The Secret Supper (30 page)

Brother Guglielmo’s character had not changed. His temper and his stubbornness toward us showed clearly that he would rather die than retract his actions. The Father Prior ordered that he be locked up, muttering between his teeth what he really thought of the rebellious cook.

“He’s incapable of reining in his feelings,” he said. “There’s nothing to be done about it. When he sat for the Cenacolo as James the Elder, Leonardo himself was incapable of soothing him.”

I looked astonished.

“Oh! Has no one told you? Perhaps the apostle’s long hair distracted you, Father Agostino, but if you look closely at the cook’s features, you’ll recognize him there on the wall. I myself gave the authorization. Leonardo asked me to suggest a fiery man who gestured with his arms much as James does now in the painting. Brother Guglielmo immediately came to mind.”

“And why did Leonardo want to include someone of that nature among the Twelve?”

“That is exactly what I asked him, and you know what he answered? ‘Geometry! Everything is geometry!’ He told me that in a nude, his method for assessing its beauty was to measure the distance between the nipples and compare it to that between the middle of the breast and the navel, and then, to that between the navel and the legs: all three had to be the same. As far as anger was concerned, he said he could depict it simply by the merest outline of a glance. The next time you visit the Cenacolo, observe James’s eyes. He’s avoiding to look in Christ’s face and lowers his eyes in wrath, as if he’d discovered there something monstrous.”

“That one of his companions is about to betray the Messiah,” I said.

“No!” Brother Benedetto, who had remained silent until then, suddenly spoke out. “That’s what he wants us to believe. Have our brothers not told us that what we’re seeing is a pictorial talisman? In a painting like that, the presence, or the absence, of symbols is essential for its effectiveness. And, in this case, what James is looking at in horrified anger is the shared gesture of Judas and Jesus competing for the same piece of bread…or perhaps the absence of Christ’s chalice. The Holy Grail.”

It was a pointed observation.

“And think of this: James, the wrathful, is in the section where the light is the brightest. He’s on the side of the Just.”

Brother Benedetto told us that he had attended some of the classes on the distribution of light and space given by Leonardo in the hospital cloister. His lectures were strange and spellbinding. He taught that inert matter, if distributed harmoniously, could come to life on its own. Often he would compare this miracle with the notes in a musical score: written on paper, they were nothing but a series of static squiggles with no other value than ideographic, depicting an idea rather than a sound. But filtered through the mind of a musician and transposed to the fingers or the lungs, the squiggles would vibrate, would fill the air with new sensations and would even manage to alter our spirits. Was there anything more alive than music? Leonardo did not think so.

The master painter saw his own work in similar terms. Apparently, they were still lifes, little more than canvases or pieces of wood covered with pigment and glue. And yet, interpreted by an initiated observer, they acquired an astonishing force.

“And how do you think Leonardo manages to lend life to that which does not have it?” I asked.

“Through astral magic. You know of course that this monstrous heretic studied the works of Ficino?”

Brother Benedetto’s question sounded like a trap. The one-eyed monk must have been aware of my suspicions, thanks to the Father Prior; therefore, I prudently acquiesced with a nod.

“Well,” he continued. “Ficino translated the Asclepios from the ancient Greek, a work attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, in which it is taught how the priests of the old pharaohs brought the temple statues to life.”

“Is that so?”

“They excelled in the spiritus, an occult science by which they learned to draw on lifeless images cosmic signs that connected them to the stars. Astrological signs. And Leonardo has applied these techniques to his Cenacolo.”

The Father Prior and I glanced at one another.

“Don’t you see? Twelve Apostles, twelve signs of the zodiac. To each disciple corresponds a constellation, and Jesus, in the center, is the sun. A talisman indeed!”

“Calm down, Brother Benedetto. These are only suppositions—”

“Not at all! Study the Cenacolo closely! The worst thing about it is not that it’s alive. From what we can tell, through our knowledge of Cathar doctrine, this work encloses the wildest of all heretic ideas. It’s a Satanic Bible. And it sits in our refectory!”

