I returned to the Chaminade Residence Hall at around nine-thirty that night, feeling more preoccupied than usual. Toni’s lively eyes caught mine as soon as she saw me passing in front of the window of her receptionist’s booth. She called out to me and stopped me in my tracks.
“What the heck have you got yourself mixed up in, Javi? I’ve been trying to find you all day!” she complained, waving a small wad of paper at me. “Everyone’s looking for you! This one guy has called five times! He’s been leaving messages since three!”
She handed me what turned out to be a bunch of phone message sheets. “He says it’s very urgent,” she insisted. “And that you should call as soon as you can. So do it, okay?”
“Okay, okay,” I said, taking the notes reluctantly.
“And don’t be so hard on Marina, okay, Javi?”
Seeing Toni’s huge smile as she said this made me blush.
“What? D-did she call?”
“Twice,” she nodded. “But you should still call that guy first. It sounds more important.”
At first, I couldn’t figure out who it was who had called. There was an unfamiliar name and number, written out repeatedly in the unmistakable scrawls of both Toni and the receptionist from the previous shift.
“Toni, who’s Juan Luis Castresana?”
“Oh, right . . .” Toni lifted her gaze from the small black-and-white TV she had in her cubicle, which had the news on. “He said something about El Escorial. That you would know who he was.”
“El Escorial?” Immediately I had it. Padre Juan Luis! Of course! The librarian!
Without even thanking Toni, I raced to the pay phone in the corner and dialed the number she’d written down. I pushed my last coin into the slot and waited. It picked up after one ring, and a flat voice informed me that I had reached the student residence at the Augustinian fathers of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. I gave her Juan Luis’s name.
“Father Castresana? One moment please, I’ll put you through.” And so, after a few more clicks and pauses, his unmistakable voice thundered in my ear.
“Javier! Thank God you called.”
“Hello, Father. Has something happened?” I asked him as tactfully as I could. His voice sounded agitated. “Are you all right? I just got your messages.”
“Fine, fine . . .” he replied somewhat irritably. “It’s not easy to get hold of you.”
“I’ve been out all day.” I told him. “I just got back now from the Prado. I’m sorry I didn’t get your messages earlier—”
He interrupted me, “No need to apologize. It doesn’t matter. Listen—I called you because this morning I discovered something very serious. Something that, one way or another, concerns you.”
For a moment I was unsure what to say.
“Javier,” he continued, and I heard him swallow. “Do you remember what you asked me to look for in the library?”
“Umm,” I hesitated.
“I’ve come across something very strange, Javier, and I mean really very strange. I don’t want to discuss it over the telephone. I’ll be waiting for you here at exactly nine o’clock tomorrow morning, in front of the monastery’s main entrance. You know where that is, next to the student residence. All right?”
“Bu . . . but . . .” I tried to protest.
“Make sure you’re there. It’s important.” And he hung up.
Heart racing, the very next thing I did was to return Marina’s calls. She had never left me two messages like that before, so I knew it must be something important.
“Javier! Thank God you called,” she said as soon as she heard my voice. She sounded just as scared as she had on the day that I’d met her at her lecture hall, though there was also something else—a certain tone, a certain tension—that was new.
“What is it, Marina?”
“It’s what I told you,” she burst out. “You have to stop!” She sounded even more nervous than I was. “Don’t you get it? You have to quit! Forget all about your Prado Master!”
I was stunned; I didn’t know what to say.
“Listen,” she went on. “My parents got back from their trip last night and when they heard about that guy’s visit they were really mad!”
“Wait a minute,” I stopped her, amazed. “You told them about that?”
“Aunt Esther mentioned that we’d been sleeping at her house because of how scared we were, and then my sister told them everything today at lunch. They can’t believe we let this dangerous lunatic into their house, Javi, and they say that it’s all your fault!”
“It doesn’t matter, Marina,” I said. “The important thing is whether you—”
“I’ve had it, Javier. I’m finished.”
“What . . . what are you saying, Marina?”
“I liked coming along with you, Javier, seeing El Escorial, and being with you while you did your . . . investigating, or whatever. But it’s not fun anymore, not at all. Now it seems really dangerous.”
I didn’t know how to reply. There was something about the last thing she’d said that I must have missed.
