by Unknown
Claire had the folded note in her purse.
“We have a document,” Arthur began. “We think it’s signed by Gaudí and we were hoping to authenticate it and try to learn more about it.”
With raised eyebrows, Bellver took the paper, unfolded it and stared.
“How extraordinary!” she exclaimed. “This is certainly his signature. Do you know how unique this is? We have his own writing on only a handful of documents, as his papers were lost during the Civil War. Where did you get this?”
They had a constructed story that bore no resemblance to the truth. She seemed to accept it without question.
“Well, 1883 was an important year for Gaudí but whatever could this be referring to—‘I have found it’?”
“That’s what we are trying to understand,” Claire said.
“We were hoping to read through whatever papers of his you have and see if we can find any reference to this note,” Arthur added. “Any context.”
“We have not a single one of his handwritten papers here,” she explained. “I can show you some reproductions as they appear in several books but I can assure that none of them will cast any light on your document. There are so few I know them all. There is his signed entrance pass to the 1888 Barcelona Exhibition, a limited collection of his school projects and reports when he was a young architectural student, a very small number of personal letters which deal with completely inconsequential matters, some business letters referring to changes to plans, payments owed for various building projects and, near the end of his life, a bequeathment in honor of his mother and a last will and testament leaving all his assets to the archbishop of Tarragona and the rector of Riudoms. I’m afraid that’s all.”
“Where are these documents kept?” Claire asked.
“Various archives: some at the national library, the Biblioteca de Catalunya, others here and there.” She sighed. “I’m afraid I haven’t been very helpful. As I said, I have reproductions of some of these letters here and I can help you with the translation if you don’t read Catalan.”
“That’s very kind,” Arthur said. “But it doesn’t sound like it’s going to be all that productive. Can you think of anyone, anywhere, who might be able to shed any light on our note?”
She sighed again, this time much more heavily. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll try to pull in a very big favor from a good friend of mine who probably won’t be such a good friend after I call him. This man, Esteve Vallespir, is the leading expert in the world on Gaudí.”
“We bought one of his books today,” Claire said.
“Yes, he’s written many books. He’s very old and doesn’t like to see people anymore but I think he’d be interested in your document. I’ll try to get him to see you.”
“You said a deal,” Arthur said.
“I want to purchase your document. I don’t know how much it’s worth or how much I can pay but I want the chance to buy it if it’s for sale.”
Arthur extended his hand. “I promise we’ll come to you first.”
#
The Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura de Barcelona at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya was, the librarian had told them, one of the preeminent architectural colleges in Spain and it was no wonder that Gaudí continued to be revered and studied there.
Vallespir’s building at the college, in north Barcelona along the busy Avinguda Diagonal, was low, modern, and quite undistinguished for an architecture faculty in such an architecture-mad city as Barcelona. A student pointed the way and they found his office on the second floor.
Vallespir was there on his own, no secretary, no assistant—an old, stooped man in a ridiculously cluttered office. In a way he resembled how Gaudí himself looked in some of his photos near the end of his life. He had an unruly white beard that had not been trimmed for some time, drawing attention away from a scaly bald scalp. His twill trousers were too short, his white dress shirt threadbare at the collar, his bow tie crooked.
Vallespir spoke authoritatively in heavily accented English. “I did not want to see you. Frankly, I do not want to see most people these days but Isabella is persuasive. Come in. I’ll give you five minutes. I’m going home soon. I’m not well, you see.”
“We’re very sorry to intrude,” Arthur said. “We’ll try not to take much of your time. We’re trying to get some answers about a Gaudí document we found recently.”
“Where did you find it?” the old man demanded.
Claire delivered their falsehood. “I was going through my grandmother’s books and a letter was inside a book on Modernista architecture.”
“Which book?”
“I don’t recall the title offhand,” she said, squirming a little. “It was quite old, a French title.”
“France?”
“Yes, she was from Toulouse.”
The professor shook his head. “Gaudí had no connections with Toulouse. Let me see the paper.”
As Vallespir read it, Arthur searched the lined and sagging face for a reaction but the old man was impassive.
“I have found it,” the professor said. “I have no idea what this means, though I can vouch that this is, in fact, Gaudí’s true signature. Toulouse, you say?”
Claire nodded.
Vallespir repeated that Gaudí had no known interactions with people from Toulouse or that region of France and handed the document back gruffly, saying he couldn’t help them.
Arthur thought quickly. They had an audience with the world’s greatest authority on Gaudí and the audience was about to end. If this was a dead end, they would have nowhere else to go.
“Professor, I’m sorry, but we didn’t tell you the real story. It’s a little more controversial.”
Vallespir’s eyebrows rose. “Go on.”
“We found this at Montserrat.”
The old man stiffened and a look of outrage overtook him. “How does one find something like this at Montserrat?”
“I can’t really say at this point.”
“Who are you? Did you steal this? Was it from the monastery library?”
“We just want your help to understand it,” Claire said evenly.
“I should call the police. Would you like me to do that?”
“We read that Gaudí was very religious,” Claire continued, in an obvious attempt to diffuse his anger. “Did he make pilgrimages to Montserrat?”
