by Unknown
Their exchange typically went as follows: “If it troubles you so much, Antoni, why don’t you return it? Far from being angry with you, the abbot, I expect, will be delighted to possess the greatest relic in Christianity.”
“You don’t understand,” Gaudí would reply. “It was divine providence! I was presented with the commission for Sagrada Família. I did not wish to take it on; then only days later I found it. It was meant to be. God was telling me to build the temple. He was telling me to build it to honor Christ and the Holy Family. He was telling me to honor the Holy Grail. I am the Grail’s guardian, father. I was given the responsibility by God and I will not turn my back on my divine obligation. You have your vows, I have mine.”
“I am a priest,” Parès would say with a sigh. “The confession is sacred. I have no choice but to carry your burden as if it were my own.”
Now, after so many years, on hearing Gaudí’s confession, Parès would only wearily say, “Say ten Hail Marys,” and follow this by telling him, “although God has already forgiven you, Antoni, and if I’ve said it a thousand times, I will say it again: You have honored Him with your life and your work in a fashion that few men can match.”
“Remember what I asked of you,” Gaudí would reply.
“Yes, of course, I remember. But you are not ready for that yet. You have more work to do on this earth.”
Work on the temple progressed; and day by day, week by week, year by year Gaudí’s vision shaped itself in stone and glass. The crypt had been completed, the Nativity Façade nearly done, with four circular campanile towers slowly rising above it. The interior space was roughed out, although existing mainly on paper and worked into models, and the school for the worker’s children was built. It was perhaps twenty percent on the way to completion. Others would have to carry the task forward long after he was gone.
Work continued amid grave political and social tensions. Anticlerical sentiments that fueled the death and destruction of Tragic Week in 1909 persisted, making fund-raising for the temple a challenge. Yet Gaudí surely was grateful that the Sagrada Família had been spared the mayhem of the riots. A growing movement for Catalan independence fueled general strikes. Social unrest boiled over but was brought to a swift end by Primo de Rivera’s successful coup d’état in 1923. From his dictator’s perch in Madrid he sent edicts and soldiers to suppress the Catalan independence movement and ban the Catalan tongue.
Gaudí, for the most part, kept his head down, sticking to his routine while the troubles of the world swirled around him. And when the good people of Barcelona saw him coming toward them on the sidewalk often they would cross to the other side, as he was apt to beg them for a few pesetas to help him meet the payroll of his masons.
#
Enrique Sánchez Molina was never at ease in Barcelona. Born and bred in Madrid, he resented that he felt like a stranger in what he believed should be one unified Spain. No politician, he nevertheless belittled the Catalan separatist attitudes, preferring to leave those messy issues to others; he had his own concerns.
He was a physicist and these were heady times for the discipline. A professor at the Universidad Central de Madrid, Molina was one of the leading Spanish researchers in experimental physics and he had been the honorific host to the great Albert Einstein during his visit to Spain in 1923. After centuries of darkness, Einstein’s theory of general relativity was finally bringing the universe into the light.
It was a propitious time to be a Khem.
Molina waited within the cavernous Estació de França for the train from Paris and when it arrived he surveyed the arriving passengers, looking for a familiar face. Before long, Gustav Ergma, the great Estonian physicist appeared, a ferretlike man dressed too warmly for a summer day, sweating and scowling.
“Molina, take me someplace cooler, for God’s sake,” he said in their only common language, English. “That train was impossibly warm.”
“Perhaps you might begin by removing your coat, Gustav,” Molina said. “Come along, we’ll get a cold beer into you for a start.”
A sleek white and black Hispano-Suiza roadster was waiting at the curb and the two physicists climbed into the spacious rear seat while the driver secured the luggage.
“I have rooms for us at the Majestic,” Molina said. “We’ll be there in no time.”
Ergma pointed to the driver’s back. “Can we speak in front of him?”
“Carlos is pure muscle. Plus he doesn’t understand a word of English. So speak freely.”
