Origin

Ambra had now returned the dashboard display to its default page—a navigation program consisting of a satellite photo on which a tiny “avatar” of their car was visible. Langdon could see that they had wound through the Collserola Mountains and were now merging onto Highway B-20 toward Barcelona. To the south of their location, on the satellite photo, Langdon spotted something unusual that drew his attention—a large forested area in the middle of the urban sprawl. The green expanse was elongated and amorphous, like a giant amoeba.

“Is that Parc Güell?” he asked.

Ambra glanced at the screen and nodded. “Good eye.”

“Edmond stopped there frequently,” Winston added, “on his way home from the airport.”

Langdon was not surprised. Parc Güell was one of the best-known masterpieces of Antoni Gaudí—the same architect and artist whose work Edmond displayed on his phone case. Gaudí was a lot like Edmond, Langdon thought. A groundbreaking visionary for whom the normal rules did not apply.

A devout student of nature, Antoni Gaudí had taken his architectural inspiration from organic forms, using “God’s natural world” to help him design fluid biomorphic structures that often appeared to have grown out of the ground themselves. There are no straight lines in nature, Gaudí was once quoted as saying, and indeed, there were very few straight lines in his work either.

Often described as the progenitor of “living architecture” and “biological design,” Gaudí invented never-before-seen techniques of carpentry, ironwork, glasswork, and ceramics in order to “sheathe” his buildings in dazzling, colorful skins.

Even now, nearly a century after Gaudí’s death, tourists from around the world traveled to Barcelona to get a glimpse of his inimitable modernist style. His works included parks, public buildings, private mansions, and, of course, his magnum opus—Sagrada Família—the massive Catholic basilica whose skyscraping “sea sponge spires” dominated Barcelona’s skyline, and which critics hailed as being “unlike anything in the entire history of art.”

Langdon had always marveled at Gaudí’s audacious vision for Sagrada Família—a basilica so colossal that it remained under construction today, nearly 140 years after its groundbreaking.

Tonight, as Langdon eyed the car’s satellite image of Gaudí’s famous Parc Güell, he recalled his first visit to the park as a college student—a stroll through a fantasyland of twisting treelike columns supporting elevated walkways, nebulous misshapen benches, grottoes with fountains resembling dragons and fish, and an undulating white wall so distinctively fluid that it looked like the whipping flagellum of a giant single-celled creature.

“Edmond loved everything Gaudí,” Winston continued, “in particular his concept of nature as organic art.”

Langdon’s mind touched again on Edmond’s discovery. Nature. Organics. The Creation. He flashed on Gaudí’s famous Barcelona Panots—hexagonal paving tiles commissioned for the sidewalks of the city. Each tile bore an identical swirling design of seemingly meaningless squiggles, and yet when they were all arranged and rotated as intended, a startling pattern emerged—an underwater seascape that gave the impression of plankton, microbes, and undersea flora—La Sopa Primordial, as the locals often called the design.

Gaudí’s primordial soup, Langdon thought, again startled by how perfectly the city of Barcelona dovetailed with Edmond’s curiosity about the beginnings of life. The prevailing scientific theory was that life had begun in the earth’s primordial soup—those early oceans where volcanoes spewed rich chemicals, which swirled around one another, constantly bombarded by lightning bolts from endless storms … until suddenly, like some kind of microscopic golem, the first single-celled creature sprang to life.

“Ambra,” Langdon said, “you’re a museum curator—you must have discussed art frequently with Edmond. Did he ever tell you specifically what it was about Gaudí that spoke to him?”

“Only what Winston mentioned,” she replied. “His architecture feels as if it were created by nature herself. Gaudí’s grottoes seem carved by the wind and rain, his supporting pillars seem to have grown out of the earth, and his tile work resembles primitive sea life.” She shrugged. “Whatever the reason, Edmond admired Gaudí enough to move to Spain.”

Langdon glanced over at her, surprised. He knew Edmond owned houses in several countries around the world, but in recent years, he’d chosen to settle in Spain. “You’re saying Edmond moved here because of the art of Gaudí?”

“I believe he did,” Ambra said. “I once asked him, ‘Why Spain?’ and he told me he had the rare opportunity to rent a unique property here—a property unlike anything else in the world. I assume he meant his apartment,” she said.