"which were simpatico with the main dish, but the Côtes du Rhône was seldom the one to go without. He smiled as he moved on.

For a moment, he also found himself debating whether preparing the dish was more delightful than the eating of it. On the face of it, one of those acts seemed to be a toil at all. With this dish, a certain kind of labor indeed went into the preparation of the primary ingredients. He shrugged at the absurdity of the thought as he reached the threshold of the corridor. At the far end, just on the other side of the foyer, sat his study. There was a certain delight which came with handling Les légumes; a kind of precision and discrimination was necessary in this act. The circumference of those little discs depended on the vegetables themselves. Their widths, however, were an important intricacy, and the burden of the hand wielding the knife. How wasn’t that a delight as eating? But perhaps most delightful was finding and infusing those spices with the balance and grace as was due. Let it be for now. He continued on.


He stopped at the threshold of the corridor and for a good while stared down the hall, at the glass panes of his closed office doors. Then his gaze drew him from those glass panes to the left wall of the hall where three near mural paintings, set apart in neat intervals, spanned the length of the wall to the far end. The right wall bore little glass cabinets which also spanned the entire wall. Each with a little glass door, wooden with golden interweaving on their edges, and each advertising some collected artifact basking in amber luminescence�"mostly precious gemstones. He looked to the left wall of the hall again, and at the “mural” most adjacent. He smiled and took a step forward, beginning again on his way.


The mural there was a mere replica of Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of earthly delights, the artistic depiction of the lack of hesitation in the face of temptation. The realization drew him instantly back to Montpellier, perhaps bringing his earlier hesitation into a certain light. But first, to that implication which “Well, money, Mr. Or. This is all that matters in this world, isn’t it? Isn’t that it?” carried. The probable reason for which the architect had given those words was obvious enough but there was a deeper, or obviously broader conclusion one could have made.

“Wasn’t there, Montpellier?”


To the extent that certain individuals could be bought, did he mean to say that all men must be so implicated? Cichy reached the foyer and made his way across to his study.


“Such a broad generalization isn’t immediately fallacious, is it?” he quietly said as he reached the pair of French doors.

What seemed to be most striking now, in fact, that may have been the matter all along, was a feeling that Montpellier represented a kind of temptation he needed to hesitate. This was the realization which struck him, though perhaps unconsciously he suspected, when he stood next to the Bosch replica. But, more yet of the architect’s ridiculous utterance, there was the matter of “replica.”


“I suppose all the money in the world did get me the genuine article, didn’t it Montpellier?” The first manifestly contradictory fact of that statement’s immediate proposition. Cichy opened his office doors and stepped into the room.


The flare of the settling twilight shone faintly through the large glass window situated about fifteen yards east of the entryway. He soon began to think of it as a wall on a hand. On another hand, he conceived its designed being much the same as an Ames window without motion, or else a life-size, glass Tsumego board. This thought brought Crèche to his mind, she had beaten him for the first time during their last Go match. How many games had they played beforehand? he wondered behind a cheerful smile.


Just in front of that window was a seating area: cradling two chairs facing each other and a coffee table sat between them, nestled atop a pristine, circular rug as fluffy as a cloud. A chess set sat atop the coffee table, advertising an abandoned game. Every other wall, floor to ceiling, labored beneath the weight of shelves and books and a ladder stood directly behind the desk laid against a section of the bookshelf. The centerpiece of the room was a large wooden desk, held up and together by the intricacy of sashimono. On the surface of the desk: a computer monitor sat dead center, along with a stack of books and a bale of, probably, printer papers, right of the monitor. To the left, from the vantage of Cichy had he been sitting in the chair behind the desk, was a miniature sailboat, elaborate with golden and silver trappings on its hull, perched atop carved, golden, parted waves as its plinth. Cichy shut both doors behind him and started towards his desk.