“I’m a busy man, Molina, but I felt compelled to heed your telegram and make the long journey. We have had a very long dry spell. Since I assumed the leadership position within the Khem I have not had one single piece of credible information on the Grail to act upon. How good is your intelligence?”
“I don’t want to overplay it, Gustav, but it is intriguing and I would have been terribly remiss not to pass it along for your consideration. It seems that last Christmas a man died from cancer at one of the hospitals here. His name was Matamala and he was a well-known architectural sculptor. Before his death he was administered radiation emanation therapy for a facial cancer by a Doctor Simó, one of the few practitioners of the art in Barcelona. Last week this Simó came to Madrid to participate in a conference on the use of radium in the clinic and I gave a talk on the physics of radiation. Afterward he sought me out in the bar and we had more than a few drinks. He was a jovial sort. Well, it seems this patient of his, this Matamala, under the influence of heavy doses of morphine for his pain, babbled to Simó about some relic which the architect Gaudí possessed. He said he had found a wooden box one day in Gaudí’s workshop with a carving on its lid of Montserrat mountain. Without permission he opened it.”
Ergma perked up at the mention of Montserrat. “What was in the box?”
“Apparently, in his drugged state all he said was that it was as warm as human flesh.”
Ergma’s thin eyebrows arched. “He said that?”
“So I was told.”
“Have you approached this Gaudí?”
“No, I was waiting for your arrival. I’ve heard he’s a real eccentric, a misanthrope, a difficult man. I thought we might have only one chance to get him to talk and I thought you would want to be personally involved in, shall we say, an interview.”
“Good. You made the correct decision, Molina. What is your intention?”
“Tomorrow, we will pick him off the street. He has a predictable routine. We’ll take him to Carlos’s garage. He has car batteries there. Electricity applied to a man’s tender areas loosens the tongue, or so I’ve been told.”
#
On the evening of 7 June 1926, Gaudí put his drafting pencils down. It was 5:30 and time to leave for his three-kilometer walk to mass at St. Felipe Neri. Though it was a fine enough evening, owing to his state of emaciation, the old man shivered as he always did out of doors.
Shuffling in his bedroom slippers bound with elastic to keep the soles attached, he made his way down carrer de Bailén to the broad avenue of the Corts Catalanes.
A car was parked on the avenue near the intersection, a white and black Hispano-Suiza.
“That’s him,” Molina said from the backseat.
“Really?” Ergma exclaimed. “That man? He’s old and weak. We hardly need Carlos’s help to do the job.”
When Gaudí began to cross the Corts Catalanes the burly driver got out, looked for traffic and approached him as he was reaching the median.
“Hey, Senyor, let me speak with you.”
Gaudí kept his head down and ignored the ruffian.
“Hey, come here.”
Carlos grabbed him by his coat sleeve and gave him a tug but was surprised at how violently and forcefully the old man reacted.
Though Gaudí did not utter a word, thoughts exploded inside his head at the affront.
Leave me alone! Unhand me! I am on my way to mass!
Carlos had a generous handful of coat sleeve in his hand and desp
ite the old man’s resistance he was not about to let go. One more hard yank would do it but the fabric was so threadbare it ripped in Carlos’s hand, sending him backward a step and launching Gaudí forward.
Just at that moment, the Number 30 tram clattered by. The driver was unable to apply the brake in time to avoid the old man who had stumbled onto the tracks. Gaudí was thrown to the ground and lay there immobile, blood pooling from his ear.
Some pedestrians ran to his side and Carlos looked helplessly at Molina, who motioned him back to the car.
“Drive,” Molina commanded.
“He looked bad,” Carlos said, pulling away.
Molina shook his head. “I’ll have his quarters searched. Maybe we’ll be able to find it without him.”
Ergma’s face soured like a bowl of curdled milk. “Tell me Molina, when is the next train to Paris?”
