The Secret Supper (12 page)

A new idea occurred to me: Did the Father Prior and I share the same riddle without knowing it?

“If this place were already consecrated,”—the Father Prior’s face lit up as he pushed the heavy door—“we’d all wash our hands and you two would wait outside until I gave you leave to enter—”

“But it hasn’t been!” screeched the scribe.

“No. Not yet. But that will not prevent its holy atmosphere to soak into our souls.”

“Holy atmosphere! Rubbish!”

And with these words, we entered.

As I had supposed, I had stepped into the monastery’s future refectory. It was dark and cold, lined with huge cartons resting against the walls among the jumble. Ropes, bricks, screens, boxes and, most curious of all, a table set for dinner and covered with a large cotton cloth; all filled a room that seemed to have fallen into oblivion a long time ago. The table was the thing that most drew my attention, since it seemed to be the only trace of order amidst the chaos. Nothing suggested that it had been put to use. The plates were empty and, like the crockery, were covered by a fine coat of dust, as if untouched for weeks.

“I beg you not to be alarmed by the sorry state of our dining room,” said the Father Prior as he rolled up the sleeves of his habit and made his way through the sea of wooden planks. “This will be our refectory. It’s been like this for three years now, can you imagine? The brothers are barely allowed to enter, by order of Leonardo himself, who keeps it locked up until his work is finished. In the meantime, our furniture lies molding in that corner there, among the dirt and the detestable smell of paint.”

“It’s a veritable hell, did I not say so? A hell with its very own devil—”

“Brother Benedetto, in God’s name!”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “In Rome we’re always under construction; the atmosphere is familiar.”

Separated from the rest of the stuff by wooden screens, in one of the side wings of the immense room, one could make out a board cut out in the shape of a U, on which were piled up long benches painted in black varnish, as well as the remains of an exquisite wooden canopy, rotting with mold. As we made our way through the discarded furniture, the Father Prior commented:

“None of the decoration work in the monastery is on time. But the worst delays are in this room. It seems impossible to reach the point at which it will all be finished.”

“It’s Leonardo’s fault,” Brother Benedetto growled again. “He’s been toying with us for months. Let’s finish with him, once and for all!”

“Please be silent. Let me explain our problem to Father Agostino.”

The Father Prior looked both ways, as if to ascertain that there was no one else listening. The precaution seemed absurd: since we had left the church, we had not met anyone except the one-eyed monk, and it was hardly likely that there’d be someone hiding there instead of preparing for the funeral or attending to daily duties. And yet the Father Prior seemed uncertain, afraid. Perhaps that is why he lowered his voice to a whisper as he bent over my ear:

“You’ll soon understand my precaution.”

“Indeed?”

The Father Prior nodded nervously.

“Master Leonardo is said to be a very influential man and might have me removed if he knew that I’ve allowed you to enter without his permission.”

“Leonardo da Vinci?”

“Don’t say his name so loud!” he whispered. “Does it surprise you? The duke himself called on him four years ago to help him decorate this monastery. Ludovico il Moro wants the Sforza family pantheon to be placed beneath the apse of the church and he requires magnificent, unimpeachable surroundings to justify his decision in the eyes of his relatives. That is why he contracted Leonardo. And believe me when I say that since the duke embarked in this project, there hasn’t been a single day of peace under this roof.”

“Not one,” Brother Benedetto confirmed. “And you know why? Because this Master who always wears white, whom you’ll never see eating meat or killing an animal, is in truth an evil soul. He’s introduced a sinister heresy in his paintings for our community and has defied us to find it before he finishes them. And Ludovico il Moro lends him his support!”

“But Leonardo is not—”

“A heretic?” he interrupted me. “No, of course not. At a first glance, he doesn’t appear to be one. He won’t hurt a fly, he spends his days meditating or jotting down things in his notebooks, and gives every appearance of being a wise man. But I’m certain that the Master is not a good Christian.”

“May I ask something?”

The Father Prior nodded in assent.

“Is it true that you ordered all available information to be gathered on Leonardo’s past? Why have you never trusted him? The brother librarian told me so.”

“You see, it was just after he launched his challenge. As you can understand, we were forced to dig into his past to find out what kind of man we were dealing with. You’d have done the same had he challenged the Holy Office.”

