Under the Egg (13 page)

E
ddie's friend worked at the Center of Jewish History, a high-tech research consortium built out of five different organizations across six conjoined buildings. We were metal-detected, registered, photographed, reregistered, and finally admitted to the central reading room. Between my towel-dress, Bodhi's uniform, and Eddie's tattoos, we didn't exactly blend in among the scholars bent over their Talmuds and laptops.

Eddie's friend Goldie jumped in immediately, dismissing any pleasantries. “Okay, Eddie, I got your e-mail. Who exactly are we looking for?” she asked, pushing up her headband and positioning herself at a terminal behind the long reception desk. She spoke with a slight accent, sort of Brooklyn by way of Poland, and her voice sailed through the library like a deli order.

“It's for me,” I said, pulling my towel-dress up deeper into my armpits. Next to Goldie's conservative black stockings and long sleeves, I felt half naked—which technically I was. “We're looking for a girl, Anna Trenczer. Well, a woman now.”

“If she's alive at all,” added Bodhi.

Goldie nodded, unfazed. “Okay, we'll start with the obvious sources first. Yad Vashem—”

“That's the Holocaust museum in Israel,” Eddie cut in for our benefit.

Goldie's focus never left the computer screen. “Yad Vashem has the world's most comprehensive online database of Holocaust victims . . . and . . .” she typed and hit enter, typed and hit enter, “. . . they're not showing anything for Anna Trenczer—”

I leaned over the desk. “It could be spelled with -C-Z-E-R, but also with -C-H-E-R, or possibly—”

“Obviously. I already allowed for phonetic matches.” Goldie rolled her eyes at Eddie as if to say, “Amateurs.”

“Oh.” I must have sounded disappointed, because Goldie stopped and looked at me. “Look now, don't panic. First of all, this is maybe good news. This database contains only the names of the deceased, not survivors. So if Anna Trenczer is not here, then maybe she survived.”

“So . . . it's good news?” asked Bodhi.

“Well, you have to remember: even the Yad Vashem site only contains about two-thirds of the Jewish victims. That's around two million people unaccounted for.”

Two million people. Vanished. With no record of their life or death.

Goldie continued. “For survivors, the best place to look is—

“—the U.S. Holocaust Museum database. They have a Survivors Registry, plus they're an excellent source of recorded oral histories and survivor testimonies.” Eddie beamed.

Goldie looked annoyed. “Yes, I know. Quit interrupting me!”

Bodhi elbowed Eddie in the ribs. “Dude,” she whispered, “play it cool.”

More typing from Goldie. “The problem there, of course, is that Anna Trenczer would have had to register herself.” Not surprisingly, she hadn't.

I started to sigh, but Goldie stopped me with one look. “Listen, this is not one-stop shopping, you know? Even if we find something, you have to remember that the files are not entirely accurate. Just last week a guy comes in and says, ‘So, I'm dead and no one told me?' His cousin had submitted testimony that he died in a camp. So remember: we have to cross-check many, many sources.”

The sign above Goldie read
NO FOOD AND DRINK
. My stomach rumbled.

“No Anna Trenczer-Trencher-Trencer-Trenser in the refugee organizations. None on the orphan lists.” Goldie flitted from terminal to bookshelf to file cabinet, an elfin information powerhouse. “Nothing with European Jewish Children's Aid. No Holocaust restitution claims filed . . .” She stopped at the keyboard again. “You said she was last seen in France?”

“Yes, she—”

Goldie had already ping-ponged her way to the website for Mémorial de la Shoah, the research center in Paris. “Got it. See?” She turned the terminal our way, and we all three leaned in to get a better look.

There was the whole Trenczer family, their tragic fate boiled down to a few lines on a computer screen.

Monsieur TRENCZER Maxim né le 26/05/1909 à CRACOVIE. Interné à Drancy de 17/07/1942. Déporté à Auschwitz par le convoi
n°
17 au départ de Drancy le 10/08/1942. De profession propriétaire de la galerie.

Madame TRENCZER Éva née le 22/04/1911 à
CRACOVIE. Internée à Drancy de 17/07/1942. Déportée à Auschwitz par le convoi
n°
17 au départ de Drancy le 10/08/1942.

Mademoiselle TRENCZER Anna née le 3/10/1937 à PARIS. Internée à Drancy de 17/07/1942.

