The Painting

by Alison Booth

  There was a short pause, before he said, ‘What about a walk on Sunday afternoon?’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘I’ll collect you at two. I know a great track from Taronga Park to Clifton Gardens and on to the old quarantine station.’ After a brief goodbye, he put down the receiver.

  For a second or two Anika listened to the dial tone. The conversation left her confused, not knowing where she stood with Daniel. His feelings towards her were unclear, and her own were equally ambiguous.

  That night, sleep would not come. Anika was chasing it too hard and it slipped away. Soon she was caught up in the bedding and her hip began to ache, a reminder of the beating she’d received from the police when they’d scooped her up at the Danube Bend. She got up to smooth out the tangled sheets and start all over again. If only she could empty her head but thoughts kept crowding in, as if there was a party going on that they simply had to attend.

  It wasn’t only losing the painting that was so awful, though that was bad enough. But added to this was the fact that it was so valuable, if Howard Meyer’s wife was to be believed. Once more Anika rolled over. Her parents surely couldn’t have known what the painting was worth. Her father had told her that in communist Hungary there wasn’t a well-established market for paintings. Nyenye had misinformed her when she said Sebestyén Tinódi had given the picture to Uncle Tomas. Maybe Tomas had bought it himself. Anika imagined him heading to the consignment store to buy the painting. Not with a wallet stuffed with forints but with a wheelbarrow full, like those pictures of what hyperinflation looked like in 1946. Scarred by galloping inflation, he might have thought it was better to keep any savings in a painting rather than under the mattress. Yet how could he have afforded a painting? He was only a boy after the war and still a student when he died a decade later, no doubt penniless as students always were.

  She tossed and turned. Her head was spinning and sleep more elusive than ever. To calm herself, she tried deep breathing. Learn to concentrate on the moment, that’s what Sally advised. But it didn’t work; her thoughts kept turning back home, to the expressions on her parents’ faces – and Nyenye’s too – before she’d left Budapest and her father had placed the painting in her suitcase. Could they have known they were handing over something valuable but she wasn’t smart enough to realise it? No, they were simple people, honourable people. More likely was that their faces were clouded by her imminent departure. As was hers. It was a big step she was about to take.

  On the afternoon she’d left Budapest it had been so cold. She’d felt chilled through and through, not only by the weather but by what she was embarking on. The dear faces of her family – her parents and Nyenye and Miklos too – were pinched with anxiety and blanched by the icy wind. They had all known that they might never see one another again. And Anika was convinced that her family had no idea that the painting they’d put in her luggage was valuable.

  Through the open window now she heard the distant drone of late-night traffic from Victoria Street. A drunk passed by, singing raucously. After he was out of earshot she got up. Flinging open the curtains, she watched wisps of cloud pass across the marbled moon, blurring its edges.

  Tomas was in his early twenties when he died. Her father was ten years younger, so he’d never had much of a chance to get to know his brother well. It was clear to Anika that he’d loved him and idolised him, yet some of that might have been because Tomas died like a martyr and was kind to his little brother. And her father wouldn’t have been Tomas’ confidant, would he? He was too young. Anyway, even if Tomas had told her father or Nyenye where the painting had come from, they hadn’t passed on that information to her. So where had Tomas got it from? He must have got lucky picking up a work of art on the cheap.

  Now it was too late to find out.

  * * *

  On Sunday morning Anika dressed carefully, in cream cotton trousers and the multicoloured floral silk shirt that she’d found a few months back in the Gladesville opshop and bought for only five dollars. When she was tying up the laces of her sneakers, she heard the front gate squeak. Much too early for Daniel. Leaning out of the window she saw a blonde head that she recognised right away. Before Jonno had a chance to ring the bell, she was downstairs and opening the door.

  ‘I was just passing by and thought I’d drop in.’ Jonno was bigger than she remembered and seemed to dwarf the narrow verandah. ‘You know, on my way to see that mate of mine. The one I told you about when we met at the gallery. He lives in Reynolds Street.’ He held out a business card: Jonno Jamison, Freelance Journalist.

  ‘How did you find out where I live?’

  ‘Easy. You said you lived in a stone terraced house not all that far from Victoria Street and there aren’t all that many of those. It’s not for nothing I’m a journalist.’

  Anika rolled his card back and forth in her hand. It looked very new. ‘For some reason I thought you were a teacher not a journalist,’ she said.

  ‘Once upon a time I did some tutoring. But I didn’t tell you that when we had coffee that time.’

  ‘You sort of implied it. Evaluating essays, isn’t that what you said?’

  ‘You’ve got a good memory.’

  ‘For some things.’

  ‘I’m sorry you had your painting stolen.’

  ‘How did you know about it?’

  ‘From the newspaper reports.’

  ‘I didn’t expect those.’

  ‘That’s not why I’m here though. I’ve been thinking for a while about doing a story about what it’s like for a new arrival in Australia. I want to interview a few people, five or six maybe. Would you be interested?’

  ‘Thanks, but I don’t think so.’

