Juxtaposition

THE MUSEUM

The winter air was brisk, the sort that filled the nostrils, expanded the lungs, invigorated the entire body through a single inhale. It stung, certainly, but the icy chill was shot through with adrenaline. You could taste the apprehension of the world simply by walking along the street-corner and smelling the air.

The water fountain sat abandoned, largely forgotten by even the most devoted of patrons; one had the sense that this fountain had seen curators come and go. Flecks of rust spotted its handle and its spout, the opening of which looked for all the world like a weary grandfather, the sort who has a trace of gargoyle in his face after living so long.

The pipes that snaked their way into the rusted fountain had long since run dry. Corrosion had eaten away at them, and the city had reluctantly shut off plumbing access to what was now lovingly called the museum’s most modern relic. A passerby could pump the handle all day and night without a single drop to assuage their thirst for productivity.

The paving-stones were a color somewhere between cream and tan. They had clearly been trodden time out of mind, but had never quite lost their brilliant hue. It was simply hidden under the weight of the many years they had lain at the feet of the world.

The obelisk stood tall, black as ebony, and at such a height that the sun disappeared if you stood in the wrong part of the shadow. Its smooth marble surface was engraved with the most intricate patterns, some hieroglyphic in nature, others pictorial representations of the deepest emotions of the scribes who so meticulously carved the inscriptions into the dispassionate stone.

The street continued, all the way down to the great arch. Its sidewalks were lined with trees, clearly verdant in summer but now, in the throes of winter, barren and brown. Along the street-sides, merchants peddled their wares from makeshift stands so obviously tatterdemalion that it was an embarrassment to all the actual shops which packed the avenue.

The warehouses were just as fascinating as the stores and the peddlers’ ramshackle stalls, if not more so. One, of a staggering height which dwarfed the now-distant obelisk, resembled nothing so much as a large designer suitcase inserted cleanly between two office buildings.

The arch itself towered over every surrounding edifice, of course—it was well-known as the highest structure for twenty-seven hectares, or so the brochure said. (Perhaps not everything in the colorful pamphlet was to be trusted; it was a tad meretricious.)

Built for the wedding-vows of a grand general, it now served as his headstone. A flame blazed beneath it—an insufficient funeral pyre, yet funereal natheless in its eternity. Whatever kindling was used to stoke it, whatever gales blew, whatever torrential rain the sky let fall upon it, this flame never ceased. It was preservation in the most solemn sense.

Cathedrals, museums, and of course the great Arch lent the town what one might call an air; its antiquity and splendor were unquestionable. Yet despite the grandeur of the location, the pyramid made its presence known.

A great glass structure it was, fifty feet high or more, its tip honed to the sharpness found only within the acerbic tongue of a restaurant critic. It was a staggering structure, yet like an iceberg in that it was just as expansive belowground as above.

The same was true of the surrounding buildings, all architectural masterpieces, opulent, yet practically antediluvian in comparison to the undeniable modernity and innovation of the pyramid.