Authors: Javier Sierra
“I don’t think there’s anything I can do for her,” he said.
“I know, Master. It was she who insisted on seeing you.”
Leonardo bent his head until it was close to the dying woman’s lips, which kept trembling as if muttering a painfully inaudible litany. The parish priest of Santa Marta, who had already anointed Sister Veronica with the holy oils of Extreme Unction and was reciting the Rosary by her side, allowed the visitor to come even closer.
“Do you still have twins in your paintings?”
The Master was taken aback. The nun had recognized him without even opening her eyes.
“I paint what I know, Sister.”
“Ah, Leonardo!” she whispered. “Don’t think I haven’t realized who you are. I know it well. Even though at this point in my life, it isn’t worth arguing with you any longer.”
Sister Veronica spoke haltingly, in a low tone of voice that made it difficult for Leonardo to understand her.
“I saw your altarpiece in the Church of San Francesco, your Madonna.”
“Did you like it?”
“The Virgin, yes. You are a very gifted artist. But the twins, no. Tell me, did you change them?”
“Yes, Sister. Just as the Franciscan brothers asked me to.”
“You have a reputation for being stubborn, Leonardo. Today I was told that you’ve painted twins again, this time in the Dominican refectory. Is it true?”
Leonardo drew himself up in astonishment.
“You’ve seen the Cenacolo, Sister?”
“No. But everyone talks about your work. You should know that.”
“As I said before, Sister Veronica, I only paint that of which I’m certain.”
“Then why do you insist on including twins in your paintings for the Church?”
“Because they existed. Andrew and Simon were brothers. Saint Augustine and other theologians tell us so. James the Less was often mistaken for Jesus because of their close resemblance. I’ve made none of it up. It’s written in the Scriptures.”
The nun stopped whispering and raised her voice to a cry: “Leonardo! Don’t make the same mistake you made in San Francesco! An artist’s mission is not to confuse the faithful but to show them clearly the characters that have been entrusted to him.”
“Mistake?” Leonardo had raised his voice involuntarily. “What mistake?” Marco, the priest and the two nuns attending at the deathbed turned toward him.
“Come, come, Master Leonardo,” the dying woman muttered. “Did they not accuse you of confusing Saint John with our Lord Jesus in your painting? Did you not depict them as alike as two drops of water? Did they not have the same curly hair, the same chubby cheeks and almost the same gesture? Did your painting not lead one to a perverse confusion between John and Christ?”
“It won’t happen this time, Sister. Not in the Cenacolo.”
“But I’ve been told that you’ve already painted James with the same face as Jesus!”
Everyone heard Sister Veronica’s complaint. Marco, still dreaming of being able to show his teacher that he was capable of deciphering the secrets of his work, paid close attention.
“There’s no possible confusion,” Leonardo answered. “Jesus is the axis of my new work. He’s an enormous A in the middle of the mural. A gigantic alpha. The origin of my entire composition.”
Marco stroked his chin thoughtfully. How was it that he hadn’t seen it before? As he conjured up the Last Supper in his mind, it was true that Jesus resembled a large capital A.
“An A?” Sister Veronica lowered her voice again. Leonardo’s words had surprised her. “And may I know what it is that you’ve inscribed in your work this time around?”
“Nothing that true believers can’t read.”
“Most good Christians are unable to read, Master Leonardo.”
“That is why I paint for them.”
“And has that given you the right to include yourself among the Twelve Apostles?”
“I portray the most humble of them all, Sister Veronica. I portray Judas Thaddeus, almost at the very end of the table, just as Omega comes at the very end of the line begun by Alpha.”
“Omega? You? Careful, Leonardo. You are extremely proud, and pride might cause you to lose your soul.”
“Is that a prophecy?” he asked ironically.
“Don’t mock this old woman. Pay attention to what I’m about to tell you. God has given me a clear vision of that which is to come. You must know, Leonardo, that today I will not be the only one whose soul will ascend unto the Eternal Father,” she said. “Some of those others whom you call the true faithful will accompany me into the Halls of Judgment. And I am very afraid that they will not enjoy the Lord’s divine mercy.”
