The Painting

by Alison Booth

  Or worse, maybe her family had been involved with the SS or the Arrow Cross. Her grandfather, for instance, who’d died ten years ago leaving Nyenye alone and her parents in charge of the butcher’s shop. Yet her grandparents would have hated the Arrow Cross, Anika felt sure of that. She knew who they were: industrious and astute people who’d managed to survive under a tough regime. But was it possible that they were too astute? Perhaps Nyenye wasn’t the naïve collector of art as Anika had assumed before the Rocheteau was stolen. This thought filled her with alarm. Nyenye had been a bulwark all Anika’s life and it would rock her to her foundations if her grandmother was not who she seemed. Anika had to come up with some strategy to find out what her family was.

  But perhaps the only strategy was to wait. Hungary was liberalising. If she were patient she might be able to talk to Nyenye. You never could tell what the future might bring.

  Part III

  Sydney, November to December, 1989

  Chapter 22

  When the Berlin Wall came down in November, Anika and Tabilla were as good as there, leaning forward in their chairs with the television on loud. Anika’s heart was dancing the polka, Tabilla’s face was so jubilant she looked ten years younger, the journalist’s voice was as animated as a commentator for the footy grand final. People jammed the Berlin streets, the gates were open, crowds were surging through from the East. The green-uniformed guards, who a week before would have shot anyone trying to cross to the West, were standing idly by, watching it all.

  Anika’s eyes misted over as the television camera closed in on the hugs, the reunions, the faces wet with tears, tears of joy as families reunited after all those years they had been apart. People were scrambling up the wall and dancing on its top. Others were bashing at it with sledgehammers, intent on breaking down this division between East and West, while some began to knock off bits of concrete to take away, souvenirs of this miracle that countless numbers of them would never forget.

  ‘We’ll celebrate too,’ Tabilla said once the news item had ended. She got the wine box out of the fridge and poured them each a large glass. ‘To reunification.’

  ‘To the end of a regime,’ Anika said, and after half a glass added, ‘I’d love to go home for a visit.’

  ‘I never want to go back,’ Tabilla said. ‘But I’m over the moon this has happened.’

  Anika found herself telling Tabilla that she’d been saving for months. She had begun to save after the Hungarian share of the Iron Curtain was rolled up in early May. That was when the electrified fence between Austria and Hungary was removed; that was when the authorities hacked through the barbed wire that was too expensive to maintain. But in May she had nowhere near enough to pay for a ticket. By late September, she had more savings but still not enough. That was when the Hungarian Communist Party voted itself out of existence and announced that there would be free elections the following March.

  ‘How much more do you need?’ Tabilla asked.

  When Anika told her, she said, ‘I can lend you some money. Add it to what you already have and it should be enough to get you a return ticket.’

  ‘Are you sure you can spare it? It will be months before I can pay you back.’

  ‘I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t sure. You’ve seemed withdrawn for ages. I guessed you were homesick. You need to go back to recharge your cultural batteries.’

  The next day in Anika’s lunch break she visited the travel agency on William Street. All three of the booking clerks, clad in navy and red uniforms like flight attendants, were engaged in advising customers. Anika hovered around the waiting area, trying to curb her excitement, ready to leap forward when a position became available.

  ‘I’d like to book a return ticket to Budapest,’ she told the woman behind the counter when it was her turn and the clock on the wall said 1.45pm. The woman wore her dark hair cut in a bob, and a smile that might be glued-on it looked so fixed.

  ‘Give me some dates.’ Even when she spoke, the booking clerk’s smile remained unperturbed.

  ‘I’m pretty flexible. I can leave any time from two days before Christmas right up to Australia Day. But I can only be away for three weeks in total.’

  ‘You’ve left it very late to book.’

  ‘It’s not even mid-November,’ Anika said.

  ‘But it’s Christmas, you see. People plan months ahead for that. But I’ll see what I can do.’ The clerk’s voice was soothing.

