Under the Egg (4 page)

“My grandfather was a painter.”

“He taught you well, I see. Okay, we have ourselves a Madonna and Child, Mary and Jesus, that much you already know. My guess would be Renaissance in style, but to be fair, that's not very realistic. One doesn't find Leonardos rattling around the attic, despite what
Antiques Roadshow
might suggest!” She laughed at her own little joke. “No, I would guess some nineteenth-century painting in the Renaissance style.”

“So what does the poem say?” asked Bodhi.

Reverend Cecily picked up a yellow legal pad. “Now, my background is more church Latin—not poetry—but here we go:

Bread of life

Risen yet unrisen

Nourished the well-fed

And healed the healing angel

“Ummmm, okay. So what does that mean?” interjected Bodhi. I looked over and was surprised to see that Bodhi was staring at the painting intently.

“Well, to be fair, it sounds better in Latin.” Reverend Cecily folded her hands over her robes. “But it's basic Christian imagery, really,” she started. “In John 6:35, after the Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes, Jesus says, ‘I am the—'”

“‘The bread of life,'” I finished, surprising myself. I guess something had sunk in during all those organ concerts.

“Yes! ‘He who comes to me will never go hungry.' Spiritual hunger, you understand? Here, he foreshadows the Last Supper. You know the da Vinci painting, of course.”

Even Bodhi nodded.

“This is where Christ shared bread and wine with his disciples, asking them to do this again in remembrance of Him after his death. That moment is repeated every week at Mass in what we call Communion. So in calling the Christ Child ‘the bread of life,' the painter is alluding to Christ's future sacrifice and to Communion.”

“So why is the bread risen but not risen?” I asked.

“It's a—well, not exactly a joke—but a play on words. The Last Supper takes place during Passover, the Jewish festival in which they eat unleavened bread—that is, bread made without any yeast to make it rise. And this painting foreshadows Christ's death, when his life is cut short, but after which he ascends—or rises—into heaven. ‘Risen but not risen.' Do you see?”

“And the well nourished? And the healing angel?”

“This one's a bit trickier.” Reverend Cecily thought for a moment. “Christ came to offer love to one and all: the rich and the poor, the high and the low. So in this way, He ‘nourished the well nourished': his spiritual food fills those who have material wealth but no inner peace. And because He holds dominion over all of heaven and earth, He can comfort even the angels who comfort us.”

Reverend Cecily crouched down to inspect the faces further. “While this is nominally a traditional Madonna with the infant Christ Child, I think the painting is really foreshadowing the Last Supper and the end of Christ's life. This isn't the robust toddler you usually see in paintings like these. This Christ Child looks drawn, almost ill, as if He is already filled with suffering. And Mary looks on with such worry, poor dear.” The rector clucked her tongue.

“And see this bird? That's the dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit. See how he descends upon the Mother and Child? That's foreshadowing Christ's baptism, when the Holy Spirit descends from heaven. That's the moment when Christ begins his mission and starts down the path that leads inevitably to his crucifixion.”

We all looked closer. You couldn't escape it—the painting was a downer.

“It's a complex painting. Interesting, I think, in the way it imbues a Madonna and Child composition—usually a sweet, peaceful subject—with quite dark undertones.”

“So is it worth anything?” Bodhi blurted out.

Reverend Cecily laughed. “That is certainly outside my expertise. But since you're so keen to find out, I know someone who could give you an appraisal. A parishioner of mine works at one of the auction houses uptown. If you bring him the painting, I'm sure he'll be able to ID it in a jiffy.” She jotted a name and number down on a slip of paper and handed it to me.

“Thanks, Reverend Cecily. I really appreciate this.” I started wrapping up the painting again and settling it back into the Samsonite.

“Not a problem.” She glanced at my pockets bulging with Nutter Butters, then she picked up a flyer from her desk and held it out to me. “You know, our church hosts a food pantry, open Tuesday and Thursday mornings. You're welcome to come along anytime.”

“Oh. Yeah, thanks. Thanks about the painting.” I turned toward the door and left the flyer in her outstretched hand. Jack always said that as long as we had eggs in the henhouse, we didn't need charity.

“Theo, there is one other thing.”

“Yes?”

