Authors: Javier Sierra
“L’amo…re…mi…fa…sol…la…‘za’…re…L’amore mi fa sollazare!” he leapt up. “ ‘Love gives me pleasure.’ That Leonardo is a scamp! He’d better not let me catch him! To play like this with musical notes—Maledetto!”
“Leonardo?”
The mention of that name brought me back to reality. I had come to the library seeking a quiet place to decipher the Soothsayer’s enigma. A clue that, unless we were much mistaken, closely concerned Leonardo, the forbidden refectory and the work he was there engaged in.
“Ah!” the librarian exclaimed, still euphoric with the discovery. “You have not yet met him?”
I shook my head.
“He is another lover of riddles. He challenges the monks of Santa Maria with one every week. This was one of the hardest ones.”
“Leonardo da Vinci?”
“Who else?”
“I thought…,” I said hesitatingly, “that he seldom spoke with the monks.”
“That is only true when he’s working. But as he lives nearby, he often comes to supervise the work and jokes with us in the cloisters. He loves wordplay and puns, and he makes us laugh with his witticisms.”
The monk’s answer, instead of amusing me, filled me with unease. I was here to decipher a message that had baffled all the cryptographers of Bethany. A text bearing no resemblance to the ribald phrase disguised by Leonardo in a musical staff. A text on whose resolution several affairs of state depended. Why was I wasting time on inconsequential chatter?
“At least,” I said somewhat brusquely, “your friend Leonardo and I have something in common: we both like to work alone. Could you show me to a table and make sure that no one disturbs me?”
Father Alessandro understood that I was not requesting a favor. He wiped the winning smile from his lean face and obediently assented.
“Make yourself at home. No one will interrupt your studies.”
That afternoon, the librarian kept his word. The hours I passed brooding over the seven lines that Master Torriani had given me in Bethany were some of the most solitary I spent in Milan. I knew that, more than any previous task, this one required absolute seclusion. I read the verses once again:
Oculos jus inumera,
ed noli voltum dspicere.
In latere nominis
mei notam rinvenies.
Contemplari et contemplata
aliis radere.
Veritas
It would all be a question of patience.
Just as I had learned in the workshops of Bethany, I applied to those nonsensical lines the techniques of the admirable Father Leon Battista Alberti. Father Alberti would have loved the challenge: not only was there a hidden message to be disentangled behind a common text, but the message would probably lead me to a work of art that held a worthy mystery locked within it. Father Alberti was the first scholar to write about the art of perspective; he was also a lover of art, a poet, a philosopher, the composer of a funeral dirge for his dog and the designer of Rome’s Trevi Fountain. Our praiseworthy teacher, whom God summoned prematurely to His side, used to say that in order to solve any puzzle, no matter what its type or its origin, one had to go from the apparent to the latent. That is to say, to identify first what is obvious—the “za”—in order to then seek its hidden meaning. And he set forth yet another useful law: riddles are always solved without hurry, attending to minute details and allowing them to settle in our memory.
In this case, the obvious, the very obvious fact was that the verses contained a name. Torriani was certain of it, and I too; the more I read them, the more certain I became. We both believed that the Soothsayer had left us this clue in the hope that the Secretariat of Keys would solve it and communicate with him, so there had to exist an unequivocal way of reading it. Of course, if our anonymous informer was as cautious as he seemed, only the eyes of a shrewd observer would identify it.
Something else that attracted my attention in those lines was the occurrence of the number seven. Numbers are usually important in this type of enigma. The poem consisted of seven lines. Its strange, irregular metrics had to mean something, like Leonardo’s hook. And if that “something” was the identity I was after, the text warned me that I would find it only by counting the eyes of someone whose face I was not allowed to see. The paradox disarmed me. How could I count the eyes of someone without looking him in the face?
The text resisted my advances. What did the mysterious allusion to the eyes mean? Perhaps something related to the seven eyes of the Lord described by Zechariah, or the seven horns and seven eyes of the slain lamb of the Apocalypse? And if so, what kind of a name might be found behind a number? The middle line was eloquent enough: “The number of my name you shall find on its side.” What number? A seven perhaps? Might it refer to a numeral, the seventh in an order? Like the Antipope, Clement VII of Avignon, for example? I quickly discarded that possibility. It was unlikely that our anonymous scribe was worthy of a number after his name. What then? And furthermore, how should I interpret the strange error I discovered in the fourth verse? Why, instead of invenies, had the cryptographer written rinvenies?
