Under the Egg

by Laura Marx Fitzgerald

  As it turns out, the only raps at the door came from Bodhi. But I skulked around with the curtains drawn, deliberately avoiding her knocks and notes.

  Tuesday morning I found a slip of paper shoved through the mail slot: Googling ‘Anna Trenczer’/‘Anna Trencher’, but found 0. Prbly married, chgd name. Wd Eddie know how 2 find out? Meet @ library today @ 12:00. B.

  I spent the day taking inventory on the pantry (beans getting low) and doing another round of canning. On Wednesday I got this note: Where r u? Eddie gave me some books on Holocaust. Also, he has a friend who can help us. Y DON’T U HAVE A PHONE?!?

  Thursday I got two notes: R u trapped under a chiffarobe? and ?????????????.

  Friday morning was particularly stifling, and when I looked in the mirror I saw that I was starting to get crazy eyes like that lady in the park who wears underwear over her clothes. It was time to leave the house.

  The day wasn’t good for anything besides the city pool, so I put on my mom’s old neon bathing suit and a cover-up I’d made out of an old towel. With the garden tended, my mother’s tea tray by her door, and a lunch of hard-boiled eggs and green beans in my sweater bag, I headed out the front door feeling quite self-sufficient.

  Bodhi was waiting for me on the front stoop.

  She brushed the paint chips off the back of her khakis as she stood up. “Finally.”

  “Oh, hi. There you are,” I chirped.

  “No, there you are. Why have you been avoiding me?”

  “I haven’t been avoiding—”

  “—me, yes you have.” Bodhi blocked my way, her arms folded.

  “I’ve been busy,” I sniffed. “Some of us have chores, you know. Some of us don’t have a team of assistants to run our lives.”

  Bodhi regarded me with more amusement than anger. “I think you’re the one who wants a team of assistants. But I’m not doing this alone.”

  “What alone? I didn’t ask you to do anything.”

  “What do you think I’m doing? Finding this girl, this Anna Trenczer.”

  Bodhi’s big brown eyes were fixed on me, and I looked away. “I’m not sure I want to find her.”

  I squeezed past Bodhi and headed down the sidewalk.

  “Don’t want to find her?” Bodhi trotted alongside me. “Isn’t that what your grandfather asked you to do? There’s this girl out there—well, a woman now—waiting for her painting. You’re just going to hold on to it?”

  “Isn’t that what Jack did? Why should I do anything different?”

  We rounded Seventh Avenue, my course fixed on the pool.

  “Listen,” I huffed, “I’ve lost my grandfather. I’ve lost the painting that I looked at every morning of my life. I’ve lost the hidden stash of treasure—if there ever even was one—that was promised to me. And if I give this painting away, I’ll lose the last thing—it turns out the only thing—my grandfather left me.” I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “I’m not losing any more.”

  Bodhi looked baffled. “You’re crazy. Yeah, you’ve lost some things, but you’ve found so much. You’ve found this beautiful painting. You’ve found a whole side of your grandfather you never knew existed. You’ve found all this history and all these people and all their stories.”

  She smiled shyly.

  “And you’ve found a friend. So have I.” Bodhi linked her arm in mine like a character in a Nancy Drew book. “This is turning into the best summer I’ve ever had. And that includes the summer I spent snowboarding in Argentina.”

  “Why, girls, what fun. I was just thinking of you.”

  We looked up to see a familiar figure in black waddling toward us. Reverend Cecily still wore her Birkenstocks, but now with a combination of black Bermuda shorts and shirt with a priest’s collar.

  “How goes your mystery? Was my friend Gus of any help?”

  “Who?”

  “Augustus Garvey. My parishioner at Cadwalader’s.”

  If I had known he went by Gus, I might not have been so intimidated. “Not exactly.”

  “Oh, that’s a shame. This painting has gotten under my skin, you know. There’s something about it, isn’t there? One look, and it just takes hold.”

  “That’s just what I was saying to Theo here.” Bodhi stuck out her tongue at me.

  “Well, I was just mulling it over the other day,” Reverend Cecily rummaged around a satchel she carried and produced a folded up slip of paper, “I went back to the poem and found an alternate reading. There’s something about this idea of Raphael.”

  Bodhi and I exchanged looks. In all the excitement around Nazis and secret missions and missing girls, I’d almost forgotten about the painting itself.

  “Raphael, huh?” I reached out my hand. “Well, anything’s possible. Maybe I could look at those notes?”

  “Of course.” She pressed the paper into my open hand. “But you must promise me to come back and report all your findings. I have become quite entranced by this painting.”

  “Will do. Well, thanks, Reverend Cecily.”

  “Not at all.” She gave my shoulder a squeeze and waddled away down Seventh Avenue.

  Bodhi blocked my way on the sidewalk again. “She’s right. And you know she’s right.”

  “Who’s right?” A shadow fell over me as a hulking figure drew near enough to block out the sun. It was Eddie. He flipped his mirrored sunglasses on top of his shaved head. “I thought we were meeting at the diner.”

  “We were. But this one’s having second thoughts.”

  “Who’s meeting at the diner?” I looked back and forth between them.

  “We are. You are. That’s why I came by your house. Eddie found us a lead.”

  “Well, not a lead. A friend. Well, not a friend. Although, you know, we’re friendly, but not friend-friends,” Eddie blushed. “A classmate. From my Library Science degree. Anyway, she works nearby, and she said she can help you track down this missing girl.”

  I looked at Bodhi. “You told him?”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not? Because—” I must have been yelling, because even a hipster in headphones looked up. “Because this is my painting, my mystery, and my business. And it’s my decision whether or not to finish it.”

  “Oh, hello, Miss Theo.” The smell of roasted vanilla floated over me, and I turned around to see Sanjiv pushing his cart past us. “I was thinking about your dilemma. Latex. It must be latex paint, I think. I have some research to show you.”

  Bodhi put her arm around my shoulder.

  “Sorry, Theo. It’s bigger than the both of us now.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Eddie’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.