The Painting

by Alison Booth

  She roughed out a floor plan on a piece of butter paper and then scrunched it up in irritation and chucked it across the room. Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds were starting to grate; out with the cassette, off with the headphones. It was past midnight when she had a sketch plan that she was happy with. For a few minutes she was on a high. It was while she was collecting the rejected plans from the floor that her conversation with Daniel bubbled up once more in her mind.

  She looked at the space where the portrait had hung and saw only Daniel’s face and those beautiful dark eyes. For Daniel, life was a series of exchanges, that’s what he’d said. Sometimes of gifts; sometimes of punishments. He took her out not because he wanted to spend time with her but because he wanted to pump her about her painting. Maybe he had something to gain from this. Last week he could have taken her out to dinner as a ruse, a means of getting her out of the house in order to allow someone Julius employed to steal the picture.

  Or someone Daniel hired himself – that was possible too. He’d kept her out all evening, given her a few glasses of wine at the pub – she must have drunk at least two-thirds of that bottle of Riesling – and injected a hint of romance into the air. That interlude would have given the thief plenty of time to nip into the house when Tabilla was distracted, and creep up to Anika’s room and remove the painting. Yet why would Daniel have contacted her again afterwards if he’d organised the theft of the Rocheteau? Again she dismissed this possibility. She was going around in circles and getting nowhere.

  She squashed the scrunched-up pieces of butter paper into her wastepaper basket. Daniel was also an art expert, she reminded herself as she changed into pyjamas, and perhaps he was right about the painting’s provenance. If it really was looted all those years ago – and she was beginning to think this was likely – what should she do about it? Give it back, of course, but it was too late to do anything now it had gone. Unless Julius Singer had arranged to have it stolen but she couldn’t really believe he’d do that. If only she could discuss what to do with someone. Tabilla maybe. Yet Anika didn’t want to worry her aunt or worse, upset her by raising suspicions about her beloved Tomas. Besides, Tabilla was a friend of Julius’s; not a close friend, admittedly, but a friend nonetheless.

  Suddenly she remembered Jonno’s offer that now seemed almost tempting. It was not that she wanted him to write a human-interest piece about her but he was someone to talk to – and someone who knew about her painting. Yet a moment later Daniel’s words bobbed up in her head like a red warning balloon: there was something odd about the way Jonno had latched on to her at the art gallery that day.

  And she began to feel more confused than ever.

  * * *

  People who hadn’t studied history of architecture mightn’t realise how judgemental it could make you, and sometimes Anika wished she could stifle that inner critic. At its worst, it slotted every building into an historical timeframe and when, several days later, she went to the Mitchell Library she immediately noticed how derivative its façade was. Neoclassical architecture in the early twentieth century. Ionic columns that might have graced an ancient Greek temple grafted on to the front of a sandstone building. Just like the Art Gallery of New South Wales, only the library had windows in its façade. She didn’t need Professor Smythe, the history of architecture lecturer, to tell her that both buildings were designed by the same architect. But at least they brought some consistency to the hodgepodge of downtown Sydney, she thought, where developers were keen to knock down the past and construct their own interpretations of the present.

  Once she was through the library portals, it took a while to calm her inner critic and settle down. This wasn’t because the place was noisy; the only sounds were the background thrumming of the air-conditioning and the occasional rustle of papers and clunk of a spool rolling forwards. Not hers though. She spent half an hour in the reading room tracking down newspaper records and now, perched on an uncomfortable chair in front of one of the microfilm readers in the library’s basement, she struggled to come to terms with the instructions on the laminated sheet in front of her. Her English was failing her, and once more she began to read the instructions. When she felt a gentle tap on her shoulder, she looked up to see an angel in the form of a middle-aged librarian with a kind face and a halo of curly fair hair.

  ‘Let me help you.’ Effortlessly the librarian slotted in the spool of film and spun the dial. White text appeared on the backlit screen and the instructions Anika had been labouring through suddenly made sense. The librarian’s expression was benevolent, as if nothing gave her more pleasure than helping novices like Anika. ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘Articles by Jonno Jamison.’ Anika showed her Jonno’s business card.

  ‘I’ll teach you how to search.’ Within seconds the librarian had brought into focus an article from a few months back. ‘There may well be earlier ones,’ she said. ‘But this is the latest. Let me know if you need any more help.’

  Anika read carefully. The article was prompted by a politician’s outburst against migration. There were too many migrants, the politician claimed, they were changing the character of Australia. In response, Jonno had written that Australia as we knew it was a country of migrants. Even the Indigenous Australians were migrants, out of Africa. Much later the migrants had been European. And in 1947, two per cent of the Australian population comprised displaced persons.

