The Belly of an Architect 1987

Stourley Kracklite is an American architect who is commissioned to assemble an exhibition in Rome about the 18th‑century French designer Étienne-Louis Boullée, a figure who remained largely unknown until recent scholarship. In the eyes of Kracklite’s Italian colleagues, Boullée belongs more to theory than to craft; they point out that only a handful of his buildings were ever realized and note that Boullée’s influence even helped shape Adolf Hitler’s architect, Albert Speer. As Kracklite immerses himself in the project, his marriage frays and his health falters, setting a private tremor against the public showcase.

He grows fascinated by Caesar Augustus, the first emperor of Rome, after learning of a dark claim—that Augustus’s wife, Livia, might have poisoned him. Suffering from persistent stomach pains, Kracklite begins to suspect his much younger wife, Louisa Kracklite, of a similar design. Louisa reappears with a startling truth: she is pregnant, conceived at the exact moment their train crossed the Italian border. Complicating matters, she has become emotionally and physically entangled with Caspasian Speckler, the ambitious co‑organizer of the exhibition, whose charm masks a broader pattern of self‑interest.

The entanglements intensify as Kracklite’s precarious authority is undermined by Caspasian and his Italian associates, who siphon funds from the project and chip away at Kracklite’s confidence. In a turn of desire and risk, Kracklite finds himself drawn to Flavia Speckler, Caspasian’s sister and a photographer living in a stark apartment across from the monumental Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana. The pair are discovered in a charged moment by Caspasian himself, who warns that the truth could upend everything.

Louisa eventually leaves Kracklite, and his body bears the burden of illness as doctors diagnose stomach cancer, granting him only months to live. The narrative culminates at the exhibition’s opening ceremony, nine months after their arrival, with Kracklite watching from a high vantage where Louisa Kracklite cuts the ceremonial tape. In a final, fatal twist of fate, she goes into labor as the event unfolds, and Kracklite climbs higher still before leaping to his death.