The question had the desired calming effect. “Yes … Montserrat was a special place for him. He ventured there many, many times as a young man … when he was older … his entire life. It is a special place for all of the Catalan people.”
“What do you think he could have found there, professor?” Arthur asked cautiously.
The old man sighed. “I’m sorry. I really don’t know what your intention is or who you are. Are you scholars? Are you with a university?”
“I’m a descendant of Thomas Malory, the man who wrote Le Morte D’Arthur.”
“And you?” the professor asked Claire.
“I’m here offering my moral support. I’m a physicist.”
Vallespir opened his arms in a gesture of confusion. “What does a descendant of Thomas Malory have to do with Antoni Gaudí?”
“To be perfectly frank, professor, I’m interested in the Holy Grail.”
The old man checked his watch and pushed himself off his chair. “This is not a subject of mine. I am an architect and an architectural historian. Perhaps you want to speak with someone in our medieval history or religious studies faculties. Now my wife is expecting me home.”
“Can I give you my mobile number in case you think of something that might be helpful?” Arthur jotted the number on a page from the hotel’s notepad.
Vallespir looked at it. “Ah, this hotel was designed by Domènech. Now that’s something I know about.”
#
Arthur and Claire returned to the hotel, dispirited; then meandered to Le Boqueria market for lunch. Two metal stools opened up
at the crowded Pinotxo Bar and they had tapas and talked, oblivious to the lunchtime bustle, a man and a woman at the end of an exhausting adventure.
“It was quite a ride,” Arthur said.
“Are you sure it’s over?”
“For now. I’ll go home—well, first I need to find a home. I’ll try to do more research on Gaudí. But if the number-one Gaudí authority in the world has nothing to offer us, then I’ve got to accept that we may have gotten as close to the Grail as we’re ever going to get.”
“Do you think you’ll be left alone?”
Arthur shook his head. “I don’t know. I hope so. But I killed one of them, Claire.”
“I suppose I’ll be going home too.”
He touched her knee with his. “The most important thing is that you’ll be safe.”
At the hotel they booked flights to the UK and France. Then they packed their bags and called for their car.
Arthur paid the bill. As he was slipping the bellman a few euros, a woman from the reception desk came outside and waved at them.
“Excuse me, Mr. Malory, but someone has just arrived to see you.”
Arthur looked up, alarmed. “Who?”
“A woman. I’m sorry but I didn’t get her name.”
Claire got out of the car and both of them reentered the lobby.
A stylish woman in her sixties was at the front desk. Arthur saw her arrive as they were leaving but hadn’t paid her any mind. The receptionist pointed at Arthur and said something in Catalan to the woman.
She stepped forward and said in good English, “My name is Elisenda Vallespir. You visited my husband this morning. Can we talk somewhere?”
Arthur tried to keep his excitement in check. The hotel bar was empty. “Maybe we can go in here.”
They sat and ordered coffees. Arthur introduced Claire.
“Yes, Esteve told me about both of you. He was quite agitated when he came home.”
“I’m sorry we troubled him,” Arthur said.
“He’s easily troubled, I’m afraid. He has never been an easygoing man. Now that he is ill his fuse is ever shorter.”
“I feel bad we upset him,” Claire offered.
“The problem with my husband is that he treats Gaudí as though he were still alive. In this city you are constantly reminded of Gaudí. To see a Picasso or a Miró you must enter a museum or a gallery. To see a Gaudí you merely have to walk down the street. Esteve worships the ground he walked upon and is fiercely protective of his legacy and his reputation. It’s not that I don’t share this respect; I was Esteve’s architectural student before I became his wife and research assistant. It’s been a ménage à trois, always living with Gaudí. But my husband has cancer. They haven’t given him long.”
“I’m sorry,” Arthur once more said.
She nodded. “I know why he turned you away but I don’t agree with him. There is no reason other than his stubbornness for him not to help you. I asked myself: What purpose would be served by letting him take this to his grave?”
Arthur stopped himself from interrupting—better to let her talk.
“Gaudí was very close to a priest. His name was Mossèn Gil Parès. He was the first parish priest of Sagrada Família. He ministered to the workers and their children. Gaudí personally financed and built the famous Escuelas for the children, which you can see today next to the temple. The two of them, Gaudí and Parès, constructed a sort of utopian Christian community there. When Gaudí died in 1926, Parès was executor of his estate. After the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, Parès was stripped of his post for his Catalan sentiments. Unfortunately, he was murdered in 1936 during the Civil War, together with twelve other martyrs of the Sagrada Família. Recently, his body was buried in the crypt of Sagrada Família near his friend Gaudí, and the Vatican has begun the process of his beatification.”
She paused to clear her throat just as the coffees arrived. Claire poured her some water.
“The reason I am telling you this,” she continued, “is that we possess a letter which Gaudí wrote to Parès in 1911. Gaudí had contracted brucellosis and was very seriously ill. He was not expected to survive. His physician and friend Dr. Santaló sent him to the Pyrenees to convalesce for several months. It was a miracle he lived and was returned to health. This letter I have is written on the stationery of Gaudí’s hotel.”