“Marina,” I stammered, “I don’t understand.”
“Wait a minute,” she said. “Here’s my dad.”
She put down the receiver for a moment as a wave of heat washed over my face. Her dad?
“Javier Sierra?” The voice sounded ominous, with the stern tone of a teacher giving an exam. “I’m Thomas Sanchez, Marina’s father.”
“How are you, sir?”
“I want you to listen carefully to what I’m about to say to you,” he went on severely, not giving me a chance to say anything. “Marina and her sister, Sonia, were put in a very dangerous situation. I don’t know if you understand exactly what happened. This man came into our house, taking advantage of the fact that we were away. He sat at our family’s kitchen table! He threatened the girls, and he could have hurt them!”
“But—”
“I’m not done!” He was checking himself, trying not to yell at me. “You’ve exposed not just Marina but our whole family to danger. We don’t know if he’ll come back or even if he’s watching us or the girls right now. We’re seriously considering whether we should file a complaint against you with the police.”
“The police? Against me?”
“As an accessory.”
“Sir, I—”
“Listen to me, Javier; I’m only going to say this once. You are not to go near Marina. Ever. If you so much as call her, or if I get even a hint that you’ve tried to see her or involve her in whatever it is you’re up to, I swear . . . I will press charges, you understand me? I will not quit until your life is ruined!”
“Papa!” I heard Marina cry out in the background amid some commotion. I waited a few more seconds, expecting one of them to say something else, but the line went dead. I stayed like that for a while, motionless, with the phone against my ear. My blood felt cold in my veins as I waited for someone to explain to me what had just happened. No one did.
As it turned out, that was the last I would hear of Marina for a long, long time.
The next morning, Saturday, at eight-fifty, with the remains of the last snow still on the cobblestone path leading to the El Escorial monastery, I turned and walked up to the main entrance. What else could I do? I had decided only days before just to let events carry me along and let fate—or whatever else it might be—determine my path. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to test my new faith. Was I wrong? Was it a good idea to experiment like this? Unfortunately, I couldn’t be sure. I was alone, I hadn’t eaten, and I was in the worst funk. Between the early morning and the news on the car radio, I had no appetite. All around me the world was falling into chaos.
The UN Secretary General, Javier Pérez de Cuellar, was meeting that very day with Saddam Hussein’s envoy to demand that Iraq withdraw its troops from Kuwait. The Americans were beating the war drums, and as if that wasn’t enough, our prime minister Felipe Gonzalez had just ordered Spanish troops to prepare to support an eventual allied invasion of Iraq.
And in the middle of this collective madness a young journalism student being buffeted in all directions, some Master who had appeared from God knows where, a father aggressively guarding his daughter’s safety, a sinister kind of art policeman, and now an old Augustinian from the El Escorial library who had something urgent to tell me. It was all far too strange. I felt like I was in a whirlpool that was threatening to overwhelm me. However, there wasn’t much I could do about it. Whatever path I was on, there was no going back.
I rubbed my eyes with my gloved hands and tried to concentrate on what had brought me here. I was happy not to be entirely alone. An intermittent flow of people—caretakers, security guards, staff, and even the odd early morning tourist—were all trying earnestly to negotiate the icy paving stones and get to the main door in one piece. I decided to follow their example and pick my way carefully to the rendezvous point I’d arranged with Father Juan Luis.
At that hour, the place was particularly imposing. Its bearing, its solemnity, the silence broken only by the echo of visitors’ footsteps and the overall impression of gravity and perfection conveyed by the majesty of those great walls, all announced that this was not just any other monument. Nor was it. Those vast façades that Philip II had built hid 2,673 windows, 88 fountains, 540 frescoes, 1,600 paintings, and more than 45,000 books. Those numbers, burned into my memory over numerous tours, made my head swim. El Escorial had always held a fascination for me, and I had visited it whenever I could. I was familiar with its legends, and I could well imagine it hiding any number of answers to the arcanon of the Prado.
But what did Father Juan Luis want to tell me? And why not over the phone? Had he uncovered some new clue to The New Apocalypse? Another angelic prophecy, perhaps?
I had no inkling of the dramatic turn that events were about to take.
