Cinnabar's Gnosis: A Homage to Gustav Meyrink by Dan T. Ghetu

Author:Dan T. Ghetu
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mount Abraxas
Published: 2023-10-05T00:00:00+00:00

Modern Cities Exist

Only to Be Destroyed

Michael Cisco

Standing at the edge of the platform, X. gazes at a panel set in the dingy, bruise-colored wall on the opposite side of the tracks. The wall folds inwards a few feet to the left of the panel, forming a corner that has been invaded by an irregular patch of lacy white scale, which, at times, he thinks looks like the spray of a violent sea, frozen in midleap as it dashes against the rocks of the shore. At other times, he sees profiles in it: a grimacing hag with a surprised-looking eye nestled in her hair, or a supine child’s face gazing up in death or wonder as another, half-formed spirit face emerges from its nostrils.

The panel is perhaps a little more than three feet square, and set in the wall at floor level. Large bolt heads stud the outline at intervals, and both they, and the panel, which might be slightly concave, are the same grimy color as the wall. What’s behind it? The question barely glances through his mind. He looks at it as if he were imagining first one possibility and then another, but no such thing. He is only looking at it, because it holds his attention magnetically. What might lie behind it is of no more importance than what or who might happen, for example, to be behind him, just at that moment.

The panel is more like a mirror, reflecting something about himself It could be the door of a tomb, rudely chiseled into the wall of a cave and sealed with excessive measures, as if being dead weren’t enough, one also had to be imprisoned. At the same time, the panel is obviously the work of some impersonal city agency, one job among many done by one functionary among many, so that the work and its purpose, the one who directs the act and the one who carries it out, are not united in one place and time. The panel is at least as real as he is. But it may be that its reality is bestowed on it by his attention.

X. glances at the people standing to either side of him on the crowded platform. They are all facing the wall, and all of them are reading. The distant train, which hoots once down the tunnel as it comes, presses dank, cemetery air before it, stirring the white leaves of the books. It’s the end of the working day, and they are all presumably going home. His physical stamina, thanks to the Gurdjieff Exercises, is excellent, and his body is neither especially lively nor particularly tired. His mind, however, feels like a piece of fabric that has been stretched out of shape, and his thoughts are lifeless and subdued. The day of work just completed was long and filled with effort, but, even though he is all too sensible of the fatigue it left behind in him, it nevertheless seems in hindsight as though it had flashed by in an instant.

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