details far from the public record.”
At odds with the modern world, Father Hubert believes that Catholic activists have too often struggled between their faith and the misguided or wavering convictions of the flock. Perhaps the enactment of a Catholic sharia (modeled after Islam’s “divine” law) could greatly ease the Army of Christ’s awesome task. Perhaps such sharia could also include a fatwa, or decree, that sanctions, in the name of the Lord, the formation of death squads charged with the ritual execution of heretics and apostates. Spurning the lessons of history, trembling with sacramental fervor, Hubert François de Ravaillac, the descendant of Huguenot King Henry IV’s assassin will be ready if called. After all, he was named in honor of Saint Hubert, the patron saint of hunters.
Letter from Rotterdam
Late on the afternoon of October 2, 2008, the phone chimes in the cluttered riverfront office of Michel Montvert, director of the Institute of Symbolic and Hermetic Arts in Paris. On the line is Dr. Manuel Albeniz, a colleague and specialist in Medieval history in Madrid.
“I received a letter this morning from a certain Jan van den Haag. Did you?” Albeniz asks in heavily accented French.
“I don’t know. Why.”
“His signature is followed by a CC addressed to you.”
“Let me look.”
Montvert, a tall, angular, graying man, leans across his desk. The in-box brims with sheaves of documents and unopened mail. He finds the envelope. Peering at the tight, florid script in which his name and address are inscribed, he turns around, leans back in his high-winged leather chair and stretches his feet on the credenza. Through the window, across the slate-colored Seine, the filigreed spires of the Sainte-Chapelle shimmer in the pale pastel colors of dusk. Frozen in time, stupor or lethargy or anguish etched on their granite faces, winged and serpent-like, their shadows stretching over the battlements, gargoyles fix vacant but ever-watchful eyes on the city below.
“I found it.”
“Will you have a chance to read it soon?”
“I doubt it. I’ve been swamped. I’m exhausted. Yesterday I gave a lecture on Frida Kahlo at the Musée d’Orsay. This morning we had a retrospective of the late Jules Perahim’s work. The Bauhaus Museum in Berlin has invited me to address a symposium. I’m flying out tonight. I’ll try to read it on the plane.”
“Do that,” Albeniz presses with some urgency. “You’ll find it … intriguing. Let me hear from you when you get back.”
“De acuerdo. Hasta pronto, hermano.” Deep in thought, Montvert lets out a wearied sigh, fans himself distractedly with the envelope, and stows it in his breast pocket.
In his office at the El Prado Museum, Albeniz, an older man with a high forehead and a lion-like mane of silvery hair, rereads the missive. He frowns, and shakes his head. Grimace turns to grin, grin to sneer.
“Nah, debe ser una broma.” Must be a joke. There’s more hope than certitude in this assessment. Something in Jan van den Haag’s language, in the elegance of his syntax, in his carefully articulated esotericism and allusions reveals broad scholarship and implies initiation into and familiarity with the symbolism and objectives of Freemasonry. His entreaty has the resonance of truth. Most enticing are the data he promises to share in future communications, should Albeniz and Montvert express serious interest.
That evening, as the Airbus that carries Montvert to Berlin descends toward Tempelhof Airport, Albeniz heads to La Escudilla Restaurant, in the Barrio de Trafalgar, for a late supper. He eats absent-mindedly struggling to reconcile history, art, human nature and the politics of discretion.
In his room at the venerable Hotel de Rome on Bebelplatz, off the lime-tree-lined Unter den Linden in the German capital, Montvert reviews his notes for the next day’s symposium. He remembers van den Haag’s letter, still resting in the breast pocket of his jacket. He walks to the closet, retrieves it and stretches on the king-sized bed. Once again, he studies the exquisite penmanship, the stamp, the postmark. He wearily tears the envelope open and removes a sheet of buff-hued paper bearing an impeccably symmetrical italic hand-written message.
P.O.B 3579, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
30 September 2008
Dear Monsieur Montvert,
We share similar interests, political leanings and metaphysical ideals, many of them embodied in the Regius Poem and later reaffirmed in Anderson’s Constitution. You and I are also heir to the same wanderings and tribulations that have darkened the pages of history. It is in that spirit that I write.
I am the direct and last descendant of a legendary artist whose name I cannot reveal at this time. In my possession is a manuscript this early freethinker penned shortly before he died. A codicil stipulates that it will not be opened and circulated until five hundred years after his death. The document has been safeguarded by my family over the centuries and his injunction was scrupulously respected –- until now. Old, unmarried and childless, unsure I will reach the year 2016, when the contents of my ancestor’s revelations can be made public, guilt-ridden but consumed with curiosity, I broke the wax seal and perused an extraordinary compendium of insights and affirmations about his work, personal convictions and the perils of whimsy -- or grotesque realism -- in an age of austere literalism. What I read has left me shaken, enthralled, confused and apprehensive.
Your reputation and that of Señor Albeniz in the world of art and art history are unrivaled. So is your untiring patronage of Surrealism, primitive and contemporary, as are Señor Albeniz’s grasp of inter-doctrinal affairs and expertise on the rift that continues to divide the Church and the secular world.
My forebear’s musings, I believe, need to be made public, studied and deliberated. The airing of this startling document can only be entrusted to a professional, someone whose character, eminence and authority command attention, someone who can stand firm against the firestorm of controversy, perhaps of rancor, that my ancestor’s final words are apt to ignite.
If you wish to learn more and, having done so, can pledge your willingness to shepherd what will surely result in a scandal of sizable magnitude, please write. If not, I apologize for the intrusion with every assurance that I shall bear you not a trace of ill will.
Respectfully and Fraternally,
Jan Henryk van den Haag.
CC. Dr. Manuel Albeniz
Van den Haag’s ornate signature ends with three dots forming an equilateral triangle.
In his luxurious quarters at the papal apartments, Pope Benedict XVI consults with the second most powerful man in the Catholic Church hierarchy, his successor and trusted Inquisitor, the hard-nosed Cardinal William Joseph Levada. The in-camera
