…it could be gone forever.”
The artist in the photograph was Elena Varga, a Hungarian painter who vanished in 1985. Before she disappeared, she’d painted one final work, a portrait of her daughter, which she called the most important painting of her life. It had never been found.
“Your father was her closest friend,” the dealer, Mr. Harlow, said. “Her daughter believes Elena gave it to him to keep safe from her husband, who wanted to sell it. Your father hid it inside that couch’s frame.”
My father had never said a word. But I remembered him once telling me never to let anyone take the couch, “no matter how ugly it gets.”
We drove to the recycling center that afternoon. The couch was in a pile waiting to be crushed. A worker helped us pull it out. Mr. Harlow carefully cut open the back panel. Inside, wrapped in oilcloth, was a rolled canvas.
It was a portrait of a little girl with dark braids, holding a yellow bird. Mr. Harlow’s hands were shaking.
The painting’s estimated value was more than two million dollars. It didn’t belong to me. It belonged to Elena’s daughter, Anna, who was now seventy and living in Budapest.
Mr. Harlow arranged for Anna to fly in. When she saw the painting, she touched the little girl’s face and cried. “That’s me,” she said. “She painted me the week before she left.”
Anna insisted on paying me the $80,000 finder’s fee Mr. Harlow had offered. I used part of it to buy a new couch. A comfortable one, but just as ugly as the old one. My husband hates it. I love it.