  Two per cent. That was quite a few. Jonno’s article then mentioned the displaced person camps scattered across Europe post-war and the enormous task of repatriating people where possible and of finding them new countries where impossible. Anika imagined the refugee ships collecting migrants from stopping points along the route. She imagined them arriving at the major ports in Australia. She imagined the shock of arrival: the incomprehensible accents, the blinding sun, the prejudice. And perhaps the friendliness too and the plentiful food. Her mind flickered to her own arrival. Her nervousness, her apprehension. It had been a major step to come to a new country, where no one knew of her apart from her Aunt Tabilla.

  Next, Anika retrieved one of Jonno’s earlier articles. It contained a number of interviews with people who’d fled immediately post-war from Europe to Australia. An issue, Jonno wrote, was that when an old order vanished – together with most of its records – new opportunities arrived for the perpetrators of crimes: they could change their identity as well as their destiny, and escape justice. Of the refugees, deeply traumatised by their experiences, some had made good in their new home, while others had not. They told him how they felt if they saw their guards and captors walking free in Australia, somehow evading war crime charges, somehow gaining visas. They told him about their different coping strategies when they saw a former guard. Averting their eyes, taking revenge – a brick through a window, a tip-off to the police – and sometimes people they had known committing suicide.

  This pulled Anika up and she wondered what might happen in Hungary now it was liberalising. Would the secret police somehow evade being punished, would they become part of the new establishment? Might she come across the man who’d interrogated her, walking the streets? That was possible.

  And at this point she decided that she couldn’t be interviewed by Jonno. He was a fine journalist, and after reading his work she felt a growing respect for him, but the situation was still too fluid in Hungary. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself. You couldn’t trust a journalist, even in a country with a free press. Even a journalist who wrote as well as Jonno. She’d been wrong in thinking he’d be a good friend to talk to about her anxieties. You couldn’t believe in someone you’d only recently met. And you certainly couldn’t call them a good friend.

  * * *

  Barely two minutes’ walk from the library, the large man stepping in front of Anika made her jump. ‘Hello, Anika,’ Jonno said. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  She stepped back a pace and Jonno gri
nned in a knowing way. This startled her – it was as if he knew she’d been investigating him, or maybe he thought she was bowled over by his good looks.

  Jonno said, ‘What are you doing in this part of the world?’

  ‘Working in the library. What are you doing in Macquarie Street?’ Only now did it occur to her that it was strange the way he’d started turning up everywhere. It could have been coincidence but it could also be that he was stalking her.

  ‘I had a meeting.’ He gestured vaguely in the direction of the city. ‘You didn’t phone me. About that interview, remember?’

  From the Moreton Bay fig tree next to the pavement a small fig dropped. Jonno gave it a gentle kick and it rolled into the gutter. The air smelled of fermenting fruit overlaid with a hint of car exhaust.

  ‘I haven’t forgotten. It’s serendipity that our paths just happened to cross.’ She scrutinised his face but his expression remained unaltered, until he began to sing the last few lines of ‘Simple Twist of Fate’, which was her favourite Bob Dylan song, and how could he have known that?

  ‘Everyone’s favourite Dylan song,’ he said, as if reading her mind.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said, smiling. ‘Anyway, I was going to ring you tonight. I’m sorry, Jonno. I don’t want to be a human-interest story. But thanks for offering.’

  ‘There’s another way I can help you.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’m thinking of doing a piece about artworks that go missing. Like yours.’

  ‘How will that help me?’

  ‘Your painting might turn up somewhere attributed to a different artist.’

  ‘That’s unlikely. Rocheteau’s signature shows quite clearly in the bottom right hand corner of the canvas.’

  In fact, the name was virtually illegible. Anika would have been none the wiser about the identity of the artist without the assistance of the silver-haired curator from the art gallery.

  Jonno narrowed his eyes. ‘I’ve already interviewed Olivia Cousins.’

  ‘Who’s Olivia Cousins?’

  ‘She’s one of the curators. The one Daniel got to identify your painting. She had some interesting things to say.’ His antipathy to Daniel manifested itself in the note of contempt that had crept into his voice. ‘Maybe you’ve forgotten I was there that day. Daniel didn’t have a clue.’

  This irritated Anika slightly, in spite of her own annoyance with Daniel for what happened on their Clifton Gardens walk. ‘Of course he had a clue. He was just being careful.’

  ‘He had to get the real expert. I was there, remember? Anyway, Olivia was more than happy to be interviewed. We had lunch yesterday. What about you and me having lunch on Friday?’

  ‘What did Olivia Cousins have to say?’

  ‘If you have lunch with me I’ll tell you.’

  Anika hesitated. She’d already decided that she didn’t want to tell him anything. But on the other hand, maybe she could get information out of him. Like what he was planning and why he was pursuing her and what Olivia Cousins had told him.

  When Anika agreed to lunch, he asked where her office was. ‘That’s not all that far from where I live,’ he said after she gave him the address. ‘There are some nice little restaurants near there.’

  They arranged to meet outside the building where she worked. As Jonno strode down the street, she observed the spring in his step, as if he were about to break into a run.

  Only when he was out of sight did it occur to her that he could have lied about interviewing Olivia Cousins. He might have fashioned that as a hook to draw her in and she’d swallowed it in a matter of seconds.