When he got to the desk, he grabbed the ladder and moved it away from where it had been. He turned and pushed his chair closer to the table. For a moment, before turning back to face the bookshelf, he stopped. He let his gaze veer towards the window, and beyond. Dusk made its slow, but sure exit on high. The night would soon unfurl itself there against the ether. Upon lowering his gaze once more, he took notice of the chess board; of the unfinished game. Again, after a brief while, he smiled. He hadn’t seen it before, but from where he now stood, the next move, no, the coup de grâce glared at him like the faded daylight beyond the window panes.


A matter of perspective come to life, he supposed. After this thought, he turned and took a few steps towards the anchored sea of books behind him and removed a book from the shelf. A subdued rumble sang from the general section from which he removed the book. Then came the aria of a crackle�"a singing out of keeping, a kind of falsetto, crescendoing from a low to a piercing high, which he attempted to visualize as the monody had been aurally jarring. Tuh. He replaced the book he’d removed, pushing against the shelf in the same motion. The section of the bookshelf performed, away from him, the function of a door revealing a threshold to yet another room beyond. Cichy made his way into the room, swallowed by the darkness therein. Slowly, the shelf swung shut, resuming its ruse as a section of the seamless bookshelf. Another book, just left of the door and at the very center of its vertical axis, moved of its own volition just that instant, angling at a forty-five degree angle�"asymmetrical to its immediate neighbors. A minute later, the library came alight, luminescent in a subdued amber deluge.


After a while, the door of books began to open again, singing its previous song just the same.When it completely opened, its threshold framed the same darkness as before; however, the secluded little milieu beyond seemed darker yet, if not darkest, and stood firm, stubborn against the intrusion of the golden gleam within the library. Cichy emerged from the darkness a moment later, preoccupied by one of the few things he carried: a leather-bound book tucked under his right arm, and his mobile device which was the subject of his immediate obsession.


Fully emerged, Cichy stopped just in front of the doorway, still fiddling his device. He’d neglected the robe he’d worn before in favor of black, silken pajamas. For a moment they appeared as an extension; as fabric torn from the film of darkness unfurled just behind him, as they at once seemed to refract the amber lighting within the library as if it had been woven into those seams. He turned, lifting, with the hand roosting the leather-bound book underarm, the mobile device to his ear, and moved towards the protuberant hard cover signaling to itself on the bookshelf like an unwanted memory. He reached it, pushed it back in place and began on his way to the seating area by the large window. The door of books reclaimed its ruse as a mere bookshelf. He reached the seating area, and with his vacant hand unburdened the uppermost crease of the hand wielding the mobile device. He began to sit as he placed the book onto the coffee table. In a subtle spasm, his head tilted pulling his gaze back whence he’d come. The “obstinate” hard cover he’d straighten out was his latest publication: Idée Fixe. A novel about a protagonist whose fixed idea about being was essentially a veil atop his eyes as simultaneously a suffocating hand. He thought of Montpellier as he retrieved his gaze and returned it to the mobile device. His brows furrowed as he looked at the device. Someone hadn’t been receptive.


He fiddled the device once more and lifted it to his ear. A moment passed. The mobile phone began to ring. Soon enough, a voice, female, palpably British, abated the silence.

“Hello?” She asked.

“Sophina,” Cichy called.

“Yes, master Or.”

“How about it?”

“I’ll be right there, sir.” Sophina replied.
He lowered the mobile device from his head and placed it next to the book on the table. Sophina was punctual as ever, she would indeed “be right there,” soon enough.

That novel of his, its memory prompted by his sight of the leather-bonded book on the coffee table, had achieved the kind of thing vastly popular books do achieve. That was good and well enough. The endeavor had never been about gaining, however; not a pursuit of popularity or status, nor riches…insofar as those things weren’t residuals of the international bestseller. It had been about a certain kind of probing: searching, reaching, through dramaturgy, for a kind of distillation. And yet that extraction synthesized,�"he hoped by his hands it had been�"he’d long since concluded, had been lost beneath the waves of the novel’s commodification. Those reviews from the reputable sources had said as much. The laudable aspects of the novel had indeed been preened at as misfortune duly culminated, but, he knew, only at the expense of averting, or failing to extract the savory parts out. None of which were merely thematic intricacy nor lyrical flourishing, no, rather the essence and texture of the fabric of hamartia they waved. L’Arc, his protagonist,�"hardly heroic, and perpetually inert in his restlessness�"alas realizes the cost of his fixed idea, only when it begins to cost him. Likewise, his narrative ultimately became, at his point of clarity, an anthemic self-cannibalism masquerading as interior philosophy, married to lyricism, loneliness, and the hunger to be loved without delusion. He recounts all of his fault. Brutally. But he isn’t able to add it all up. He isn’t able to articulate any of it into a useful system. Cichy scoffed a sigh. Of course, his protagonist sort of vacancy could very much have been due to a failure in dramaturgy, on Cichy’s part, and this ultimately meant that L’Arc was only sort of culpable.