Marco d’Oggiono, much impressed, saw that Sister Veronica was panting with the effort of speaking.
“But you, on the other hand, have time left to repent and to save your soul.”
14
I will never be able to thank Father Alessandro sufficiently for his help on the days following our walk. Other than himself and young Matteo, who sometimes would sneak into the library to see what the reclusive monk from Rome was doing, I barely exchanged a word with anyone. The rest of the monks I would see only at mealtimes in the improvised refectory that had been installed next to the so-called Large Cloister, and sometimes in church during prayers. But in both places the rule of silence was imposed and it was therefore not easy to engage one of them in conversation.
In the library, however, everything was different. Father Alessandro would lose the stiffness he showed among his brethren and would loosen his tongue, which was so stifled at other moments of his monastic life. The librarian’s hometown was Riccio, on Lake Trasimeno, closer to Rome than to Milan, which in a certain way explained his isolation from the rest of the friars and his perception of me as a somewhat disadvantaged countryman in need of protection. Though I never saw a morsel of food pass his lips, every day he brought me water, a certain wheat pasta dark as pebbles (a specialty of Brother Guglielmo that he would procure for me in secret) and even clean oil for my lamp when it threatened to go out. All this (I later learned) in order not to leave me, in the hope that his unexpected guest would feel the need to unburden himself on someone and thus reveal to him new details of his “secret.” I believe that with every passing hour, Alessandro imagined this secret to be more and more colossal. I admonished him, saying that the imagination was not a useful ally for someone bent on deciphering mysteries, but he would merely smile, certain that his abilities would someday prove useful.
One aspect of his personality never gave me cause for complaint: his humanity. Father Alessandro soon became a dear friend. Whenever I needed him, he was near. He would console me when I would fling my pen to the ground, in despair at the lack of results, and he would encourage me to continue trying to solve the devilish riddle. But Oculos ejus dinumera seemed to resist all my efforts. Even applying numerical value to its letters yielded nothing but confusion. After three days of disillusionment and sleepless efforts, Father Alessandro, having seen the verses and having learned them by heart, was playing with them himself, attempting with a frown to break the code. Every time he thought he had found a glimmer of light in the tangle, his face would light up with satisfaction, as if suddenly his lean features had become softer and his sharp-angled face transformed into that of an enthusiastic child. On one of those occasions, I learned that his favorite conundrums were those made up of numbers and letters. After reading Ramon Llull, inventor of the Ars Magna of secret codes, he had devoted his whole life to them. My book-owl friend was an inexhaustible source of surprises. He seemed to know everything, every important work on the art of cryptography, every kabbalistic treatise, every biblical essay. And yet, all this theoretical preparation finally did not seem to be of much use to us.
“Well now,” Alessandro muttered on one of those afternoons in which the whole community was bursting with activity in preparation for Donna Beatrice’s funeral. “Do you think that maybe we should count the number of eyes on one of the images in the monastery to find the solution to our problem? Could it be as simple as that?”
I patted his hand affectionately even as I shrugged. What was I supposed to answer? That his suggestion was now all that was left to try? The librarian watched me with his owlish eyes, his hand on his pointed chin. But, like myself, he did not put much hope in the proposal, and with reason. If the number of the name was to be sought in the number of eyes on an image, whether that of the Virgin, of Saint Dominic or Saint Anne, the result would lead us into an impasse. It would be impossible to find a name of only one or two letters, which was the obvious conclusion we would reach by counting the eyes of any of the images in Santa Maria. Furthermore, none of the brethren had such a short name or nickname. There was no Io, Eo or Au lodged here. Not even a three-lettered name such as Job would be of any use to us. In Santa Maria, there were no Jobs, nor any Gads or Lots, and even if there were, on the face of what image would we find the three eyes that would allow us to identify the author of the letters?
All of a sudden, I realized something. What if the riddle did not refer to a human being? If it referred to a dragon, a seven-headed hydra with fourteen eyes or some other kind of monster painted on the margins of one of the rooms?
“But there are no such monsters anywhere in Santa Maria,” protested Father Alessandro.