Oddities piled up on oddities.
My first day’s labor at Santa Maria offered me only a single fact: the last two phrases of the “signature” were, with utter certainty, formulas typical of a Dominican. Torriani’s instinct had not failed him. “Contemplari et contemplata aliis tradere” was a famous dictum of Saint Thomas, taken from the Summa theologica and accepted as one of our order’s best-known sayings: “To contemplate and to offer to others the fruit of your contemplation.” The second one, “Veritas,” or “Truth,” besides being another common Dominican motto, used to appear on our coat of arms. It is true that I had never seen both phrases together but, read one after the other, they seemed to say that in order to reach the truth, one needed to remain vigilant. At least, the advice was good. Father Alberti would have applauded.
But what about the two previous sentences? What name or number did they conceal?
9
“Have you heard anything about the new guest at the monastery of Santa Maria?”
Leonardo used to spend the last hours of daylight scrutinizing his Last Supper. The rays of the setting sun transformed the figures at the table first into reddish shadows and then into dark and sinister silhouettes. He frequently visited the monastery of Santa Maria in order to cast his eyes on his favorite work and to seek distraction from his daily occupations. The duke was pushing him to finish the colossal equestrian statue in honor of Francesco Sforza, and during the day, Leonardo allowed himself to be obsessed with the monumental horse. And yet, even Ludovico was aware that the artist’s true passion was in the refectory of Santa Maria. Almost sixteen by thirty feet, the painting was the largest he had ever undertaken. Only God knew when he would finish it, but that was a detail that did not concern him. So abstracted was Leonardo in the contemplation of his magical scene that Marco d’Oggiono, the most inquisitive of his apprentices, was forced to repeat his question:
“Truly you haven’t heard of him?”
Absentmindedly the Master shook his head. Marco discovered him sitting on a wooden crate in the middle of the refectory, his blond mane unkempt, as he often appeared at the end of his working day.
“No, I haven’t,” he answered. “Is he someone interesting, caro?”
“He’s an inquisitor, Master Leonardo.”
“A terrible occupation.”
“The fact is, Master, that he too seems very much interested in your secrets.”
Leonardo glanced away from his Cenacolo and sought out the blue eyes of his disciple. He looked serious, as if the proximity of a member of the Holy Inquisition had stirred a deep-rooted fear in his soul.
“My secrets? You ask about them again, Marco? They are all here. I told you so yesterday. Visible to all. Years ago, I learned that if you wish to hide something from the stupidity of humans, the best place to do so is there where everyone can see it. You understand that, don’t you?”
Marco nodded without much conviction. The Master’s good humor from the previous day had entirely vanished.
“I’ve given much thought to what you told me, Master. And I think I’ve understood something about this place.”
“Have you, now?”
“In spite of working on hallowed ground and under the supervision of men of God, you didn’t intend to depict Christ’s first Mass in your Last Supper, did you?”
The Master arched his thick blond eyebrows in astonishment. Marco d’Oggiono went on:
“Don’t pretend to be surprised. Jesus is not holding up the Host in his hand, nor is he instituting the Eucharist, and his disciples are neither eating nor drinking. They are not even receiving His blessing.”
“Well, well,” Leonardo exclaimed. “You’re on the right path.”
“What I don’t understand, Master, is why you’ve painted that knot at the far end of the table. The wine and the bread are mentioned in the Scriptures; the fish, even though none of the evangelists mention it, can be understood as a symbol of Christ Himself. But who ever heard of a knot in the tablecloth of the Last Supper?”
Leonardo extended a hand toward Marco, calling him to his side.
“I see that you’ve tried to penetrate the mural. Well done.”
“And yet, I’m still far from your secret, am I not?”
“The arrival should not matter to you, Marco. Concern yourself with traveling the path.”
Marco opened his eyes wide.