This realization�"of which he debated a briefly felt contentment�"pushed him towards the only endeavor he could have under taken at that moment. It was the flourish to focus his mind onto Montpellier’s game.

The sound of his office doors opening drew him from his mind at last, garnering his attention: kindling the subtle swivel of his head, the discerning movement his eyes, the possession his stare. Sophina had come.

Sophina entered the room just as soon, and after closing the doors behind her and turning to face him, she said:

“The usual, sir?”

“Coffee will do this time, Sophina,” he said, looking at her.

Sophina wore a dark, navy blue dress which flared and settled just below her knees. Her torso was snugly enveloped by a gray, cashmere sweater, blue stripes at the cuffs, buttoned shut just beneath a gray bow tie. A miniature, golden globule�"the family crest�"rested just above the bulge of her left breast. She had drawn back her hair into a ponytail, and a pair of glasses rested atop ivy-green eyes, completing the embodiment: majordomo, confidante.

“Alertness for the coming hour, then?” She said dryly, turning and facing the left side of the room. He laughed, picking up the leather bound book he had been carrying. Her question was less that than a certain kind of affirmation of his held intentions. What she had said by it was: I’m am here for you, sir. As always.

He began to study the book as if he’d found something sudden, new about it, or else as if there was still something yet to be discovered. Something unwanted. Something to be disassociated with. Something…a bad part to be extracted out. He replaced the book back onto the table and fell back into the chair.

About twenty yards from the entrance of the office, the direction towards which Sophina had begun to move, a pair of wooden doors concealed away any content of the room beyond. When the woman reached them, she placed her index finger onto a rectangular strip of metal embedded into one of its wooden panels. A faint click sang. The piece of metal leapt from its wooden borrow. She grabbed and pulled it, strumming yet another click. A crease forming between the adjoining doors, advertising a continuous strip of the darkness in the room beyond. She placed her hand into the crease and pulled the doors apart, entered the room and pulled them shut again.

Cichy thoughts about the leather-bound book�"Tuscan leathered, embroidered with amber stitching�"was, perhaps he’d always known, more about his reaction towards Montpellier’s…

How, strictly speaking, wasn’t the man’s utterance merely banal? The precise kind of thing which must incur a certain kind of diversion, as it was unworthy of a response. Insofar as the statement could have been responded to, Cichy began to recall the affect of the shock he’d felt during that meeting. He had embodied it�"this shock. It was plausible to assume he had also displayed it where Montpellier could, no, had seen. Earlier, as the present moment, he’d come to this realization, though merely circumnavigating the main issue at all…that he had indeed displayed this possession. Montpellier had been, though on the sly, shrewdest yet, after then vocalizing: ‘Isn’t that it?’ At that moment he’d found Cichy’s eyes with his. He had seen it then.

Any man of a certain age must know that he must maintain the reins of his emotion. Even when, and if letting go is necessary. Cichy laughed. There was something to be said about that as well. A man without emotions is essentially blind…even if, of those who do possess them, showing risks that he’d be seen. And yet, that, that showing was the bad part he needed extracted out. He should have, as it related to Montpellier. Noted�"on one hand. Although, on the other hand, this notation needed to be apprehended as…absurd. After all, it is all too necessary to be seen.