At exactly nine o’clock, as precise as a Swiss watch, Father Juan Luis appeared in the doorway of the Alfonso XII residence. He was impossible to miss. Stooped, his black robes fastened at the front and without a coat, he made his way slowly down long side of the building toward the main entrance, not even pausing to glance around him. If he was really on his way to meet me at the main door, he was doing a good job of hiding it.
I headed in his direction and intercepted him partway.
“Good morning, Father,” I began, reaching for his arm. “Is this a good time to—?”
Feeling my touch on his bony shoulder, he jumped. “What the devil!” he exclaimed. “You gave me a fright!”
“Just like the one you gave me last night,” I replied with a smile.
He understood immediately, or so it seemed. No one observing us at that moment would have suspected that our meeting had not been accidental.
“Fair enough, fair enough . . .” He gave me a quick wink before lowering his voice and saying, “I’m very glad you’re here. Are you alone?”
“Marina wasn’t able to make it,” I lied. “I hope that’s okay.”
He opened his hands as if to say “What can you do?” and then shot a glance around him with a wariness that reminded me of the Master. Why was it that everyone I spoke to ended up feeling as if they were being watched?
Turning back to me, he whispered, “I think it’s better if we first talk out here, all right?”
“Excellent. Now, when we go into the library and I show you what I’ve found, keep quiet; don’t say a word. Don’t ask any questions. I won’t talk either, understand? If they were to hear us, I’d be locked up as crazy, and you . . . well, I have no idea what they would do to you.”
“Are you sure you want to talk out here, though? With this cold? You don’t even have a scarf.”
“Let’s walk!” he replied.
Then the monk took my arm so that he wouldn’t slip, and together we began to traverse the fifty or so yards between us and the monastery entrance. Neither my shivering nor my attempts to speed up did any good. Oblivious to my discomfort, Father Juan Luis began to talk in a voice so slow and halting that I had to incline my head toward his to hear what he was saying.
“—that I should have noticed sooner,” he finished.
“Noticed what, Father?” I interrupted, lost.
“The dates, Javier! The dates!” he scolded. “When you asked me to check who had shown an interest in The New Apocalypse before your visit, remember? I checked the register and noticed something interesting in our records.”
Hearing the name of that prophetic work once again, I leaned even closer.
“At first I didn’t think it was anything. I assumed that it was just a mistake. But then this week I finally had a chance to go back to it and I got a big surprise!”
“What happened?” I asked him.
The monk sighed. “All right, now, Javier, listen carefully. The register for access to the Blessed Amadeo text couldn’t be clearer. In the whole of last year, no one—absolutely no one—requested access to the book, until you and that other investigator who was there just before you.”
“Julian de Prada,” I interjected.
His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Yes, exactly. I didn’t realize that you knew him.”
“I don’t, much. Marina and I met him in Madrid after we talked to you. But please, go on.”
“Well, here comes the strangest part, Javier. It intrigued me that a book like that—beautifully bound, with glorious calligraphy—had so few requests to view it, so I went back through the register to see: 1989, 1988, 1987, and nothing! It’s incredible! No one seems to have cared a whit about The New Apocalypse for a long time. And then I was really disturbed when I decided to check the archives going all the way back to the 1970s, and again—nothing! Not even an internal request.”
“So there’s nothing for twenty years and then two in a row?”
“Very suspicious, don’t you think?”
“Very,” I agreed.
“You have to realize that each year this library receives many unusual requests. With the kind of archive we have here, unique in many respects, we get scholars from all corners of the world. One of the most frequent requests that we get, for example, is for the Enchiridion that belonged to Pope Leo III, and that he presented to Charlemagne as a gift. From then until his death, it granted him happiness, protection, and many military victories, as it was said to have magical properties. Charles V, his son Philip, and other distant descendants of theirs all sent experts across Europe to track down this extraordinary talisman in parchment. If they ever found it, they did not bring it back here. We also get asked for the signed works of St. Teresa, Alfonso X’s Canticles of Holy Mary, and the Beatus of Liébana.
“Now, The New Apocalypse is properly listed in our catalog and part of a notable collection. For there not to have been a single request for it in twenty years, and then to have two requests in one week—that just seems too strange.” Father Juan Luis shook his head slowly.
“Although,” I said, trying to make a case for why this might have happened, “with all the books that you have here, there must be many that remain untouched for centuries!”