“I only read German and Yiddish,” said Goldie. “Anyone read French?”

Bodhi reached for her translation app, but I put my hand over her phone. “No.”

“I do!” jumped in Eddie. “I mean,” he said, with a mighty effort at restraint, “I might, y'know, know a little.”

“Okay then. Let's see what you've got.” Goldie turned the computer screen toward him.

“It's showing us the family's internment and deportation,” Eddie began. Was he sucking in his gut? “Says here the dad, Max, was born in Kraków in oh nine, but was held at Drancy—meaning he was living in Paris—until he was deported. Sent to Auschwitz on the train convoy numbered seventeen. His wife, Eva, too; same transport.”

Goldie looked approvingly at Eddie, then moved to another terminal where she accessed another database. “Eva and Max do pop up on the Yad Vashem databases. Eva's death at Auschwitz confirmed shortly after the convoy arrived. Max transferred out to Buchenwald, then Berga-an-der-Elster, died March 7, 1945.” She came back to our terminal and tapped the screen. “This is good news.”

I blinked. “In what possible way is any of this awful story good?”

“Because it confirms everything you've told me so far, which means your sources are credible. And look at Anna's file again. What's missing?”

Mademoiselle TRENCZER Anna née le 23/10/1937 à PARIS. Internée à Drancy de 17/07/1942
. Anna Trenczer, born in Paris, interned at Drancy . . . that's all.

“There's no deportation date,” said Eddie. “She was never sent out of the camp.”

“Right,” said Goldie, and I think she may have even smiled. “It's promising.”

“But it doesn't tell us anything new,” complained Bodhi. “We still don't know what happened to her.”

“What time is it?” Goldie asked.

Eddie held out his watch. “Eleven forty-two!”

“There might be time . . .” Goldie trailed off as she exited through a small door behind her.

We waited there for ten or fifteen minutes. Bodhi gave Eddie more tips on playing-hard-to-get. Eddie responded by peering through the door compulsively every few seconds.

Goldie finally re-emerged with an enormous book in her arms and heaved it on the counter. “Found her.”

“You found her? Where is she?” As the words left my mouth, I didn't know whether to feel happy or sad.

“Well. Kind of.” Goldie readjusted her headband again and started paging through the book. “I called a colleague at the Mémorial de la Shoah.”

“Of course,” Eddie nodded. “In Paris.”

“Yes. And I was lucky to catch him before he went home. Anyway, they have access there to more of the Drancy documents. And Jean-Paul—that's my colleague—found Anna Trenczer's file. He said she was signed out of the camp on,” Goldie stopped to consult her notes, “August 28, 1942, by a Nazi officer named Hans Brandt.”

“Signed out?” It made it sound as if he was taking her to a dental appointment. “Where did he take her?”

“I don't know. And we can't ask Herr Brandt because he committed suicide in nineteen forty-five while awaiting trial for war crimes.”

“Hans Brandt.” Eddie stroked his goatee. “That sounds familiar to me. Was he—”

“Yes, the man overseeing the deportations. He's also known by his moniker, the Paris Executioner.”

“Oh, yes, now I remember. Brandt features heavily in Beliveau's work on French collaboration and the Vichy Regime. Fascinating reading.”

Goldie's eyes lit up, and I swear I saw her eyelashes bat. “I know, isn't it? Well, if you liked Beliveau, you should read Brunner's book on the postwar—”

“Excuse me. Did you really just say ‘the Paris Executioner'?” Bodhi broke in. “Um, that doesn't sound good.”

“No,” Goldie turned back to us, “it doesn't. But there's one bit of good news. Jean-Paul also reminded me of a book in our collection. A compilation of sixty-five thousand identity cards from a nineteen forty-one census of Jews living in France. I've got it here.” She flipped past one black-and-white face after another, each attached to an official-looking card. “It may not help us find Anna, but it should give us—oh! Here.” Goldie pointed to a photo in the middle of the book. “There she is. That's Anna Trenczer.”

We looked, and at the same moment, we gasped. Because, in the midst of page after page of terrified, terrorized faces, here was the face of blissful ignorance. With her neatly combed bob and toothy grin, this was a girl who knew nothing of the reasons behind her latest portrait. Her smile said: And why wouldn't you want to snap my picture? Will we get ice cream afterward?

