The Letter Pavel Left
~ Thursday, May 1, 2025 ~
I am writing this from Honolulu, from Bishop’s kitchen, at an hour I would normally be asleep. My flight to Los Angeles leaves in two hours. I have not packed. I am writing this because I write things down before I do them, and because if I do not write this now I do not know when I will.
Pavel’s attorney contacted me in early April. I had known about the letter for three weeks before I opened it. That is a longer explanation than I have time for right now. The short version is that I opened it here, at this table, in front of Bishop, which is probably where I should have opened it.
The letter is short. Two pages, handwritten. Pavel wrote it in November 2022, which means he wrote it at the same time he was working through the notebook pages I have published about here — the research into the keeper family in Prague, the section on the old Benedictine house, the sketch with a single word beneath it that I had not understood until I had read it a dozen times. He wrote the letter and gave it to his attorney with instructions to forward it to me if he had not been in contact for eighteen months.
I do not know exactly when Pavel stopped being in contact. I know when the letter arrived.
What it says
I am not going to publish the full letter. Most of it is practical — what he wanted done with the notebook, which sections he considered finished, which sections he considered too incomplete to stand on their own. He names me as the person he trusts to make those judgments. I am not sure the trust is warranted. I am making the judgments anyway.
Near the end of the second page, after the practical instructions, Pavel writes two sentences in Czech that are not practical at all. The first: Našel jsem všechna tři. Jsou tam, přesně kde mají být. I found all three. They are there, exactly where they should be.
The second sentence is the one I showed Bishop.
Ti, kdo nosí třicet stříbrných, jsou na cestě. Those who carry the thirty silver coins are on their way.
Bishop read it once. Then he set the letter down on the table and did not say anything for a while. When he did speak, he did not explain what the phrase meant to him. He did not have to. I have been reading his published work for twelve years. I know which tradition that language comes from.
Why I am going now
Pavel found all three. He left them where they are. He also left a trail — I know this from the notebook. He prepared for someone coming after him. He assumed that someone would be me, eventually, when I stopped being stubborn about it.
What he also knew, and what the second sentence tells me, is that someone else is already looking. Someone who knows the same tradition Pavel was researching. Someone who does not intend to leave the marks where they are.
Pavel wrote this in November 2022. The letter took three and a half years to reach me. I do not know how much of that time the other people have had.
Bishop asked me if I wanted company. I said no. He did not argue. He said one thing before I went to pack: that the marks needed to be found by someone who understood the obligation, not just the location. That the tradition was not only about finding.
I told him I would think about it on the plane.
I have a connection in Los Angeles and another in Frankfurt. I should be in Prague by the third.
A precaution
I do not normally ask for help. I am not asking now, exactly.
Someone told me — I will not say who — that there is a group of people in Czechia with a particular aptitude for following hidden trails. Ciphers, fragments, things that were not meant to be found easily. I do not know them. I am not telling them the story. But I have sent a message. If I have not written here by the end of June, they will know to look.
I do not expect to need them. I am going, I am finding what is there, I am writing it up, I am coming home. That is the plan.
Plans are not contracts.
Related
- What Pavel Was Looking For — the notebook; how Pavel followed the trail
- What Pavel Left — the notebook itself; what I did and did not publish
- Those Who Held the Sign — Bishop Kapalini on the keeper tradition; the obligation that comes with finding