“No, no,” objected Father Juan Luis, “that’s not what’s so odd here. The strangest thing is that the last person before you to request the book did so back in the spring of 1970, and you know what his name was?”
I frowned and shook my head. How could I know?
“Julian de Prada!”
“It can’t be!” I breathed.
“It’s all down in the register. There’s no question about it. Between the months of April and June of 1970, two men requested Amadeo’s The New Apocalypse three times—Julian de Prada and another man called Luis Fovel. The microfiche is the proof.”
“Luis Fovel?” I could barely get the words out. For a moment there seemed to be a great distance between us, and I felt the blood drain from my face. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Do you know him as well?”
I nodded, feeling apprehensive.
“How long ago is it since you’ve seen him?”
The question surprised me. “I saw him just yesterday, Father. Why?”
I noticed a strange expression cross the monk’s face, and only when I felt his fingers digging into my arm did I realize that it was anxiety.
He cleared his throat. “Tell me . . . is he very old?”
I pursed my lips and said, “Well, no more than you, Father.” At which he moaned, seemingly more disturbed still.
“What is it, Father?”
The old librarian took a couple of steps toward the door of the chapel—just enough to get out of the shadows and place himself in the one spot blessed by the rays of the morning sun. After a moment, he spoke. “Yesterday morning, I went back through the library register one more time, and I found something that alarmed me greatly. This is why I called you. You see, between 1952 and 1970 there were no requests at all to see the Beato’s book. But I did find one in 1952, in October, signed by Luis Fovel.”
“In 1952? That’s forty years ago.”
The old monk looked at me, swallowed, and nodded. “But that’s not the end. I went to one of the technical kids who are transferring all our old records onto digital, and asked him to search the old archives for any instances of the names Luis Fovel or Julian de Prada. He found something that . . . well, I don’t know what to make of it!”
“What did he find?”
“Well,” he turned his face toward the sun and forced a nervous laugh. “The computer trail for Julian de Prada goes cold, but not for Fovel. There are several records for him: in 1949, 1934 . . .” He took a shaky breath. “1918 and 1902. We don’t have any records before that, unfortunately.”
“It must be a joke, don’t you think, Father?” I objected, very perplexed. “It can’t be that—”
He cut in. “That’s what I thought, too, young man! Or I thought that they might be related, you know—a grandfather, father and son, all with the same name, coming here through the years, all interested in the same kind of things. Why not? Things like that happen. But there was a problem . . .”
“What kind of problem?” My voice had gone flat.
“Yesterday I finally dug up the entry that Fovel signed in 1902. It’s in the oldest register we have. Luckily it’s all on microfiche. And I compared his signature from that with the signature from 1970 . . .” He was actually shaking.
“What, Father?” I asked, gently.
“It’s the same person. Lord above, Javier, I’m not a handwriting expert but I would be willing to swear that it’s the same signature! Do you realize what that means?”
I took in a huge lungful of cold air. If what the old librarian was saying was true, a man named Luis Fovel had requested a forbidden text from the El Escorial library on and off over the course of almost seventy years. And if it really was the same Fovel that I knew, who looked to be in his sixties, then the Master of the Prado would have to be something like a hundred and ten or a hundred and twenty years old!
“It’s impossible,” I protested, with all the conviction I could muster. “It has to be a mistake, Father. There just must be an explanation somewhere!”
“None that I can see.”
“Could I see the signatures?”
“Yes, I think you should have a look at them.”
Ten minutes later, the man who knew the monastery library better than anyone alive was leading me to his small desk to show me his discoveries. Very little had changed since my last visit. It was still the refuge of some wise man or scholar from another time, straight out of the past, without a single computer or other trace of technology, right in the middle of a corridor otherwise filled with people much younger. We all greeted each other, Father Juan Luis grunting a reply.
He pointed at something, and I then noticed the one new addition to the setting. Resting on a small side table was an enormous metal contraption shaped something like a bell, topped with a series of wheels and levers. Seeing my surprise, the monk muttered, “That’s the new ‘Teepee.’ A relic from the Cold War. The Americans who sold it to us in the seventies said it reminded them of something from the trading posts of the Wild West. Officially, it’s a Recordak MPE-1, the most reliable microfilm reader you can get.”