The idea of this girl left in the hands of the Paris Executioner was sickening.

“It's nice to have a face to the name,” Bodhi said, “but does it buy us anything? I mean, does it get us any closer to finding Anna?”

“No,” said Goldie bluntly. “This is the ‘before.' This,” she pointed to the database still up on the computer screen, “is the ‘after.' And the ‘after' is going to take a lot more work.”

“More work for . . .” I looked at Goldie hopefully.

“For you. Or for someone you hire; there are archivists who take on cases like these for a fee.” She saw my face fall, and her eyes seemed to take in the scruffiness of our ragtag group.

Eddie leaned his elbows on the counter. “It wouldn't be the same working with anyone else.”

Goldie ducked her chin shyly. “Well,
maybe
I could do a bit more digging. But I have to warn you: Survivors of the Holocaust are much harder to track down than the victims. The survivors who have died since the war are even harder; we don't have any wartime death records to go on, and they're no longer in any telephone books or electronic databases.”

Goldie looked back and forth at our expectant faces, then sighed and glanced at her notes once more. “There is one thing. It's Hans Brandt. We know he was ruthlessly efficient at rounding up Jews, but he was also a devout Roman Catholic.”

“I wouldn't call him exactly devout,” muttered Bodhi.

“Trust me, these Nazis were pretty inconsistent, morality-wise. Anyway, Brandt sent Jews, Gypsies, dissidents—all kinds of people to the camps—but he left the convents and monasteries in his districts pretty much alone. It's possible . . .” She tapped her notes with a pen. “And if they still had the baptismal certificates . . .”

“Baptismal certificates?” I shook my head. “What does that have to do with—”

Goldie, her mind now commandeered by her latest theory, reached for another book and waved us away with her hands. Bodhi and I crept away to re-collect our bags from the storage lockers.

“Eddie, you coming?”

But Eddie didn't hear us. He was bent over the book with Goldie, their heads almost touching. More volumes towered just beyond Goldie's elbow. This might take all afternoon.

W
hile Goldie pursued her mysterious lead and Lydon plotted his warrant, Bodhi and I had nothing to do but wait. We regrouped the next day in Jack's studio, guarding the painting while we sipped un-iced tea (really, just the leftover morning's tea served lukewarm in jelly jars).

It was clear we were at a crossroads—but we didn't even know which directions the signs pointed.

“To wit:—” I launched in.

“To
what
?” Bodhi interrupted.

“To wit,” I said. “It means, thusly—”

Bodhi rolled her eyes. “Oh jeez, just talk like a normal person for once and not like an eighty-year-old in your old lady slip.”

“Fine, okay,” I said, crossing my arms over my grandmother's repurposed negligee (which I had thought made a nice sundress). “Here's what we know. Anna Trenczer is probably—let's face it—dead. Even if she survived the camp, it's not likely she survived the Paris Executioner. And we know her parents are dead, and most likely, all of her family members.”

“We don't know that actually,” mused Bodhi. “There could be some long, lost cousin out there.”

“Yes,” I admitted, “but we won't find them without hiring an archivist, like Goldie said.”

“True dat,” nodded Bodhi.

“Okay, I'll stop talking like an old lady if you stop impersonating rap stars.”

“Hip-hop artists,” Bodhi corrected. I gave her a look, after which she said nothing but made an okay sign.

“We also know that the painting is stolen.”

“With no authentication.”

“Or documentation. So I can't sell it.”

“And if you can't find Anna, you can't return it.”

“So what was the point?” I clenched my jar of tea. “Jack must've known that I had no chance of finding Anna Trenczer. So why leave me with this great big mystery? Why shouldn't I just give the stupid painting to Lydon?”

“I don't know, Theo,” said Bodhi. “Maybe you should.”

We sat with that sign on the crossroads, attempting to dismantle the mental roadblock that kept us from admitting defeat.

Bodhi finally spoke. “There is one thing that Goldie said that's been bothering me.”

“Just one?”

“Okay, there were a lot of things that were . . . disturbing. But only one that doesn't make sense. The Nazi officer—he signed Anna out of the camp, right?”

“The Paris Executioner? Seems so.”

Bodhi started pacing the room. “Well, why? If he wanted her to die, he could've just left her there.”

“He needed the painting. She had it.”