  Chapter 18

  On Friday morning Anika dressed carefully for lunch with Jonno, in the shift dress Tabilla had made for her the previous year out of some black-and-white Marimekko fabric that Anika had been unable to resist purchasing. As Anika came out of the office building, Jonno bobbed up in front of her, an engaging smile on his face and hair striped with comb marks. He was wearing beige chinos and a blue Oxford shirt with a button-down collar and carrying a brown leather attaché case that she wouldn’t have minded purloining as a handbag. There was something spicy about his aftershave, with an overtone of peppermint.

  Jonno had booked a table at the Mezzaluna restaurant; it was by the window, with a view of a quiet lane bordered by palm trees and recycling bins. The restaurateur, a small man with an Italian accent, greeted Jonno like a long-lost friend. He referred to Anika as Jonno’s beautiful companion and winked at her. Although she didn’t like winkers she smiled back, a social smile that she couldn’t make reach her eyes, though no one would notice in this restaurant, not when they were discussing the intricacies of the menu. She ordered a pasta dish and tried not to worry about the cost. Jonno chose a bottle of wine that was far beyond her budget and when she told him she didn’t drink at lunchtime he changed his order to a glass.

  ‘I used to practise as a lawyer,’ he said. ‘My boss brought me here when I started, and I fell in love with the food. So when I gave up the law I kept on coming.’

  ‘You don’t look old enough.’

  ‘To have given up the law?’

  ‘Yes. I hope that didn’t sound rude.’

  ‘I assure you I’m easily old enough. I’ll be thirty-three next birthday.’

  The two middle-aged women sitting at the table nearby halted their conversation and swivelled their heads to inspect Jonno. Anika took the opportunity to register what they were eating: grilled barramundi on one plate and what could be veal on the other. The women grinned at each other before resuming their conversation. Did they recognise Jonno from his journalism or was it his childish emphasis of his age that amused them? Or maybe it was just that she and Jonno seemed like an unlikely couple to be on a lunch date. But of course they were not, this was a working lunch and Anika was here only to obtain information. ‘Who did you work for?’ she asked him.

  ‘When?’

  ‘When you were a lawyer.’

  ‘Oh, back then. That was a while ago. It seems almost like a different lifetime.’ He mentioned the name of a firm that she’d never heard of. But why should she have? So far in Australia she’d had nothing to do with the law and she wanted to keep it that way.

  ‘I like to take the legal angle,’ he continued. ‘Property rights, human rights, that sort of thing. They underlie everything, don’t they? Or at least everything I’m interested in. In fact, that’s what intrigues me about you and your stolen painting.’

  ‘You mean who the legal owner is? That’s me.’ She picked up a breadstick from the basket on the table and crunched into it. Crumbs flew everywhere.

  ‘But you don’t have the provenance, do you?’

  ‘No.’ The word provenance sprung out of everyone’s mouth and yet she’d never heard of it a month ago. She brushed the crumbs off the tablecloth and took a sip of water.

  ‘That’s not a huge problem in the art world. It can be faked.’

  ‘Is that what you’re offering me, Jonno?’

  He laughed; his head flung back so far she could see the arch of his top row of teeth with not a filling to be seen. ‘Well, you don’t have the painting any more, so having a provenance now isn’t going to be much help.’

  ‘But whoever took the painting could forge the provenance. Do you know people who do that? It might be one way of tracking down where the painting is.’

  ‘That’s a clever idea, Anika, but it’s not only your painting I’m interested in. I’d like to investigate a few thefts. I want to find out who they belonged to originally. Whether there’s a story that can be told if I can examine enough cases.’

  Their conversation was interrupted by the waiter bringing their food. Jonno had ordered osso bucco and Anika was having spaghetti carbonara. After the waiter figured out who was having what, he waved a very tall pepper grinder
in front of her and it took her a few seconds to understand that he was offering to grind it for her. Shaking her head, she waited until he’d gone before asking Jonno, ‘Isn’t that the job of the police?’

  ‘Yes, and they might be doing it for all I know. But they’re unlikely to be following up the story I’m after.’

  ‘I read your articles in the Sunday supplement from a few months back.’ She wiped the spaghetti sauce off her chin – it left a greasy mark on the napkin – before continuing, ‘That’s what I was doing in the Mitchell Library when you saw me the other day. Checking up on you.’ Ever since then, she’d wondered why he was so interested in her. It might have been a journalist’s natural curiosity or maybe was there something else going on.

  ‘I’m flattered.’

  ‘You said when we bumped into one another near the library that day that Olivia Cousins had some interesting things to say.’

  ‘She did.’

  ‘What were they?’

  ‘She said it was surprising the Rocheteau had turned up in Australia.’

  ‘Was that all she had to say?’

  ‘Yes.’ He grinned in a way that might have been disarming if Anika hadn’t felt flooded with irritation at how he’d duped her into lunch.