  ‘Mine would be a human-interest story.’ His hair glinted in the sunlight and, when he smiled, his entire face lit up.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Anika had no desire to let him know too much about her background.

  ‘It would only be a very simple human-interest story,’ Jonno’s eyes were now on her hands holding his card. ‘I just want to know about you, Anika.’

  Sometimes it was better not to decline outright. ‘Let me think about it.’ If Jonno hadn’t stolen the painting – and he wouldn’t be here if he had – maybe he could help find it.

  ‘OK.’ Jonno’s voice was patient and the friendly expression still on his face. ‘How long do you need?’

  ‘I’ll call you.’ The patch of sunlight he was standing in was so bright he might have been under a spotlight: she shut her eyes for an instant against the glare.

  ‘That’d be good. But why don’t I drop by on my way back from seeing my mate?’

  ‘What time will that be?’ Anika opened her eyes and saw that he was staring hard at her.

  ‘Right after lunch.’

  ‘I’ve got a friend collecting me at two.’

  ‘I’ll drop by before that. One-thirty, let’s say.’

  ‘See you then.’

  She watched him concertina himself into a red Mini that was far too small for him. There was information and disinformation, she reminded herself, and she knew that you should find things out for yourself even if that did involve reinventing the wheel. If Jonno really was a freelance journalist, his articles would be in the newspaper archives under his name. Checking up on him was something she should do and soon.

  The brilliant sapphire blue of the sky hurt her eyes and she didn’t understand why she felt a sudden sharp stab of loneliness. Part of her wanted to welcome Jonno’s friendship – if that was what he was offering. Another part was urging her to be cautious and have nothing to do with this journalist and what he was suggesting. If you let someone have too much information you could lose control of your life. Keep yourself to yourself. Keep your head down. That’s the way she was brought up. And that’s what she had learned. Consenting to a hu
man-interest interview with Jonno could cause trouble back home. Even now.

  ‘Who was that?’ Tabilla was behind her, framed in the open front door, and wearing the rather smart blue dress that she put on when she was going out somewhere special. It had dark-blue embroidery round the neck and around the hem.

  ‘Just a man I met at the gallery.’

  ‘Which gallery?’

  ‘The Art Gallery of New South Wales.’

  ‘When you took the painting in to be identified?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You met a lot of men that day.’

  ‘Only two.’

  ‘And he knows you had a painting and where you live.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He could have taken the painting.’

  ‘I know. I’ve thought about that. But if he had, why would he turn up here again? That just doesn’t make sense.’

  Tabilla stared into the distance for a few seconds. When she looked at Anika again she frowned and leaned forward to turn down her collar. ‘You should check the mirror before you answer the door. And both those young men have invited you out?’

  ‘No. This one’s a journalist. He wants to interview me for a human-interest story. How Sydney treats new migrants, that sort of thing.’

  ‘That’s one way of getting to know someone.’

  ‘I’m going to think about it.’

  ‘He’s a nice-looking man, though maybe a bit too old for you.’

  A honeyeater swooped down from next door’s gutter. It perched on a branch of the shrub that was flourishing in Tabilla’s pocket-handkerchief front yard, only a metre away from where she stood. The branch swung to and fro while the bird sipped at the nectar of one of the spidery red flowers.

  ‘You were peeping out of the upstairs window, weren’t you?’

  ‘I like to know who comes calling. Especially after the break-in.’

  Anika didn’t reply but kept her eyes on the bird in Tabilla’s grevillea.

  ‘Sometimes it’s almost as if you’re not alive,’ Tabilla said, her voice low. ‘Your face becomes expressionless. It cuts you off, it makes you seem unapproachable.’

  She was awaiting a reaction from Anika, who kept her face unreadable. It was not difficult.

  ‘I know you were brought up to never show your feelings, Anika, but I think you’ve carried it too far. And I know that dreadful ex-boyfriend of yours, that Frank, was a pain. But don’t let that experience change you, or he will have won.’

  Anika kept quiet while she watched the bird and thought about what Tabilla had said. She had begun to trust again, she’d begun to trust Daniel. But how could she trust people now, after having the Rocheteau stolen?

  ‘By the way, you don’t think it could have been Frank who took your painting?’ Tabilla said.

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘He knows about it though.’

  ‘He thought it was a worthless piece of junk. He’s not into art.’

  ‘He might have found out somehow that it was worth something.’

  ‘Only after it was stolen and only if he’d read the newspaper reports. It would have been too late by then for him to nick it. Anyway, he’s gone away.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’d forgotten. But he might have come back.’

  ‘I doubt it. His family’s from Perth and he went back there.’

  ‘That’s a nice long way away.’

  ‘He went there soon after we split up.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me that’s where he’d gone.’

  ‘You didn’t ask. And I know you don’t like hearing about him. I don’t either. I don’t like talking about him or hearing about him or thinking about him.’

  He had called Anika a couple of weeks after she’d broken off with him to say he was moving to Perth. He’d been offered a great job there, he said. She had wished him well and was glad that he was going. When something was over, you couldn’t have regrets or dwell on the past.