Reverend Cecily hesitated a moment. “It's the ‘healing angel' in those verses; I keep coming back to it. Another translation might be ‘the angel that heals.'” She walked back over to her desk and opened a large Bible, paging through it until she found what she was looking for. “Here. In the Book of Enoch, we find the archangel Raphael, whose name means ‘God heals.' This angel Raphael cures Tobiah's blindness and brings him safely into the light at the end of his journey.”

“Oh?” I waited. “Really?”

Reverend Cecily looked amused. “Why, Theo-Theodora. What would your grandfather say? Doesn't the name Raphael ring a bell?” She laughed at my blank stare. “Raphael the painter? One of the giants of the Italian Renaissance—of painting, full stop?”

Click.

R
aphael. Of course.

In my defense, I'd like to point out that I spent most of that summer in a heat-addled stupor. Also, I suspect that a beet-heavy diet may have deprived my brain of the nutrients needed to recall major artists.

Or maybe I'd been so close to the answer I couldn't see it, the way your name looks like a random jumble of letters if you stare at it too long. Jack loved Raphael and had dragged me to see his work whenever he could: at the Met, of course; on tour at the Frick; even the collection at the National Gallery in D.C., which we'd visited in one day via a round-trip Chinatown bus.

Now a missing part of that collection might be tucked into in my Samsonite, and as Bodhi and I exited through the church's leafy garden courtyard, my brain rapidly sorted through the Raphaels I'd seen, holding them up for comparison.

Bodhi, meanwhile, was halfway down the Information Highway.

“Do you know how much the last Raphael painting went for at auction?” Bodhi practically shouted, staring into her phone.

“Shhhhhh!” I hissed, switching the suitcase from one sweaty hand to the other.

“Thirty-seven million dollars!”

I tripped, almost sending thirty-seven million dollars into a flower bed.

“Hey!” Bodhi dove for the suitcase and caught it just in time. “Careful. You don't want to break your . . . wait . . . got it,” Bodhi jabbed and swiped furiously at her phone. “Raphael. Born Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, actually. Along with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, one of the Big Three of the Italian Renaissance.”

“The three of them pretty much
were
the Renaissance,” I launched in. Bodhi might have known movies, music, and hippopotamuses. But I knew art. “Raphael in particular was revered by every future generation of painters, even modernists like Jack.”

Bodhi was too focused on her Wikipedia page to hear me. “Born in 1483, father was court painter to a very powerful duke. He grew up among the elite, and this gave him access to wealthy and powerful patrons when he came of age. Orphaned at eleven and apprenticed out early to famous painters like Perugino.” Now she looked up at me. “Know him?”

“Perugino? Sure, the Met has a few of his paintings. Lovely modeling, a real sense of—”

“Raphael moved on to Florence, then on to Rome, where he became the favorite painter of two popes and the Italian aristocracy. Mostly famous for his monumental works across an entire room at the Vatican called the Raphael Rooms, including a painting called—

“
School of Athens
,” I cut in. “His masterpiece, the high point of Humanism, bringing the giants of Classical Greece and Rome into the heart of the Catholic Church.”

“Hey, let me get there.” Bodhi jumped ahead a few screens. “But Raphael was perhaps best known for—”

My stomach gave a flip. “—his Madonna and Child paintings.”

Bodhi glared at me.

“Sorry.”

If there was one thing Raphael was famous for, it was his cuddly Jesuses and adoring Madonnas: seated, standing, alone, with other characters from the Bible. But always lovely and lovable.

Kind of like the one in the very suitcase, now giving me a shoulder cramp.

Kind of. But not exactly.

“Oh, I know these guys.” Bodhi was holding up her phone to show me two mischievous angels gazing upward. You'd know them if you saw them, too, a detail from a larger work that has been isolated and reproduced on calendars and greeting cards and chocolate boxes around the world. “So I guess this painting is a big deal, right?”

I took a deep breath. “Listen, we don't know what this is. Like the reverend said, it's probably much later than Raphael. It could be some junky old thing my grandfather found in a pawnshop. It could be some old family heirloom he found down in the cellar and—”

“Then why did he hide it, huh? Explain that!”

I couldn't.

“All right, let's say it
is
a Raphael. That means it's probably,” I looked around, “
stolen
. And if it's stolen, no one is giving me thirty-seven anything, except maybe thirty-seven years in the slammer.”