“So?” Bodhi stopped in front of me. “He could have gone to the camp—or sent some underling, for that matter—grabbed the painting, kicked her back inside.”

Slowly it dawned on me. “But he signed her out . . .”

“Exactly. I mean, if the Executioner wanted to kill her, it would have been a lot easier to just leave her at the camp and let the system do the dirty work.”

“So do you think he got her to safety?”

Bodhi spoke tentatively. “I think maybe he did.”

“And maybe—”

I was interrupted by a banging on the front door that carried all the way up the stairs. The kind of insistent banging that's only produced by a fist.

Bodhi and I ran to the small front window of Jack's studio that overlooked the street, where a squad car was double-parked. Below, on the stoop, stood at least three men in police uniforms. Plus an older man in a seersucker suit.

I knew in that instant that, whatever happened to the painting, it was not going to leave this house by force. Not this way.

I turned to Bodhi. “Do you think we can wait them out?” I remembered Lydon's last threats. “They probably have a warrant.”

Bodhi shook her head. “I dunno. My dad has been in a couple of cop movies, and I think they can bust their way in if they have a warrant.”

I started moving paintings around the studio, looking for a hiding place.

“They're going to search the whole house, you know,” said Bodhi.

I stopped with my arms full of unfinished canvases. “I know.”

“What about behind the house? In the chicken coop?”

“That's not a bad idea.” I looked out the front window again. “But they'll see us coming down the stairs. Through the glass of the front door.”

“What about the basement?”

“Still have to go down the front stairs.”

“Theo? Theo, are you up there? There's someone at the door.”

My mom's reedy voice floated through the house.

“Shhhhh, Mom,” I hissed. “I'll be down in a minute.”

Turning back to Bodhi, I said, “We've got to find somewhere to stash this before—”

Lydon's muffled voice drifted through the door and all the way up the staircase. “Theodora, we know you're in there. I have a warrant here, and these police officers have every right to break your door down if you don't open it of your own accord. Be a good girl now.”

“Before that,” I finished.

Bodhi furrowed her brow. “Don't you have any secret rooms or passageways or something in this old house?”

One dim, 30-watt lightbulb went off in my brain. “It's a risk,” I muttered. “But she would be at the shop now. And I could get it back before she gets home . . .” I thrust the painting into Bodhi's arms and headed down the stairs to the second floor, calling over my shoulder, “Wait at the top of the stairs. I've got to talk to my mom.”

My mom was hovering on the second floor landing in her bathrobe. “Theo, aren't you going to answer it?” She looked worried. “They seem impatient.”

“Mom, look me in the eyes.” She made a few efforts, her eyes finally landing on my shoulder. Close enough. “Mom, I need you to do something very important. That's Lydon Randolph downstairs with some friends of his. They are coming to see me, but I'm not ready for them yet. I need you to make them some tea.”

“Tea?” She blinked rapidly. “Why me?”

“Because I have to get something ready for them, and you're the only one I can trust to know the right kind of tea to serve.”

My mom looked momentarily confused, then proud. “Lydon and his friends? What kind of friends?”

“Police officers.”

She stood up a bit taller. “Oh, well, that's easy. Something strong and bracing. Lapsang Souchong. I could do that, I suppose.” She wrapped her bathrobe around her tighter. “And the kettle is—”

“On the stove.”

“And the Lapsang—”

“On the windowsill in the yellow tin.” I pushed her in the direction of the stairs. “Oh! And they are really interested in—what's that thing you're working on?”

“Fermat's Last Theorem?”

“Yes! That's why they're here. To hear about that.”

As my mother tripped downstairs like a girl with a gentleman caller, I waved Bodhi and the painting down to the second floor and pulled her into Jack's old bedroom. We closed his door just as I heard my mother greeting Lydon and his merry band.

Jack's scent had faded, but at that moment, it felt overwhelming: paint, turpentine, Old Spice, the smoke of his one Saturday night cigarette. The furniture was just as he'd left it, too: a grand Victorian bedroom set made up with spartan Army blankets. It occurred to me for the first time that they were military issue, brought home from the war.

“How much time can your mom really buy us?” asked Bodhi.

“They won't start here. They'll start poking around downstairs, or go right to the studio. We only need five minutes.”