“I suppose so.”

“I did indeed put Father Alessandro in charge of drawing out a profile of his work, in order to be a step ahead of his plans. That was how we found out that the Franciscans in Milan had already been plagued by serious problems because of Master Leonardo. Apparently, he used pagan sources to document his paintings, leading the faithful into dangerous misinterpretations.”

“Father Alessandro told me about that too, and about a heretical book by a certain Amadeo.”

“The Apocalipsis Nova.”

“Exactly.”

“But that book is only a small sample of what was discovered. Didn’t he tell you anything about Leonardo’s scruples regarding certain biblical scenes?”

“Scruples?”

“Very revealing scruples. Until this very day, we haven’t been able to find a single work by Leonardo depicting the Crucifixion. Not one. Nor any that show scenes from Our Lord’s Passion.”

“Perhaps he was never commissioned to paint one.”

“No, Father Agostino. The Tuscan has avoided painting these scriptural episodes for some obscure reason. At first we thought he might be a Jew, but later we discovered that he wasn’t. He didn’t keep the rules of Sabbath nor any of the Hebrew customs.”

“So, then?”

“Well…I believe that anomaly is somehow related to the problem that concerns us.”

“Tell me about Leonardo. Father Alessandro never mentioned that he had ever challenged you.”

“The librarian wasn’t present when it took place. And, in our community, barely half a dozen brothers are aware of the facts. It all started during one of the courtesy visits that Donna Beatrice paid Leonardo, a couple of years ago. The Master had finished painting Saint Thomas in the Last Supper. He had depicted him as a bearded man, lifting his index finger, seated close to Christ.”

“I imagine that the finger is the one he’ll later put in Christ’s wound, once Our Lord was resurrected, isn’t that right?”

“That is what I thought and that is what I said to Her Grace. But Leonardo laughed at my interpretation. He said that we priests had no idea of symbolism, and that if he wished he could portray Mahomet himself without any of us noticing.”

“He said that?”

“Donna Beatrice and the Master burst out laughing, and we felt very offended. But what could we do? To quarrel with the duke’s wife and with his favorite painter? If we did, no doubt Leonardo would have blamed us for the delays in his Last Supper.”

The Father Prior continued.

“In truth, it was I who provoked him. I wanted to show him that I wasn’t as thickheaded in interpreting symbols as he made me out to be, but in doing so, I entered a field into which I never should have ventured.”

“What do you mean, Father Prior?”

“In those days, I used to visit the Rochetta Palace in order to inform the duke of the progress of the work at Santa Maria. And on several occasions I came upon Donna Beatrice playing in the throne room with a deck of cards. The figures on these cards were strangely attractive, painted in lively colors. They depicted hanged men, women holding stars, fauns, popes, blindfolded angels, devils. Very soon, I learned that these cards were an old family heirloom. They had been designed by the old Duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti, with the assistance of the condottiere Francesco Sforza, in 1441. Later, when Sforza gained control over the dukedom, he offered the deck to his children, and a copy eventually ended up in the hands of Ludovico il Moro.”

“What happened then?”

“You’ll see. One of these cards showed a woman dressed as a Franciscan, holding a closed book in her hand. It drew my attention because the woman was wearing a man’s habit, and she seemed to be pregnant. Can you imagine? A pregnant woman in a Franciscan habit? The whole thing seemed a mockery. Well, I don’t know why, I recalled that card during the discussion with Leonardo, and I decided to show off. ‘I know what the Franciscan woman on the card means,’ I said. Donna Beatrice became very serious. ‘What can you know?’ she sneered. ‘It’s a symbol that refers to you, Your Grace,’ I said. She became interested. ‘The Franciscan woman is a crowned maiden, which means she has your same honored position. And she is pregnant, which proclaims the same state of grace for you. That card is a warning of what fate has in store for you.’ ”

“And the book?” I asked.