We were back on Broadway and stopped to enjoy the air-conditioning leaking out of a nail salon's doors.

“So what, we drop it in front of the next cop car we see and run?” Bodhi looked disappointed. “This was just starting to get good.”

I set the suitcase down and perched myself on top. “Okay, let's think. We have an artist and time period in mind. We've translated the message. What do we need to figure out next?”

Bodhi started counting off on her fingers. “Is it really a Raphael? If not, what is it? Where'd your granddad get it? Why'd he hide it? Why—”

“No, I said
next
. What do we need to know next? Because if it's stolen, we have to turn it in. But if it's just some old painting—well, I could use the money, whatever it's worth. Like, now.”

I looked down at the slip of paper Reverend Cecily had handed me. “Let's say we go to this auction house. Worst case scenario: They call the cops. Best case scenario: They say it's mine to keep and it's worth millions.”

“Medium case scenario: It's stolen but there's a reward for its safe return?” Bodhi ventured.

“Pretty-good case scenario: It's not stolen, it's not by anyone famous, but it's worth a few thousand, and I sell it.”

“Slightly-better-than-terrible case scenario: It's stolen, they haul us down to the precinct, but let us off with a stern warning.”

“Highly embarrassing case scenario: It's a Paint by Number kit, and they laugh at us.”

“Pretty-unlikely-but-super-dramatic case scenario: They're really vampires, but we fend them off with the Baby Jesus picture, casting them back to the tenth circle of hell.”

“Actually, we're already doomed to the tenth circle of hell.” I stood up and grabbed the suitcase again. “Because we're about to ride the subway in July.”

• • •

It was late in the afternoon by the time we got off the subway ($384.00—$2.50 = $381.50) and found Cadwalader's, the Madison Avenue auction house where Reverend Cecily's friend worked. Antique furniture dotted the cavernous modern lobby, a sleek cube of golden marble floors, walls, and ceilings. On the other side of an ocean of Persian carpet sat a polished young man behind a paper-thin computer terminal.

“Yes? May I help you?”

I whispered, “We're not in the Village anymore.”

“Upper East Side, all the way,” Bodhi whispered back.

“Yes, girls?” He seemed impatient because . . . he had so many other people to wait on? No. As Jack always said: the bigger the desk, the smaller the man.

I strode boldly across the carpet, trailing Bodhi behind me.

“Yes, we're here to see,” I double-checked the slip from my pocket, “Augustus Garvey.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

I shook my head. “But I am here on,” I cleared my throat importantly, “business.”

The guy blinked and then said smoothly, “Just a moment. Who may I say is visiting?”

“Theodora Tenpenny.”

“And Bodhi Ford.” Bodhi poked her head over my shoulder.

“You can tell him just . . . friends of Reverend Cecily.”

He blinked again. “Very good. Please have a seat.” He gestured to some spindly gilded chairs in the corner.

We tried unsuccessfully to look nonchalant, perched on the edge of the brittle antiques. By the time we heard a sharp clicking sound from the hall, Bodhi had given up and slung her Converse sneakers over my armrest.

We looked up to see a young woman with a long and well-kept mane teetering on stiletto heels. Her pinched face made me think of an ugly stepsister who regretted borrowing Cinderella's glass slippers.

“Are you the girls here to see Mr. Garvey?”

We scrambled to our feet (which is tough going when your butt has fallen asleep).

“Mr. Garvey has left for the day. I'm Gemma, his associate. Is there something I can help you with?” She hugged a folder to her chest.

I couldn't tell if she had a British accent or was just deliberately pretentious. “Oh, he's not here?”

“Yes, it's Friday.
Everyone
leaves early on summer Fridays,” she said with a sniff. This policy did not seem to extend to junior associates.

“Oh, okay. Maybe we should come back Monday—”

“I'm sure Mr. Garvey would want me to,” Gemma smiled, “preview anything you've brought.”

Bodhi and I exchanged a glance. Bodhi shrugged “why not?”

As I opened the suitcase, I explained the strange discovery of the painting, conveniently leaving out Jack's place of employment. Bodhi helped me prop the frame on a chair, where it looked no more at ease than we did.

“The poem says—”

“Yes, I know, I read Latin,” Gemma said shortly.