#
Gaudí was presumed to be a homeless tramp. He had no papers on him. His pockets were greasy with nuts. His clothes were filthy and patched, his shoes a disaster. His legs were bound with old bandages to combat arthritic swelling. No one knew he was one of the most admired men in all of Barcelona.
The ambulance crew took him to the hospital for the poor, the medieval Hospital de Santa Cruz, where he was diagnosed with fractured ribs and a cerebral contusion. Placed in Bed 19 in the public ward, he spent the night going in and out of consciousness very much alone.
Father Parés would find him later that night and stand vigil at his bedside.
Gaudí was moved to a private room and by the following day the hospital corridors were lined with bishops and politicians and poets and architects.
And then he would die two days later, his body passing on a horse-drawn cortège from the hospital to the Sagrada Família; the people of the city lined the streets in an outpouring of grief and respect.
As he had lain dying, his brain swelling from trauma, his thoughts had been mad and fragmented—but in those rare, lucid, heaven-sent moments Gaudí believed he saw the Grail, black as night, warm and glowing, floating over his bed; and he had not been the least afraid of death.
28
Jeremy Harp was walking his land with his estate manager when his mobile phone rang. It was planting season and they were trying out a new strain of barley this year. Harp had been peppering his man with questions about its disease-resisting qualities.
Harp excused himself and trudged several yards away to take the call. It was Andris Somogyi.
“Jeremy, Andris. Is it a good time?”
“Yes, Andris, of course.”
“I apologize I couldn’t make the last group call. I happened to speak with Stanley Engel on an academic matter. Afterward he filled me in but I thought I should speak with you directly. It sounds as though there have been some interesting developments.”
“That’s correct. Malory has been highly industrious and, I would say, productive. It’s almost—and I emphasize, almost—a shame we have to kill him.”
“Stanley was squeamish about that.”
“Stanley is squeamish about many things. Where do you stand, Andris?”
“I stand with you, Jeremy. Any news since the conference call?”
“Malory and Pontier are in Barcelona right now making, I hope, very solid progress. They’ve been meeting with some experts on the Spanish architect, Antoni Gaudí.”
“Has Gaudí ever been on the Khem’s radar screen?”
“It’s an interesting question, Andris. I’ve been thinking about it quite a lot the last day or so. It’s one of the problems with the Khem. We’ve always relied exclusively on oral history. We can’t just go to the shelves and pull down a reference book. Remember old Professor Hoyt from Oxford?”
“Of course.”
“He was my mentor’s mentor.”
“Roy Higgins.”
“Yes. Hoyt nominated Roy to become a Khem and Roy brought me in. I recall having a drink with Roy in his club a good long time ago. He was already retired and was in failing health. It was somewhat poignant. He knew he’d never live to see the Grail but told me it was all right because at least he’d been a link in a two-thousand-year chain which would eventually lead to its discovery. Anyway, I’m telling you this because if my memory serves, he did say that he had heard from an older Khem that there had been some suspicion in the 1910s, 1920s maybe, that a Spanish architect knew something about the Grail.”
“And?”
“Nothing came of it, apparently. I’m actually surprised I remembered the discussion. It was minor, a small footnote.”
“Mind like a steel trap, Jeremy.”
“I like to think so.”
“How did you leave it with the rest of the group?”
“I think we may be at a critical junction. The trail will, I expect, soon get either very cold or extremely hot. If it's the latter, we need to be prepared to travel to Jerusalem at a moment’s notice for the greatest moment in history since the resurrection of Christ.”
#
Arthur and Claire had rebooked their same room and now lay on the bed facing one another. Elisenda Vallespir had left them no answers but at least they had hope.
“It looks like our adventure’s going to last a little longer,” Arthur said. He reached for his notes. “Here’s the key part of the letter. Gaudí wrote, ‘I have discussed with you many times what I desire in death. You alone can make it happen.’ What does someone desire in death?”
Claire crinkled her face. “Well, to be honored, to be remembered, to be written about. A favorable legacy.”