“That was what offended me most. I told her that the Franciscan woman kept the book closed in order to hide the fact that it was a forbidden text. ‘And what text might that be?’ Master Leonardo questioned me. ‘Perhaps the Apocalipsis Nova, with which you are so familiar,’ I replied with a touch of scorn. This was when Leonardo mustered up his courage and proposed the challenge. ‘You have no idea,’ he said. ‘Obviously it’s an important book. As important as the Bible, even more so, but your theologian’s pride will prevent you from ever knowing it.’ And he added: ‘When the future son of Her Grace is born, I will have finished incorporating its secrets into my Cenacolo. And I assure you that, even though they’ll be in front of your very noses, you won’t ever be able to read them. That will be the greatness of my riddle. And also the proof of your foolishness.”

19

“When might I see The Last Supper?” I asked the Father Prior.

He smiled.

“Now, if you wish,” he said. “There it is, in front of you. All you need to do is open your eyes.”

At first, I did not know where to look. The only painting I was able to make out in the dark refectory, which stank of damp and dust, was a Mary Magdalene hanging on the southern wall of the room. She was grasping the feet of Christ on the Cross and weeping under the ecstatic look of Saint Dominic. She was kneeling on a rectangular stone on which I could read a name I had not heard before: “Io Donatvs Montorfanv P.”

“That’s a work by Master Montorfano,” the Father Prior explained. “A pious, praiseworthy piece, which he finished a couple of years ago. But it isn’t the one you wish to see.”

The Father Prior then made a gesture toward the opposite wall. The story of the card and the secret book had distracted me to the point that I could barely make out what my eyes were seeing. A mountain of planks filled a fair section of the refectory’s northern corner, and yet the feeble light that lit that particular area allowed to me to perceive something that froze me to the spot. Indeed: beyond the barrier of boxes and cartons, in between the spaces left by the great wood scaffolding that crossed the wall from one side to the other, another room could be seen! It took me a moment to understand that this was an illusion. But what an illusion! Sitting at a rectangular banquet table identical to the one that had attracted my attention upon entering, thirteen human figures with lifelike attitudes and gestures seemed to be acting out some theatrical work for our eyes only. But it was no comedy, God forgive me the thought! They were the most realistic and moving portraits I had ever seen of Our Lord Jesus Christ and His disciples. It is true that a few of the faces still needed more definition, among them that of Christ Himself, but the composition was almost finished—and it breathed life.

“Can you see it? Can you make out what’s behind it?”

I swallowed hard before nodding.

Brother Benedetto, oddly satisfied, gave me a light tap on the shoulder, inviting me to draw nearer to the magical wall.

“Come closer, it won’t bite you. It’s the Opus Diaboli of which I warned you. Seductive as the serpent in Eden, and quite as poisonous.”

It is impossible to put into words what I felt at that moment. I had the impression of seeing a forbidden scene, the frozen image of something that had taken place fifteen centuries ago and that Leonardo had managed to immortalize with inconceivable realism. I could not understand then why Brother Benedetto called it “the work of the Devil” when it seemed to be a gift of the angels themselves. As in a trance, I walked toward it, without looking to see where I put my feet. The closer I got, the more alive the wall seemed to become. Dear God! Suddenly I understood the function of that table laid out beneath the scaffolding: cloth, crockery, jugs and crystal glasses, and even porcelain dishes were set out in identical fashion on the wall six feet above it, as real as those below. But who were those disciples? Whose features had he borrowed for the portraits? Where had he found inspiration for their clothing?

“If you like, Father Agostino, we can climb onto the scaffolding to take a closer look. I don’t think Master Leonardo will be around today to supervise his work.”

Of course I’d like to, I thought.

“You will soon discover that, however close you get, you won’t appreciate it more. What happens here is the contrary of what happens in an ordinary painting: if you approach the work too closely, you become dizzy and incapable of finding a single brushstroke to help you better understand it.”

“A further proof of his heresy!” Brother Benedetto growled again. “The man is a sorcerer!”

I was dumbfounded. For a few seconds, maybe minutes, I was incapable of tearing my eyes from the most marvelous figures I had ever seen in my entire life. There, indeed, were no traces, outlines or erasures, nor smudges of charcoal pencils. What did it matter? Even in its unfinished state, with two of the apostles barely sketched onto the wall, with the face of Our Lord still devoid of expression and the outside borders of three other figures waiting to be colored in, the painting allowed the viewer to roam freely through the sacred feast. The Father Prior, aware of the time, made an effort to return me to reality.