She pulled it from her bag and removed it from its envelope.
“Let me be clear about this,” she said, fixing Arthur then Clair with an emphatic stare. “Esteve never published this letter. It came to him many years ago from the estate of Gil Parès’ brother. It was written in the form of a confession. I believe that Parès took Gaudí’s confession often and from his presumed deathbed in the Pyrenees, Gaudí wished to unburden his soul one last time. We never understood the subject matter of this letter. And here is the issue. My husband’s reverence for Gaudí has always been such that he really and truly felt that it would be a violation to betray his written confession, even so many years after the deaths of both parties. To me this sentiment violates fundamental scholarship but, well, Esteve has always been the boss. But the document you discovered at Montserrat is like finding a missing piece to a jigsaw puzzle, and with it, perhaps a picture can be properly formed. That is why I decided to come here.”
She began a search for her reading glasses in her handbag. All Arthur could do was exchange glances with Claire, control his breathing and try to stay still.
“There are some incidental sections. I’ll only translate the relevant part … Here it is, on the second page. ‘You know, dear friend, what I speak of, for I have revealed all in the confessional and if I could be with you now I would ask you to take my confession one last time. This letter will have to suffice. You know I found it. And you know I stole it, which is a great sin I have carried like a heavy weight, though in all my times of trouble I have drawn infinite comfort from it. I have dedicated my life to it and I pray I have honored it. I have discussed with you many times what I desire in death. You alone can make it happen. Your eternal friend in Christ, A. Gaudí.’”
Claire whispered, “My God.”
Arthur had grabbed a pen and had been furiously jotting notes on the back of his hotel bill. “Could we have a copy of this?” he asked quickly.
“I’ve made one for you.” She reached into her bag again. “Please do not publish it without my permission.”
“Of course not,” Arthur assured her. “I don’t know how to thank you. I wish I could thank your husband too.”
“Well, don’t think about him. Think about this quest you seem to be on. Tell me,” she asked with a cracking voice, “this object Gaudí found. It now seems certain it came from Montserrat. Do you think, Mr. Malory, it could be the Holy Grail?”
27
Barcelona, 1926
The last of Gaudí’s close friends had passed six months earlier. The sculptor Llorenc Matamala died at Christmas, 1925, but as his health was failing he made a final visit to the Sagrada Família to goad Gaudí’s priest to action.
“He hardly sleeps, the only time he’s not working is when he’s making his daily treks to and from St. Felipe Neri, and all he eats is almonds and raisins! Isn’t there anything you can do to make him slow down a little, act his age, eat a good meal and maybe take a small holiday, father?”
The priest, Mossèn Gil Parès, shrugged at the notion. “He’s set in his ways like one of your plaster casts. Anyway, you’re one to talk, Matamala. You almost worked yourself to death, of your own accord.”
Matamala had been Gaudí’s principal collaborator, the sculptor who had turned the architect’s concoctions into clay and plaster models for forty-three years. The partnership had begun in 1883 when Gaudí said to him, “Come and work for me in the temple, Senyor Llorenc, and you will have work for life.”
Their collaboration had come to an end less than a year earlier when Matamala’s facial cancer invalided him from work. Making what would be his last visit to S
agrada Família, Matamala had buttonholed the priest to plead his case, his words slurred by a distorted tongue as he mopped at his drool with one of many handkerchiefs he carried.
“Nonetheless, try to reason with him. Someone has to take care of him, father. Use your influence. I’ll wait for him in the workshop,” the sculptor said, dabbing at his chin. “I don’t know if it’s just the way I look at things with my life coming to an end, father, but progress on the temple seems slow.”
“You know what Gaudí always says, Llorenc,” the priest told him. “My client does not have a deadline.”
Gaudí had wept at Matamala’s funeral and now, in the summer of 1926, he was an old man of seventy-three, alone in the world, finding comfort in a routine as regimented as the workings of a clock.
Only a year earlier, Gaudí had moved from his home in Parc Güell to a makeshift bedroom near his studio at Sagrada Família, though he already had devoted himself exclusively to the temple since the death of his patron, Eusebi Güell, in 1918. He rose at dawn every day to toil nonstop in his small studio, pausing only to nibble on nuts and berries and scoop milk with lettuce leaves, chosen because they made excellent natural spoons. Every evening he made the forty-five-minute walk to St. Felipe Neri Church for mass, followed by the same journey back to his studio. Walking was painful due to arthritis in his legs but he was too stubborn and impecunious to use streetcars. And every night, prior to going to bed, he would summon Father Parès from his nearby house to take his confession—though both men would have to admit that for an ascetic such as Gaudí fresh sins of deed were virtually nonexistent and any sins of thought on the mild side. Yet Gaudí, like a reliable grandfather, confessed daily to a sin more than four decades old, the theft of a sacred object from his beloved shrine of Montserrat.
When Gaudí first confessed to his sin Parès struggled mightily. This theft of the Grail was not so small a sin. He urged Gaudí to consider the consequences, to return it to the monastery; but Gaudí refused, arguing that he was certainly chosen by God to honor the artifact. The act, however, weighed heavily on the architect and he insisted on daily confessing the sin.
