Now you will know what you are working for. Your mission differs somewhat from mine. I was looking for the painting’s owner. You will look for the painting’s home. Anna Trenczer may or may not be alive, but I have to believe that some relative, no matter how distant, survived somewhere on that vast continent. Find that person. Give them back the power to determine their own path.
One final note: I do not care about my own reputation. Perhaps, in your efforts, you may have to reveal my misdeeds, and hear me slandered as a thief or a speculator. But I can tell you truly that, when you have survived a man-wrought machine that enslaved others for its bidding, murdered them for its pleasure, and sentenced the survivors to a lifetime of haunted memories, you have no appetite left for anything but freedom. And that I have enjoyed in endless amounts.
Your loving Jack
The ballpoint pen appeared again here, in a postscript written in a shakier hand:
My only Theodora,
I wrote this letter for your mother when she was young. Now I know that you are the one I was waiting for.
I told you once that your mother was a songbird, but you are a chicken. Just like me. We dig in, we roost, we never stop scratching until we find what we’re looking for.
Dig, Theodora. Look under the egg and dig deep.
Acknowledgments
One of my favorite writers, Umberto Eco, wrote that “Books always speak of other books.” In this case, Under the Egg was born on page thirty-five of another great art history mystery: The Forger’s Spell by Edward Dolnick.
The Forger’s Spell tells the true story of the man who forged and sold Vermeers to the Nazis (referenced by Theo as she conducts her own research). I was riveted by the stranger-than-fiction story when I stopped at this section:
The easiest test of an old master—and the one test almost certain to be carried out—is to dab the surface with rubbing alcohol. In a genuinely old painting, the surface will be hard, and the alcohol will have no effect. If the painting is new, the alcohol will dissolve a bit of paint, and the tester’s cotton swab will come up smudged with color.
Those three sentences sparked an idea—what if someone deliberately painted over an old master, knowing that they could remove the top layer and leave the original untouched?—and set my mind off and running down the path of forgeries, smuggling, and ultimately Nazi art theft.
Over the course of the following months, three other sources became invaluable. First, a fascinating documentary called The Rape of Europa, based on the exhaustively, exactingly researched book by Lynn H. Nicholas. That led me to Robert M. Edsel’s The Monuments Men, and then Soldiers and Slaves by Roger Cohen, one of the first sources to unveil the abuses at the forgotten Berga labor camp. I highly recommend these excellent books to anyone who wants to know the real-life stories behind Jack’s adventure.
Like Theo, my progress depended on New York City’s great research institutions: namely, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Center for Jewish History. But one institution stands in a class all its own. Thank you to the Brooklyn Public Library, where my fortune in library fines couldn’t begin to repay my gratitude for their online hold system and generous checkout policies. (Did you know you can take out ninety-nine items at a time?!?)
Also like Theo, I am grateful to live in this vibrant city where every interaction sparks ideas and writing leads. Special thanks go to the many people who offered information and insight along the way: Paul Griffin, Marianna Baer, Nancy Mercado, Barbara Veith, Ian Ehling, Carrie Peterson, Morris Marx, Geoffrey Marx, Susan Hawk, Jason and Shira Koch Epstein, not to mention my Latin consultants, Andrew Durbin and Nina Quirk-Goldblatt.
I am beyond blessed to have found two partners who believed in my egg-in-the-rough even more than I did. Thank you, Sara Crowe, for sending me the best e-mail I’ve ever gotten, and thank you, Nancy Conescu, for the gentle and gracious way you pushed to make each draft better.
Finally, thank you to my smart, creative, and endlessly patient husband, Dave, who cheerfuly slogged through many drafts, contributing a critical eye and nifty plot points along the way. Never has a cliché been so true: I couldn’t have done it without you.
Under the Egg Page 16