More to the ultimate implication, then, of the architect’s statement. The epigraph smuggled beneath it, admittedly in spite of itself, which would duly stamp him nakedly revealed. Cichy sighed, lifted a hand and wedged its plump index and middle fingers into his temple. He lifted a leg, too, and crossed it atop the other, careful not to ruffle the table and its contents where they sat. The lingering game of chess, as ever, seemed to insist upon an end onto itself. He noticed. He grinned. The contortion of a certain kind of ferity giving itself reward; a withholding to the game’s hyperbolic�"the seeming egging-on borne�"need for an end. He lowered his hand, unraveled his legs. He had seen the final move long before, after all.

Just then, in an uncanny moment of simultaneity, his office door, and the door to the other room both swung open. He shifted in his chair, towards the sounds and movements. To his far right, Sophina evaded the fluorescence behind her and stepped into amber glow of the main library: tray, mug, and a kettle exhaling pale plumes of steam in hand. At the main entrance to the library, stood a girl no more than eighteen; curly, blonde head of hair, her striking, silvery eyes imbued with the purity of adolescence, and the radiant flare of mischief. Upon seeing the girl, and as she made her way towards Cichy, Sophina said, “Our chores have been completed then, have they?” For a moment the girl remained silent, a wry smile creeping to her lips. She started as well towards Cichy.

“Créche?” Sophina called softly.

“It’s all done, ma’am,” Créche replied.

“I won’t find that one of the maids were bribed to do it,” Sophina said wryly as she placed the things she carried in the coffee table. “Well, I shall look forward to being proven wrong.”

“Chi chi?” Cichy interjected.

“I swear, daddy,” Crèche protested, “I did it myself this time.”

A brief pause ensued during which the girl flitted to the back of her father’s chair and hugged him from behind. Cichy smiled, a flood of relief and warmth ran through him. He lifted a hand and placed it gently onto his daughter’s forearm. Sophina sat in the chair across from them, her attention focused on the things she carried.

“My girl,” he said softly.

“That’s me,” Créche kissed him on the cheeks. Sophina began to pour, and measure and stir.

“Your brothers and sisters?” Cichy asked.

“All the little gremlins are just fine,” Crèche said.

“Now, now,” Sophina said.

“Chi Chi?” Cichy echoed the lighted-hearted reprimand.

“I’m just joking daddy,” Crèche called.

“I know, but let’s not make a habit of it, girl.”

« Je suis désolé, papa.

“Your coffee? Master Or?” Sophina abated a brief silence.

“Ah, yes, Sophina, thank you,” Cichy said. He caressed his daughter’s hand gently. The girl loosened her grip of her father as he leaned forward.

“How did you enjoy your dinner, Chi Chi, did you like it?” He asked just as she let go of him, though not before planting another kiss on his plump, dark-caramel cheeks.

“Great,” she said, as she began her transition to Sophina’s hemisphere of the coffee table.

“Next time I would like to do all the cooking on my own,” Créche concluded with the confidence which only the spunk of naïveté often produces. The girl crossed over to Sophina’s side of the table and, almost instantly, lowered herself onto the parquet and sat on the floor, to the right side of the woman’s chair. The woman regarded Créche with her eyes. A quiet appraisal. The girl smiled and took the woman’s hand in hers, Sophina allowed it with a gentle smile, a sigh. Cichy found them both with his eyes and smiled. He found himself, somehow, appreciating Sophina allowance of what was, by any measure, obviously bad manners. Sitting on the floor, any floor, was unbecoming of a lady.

After a lull, Créche said: “Daddy?” There was singing in her inflection.

“Aah, who didn’t know a game was also being run by a certain someone?” Sophina said, caressing the girl’s hand gently.

“Sophina?” Créche cried. The girl’s head fell.

“I know, I know, Chi Chi,” Sophina said. The woman hadn’t meant to imply that the girl had solely been putting on an act in order to get her way. Sophina looked to Cichy. A wink. Cichy found it, well, a grin slid across the brim of the coffee mug at his lips.

“Let’s hear it then,” Cichy said, lowering his cup.

Créche’s head sprang up like one of those jack-in-a box things. “So, there’s a party,” she began. “Estelle, and Melody, and Manu are all going to be there,” her friends. “Can I take the Valkyrie, daddy? Can I go!”

