“Wow.”
“Yeah, you should have gotten on her good side when you had the chance.”
“I guess so. Good for Victoria. I hope she can turn it around. Or maybe she’ll just sell the company and retire somewhere warm. Do you have that piece of paper? The one I got from Jutting’s pocket?”
“Yeah, why?” Ashna got up and went to retrieve it.
“I realized I’ve never actually seen the solution. Have you heard from Wolhardt?
“Yeah, he said he came up with the same solution but he doesn’t know what it means. He thinks it’s a clue about what piece of music the counterpoint comes from.” She handed me the paper.
“Jutting thought it was a reference to the correct chapter and page of the grimoire, telling him which spell to use.” I looked at the paper. I couldn’t understand the formula but I could see what it led to. There were carefully drawn tables that showed some sort of gradual decomposition from musical notation to strings of text that, eventually, via an algorithmic transformation, yielded a simple string of five numbers and one letter: 1C1312. I stared at it for a moment.
“That guy was obsessed. He must have thought the C was for Cellini,” Ashna said. She kept talking, starting in on another diatribe about Jutting.
I blocked out her voice, closing my eyes. A memory was coming back to me. I was standing in the gallery in Los Angeles, surrounded by a swirl of activity, gazing into the dark, distorted, copper colored depths of the Eliasson piece, the whole gallery behind me reflected and trapped. Another memory bubbled up, replacing the first. Sitting in church when I was maybe twelve years old. The pastor was speaking. Something about darkness, a mirror. I opened my eyes and looked at Ashna. She was looking back at me.
“What is it man? You look spooked.”
“This is simple. Why hasn’t anyone figured it out?”
“What? Tell me.”
I pointed to the paper. “Stupidly simple. Put a colon there. This is a biblical reference. What book of the bible starts with C?”
“I don’t know. I’m Muslim. Jesus! How insensitive. You probably think I’m a terrorist.”
“Just get me a list. Actually, never mind. It’s Corinthians. It has a one in front of it. I think Corinthians is the only one with more than one book. So, one Corinthians, chapter thirteen, verse twelve. Look that up.”
Ashna ran a search on her phone. “King James? American Standard?”
“King James of course.”
“Okay.” She cleared her throat and read without any funny voices, speaking the words clearly and with emotion. “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
We both sat for a moment, thinking our own thoughts.
“Dark saying.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Through a glass, darkly.”
“What does it mean?”
I cast my mind back to the sermon, so many years ago, remembering the pastor’s voice, the shaft of sunlight from a high window lighting up the golden hair of the girl sitting in front of me. “It’s about partial knowledge, partial vision,” I said. “As our mortal selves, we can only glimpse shadows, or dark reflections of reality. But when we die and see God face to face then we will see things as they really are. Something like that. I’m no theologian.” I stopped speaking for a moment. Something was nagging at me—another memory. It came in a rush, Johann Benderick’s office, discussing the dark saying. He had said he didn’t believe it was an evil spell, that what he felt conducting the music was more like a heavenly vision, a parting of curtains after millennia of darkness to reveal the sun. “I think this is it,” I said, focusing on Ashna’s face. “What time is it? Can we call Wolhardt?”
“It’s about six in the evening in California. Let’s try. Ashna placed a video call from her laptop. The little ringer sounded once, twice, then suddenly Wolhardt’s face appeared. He was outside, a lemon tree in the background.
“Hello? Justin and Ashna?”
“Yes,” I said. “Do you have a minute?”
“Sure. I was just having some tea. I’m in my back yard.”
“I think I know what the enigma solution means. It’s a biblical reference. One Corinthians. Chapter Twelve. Verse Thirteen.”
Wolhardt was silent for a moment, looking away from the phone, thinking. “You might be right,” he said, standing. “Just a minute.” We saw a blur of shifting colors as he walked inside. He set his phone on the piano and we saw him walk to a bookshelf and search for a moment, finally pulling out a thick book. He opened it, flipped through for a few moments, found the passage and read silently. When he finished, he looked up, gazing at our faces on his little phone screen. A tear escaped from the corner of his eye. He was obviously overcome with emotion.
“Do you want us to call you back later?” Ashna asked.
“No, I’m fine. If this is correct, I think I know what the counterpoint is. There is a very well-known hymn set to a tune by JS Bach that uses this verse, in German of course.” Wolhardt approached the phone and sat at the piano. He closed his eyes and began to play single notes, hesitantly.