Whereupon this monk, who I’d thought to be one of the least technologically-minded people I’d met, proceeded to thread a spool of microfilm expertly through the slots on top, then adjust the tension bars, and flip a switch that lit up the interior of the device. He motioned me to sit before an opening on one side of the reader that held a screen, and as he rummaged in a drawer for his glasses, he ordered, “Now concentrate, young man!”
But as the first image appeared on the smooth surface of the Teepee’s screen, I felt a small pang of disappointment. In front of me was an unremarkable-looking copy of a sheet from a ledger, yellowed with time, its type and letterhead faded, bearing a date just before the Spanish Civil War, with the heading, “Library of the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo del Escorial. Reading Room—Books Borrowed.”
“Now, memorize that signature there,” the monk instructed me, pointing to the bottom of the page. We went through the same exercise three more times, and he pointed out signatures on several other sheets, dating from the beginning of the century to the later years of the Franco era. By the time he had finished his little demonstration, my original disappointment had turned to a kind of vertigo.
“Well?” he said quietly, bringing his finger up to his lips at the same time to remind me of the need to keep my reactions discreet.
As quietly as I could, I said, “You were right, Father. I see the problem.” I wanted to curse or yell, but I contained myself. If those documents were authentic, which I didn’t doubt for a second, then Father Castresana had made a sensational discovery. It was strikingly obvious that we were looking at a series of library requests separated by over seventy years and all bearing the identical signature. There was no room for error—each “Fovel” was enormous, clear, beginning with a large, stylized uppercase F and ending with the tail of the final l seeming to crack like a whip beside the last name. All exactly the same.
How was this possible?
I spent a while going back over each signature again, comparing them, changing the microfilm spools myself. As I confirmed each one, I dared do no more than just incline my head slightly so that our neighbors would be none the wiser about what we were up to. When I was done, far from easing my doubts, my initial feelings of surprise and astonishment had given way to more doubt—and to fear.
With a brusque “Very well,” Father Juan Luis brought the Teepee session to a close, replacing the rolls of microfilm in their boxes and leaving them stacked casually next to the machine. He turned to me. “Why don’t we go down to the basilica? I think in the house of God we should be able to relax a little more, and talk.” I nodded.
Father Juan Luis and I found a discreet spot on a bench in the back of the great church of the El Escorial monastery, and were there for the better part of two hours. At first, our whispered discussion wandered as we tried to understand what on earth all this could mean. We posited various mistakes, jokes, and plots, none of which led anywhere. It was all very frustrating, and after a long time talking the one thing we could agree on was that each of us, as if guided by fate, had stumbled upon something that was far greater than us. Something beyond logic.
It was then, as we were both deciding just how much more to reveal to the other, that, almost without meaning to, I took the first step. I badly needed to confide in someone, and so I talked—I talked and I talked until I had told him everything. It was the closest thing to a confession that I ever remember having made.
I told him all that I knew about Fovel. I went patiently and meticulously through everything I have written here in these pages, as well as some of the Master’s explanations about the influence of The New Apocalypse on Spanish and Italian artists. Most of all, I made sure to emphasize Fovel’s last lesson, where he talked about Bosch, Brueghel, El Greco, the Adamites, and Niclaes’s Familia Caritatis.
I even told him, with some hesitation and at the risk of sounding far-fetched, that according to Fovel, one of the principal members of those sects was El Escorial’s first librarian, Benito Arias Montano.
“Does that name mean anything to you?” I asked him.
The old Augustinian seemed completely unmoved. For him, none of what I’d told him really helped to explain the unbelievable sequence of requests for The New Apocalypse that had come from Fovel, and to a lesser extent, Julian de Prada. Realizing he was essentially at a dead end, the old monk was silent for a while. When he finally spoke again, it was to ask me for my personal interpretation of the whole affair. “And don’t tell me that you think it’s ghosts!” he warned. “Ghosts don’t borrow books from libraries!”
I couldn’t do his question justice. As it was, I didn’t know what to say to him. And just as it seemed that the road had ended for this young apprentice journalist, the old man pulled an ace from his sleeve.
“There’s one thing that we have not yet talked about,” he said, crossing his hands in his lap and gazing up fixedly at the imposing altarpiece that presided over the basilica.