  ‘I’ll fly any route,’ Anika told her. ‘Any route as long as it’s not via Moscow.’

  ‘There aren’t any direct flights from Sydney to Budapest. You’ll need to go to London or Paris or Rome or somewhere and then get another flight onwards. London, probably, that might be the cheapest. I’ll have to get back to you.’ The woman made a note of Anika’s office and home telephone numbers.

  A few hours later she called Anika at the office. ‘If you’re willing to travel on Christmas Day, I’ve got a really good deal for you: Budapest via London and Bahrain and Singapore.’ She told Anika to drop in to the agency in a few days’ time.

  Afterwards, Anika danced around the office and Barry, bless the sweet man, burrowed in the tearoom refrigerator and came up with a bottle of champagne that had been sitting there for months waiting for something to celebrate. They all had a glass or two and everyone shared Anika’s euphoria.

  In the late afternoon, she rang the police station. They were tired of her, even that taller policeman Tom Warburton, and made it clear that she shouldn’t call them again. If there was any change in the situation they would contact her.

  That evening she phoned her parents to let them know she was coming. There was no click on the line after her mother picked up, there hadn’t been for months, although this hadn’t made their conversations any less guarded. Anika’s mother was overjoyed but anxious about how she was paying for the flights. Three weeks in Hungary, that was not long, her mother said, already counting down the days until she must leave again. She’s got a job, Anika’s father said. She has commitments. Then Anika told them the office shut for just over three weeks from Christmas Eve. We are lucky then, said her mother. It’s all a miracle. She was right about that, it was.

  * * *

  It was early afternoon, two days before Anika was to fly to Budapest, when she popped into David Jones in her lunch hour to buy a present for her mother. Afterwards, as she was waiting at the stop for an Oxford Street bus – while the breeze agitated the reindeer antlers on a teenager’s head and fingered women’s skirts and flapped men’s jacket fronts – she heard her name being called.

  ‘Anika,’ Daniel said. ‘I’m so pleased to see you.’ In the bright sunlight his skin glowed golden and his dark eyes were unfathomable. Anika thought of the name she’d given him when they first met all those months ago: Mr Black Eyes.

  ‘One pronounces my name Uh-nee-ka. I told you that before.’ Anika’s heart was thumping too hard but her voice was calm.

  Daniel smiled. He looked as if he hadn’t visited a barber for weeks. His hair was smooth and shiny, and he was wearing a rumpled cream linen suit and a black T-shirt.

  At this moment she caught sight of the Oxford Street bus pulling up at the stop further down the street. ‘My bus will be here in a moment.’

  ‘Why don’t you miss it? We could have a coffee.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘I was lucky to see you,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why you won’t return my phone calls.’

  ‘You only called three times and that was months ago.’

  ‘Uh-nee-ka. I know when I’m not wanted.’ He said this so comically that she couldn’t help but laugh. He added, ‘I don’t normally come this way, I just popped into Angus and Robertson for a couple of books.’

  ‘I don’t usually come this way either.’

  ‘Let’s meet another time.’

 
‘I don’t think so.’ There was no point telling him that she was going to Hungary the next day.

  ‘What’s the matter, Anika? I didn’t mean to upset you that day at Clifton Gardens. I just wanted you to be aware of the possibilities.’

  ‘That wasn’t what upset me, though it did make me rethink a few things.’ The bus was still stationary at the stop up the road, allowing what seemed like scores of passengers to alight, while there was a score more waiting to get on.

  ‘Why won’t you at least do me the courtesy of telling me honestly what’s upsetting you?’

  ‘Me tell you honestly? I’ve always been honest with you. The trouble is that you haven’t been with me.’

  ‘What did I do wrong?’

  ‘It was about your Uncle Jake.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘You tricked me into telling you what happened when I took the Rocheteau to Julius Singer’s gallery.’

  ‘How did I do that?’

  ‘You said your uncle knows Julius.’