We stood by silently as Gemma put her face up to the painting, stood back several paces, donned a pair of white cotton gloves she fished out of her blazer pocket, and then turned the frame around to inspect the back. She placed the frame neatly back against the chair and began pulling off the gloves, one finger at a time.

“Well, girls, thank you for bringing it in. It is quite an interesting painting.” She offered up her pinched smile again.

We all looked at each other. “And?” I probed.

The smile disappeared. “And it is difficult to definitively determine the period, let alone the artist.”

Bodhi hooked her thumb at me. “She thinks it's a Raphael.”

I was starting to wonder if Bodhi was a help or a liability.

“A Raphael? Well, well, well, you've been doing your homework, I see. No, dear, I don't think it's a . . .” she stopped here to smirk, “Raphael. First of all, the complete
oeuvre
of Raphael is very well documented, and the likelihood that you just stumbled across an undiscovered work is, well, optimistic, don't you think?”

“I guess,” I conceded.

Gemma was warming to her own expert opinion. “Look at the Christ Child, for example. Wan, thin, bearing no resemblance whatever to the warm, rounded hallmarks of a Raphael infant.

“And even if it were a ‘Raphael,'” here Gemma used air quotes, a habit I decided now to despise forever, “it could still
not
be a Raphael. It could be Circle of Raphael, Follower of Raphael, Workshop of Raphael, School of Raphael, After Raphael . . .”

Yep, I thought, deliberately pretentious.

“I suppose it's possible it's a
pastiche
, a copy by a student or an admirer. Not necessarily a
talented
admirer,” Gemma tossed her golden locks behind her ear. “The panel and frame do look authentically old, certainly as early as seventeenth century, possibly
cinquecento
.”

“So it could be a contemporary, a student?” I ventured. “Wouldn't that be worth something?”

Another smirk.

“I think in this case, there's another consideration. That it's a fake. Getting an old but not terribly valuable canvas and painting over it—it's an old trick forgers use to feign authenticity.”

I stared at the surface, straining to see underneath this layer of paint to another lurking below.

“Okay, so how do you establish really authentic authenticity?”

“Here at Cadwalader's, we have a wealth of tools at our disposal. There's microscopic analysis of the
craquelure
—that is, the depth of the lines that develop in the dried paint. We analyze paint pigments to see if the minerals therein are contemporary with the artist in question. We can do carbon dating on the frame and canvas. We can even use infrared and X-ray technology to reveal the original drawings or painting underneath the top layers.”

Bodhi's eyes lit up. “X-ray? Yeah, let's see what's under there!”

Gemma glanced at her watch. “Listen, this isn't a children's museum. We don't undertake these costly experiments just to ‘see what's under there.'” Again with the air quotes. “We would be inclined to investigate further
if
we thought there was reason to believe . . . But in this case,” Gemma's eyes flicked over me from threadbare T-shirt to hip-hop sneakers.

“Not to be blunt, but I take it your family has some . . . financial concerns? Isn't it possible your grandfather created this painting with the intention of fooling a less-discerning auction house?”

Another look at the watch. Probably trying to make an early train out to the Hamptons.

“No,” I said, holding Gemma's eye and raising my voice. “That is not possible. My grandfather was not that kind of man.” But as my voice echoed back to me in that lobby-mausoleum, I realized I didn't know my grandfather any better than Gemma did. Just a month ago, I would have called Jack the dictionary definition of integrity. But holes kept appearing in that façade, and an alternate story kept dribbling in.

“Well, you are welcome to get a second opinion at another auction house. There's always Sotheby's, Christie's, and a myriad of smaller houses. But I do thank you for bringing the painting in. It has provided a welcome Friday afternoon diversion.”

And with just a few clicks, Gemma was gone.

• • •

“So that's that?” grumbled Bodhi as we stood waiting for the 6 train (down to $379.00). The platform felt even hotter after the brittle chill of the Cadwalader's lobby. I still don't understand how my cellar stays dry and cool all summer, but the subway platforms manage to be even hotter and steamier than the sidewalk above.

I peered down the tunnel, telepathically willing the train to arrive. “I guess so. But—”

“I wanted to punch her. Reminded me of these assistants on set, with their stupid headsets and clipboards. Everyone hates them. I bet everyone hates Gemma.” Bodhi let the name drop out of her mouth like chewed gum.