“Haven’t you heard me, Master? Aren’t you worried that an inquisitor should have come to this monastery asking about your Last Supper?”
“No.”
“And that is all?”
“What should I say to you? I have more important things to worry about. Like finishing this Last Supper—and its secret.” Leonardo stroked his beard with an amused gesture before continuing. “You know something, Marco? When at last you discover the secret I’m painting and are able to read it for the very first time, you’ll never be able to stop seeing it. And you’ll ask yourself how you could have been so blind. These, and no others, are the best guarded secrets: the ones that stare us in the face and which we are unable to see.”
“And how will I learn to read your work, Master?”
“Following the example of the great men of our time. Like the geographer Toscanelli, who has finished designing his own secret under the eyes of the whole of Florence.”
The disciple had never heard of Leonardo’s old friend. In Florence, they called him “the Physician” because, even though he had spent years earning his living drawing his maps and was a passionate reader of the writings of Marco Polo, he had long ago been a medical doctor.
“But I’m sure you know nothing of all that.” Leonardo shook his head. “So that you don’t accuse me again of not teaching you to read secrets, today I’ll tell you of the one Toscanelli left in the Cathedral of Florence.”
“Truly?” asked Marco, eagerly.
“When you return to that city, don’t forget to pay a visit to the enormous dome that Filippo Brunelleschi built for the Duomo. Walk quietly under it and fix your eyes on the small opening in one of its sides. On the feasts of Saint John the Baptist and of Saint John the Evangelist, in June and in December, the midday sun streams through that hole from more than two hundred sixty feet above ground and lights up a strip of marble that my friend Toscanelli carefully placed on the floor.”
“And why did he do that, Master?”
“Don’t you understand? It’s a calendar. The solstices marked there signal the beginning of winter and of summer. Julius Caesar was the first to note this and to establish the duration of a year as 365 days and a quarter. He also invented the leap year. And all by observing the sun’s progress along a strip like that one. Toscanelli, therefore, decided to dedicate the device to him. Do you know how?”
Marco shrugged his shoulders.
“Placing at the beginning of his marble meridian, in an unusual order, the signs of Capricorn, of Scorpio—and of Aries.”
“And what is the relationship between the signs of the zodiac and the dedication to Caesar, Master?”
Leonardo smiled.
“Therein lies the secret. If you take the first two letters of the Latin name of each of those signs, in the order he gave them, that is to say, CA-ES-AR, you’ll have the hidden name we’re looking for.”
“Ca-es-ar…Clear as water! Perfect!”
“Indeed.”
“And something like that is hidden in your Cenacolo, Master?”
“Something like that. But I doubt that this inquisitor, whom you so much fear, will ever discover it.”
“But—”
“And, yes,” Leonardo interrupted him, “the knot is one of the many symbols accompanying Mary Magdalene. One of these days I’ll tell you all about it.”
10
I must have fallen asleep at my desk.
When Father Alessandro shook me toward three in the morning, just after matins, a painful stiffness had taken over my whole body.
“Father, Father!” the librarian was clamoring. “Are you all right?”
I must have answered something, because between shakings the librarian said a few words that all of a sudden had me wide awake.
“You speak in your dreams.” He laughed, as if still mocking my inability to solve riddles. “Matteo, the prior’s nephew, heard you mutter some strange phrases in Latin and came into the church to let me know. He thought you were possessed!”
Alessandro was watching me with a look partly amused and partly worried, snorting through that hooked nose of his with which he seemed to threaten me.
“It’s nothing,” I apologized with a yawn.
“Father, you have been working for a very long time. You have hardly eaten anything since you arrived, and my concern for you goes unheeded. Are you certain that I can’t help you in your labors?”
“No, it won’t be necessary. Please believe me.” The librarian’s maladroitness regarding the clue of the hook did not promise great assistance.
“And what was that about Oculos ejus dinumera? You repeated the words again and again.”
“Is that what I was saying?”
I turned pale.
“Yes. And something about a place called Bethany. Do you often dream of Biblical places, of Lazarus and his resurrection, and things like that? Because Lazarus came from Bethany, didn’t he?”