“But they'll look in here eventually.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “but they won't look in
here
.” I gestured dramatically to the heavy armoire that dominated Jack's room.

“Of course they'll look in there. They'll search every closet.” Bodhi shook her head. “What's wrong with you?”

“No, not in
there
.” I braced my back against the side of the armoire. “Listen, just put the painting down and grab hold of the other side. And help me move this as quietly as you can.”

The armoire weighed twice as much as any other piece of furniture in the house, but we managed to slide it along the floor an inch at a time, hoping the groans and creaks would be lost in the confused conversation I heard downstairs. As predicted, the combination of Mom's meandering thoughts and Lydon's attempts to appear chivalrous in front of the cops was buying us the time we needed.

Finally the armoire had been heaved aside, revealing the door that led directly into 20 Spinney Lane, home of Madame Dumont and brief dwelling place of the first Grandmama Tenpenny.

I said a silent prayer that Madame Dumont was indeed at the shop, turned the knob, and pushed my shoulder against the door. It flew open with surprising ease, and I tumbled on the floor after it.

No Madame Dumont here. I was surrounded by blackness and the smell of mothballs, a jungle of hanging fabric and plastic wrap entangling me from all sides. It turns out Jack didn't have to worry about a lurking Madame Dumont all those years. She, or some earlier occupant, had built a closet in front of the door.

“Are you okay?” asked Bodhi, her head haloed by the light of Jack's room.

I swatted away something woolen. “Yes, fine. Give me the painting.”

Bodhi stepped into the dark closet and placed the painting in my arms. “Better hurry. I just heard them heading up to the studio.”

I left the painting right there on the floor and hopped back into Jack's room, where we reversed the moving process and planted the armoire right back where we'd found it.

By the time Lydon and his men had finished ransacking the rest of the house, Bodhi and I were sitting in the parlor with my mother, drinking Lapsang Souchong and listening to her rattle on about Whoever's Last Theorem.

“Find anything good?” Bodhi inquired sweetly as the men reentered the parlor, wiping their foreheads on their shirtsleeves.

Lydon's tired face reminded me of an old cartoon character who always complained about “those meddling kids.” “Despite an incriminating amount of noise and disruption from your upper floors, no, we did not.” He loosened his tie. “Care to tell us anything, girls?”

“Not really,” I said, sipping my tea.

He turned to the officers who looked hot and bored. “It's clear they have it. Somewhere in this house. Maybe in the walls or some hidden entrance. We need to get some kind of equipment to open up the walls. Or one of those detectors that locate hollow spots. Or—”

The cops exchanged glances that said that this job was not going to get them any closer to making detective. The most senior looking one spoke up: “That's going to require a different kind of warrant than the one you got, sir.”

“What? Why? My good friend, Harry—Judge Harold Greenbaum to you—said all the paperwork was in order.”

“Mr. Randolph, I think we'd better take this outside.”

Lydon drew up his shoulders. “Yes, I think we'd better.

My mother watched the men go, shaking her head. “They didn't seem to know much at all about algebraic number theory,” she said, and shuffled her way back to her room.

As soon as she left, Bodhi turned to me, her eyes ablaze. “Upstairs, and quick!”

We tiptoed past the front door and up the stairs, the men too immersed in their debate to notice us, back up to Jack's room. “Do you have a fire escape?” asked Bodhi.

“Sure, but it just leads out to the backyard. And there isn't any way to get out of the yard again.”

“What about the roof? Couldn't you climb up to the roof from the fire escape outside Jack's studio?”

“Maybe. But not with a painting under my arm.”

“Then I'll climb up. You hand me the painting. Then I walk over the rooftops to my house, slip our bodyguard twenty dollars—well, maybe fifty dollars—not to tell my parents, and climb down my own fire escape. Like Robert DeNiro in
Godfather II
.”

“You guys have bodyguards on your
roof
?”

“Focus here, Theo.” She rapped me on the skull. “We've got to move that armoire again.”

Somehow the armoire had gotten heavier since we left. We inched it aside with even less finesse than before, certain with every scrape that the police would somehow hear us and track the noises to Jack's room.

With not a second to spare, I burst through the connecting door again. But this time, a light beckoned me at the other end of the closet. Where I saw Madame Dumont, sunken to the floor, the cardigan she'd come back for forgotten, my very own painting held in her arms while tears streamed down her face.