  ‘And he does.’

  ‘Julius told my aunt that he doesn’t know any Jake Rubinstein.’

  Daniel laughed for rather too long. ‘But that’s not his last name. And he’s my great-uncle actually, though he’s the same age as my other uncles. And what’s more, he’s called Jacob Lacey. He’s my grandmother’s youngest brother.’

  ‘Julius would surely have known that.’

  ‘Why would he? As far as I know, Uncle Jake’s only called Jake within the family. To everyone else he’s Jacob. And there’s no reason why Julius would know how we’re connected. Uncle Jake is hardly likely to go around saying to every acquaintance of his, “Oh, do you know my great-nephew?” If you’d ever met Jake you’d know that.’

  The surprise of this took her breath away. When she’d recovered, she said, ‘I remember very clearly what you said that day. I wouldn’t have told you what Julius told me if you hadn’t mentioned that your uncle knows Julius.’ Her palms suddenly felt sticky and she wiped them on her skirt.

  ‘But I just told you, he does know Julius. You’re acting like an ostrich burying your head in the sand. I would have thought someone like you would want to know the truth.’

  ‘But the trouble was, Daniel, that I wasn’t sure that you were the right person to tell me.’

  ‘I was only trying to help, Anika.’

  There was something about the way he said this that moved her, but at this point her bus pulled up. After taking a seat, she twisted around to look for him. In his rumpled linen suit, he was still standing on the pavement, his too-long black hair flopping forward on to his forehead. Although she could have leapt out of her seat, jumped off the bus and run back to him, she stayed immobile. There was an errand that she had to run and there wasn’t much time left.

  As the bus lurched off, she began to feel overwhelmed with sadness. A sadness that, she told herself, probably had more to do with nostalgia than regret. Nostalgia for that glorious day at the beach when Daniel took her into the surf and hauled her up from where she’d been dumped on the sand. Nostalgia for that evening at the pub at Watson’s Bay when he’d drawn her out of her usual reticence about her past.

  She let the bus carry her beyond the turnoff for Armstrong and Oreopoulous and on towards the 137 Gallery in Paddington. Thoughts swirled around her brain, churned up by what Daniel had told her, as she formulated questions that she planned to ask Julius. She hoped he was there. There were some things she had to find out before flying home. She wanted to have as much information as possible from Julius before confronting her family. All those things she’d avoided thinking about after her first visit to his gallery. All those things she’d wanted to forget. Now she wanted to remember them.

  Chapter 23

  Inside Singer’s gallery, the assistant – the burly man with a face like a full moon – was engrossed with a sale and barely noticed Anika. She weaved her way around intricate wire sculptures and past an exhibition of abstract expressionist paintings by Indigenous artists from the Kimberley that lit up the white walls. Mr Singer’s office was at the back of the gallery. The door was open. He was sitting behind a desk with a pile of papers in front of him, his face half turned away from her. Strands of his comb-over were displaced, as if he’d been running his hands through what was left of his hair.

  When she coughed, he looked up, startled. He’d aged since she last saw him, his face appeared lined and his mouth sinking at the corners. How could a man age that much in only half a year? She must have caught him at a bad moment. Surprised, she let go of her bag and it crashed on to the floor. By the time she’d picked it up, he had collected himself. Those strands of hair were now neatly spread across his scalp. Only his eyebrows remained unruly. Thick and bushy, it was as if they were trying to compensate for the balding pate.

  His expression was still unwelcoming though. Standing, he said, ‘Miss Molnar,’ the old-fashioned way, no Ms here. His face was thinner than when they’d last met, and the eye sockets deeper than she’d remembered. He cleared his throat before saying, ‘I was sorry to hear of your loss.’

  ‘Thank you. I got your card.’ She watched him closely for any signs of guilt.

  His face was now expressionless and his light brown eyes gave nothing away. Quietly he said, ‘As I wrote on that card, your loss is not my gain.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Anika’s voice came out too high and the words too fast. ‘I’ve come because I’ve been thinking about what you said to me the day I brought in the Rocheteau.’