“What idea do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean the idea of dualism, Father Agostino. If I didn’t misunderstand your lecture this morning, the whole system of Cathar belief is based on a confrontation between a good God and an evil one.”

“Exactly.”

“Then, when you return to the refectory, see if this battle between good and evil is not clearly portrayed in the Cenacolo. Christ is in the center as the needle on a pair of scales, halfway between the realm of the spirit and that of the flesh. To His right, or your left, are the shadows, the realm of evil. Go and see: that section lies in the gloom, lacking light. Not by chance that is the place in which Judas Iscariot sits, but also Peter with his dagger. With the weapon which, according to you, lends him a diabolical character.”

The irascible Brother Benedetto concluded:

“On the other hand, on the opposite side are those that Leonardo considers are the light. It’s the side of the table that’s illuminated, and in it he has depicted not only himself but also Plato, the ancient source of so many heretic Cathar doctrines.”

Then I remembered:

“And also the brothers Guglielmo and Giberto, the two avowed Cathars,” I added. “You told me that Giberto sat for the portrait of the Apostle Philip.”

He nodded.

“Of course,” I argued, thinking of the geometrical placement of the apostles, “you too are in that section. Lending your features to Saint Thomas, yes?”

Brother Benedetto snorted.

“Let’s stop all this chatter,” he said. “Obviously we must try to interpret Leonardo’s mural, but the real question is, what are we to do with this work? I’ll only say it once: either we attack this matter at its roots and we brick up the painting, or the contents of this mural will act as a lighthouse for heretics and bring us nothing but sorrow.”

41

“I don’t understand. Are you going to do nothing, just wait for him to be condemned?”

Leonardo seemed unmoved by Bernardino Luini’s question. He had been standing in his garden for some time now, concentrating on the development of his new machine and had hardly noticed his apprentices’ return. What was the point? Deep inside him, he held few hopes that Elena, Marco and Luini would come back from the Cenacolo enlightened by the knowledge he had so carefully implanted in the mural. The Master was tired, and bored with watching the coming and going of followers incapable of understanding his particular way of writing in charcoal and paint.

And, as usual, his apprentices only brought disheartening news from the monastery. They said that Santa Maria was ready for battle. That the Father Prior had decided to interrogate all the monks under his command in his search for heretics, and that he had ordered that Leonardo’s beloved Brother Guglielmo, the cook, be put in solitary confinement, accused of conspiring against Holy Mother the Church.

Leonardo listened to all this in sorrow, without knowing what to say.

“Nor do I understand your attitude, Master,” Marco rejoined. “You can’t be pleased with what has happened. Are you not concerned by your friend’s fate? Are you becoming insensitive to all?”

Leonardo lifted his blue eyes from the gardening box and fixed them on his dear Marco.

“Brother Guglielmo will stand up to them,” he said at last. “No one will be able to break the circle he stands for.”

“Enough of these allegories! Don’t you see the danger? Don’t you see that they’ll soon be coming for you?”

“All I see, Marco, is that you’re not listening to me,” he replied brusquely. “No one does.”

“Just a minute!” Young Elena, who up to then had not said a word, stepped forward and stood among the three men. “I know now what you’ve been trying to teach us, Master! Now I understand! Everything is stated in the Cenacolo!”

Leonardo’s eyebrows rose in surprise. The little countess proceeded.

“You used Brother Guglielmo to represent James the Elder. Of that, there’s no doubt. And in the Cenacolo he represents the letter O. Just like you do.”

Luini shrugged, blushing as he looked at Leonardo. After all, he himself had taught Elena as much.

“That can mean only one thing,” she added. “That Brother Guglielmo and you are the only ones holding the secret that you want us to find. And also, that you’re as certain of his discretion as of your own. Both of you are responsible for the same plan.”

“Admirable!” Leonardo applauded. “I see you’re as clever as your mother. And do you also know why I chose the letter O?”

“Yes…At least, I think I do.”

Leonardo stared at her inquisitively. So did her two companions.

“Because Omega is the end, the opposite of Alpha, the beginning,” she said. “In this way, you place yourself at the final point of a project that began with Jesus, who is the only A in the mural.”