  Yet the past was not always so willing to let you go. Even though you did all you could to kick it behind you, it could bounce back when you least expected it and knock you hard.

  Chapter 16

  Jonno didn’t return until two o’clock, just after Daniel had rung the front doorbell. Ignored, Anika stood watching as he and Daniel sized each other up like two dogs, and not much liking what they saw. Daniel’s expression was unwelcoming, Jonno’s face was thinly veneered with an artificial-looking smile.

  ‘I’ve seen you before somewhere,’ Daniel said to Jonno.

  ‘It was at the art gallery when I brought in a fake Gruner.’

  ‘Before that.’

  ‘I don’t think so, unless you were on duty the time I brought in my uncle’s Lister Lister. But I don’t believe you were. I’ve got a good memory for faces.’

  Anika noticed Daniel’s annoyance. It was disproportionate to Jonno’s presence. She wondered if there was something more than simple jealousy going on here. ‘Anika and I are just about to go out.’ Daniel took a step in Jonno’s direction, as if to chivvy him out the front gate.

  Jonno ignored him and turned to face her. ‘Have you thought about that interview, Anika?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘No rush. Call me when you get a chance.’

  ‘What interview?’ Daniel said.

  ‘Jonno’s a journalist. Thanks for dropping by, Jonno. I’ll give you a ring once I’ve decided.’

  ‘Looking forward to it.’ Jonno gave a jaunty wave before striding down the street to his Mini.

  Unlike Anika’s trip to the beach with Daniel, today’s excursion over the Harbour Bridge was not an entrée into the world of Australian Impressionists. Instead it was an inquisition about Jonno. Daniel had taken a strong dislike to him; Anika could tell from the way he wouldn’t abandon the theme, whatever tempting red herrings she threw in his path. Like a cat off its food, he stepped fastidiously over them. She looked at his exquisite profile, all features in perfect proportion, and was moved against her better judgement by the fine lines around his eyes as he squinted against the dazzling light.

  He said, ‘Had you met Jonno before that morning you brought the Rocheteau into the gallery?’

  ‘No.’ His use of the definite article ‘the’ rather than the demonstrative ‘your’ unsettled her but she kept this to herself. She asked, ‘Didn’t you bring your sunglasses? You seem to be having trouble with the glare.’

  Ignoring her question, Daniel said, ‘Why were you and Jonno having coffee afterwards?’

  Wretched man; had he really asked her out only to interrogate her? Time to throw him another red herring. ‘I’ve heard that going to Taronga Park by ferry is best. That way you avoid all the traffic.’

  ‘That may well be the case but I’m taking you by car. You haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘I just bumped into him on my way out of the art gallery and he invited me. I suppose he liked the look of me.’ Her laughter was forced and elicited none from Daniel.

  ‘You didn’t think it was a bit suspicious? You’d just had your painting identified as a Rocheteau and then this man turns up and takes you for coffee and asks where you live. I’m guessing that’s what happened, otherwise he wouldn’t have turned up at your door today. I’d be really suspicious if that happened to me.’

  ‘He didn’t know it was a Rocheteau. He couldn’t have heard what you and the other curator said about it because there was another woman behind him in the queue waiting to see you. She was a big talker, surely you remember. All Jonno learned that day was that my painting was by a French Impressionist.’ Anika’s heart had started pumping too fast, an uncomfortable pitter-patter. Maybe Daniel was right, she should have been a bit more careful. Knowing the painting was by a French Impressionist might well have been enough to make Jonno th
ink it was valuable.

  ‘You didn’t mention it was by Rocheteau afterwards?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure I didn’t.’

  ‘I’ve seen Jonno before.’

  ‘That’s what you said when you picked me up.’

  ‘And I’ve just remembered exactly when the first time was. It was at the gallery, months ago. He brought in an oil painting by Alfred Sutton and wanted to know who Sutton was. Odd that he comes in so often.’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘We know that he brought in the painting he’d hoped was a Gruner, that was the morning you met him. And before that there was the Lister Lister that he mentioned just now, remember? And before that there was the Alfred Sutton.’

  ‘What’s odd about that?’ Although Anika’s pulses were still beating too fast, her voice was calm. ‘Maybe he’s just hoping he’s got something valuable.’

  ‘Maybe he’s hoping to get some other information by chatting up everyone in the queue. And once he knew your painting was by a well-known artist he started hanging around you.’

  It would be tactless to mention that Daniel was doing the same. Instead she said, ‘Jonno’s not exactly hanging around me. He invited me to coffee that first day we met at the gallery and I haven’t seen him since, not until late this morning.’

  After a brief pause, during which Daniel seemed to be thinking deeply, he said, ‘Perhaps Jonno stole your painting.’

  ‘I doubt it. If he had, why would he come back again? Anyway, he doesn’t seem to know much about art.’

  ‘I’d be very careful what you tell him, if I were you.’

  ‘Oh, I will, don’t you worry.’

  Daniel looked at her sceptically, or perhaps it was the glaring sun that was giving him that squinty look.