“Is that all?” Cichy asked.

“Yes, sir.” Créche replied, her freckled, caramel face glowing beneath a brimming smile.

“I see,” Cichy said, smiling. For a moment, he fell quiet, studious of the things on the coffee table’s surface. So, too, Sophina, whose lips, almost instantly, began to tease a smile of her own.

“More cream, sir?” The woman called. Cichy looked up at her. Their eyes met. She knew what was at play behind those silver eyes of his.

“Yes, please, and thank you Sophina.”

Sophina got up and began on her way towards the fluorescent light on the other side of the room. Cichy remained silent.

“Is that a yes, daddy?” Créche called. There was a certain joy�"but knowing, too�"beneath the girl’s words, he preened at it silently.

“We will see.” He thought…On one present condition.

Créche chuckled as she began to rise. Sophina reappeared in the frame of the doorway she’d passed through earlier, with a chair and small flask in hand. Créche remained standing until the woman reached them. Sophina placed the chair on the edge of the coffee table facing the window, and set the little flask-full of cream on the table’s surface. She sat, lifted a leg and crossed it atop the other, and rested her hands, interlocked at the fingers, in her lap. Cichy gestured his daughter into the woman’s vacated chair. Créche sat.

“Now, let’s see, my girl,” he said gesturing towards the unfinished game of chess. “Your move.”

Créche began to rub her hands together almost instantly, studious and smiling, the tips of elongated canines anchored beneath her grin. After a while, Créche picked up a chess piece and moved it with assured confidence.

“Check. Mate.” She gloated. Cichy looked over at Sophina. They both smiled.

“Let’s hear it, then,” her father said gesturing, again, towards the board.

“The queen moves to back rank, to g8. With the imposing king also on his back rank�"h8�"and two of his pawns,” she identified the two, “in front of him on g7 and h7, the queen puts the opposing king in check. Voila, papa, voila.”

Sophina clapped and cheered softly. “Well, done, Chi Chi. Well, done.”

“Yes, indeed,” Cichy said, a film of pride softly tethered atop his silvern eyes. “However, ma fille, why does the queen put the king in check?”

“I’d very much like to know as well, Chi Chi,” Sophina called, rendering the girl her full attention. Créche straightened her back a little, and searched for her father’s attention with her eyes. Their eyes met and he nodded, to say: I’m here. I’m watching. Go on.

“Okay. Why does the queen put the king in check?” This was meant for her alone. “Because,” she paused, “because the captured king is on his back rank. He isn’t captured because of that alone, though. He is captured because he is restricted by his pawns. These�"she jabbed one, then the other with an index finger�"two. The king cannot move away from his position because the pawns are in his way.” She looked up and found both of their gazes. Pride and approval danced in both their eyes.

“Good girl,” Sophina praised her.

“You may go, Chi Chi,” Cichy declared. “But…” He studied the time piece on his wrist. “Be back by midnight.”

“Yay!” Créche performed something between a screech and a shout, springing to her feet. They all laughed. Off she went.

That was all he could ask of her. There would be more to nurture out, of course, but the display sufficed. Form the moment of her arrival to her departure, Créche had been her bare self. He knew that, of course, but the tides of adolescence were fickle as ever. There had been no deception in her speech; no codes in things said. She had completely made herself known, allowed herself to be seen. But, most crucially, she was capable of discernment, and agile enough to inhabit, express that process’s function as its conceptions formed�"she was a budding embodiment of this. She would find her way in the world. He smiled, coming back to the moment. She would be…Un digne héritier of all of it.




******


“Now then, master Or, to the issue we’ve so far postponed,” Sophina drew him back to the moment completely, retaking her place in the chair Créche vacated. Their eyes met. Cichy fell back into his chair, letting out a labored sigh.

“Perhaps,” Sophina targeted the unease she sensed in him, “I should send someone to look after her, just to be�"”

“Maybe she should navigate this outing alone this time, Sophina,” Cichy interrupted the woman’s expression.

“I see,” she said, “as you wish, sir.”

Author's Note

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