  Gesturing to the chair in front of his desk, he said, ‘You’d better sit down.’

  ‘When I was here last you told me the painting wasn’t mine. I’ve thought a lot about that.’

  Julius said, ‘So have I.’

  ‘I wonder if you might tell me why you thought it wasn’t mine.’ She stumbled on her words, though this was one of the questions she’d prepared on the way and rehearsed again and again.

  His face contorted as if he had a toothache. She looked away. Behind him, outside the picture window, there was a courtyard. It looked as if a piece of rainforest had been transplanted to Paddington and at any moment she might see a monkey swinging from an umbrella tree.

  Turning away from the rainforest so she could watch Julius’s expression, she continued. ‘Perhaps you don’t know that the painting belonged to my uncle, Tabilla’s husband. It belonged to him.’

  Julius looked alarmed. Anika’s words hung in the air like a fence dividing them. Tabilla had told him all those months ago, when Anika was listening to their phone conversation, only that a distant relative had given it to her. It was the news that this distant relative had been Tabilla’s husband that shocked him so much. Anika persevered. ‘Did you know, Mr Singer, that it was her husband’s?’

  ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘I thought you said you got it from your father.’

  ‘All I told you was what my father thought. That the painting must have come from the consignment store or a state auction, I can’t remember which. But it belonged to my Uncle Tomas and I haven’t got a clue where he got it from. When I left Budapest, I brought it with me for Tabilla. But she didn’t want it. She insisted that I have it. She gave it to me.’

  There was a pause during which Julius began lightly tapping his fingers on the desk. He seemed to be struggling to marshal his thoughts, and when he began to speak again, his words emerged slowly. ‘The painting was once ours, Anika. Ours, not yours or your uncle’s.’

  Anika felt the room start to swim and her mouth suddenly dry. She wondered if she might be going to vomit. There was a wastepaper basket by Julius’s desk. Maybe she could reach that in time, if she didn’t keel over first. She breathed deeply and the nausea faded. All the while Julius’s fingers continued to drum on the desk and he appeared lost in thought. Above her head a ceiling fan slowly cir
culated. The air-conditioning unit made an irregular rattle as it blasted cold air across the room.

  ‘Mr Singer, all you said last time was that the painting couldn’t be mine. You didn’t say it was once yours.’

  When he spoke again his voice was gravelly. ‘I’m going to tell you how it came into our family, Anika. And then I’ll tell you how it left again.’ His left eyelid began to twitch and he paused for a second to rub at it. ‘I was very young when my mother turned thirty-five, I was only seven. I want a quiet birthday in the bosom of my family, she said. Those were the same words she used every year. The bosom of the family was just the four of us, Mama and Papa and my younger brother Emil.’

  Julius’s eyes shifted to a point somewhere behind Anika’s left shoulder. When she turned to follow the direction of his gaze, she saw only the blank white wall. Then she realised it was the past that he was peering into. Although his voice was faint when he continued speaking, the words came fast. ‘My father came home the day before my mother’s birthday with a parcel. Emil and I watched when he hid it in his study behind the drawn curtains. It was large and flat. “It’s a secret,” my father whispered, one finger raised to his lips. “Between you and me. You mustn’t tell Mama.”’

  At this point Julius began to cough and Anika feared he might be choking. But when she stood, he waved her back to her seat. The gallery assistant stuck his head around the door. Taking no notice of the coughing, he said, ‘There’s a man here to see you, Julius. Your afternoon appointment.’

  Julius croaked, ‘Tell him to come back in half an hour, James. And bring some water, there’s a good chap.’

  The assistant returned with a bottle of sparkling mineral water and two glasses that he placed on the desk. Julius gestured him out of the room. Still coughing a little, he fiddled with the screw cap until Anika took the bottle from him and poured two glasses.