“Admirable,” repeated Leonardo. “Admirable.”

“Of course! Brother Guglielmo and you are the ones who will bring us the Church of John!” Luini cried. “That’s the secret!”

Leonardo bent once again over the strange machine he had designed for his garden, shaking his head.

“There’s more to it than that, Luini.”

The device Leonardo was working on consisted of an extraordinary apparatus. He had begun to concentrate on it shortly after failing in his intent to automate the kitchens of the Sforza castle. His automatic roasting machines, his meat grinders, his bread slicers, and his enormous bellows that blew on the fire to boil huge cauldrons of water had resulted in a number of wounded and proved useless to satisfy the colossal requirements of the duke. But his new machine, the giant turnip collector, would be different. If all went well, the duke would no longer make fun of his invention, proposing to use it as a weapon in his war against the French. It was true that in its first trial, at Porta Vercellina, the collector caused three fatalities, but after a few necessary adjustments, he was certain that the machine would no longer be lethal.

“Master,” Luini insisted, seeing Leonardo so distracted. “We’ve advanced hugely in the decipherment of your Cenacolo. But you don’t seem to be at all interested in our progress. Don’t you see that the time has come to let us into your secret? Tomorrow they might come and take you to be interrogated. If they do, your entire project will be lost.”

“I’ve listened to you, Bernardino. Very attentively,” he said without lifting his eyes from his machine. “And even though I much appreciate the fact that you’ve discovered the letters I hid in the Cenacolo, I also see that you’re not capable of interpreting them. And if you, who know where to look, are like children who cannot read, how much more lost will be those monks who you say are after me.”

“A book. The whole clue is there, isn’t it, Master? In a book in which you yourself learned everything.”

Luini’s words sounded like a challenge.

“What do you mean?”

“Come now, Master. The time for guessing games is over. And you know it. I’ve recognized in the Cenacolo the face of your old friend Ficino, the translator. Was it not with him that you agreed that the execution of such a portrait would announce the arrival of the Church of John? Did he himself not give you a book destined to be the Bible of this new Church?”

Leonardo let fall his tools next to the turnip collector, raising a cloud of dust.

“What can you know about all that?” he sighed.

“I know everything you taught me: that, ever since the time of Jesus, both churches are fighting for control over our souls. One, the Church of Peter, was imagined as the temporal Church, useful to teach men the road to the awakening of their conscience. But it is only the forerunner of another, more glorious Church that will nourish our spirit once we become open to receive it. Peter is the Church of the past, the one that forged the road toward the one to come, the Church of John. Your Church.”

Leonardo was about to say something, but his apprentice had not finished.

“The man you painted as Matthew in the Cenacolo, the man Ficino, gave you a book with writings by John for you to study. I remember it well. I was there the day it happened. I was only a boy then. And if now you’ve placed him in your mural, perhaps to allow others such as us the possibility of reading your work, then it’s because you believe that the time has come to replace the old guard. Isn’t that true? That is what your Cenacolo means. Admit it. The arrival of your new Church.”

Marco and Elena stood quietly by. Leonardo indicated silence with a gesture he often used: his finger extended toward Heaven as if asking God for leave to speak.

“My dear Bernardino,” he said, in a conciliatory tone. “It is true that Ficino entrusted me with certain very valuable texts shortly before moving to Milan. And your appreciation of the two Churches is also true. I will not deny any of it. I’ve been painting John the Baptist for years in my work, hoping for a time like the present. A time that I believe has come at last.”

“What makes you think so, Master?” said Elena.

Leonardo spoke to Elena in a much quieter voice.

“Doesn’t everyone see it? The Pope has led the temporal Church into a state of depravity hard to equal. Even his own clerics, like Savonarola in Florence, have turned against him. The time has come for John’s Church, the Church of the spirit, to replace the Church of Peter and lead us to true salvation.”

“But John the Baptist is not in the Cenacolo, Master,” said Marco.

“The Baptist isn’t, no.” Leonardo smiled at Marco, always attentive to details. “But John is.”

“I don’t understand.”