“What is it?” I sighed wearily. I had spilled everything to this man and wasn’t sure I had the strength to handle one more thing.
“Do you remember when I told you I had searched our digital archives for all of Luis Fovel’s library requests?”
I lifted my eyes to his worn face, waiting for him to go on.
“Well, when I went through all of his and de Prada’s entries, I saw that it wasn’t just The New Apocalypse that they were requesting. There were other books, too. And always the same ones each time.”
I blinked, rocked by this new revelation.
“It’s quite a varied group of books,” he continued, anticipating the obvious question. “From Matías Haco Sumbergense’s Prognosticon, which contains Philip’s astrological chart and some predictions for his reign, to works on alchemy, books on natural magic, notebooks of Arias Montano’s, and texts from earlier eras, like the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Judging from the list of requests, it seems as if the two of them were on the trail of something. Circling around the same set of themes. Not only that—I’m fairly sure that both of them got involved in some kind of race, and I have a feeling I know what kind.”
“Really?”
“You’ve been honest with me, and now it’s my turn,” he said.
I felt a wave of relief. “I have all these papers set aside up in my office,” he continued. “Without exception, they all have one thing in common. They were all requested within a short time of each other. First Fovel, then de Prada, and so on, always alternating, beginning and ending with The New Apocalypse. When I first went through them I thought I had stumbled upon a pair of alchemy nuts on the hunt for the philosopher’s stone who might have managed to distill an elixir for extending life.”
“And you don’t think so now?” I asked.
“No, that’s not it. Their interest in alchemy is a given, but to judge by the texts they’ve requested, it seems like they’re also trying to cultivate certain metaphysical visions to use in their experiments. It came to me when I saw that their requests included the work of our own ‘Doctor Illuminatus,’ Ramon Llull, the great physician and alchemist from the thirteenth century. Llull started with those kinds of visions in developing his formulas and recorded all of it in his writings, which are only to be found within these walls here. My guess is that, like him, Fovel and de Prada have been trying to discover their own formula for transiting through the portal between this world and the next, and you know what? I think Fovel has done it, and that de Prada is stalking him trying to learn the secret so that he can get that access, that key.”
I tried to take this all in, too tired to offer any argument. When I could muster the energy to reply, I said, “But, Father, what role do the paintings play in this race? Why do you think they’re so important?”
“Oh, The New Apocalypse explains all that, Javier. And I went through this with you when we first met. Amadeo wrote that in times of great trouble, certain paintings would be able to perform miracles, and could act as doorways between this world and the next. And if the old hermetic texts are to be believed, whoever manages to get hold of the alchemical masterwork will not only possess the elixir of life, but will also enjoy the power of invisibility, how to communicate with the other world, and will never stay long in the same place.”
“But . . .” I began. He went on unheeding.
“Whether or not we believe in these kinds of things makes absolutely no difference. What matters is that they do.”
“Okay, Father,” I said. “But that still leaves another question unanswered. If Fovel really is in possession of a secret like that, then why has he been spending the last few weeks giving me these lectures in the Prado and showing me all these special paintings? Why me? Why would he risk his anonymity?”
The monk shifted on the wooden bench and rubbed his forehead. Then his face lit up.
“To understand that, I have to appeal to the ‘Rosicrucian factor’!”
I made a face, uncomprehending. He began to explain.
“The Rosicrucians were a society of initiates that emerged in the seventeenth century and that attracted intellectuals and liberal thinkers of all stripes. Today they are mostly thought to be extinct, and anyone claiming to be one now is usually given the same consideration as Neotemplars or Neo-Cathars, which is to say none. But interestingly, in the beginning, their members used to claim that the brotherhood had been started by a group of teachers or ‘mysterious supermen,’ led by a certain Christian Rosenkreutz. Rosenkreutz was said to have achieved an extraordinarily long life for his time, though not the kind of immortality that the Taoists speak of, or the Himalayan yogis or classical heroes of the Holy Grail, or that magical imam from twelfth-century Iraq who the Shiites believe will reappear to do battle with the Antichrist. No, Rosenkreutz—or whatever his real name was—lived for over a hundred years and carefully guarded the supreme medicine or ‘total science’ that allowed him to break all the known biological barriers. Apparently, once he reached the age of one hundred, he devoted himself to training disciples who would pass on the formula for extending life from generation to generation. They are the real Rosicrucians, and Fovel and de Prada are very likely two of them. Alchemy aficionados always refer to these people as ‘invisibles,’ and one of their main objectives is supposed to be to foment a social and scientific revolution in the West that will allow the acceptance of the long-life elixir without causing chaos.”