“Gaudí seemed too modest for that. Look, this guy, Father Parès, was his friend but he was also his confessor. You tell your confessor secrets. What do you think Gaudí’s greatest secret was?”
“The Grail, of course. You think he told him about the Grail?”
“I’ll bet he did.”
“If you’re right, then maybe what he desired in death was for the Grail to be put somewhere safe, somewhere appropriate. Maybe he asked that it be returned to Montserrat.”
Arthur shook his head. “If that were the case, Parès most likely would have put it back in the chapel where Gaudí found it. Or the monastery would have built a chapel for it. We know that didn’t happen.”
“Well, maybe he wanted the Vatican to have it.”
“Don’t you think we’d have known about that? The Vatican would have made a huge deal over it. It would be in St. Peter’s now behind glass. It would be the holiest relic in their possession.”
Arthur got off the bed and retrieved Vallespir’s copy of Gaudí’s letter. It was two pages long on small-format Hotel Europa stationery. The section Vallespir’s wife had read them was on the second page. He regretted not having a translation of the first page. Perhaps there was something of significance she hadn’t appreciated. Turning to the signature page, he noticed a marking and made an obviously curious face.
“What?” Claire asked.
“Have a look at this, over the Europa letterhead. I thought it was a doodle but it’s not. It’s letters.”
ΑΩ JHS
“Let me see,” Claire motioned, and he rejoined her on the bed. “Yes, for sure,” she continued, squinting at the scrawl. “They are letters. The first two are alpha and omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. The last three are J-H-S.”
“Someone’s initials?” Arthur wondered.
“Maybe. What if this isn’t some random notation, Arthur? What if it was meant as part of the message to Father Parès? To reinforce what Gaudí desires in death.”
Arthur nodded. “Maybe. J-H-S. We need to find out who that is.”
Claire’s face crinkled again and Arthur watched as she leaped off the bed for her shoulder bag. She came back with her phone and began fiddling with it.
Asked what she was doing, she shushed him.
At once he heard her cry out “Oui!” and she thrust the phone in his face. “I thought I remembered seeing this. Look! It’s one of the pictures I
took yesterday at the Sagrada Família.”
Arthur let out a triumphant yell.
High on one of the façades of the cathedral, flanked by two angels and beneath a white pelican feeding her young, was a large Greek cross emblazoned with J-H-S.
Arthur pounced on their stack of Gaudí books, tossed them onto the bed and both of them dove in, flipping pages.
“Here it is!” she said, showing Arthur a page from a chapter on Gaudí’s use of symbols. “It says here that J-H-S stands for Jesus Hominum Salvator. Jesus Savior of Humanity. The cross is Greek because with four equal arms it’s the best to symbolize the conjunctions of opposites in the earthly world. And Arthur, look at these pictures. You couldn’t see it on mine. On the two ends of the cross the Greek letters—alpha and omega.”
Arthur got up and began pacing kinetically.
“It all makes sense, Claire. Gaudí initially turned down the Sagrada Família commission in 1883. We also know he finds the Grail in 1883 and he changes his mind. He decides to take the project. Here, in his letter, he says, ‘I have dedicated my life to it and I pray I have honored it.’ Maybe that’s the way he decided to honor it, by designing the most magnificent tribute to Christ since the time of the great medieval cathedrals.”
Claire shook her head in agreement. “He spends the later years of his life living at the cathedral. And where is he buried?”
“In the cathedral,” Arthur said looking Claire squarely in the eyes. “He was reminding Father Parès, pleading with him that he wanted to be buried there. It wasn’t a done deal. It wasn’t preplanned. When he died the only one already in the crypt was Bocabella. The bishop was persuaded to let Gaudí be buried there too. Who persuaded him? I bet it was Gil Parès.”
“He wanted to be buried next to it,” she said, almost whispering.
Arthur began slipping on his shoes. “We’ve got to go to the crypt.”