“In that case, we’re probably mistaken. Perhaps the figure whose eyes must be counted is not in the monastery, but in some other building. In a tower, a palace, another church nearby—”
“That’s it, Father Agostino! We have it!” The librarian’s eyes were flashing with excitement. “Don’t you see? The text doesn’t refer to a person or an animal, but to a building!”
“A building?”
“Of course! My God, how slow-witted we’ve been! It’s clear as crystal! Oculos means ‘eyes,’ but it also means ‘windows.’ Round windows. And the church of Santa Maria is full of them!”
The librarian scribbled something on a piece of paper. It was a quick alternate translation, and he passed it on to me in the hopes that I would approve it. If he was right, we had had the solution in front of our very eyes all the time. According to my book owl’s version, our “Count its eyes but look not on its face” could also mean “Count its windows but look not on its façade.”
It could not be denied. Though somewhat forced, the new text had an overwhelming sense.
The exterior of the church of Santa Maria was, indeed, full of a kind of oculus, of round windows designed by a certain Guiniforte Solari according to that pure Lombard style so dear to Ludovico il Moro. They were everywhere, even within the perimeter of the brand-new Bramante dome beneath which I had been praying for a whole week. Could the solution be that simple? Father Alessandro had no doubts about it.
“You see? On the lateral façade, Father Agostino!” he insisted. “The second part confirms it: In latere nominis mei notam rinvenies. We must seek the number of the name on its side! We must count the windows on the only side that has them, other than the main façade! That’s where you’ll find your number!”
It was the happiest moment of my sojourn in Milan.
15
No one took any notice.
None of the merchants, moneylenders or friars strolling by in the twilight around San Francesco il Grande noticed the slovenly, ill-dressed man who hurried into the Franciscan church. It was the eve of a holiday, a market day, and the inhabitants of Milan were busy gathering provisions for the coming days of official mourning. Besides, news of the death of Sister Veronica had spread like wildfire through the city, occupying most of the conversations and unleashing a passionate debate on the true powers of the visionary.
Under such circumstances, it was only natural that the presence of yet another beggar left them unconcerned.
But the fools were once again mistaken. The beggar who entered San Francesco was not an ordinary man. His knees were bruised from hours of penance, and his scalp had been devotedly tonsured. He was a man fearful of God, a man pure of heart, and as he crossed the main threshold into the church, he trembled, certain that one of the superstitious neighbors, perhaps impressed by Sister Veronica’s auguries, would sooner or later betray him.
He had no trouble imagining the sequence of events that would unfold. Very soon, someone would run to tell the sexton that there was yet another beggar in the church. The sexton would tell the deacon who, without delay, would tell the executioner. For weeks, this is what had been happening and nobody seemed to care. The false beggars who had reached the church before him had all vanished without a trace. That is why he was certain that he would not leave this place alive. And yet, it was a price he was gladly willing to pay…
Without giving himself a moment’s respite, the ragged man left behind him the double row of benches that lined the nave and hurried on toward the main altar. There was not a soul to be seen inside the church. Better this way. In fact, he could already almost feel the presence of the saint. He had never known himself to be so close to God. The Holy One was near. How else could one explain that at that very hour the light filtering through the stained-glass windows was exactly the right one to appreciate all the details of the “miracle”? The pilgrim had waited so long to reach this altarpiece and give homage to the Opus Magnum that his tears began to flow with the emotion. And rightly so. At last he had been permitted to see a painting, The Virgin of the Rocks, that few in Milan knew under its real name: the Maestà.
Was this the end of the road?
The false beggar intuited it was so.
He approached the altar cautiously. He had heard the work described so many times that the voices of those who instructed him in its hidden details, in the true key to its reading, clustered now in his mind, clouding his reason. The painting—which at 189 by 120 centimeters perfectly fit the opening in the altar intended for it—was unequivocal. In it, two infant boys had their eyes fixed on each other, while a woman of serene features raised her protective arms over them, and the solemn angel Uriel pointed toward the Father’s elect with an accusing and steady finger. “When you see the gesture, you’ll be confirmed in the truth that has been revealed to you,” he thought he could still hear. “The angel’s look will tell you that you’re right.”