“Do you really believe . . . ?”
But Father Juan Luis was not done.
“What’s strange is that these kinds of teachers seem to emerge every hundred years or so, sow their intellectual seed in a handful of chosen followers in the hope that they will help advance the development of the world, and then disappear until the next historical cycle. If you go back and track these appearances, you can see their influence among the first Christian Gnostics, the Arian heretics, the Cathars, and the Family of Love. So why wouldn’t we think that your Fovel, who knows so much about these ancient sects, could be one of these mysterious teachers, back from the shadows to recruit more custodians for his secret?”
“I don’t know . . .”
“I’m an old man, Javier. I’ve read a great deal about this in the books of this sacred building, and it seems obvious to me what’s going on. One of these secret teachers has chosen you to be the custodian of his teachings. Or at least you’re a candidate. Like a good guide, he is not showing you everything at once, but instead teaching you how to look, providing you with the tools and then letting you decode the messages left by other unknown supermen—in this case painters. Once he thinks you’ve mastered this sufficiently, he will disappear—probably for quite a while—and leave you to complete your training at your own pace. Then at some point he will reappear and reveal your role and obligation, letting you know that you are part of a long chain of transmission for this secret knowledge.
“This is how these people have done this for centuries. They always disappear just before their pupils discover who they really are. They look like regular people, but they occasionally make predictions, they know what others say about them, they disappear without any notice, and as I’ve told you, they never stay long in the same place.”
“But that’s absurd,” I objected, while at the same time recognizing many of those things in Fovel. “Why would someone like that choose me, Father? I’m no art expert, I don’t really know the Prado well, or its world. If Fovel is what you’re insinuating, then he’s made a mistake in picking me.”
The old man shook his head. “Come, Javier. How many times have you two met? Three? Four?”
“Five.”
“In that case we have no time to lose, believe me!” he said, his eyes suddenly burning with impatience. “These teachers appear only occasionally. If we really want to confirm his identity, you need to go find him as soon as you can, look him in the face, and demand that he reveal who he is and whom or what he serves. He will tell you if you corner him.”
I was suddenly anxious. “How am I supposed to do that?”
“Tell him you found this.”
Father Castresana took a folded piece of discolored but exquisitely fine paper from under his habit and handed it to me.
“What is it?” I asked him.
“A puzzle. A clue written in Fovel’s own hand.”
I unfolded the paper carefully. In the same neat handwriting that I’d seen on the microfiche in the Teepee, it had been written on a sheet of Bible paper that smelled musty.
“How . . . how did you get this?” I asked.
“Fovel and de Prada used the books in our library as mailboxes to pass messages to each other. That’s why their requests always specified only a small number of volumes, or even a single book. For whatever reason, this one message never got to its intended recipient, and lay forgotten in the pages of a treatise on astrology. I came across it this morning quite by accident as I was going back over all the books they’d requested, page by page.”
I looked at the sheet of paper without knowing what to say.
He smiled. “It’s quite a piece of luck.”
“Is there any more?”
“Not for the moment. Why do you think I had all the books that they consulted sent up to my office? That piece of paper was in a book that Fovel requested in 1970 and that de Prada never got to. It seems to me like a warning, as if your Master meant to stop his rival in his tracks, at the same time challenging him to learn his identity.”
Then Father Juan Luis leaned forward. Seizing my shoulders, and with excitement in his voice, he added, “When he sees that you have this message and that you’ve managed to interrupt his game, you’ll be in a position to ask him what we need to know.”
“You really think he’ll tell me?”
“Of course! Read this when you’re calm and you’ll be convinced as well. I’m sure that when you confront him with this and show him that you’re about to uncover his true nature, he will be honest with you. At that point, he’ll want to give you his version of things.”
“You’re a real optimist, Father.”
“Not optimistic, Javier, just thorough. This is what I would do in your place. Do you realize that no outsider for centuries has gotten as close as you to the secret of the Rosicrucians!”