The Painting on Auerperg's Wall

by Erika Rummel

  Zoltan shrugged. “You want my advice?” he said. “Leave it alone.” He looked defeated. By anya’s poetry? By his own schemes? She had never seen him falter like this.

  Out of pity, she said: “Alright.” But she pressed on nevertheless with a question she had reserved for him: Was it true that he wanted Cereta to come so he could observe the effect of American life on her?

  “Cereta thought you had a clinical interest in her.” She gave him a questioning look. “Or should I say, a clinical interest in the two of us as exhibits in a study on Nature versus Environment.”

  He finished the takeout coffee he had set down on the coffee table and picked at the rim of the Styrofoam cup.

  “So what’s the verdict?” she said, impatient with his silence. “Have we grown apart, Cereta and I? Has living in America for a month made a difference? Has it changed Cereta?”

  He stopped mangling the cup. “I take a clinical interest in Cereta? Is that what she said? That’s anya talking. I’ve noticed it before. Cereta is turning into a talking head for her mother. And that’s not a clinical observation. It’s something that concerns me as a father.”

  “So you thought you’d give her a break from anya and send me in as a substitute, as a temporary slave?”

  “I admit, getting Cereta away was a consideration,” he said mildly. “But you didn’t go to Hungary, and I doubt that you would have fallen under anya’s spell in the few weeks you were supposed to stay with her.”

  “There is always a certain give-and- take when you are in close contact with a person, even for a short time,” she said.

  He gave her an appraising look, as if she had caught him by surprise, with an unexpected bit of wisdom.

  It was true, wasn’t it? She thought of the half-hour she had spent with Cereta in the car, driving back from the airport, the give-and-take of words between them, the threat of competition she had heard in Cereta’s voice when she said she might emigrate and live in America. “Zoltan will sponsor me,” she said. The words had sounded an alarm in Laura. She was afraid of becoming interchangeable if Cereta came to live here. And, she wondered, would the give-and-take involve David as well?

  III. NANCY

  NANCY EMPTIED A TIN of Purina Friskies into Bébé’s dish and wondered whether the horror stories she had read about commercial cat food contamination and the resulting feline urinary tract infections were true, and should she buy a grinder (Cuisinart had the highest rating) and make her own, but it sounded complicated. With or without bones? With or without skin? The thought of trimming excess fat from chicken thighs was revolting, and Bébé looked healthy enough.

  She passed her hand over her ermine-sleek pelt. Bébé trembled with the double pleasure of eating and being stroked. Nancy wished for double pleasure in her own life, wished Zoltan would take her out more often, or should she give more parties? But whom to invite? The guest list needed amending, the Wrights were definitely out, he was so crass and had no appreciation for gourmet food, and Loni kept talking about her hip replacement, it was really too much, who wants to hear about titanium hips?

  Nancy looked out the kitchen window and saw David backing his car down the driveway, his Karmann Ghia (what year was it again? ’78?). He slowed, came to a stop, got out and opened the door for — Laura! No, it couldn’t be her! But it was. Laura wearing a dove-grey suit. Maybe she should look into tailored suits for herself, but what was Laura doing in David’s driveway, admiring his car? No, not admiring the car, Laura had no interest in cars. It was a romantic kind of admiration look possibly meant for David. This will complicate everything, Nancy thought, and her heart fluttered. The Nagys had a knack for intrigue, all of them, Zoltan, Laura, and Cereta — Cereta was the worst of the lot. They all had restless fantasies, unlimited what-if dreams. Life was good, but not good enough for them. They put their improving stories on life to make it more exciting. Oh, she didn’t mean to say. What did she mean to say? She didn’t mean to say anything against Zoltan. It was heaven to be with him, as spritzy as a Cristal champagne party, such conversations they had, so much fun, it was the part where the conversations turned into action that she didn’t like. If she could only keep Zoltan safely in her backyard, keep all his stories for herself, gather them up like a bouquet and put them into the living room to enjoy privately or limit those ideas of his to the sci-fi manuscript. She thought that’s what he was doing, finally, channelling his what-if ideas into writing a novel, that would be charming, but there was Laura ducking into David’s Karmann Ghia, and the two of them, David and Laura, driving off. David will find out eventually, she thought, and it will be trouble all round.

  She listened to the beat of her heart. Was she still missing dear darling Max, of course she missed him, as much as she should after two years, that’s what they say, it takes a month for every year you were married, and so she felt only a sweet kind of sorrow now, a cozy nostalgia. It was good to think of Max, who had been her mainstay all those years. Being married to Max had been like a refreshing sleep, the REM part, was it that or the other — NREM? That sleep simile was Zoltan’s, mind you, not hers. Max kept you in la-la land, he said. You’ve never really woken up to reality, and in a way Zoltan was right. She did like to keep reality at bay, at least the unpleasant parts, there was no reason to dwell on the parts that made you sad. And why would Zoltan insist on her facing reality while he indulged in all sorts of caprices that had nothing to do with reality at all?

  Unlike Max, dear Max, who was solidly planted in the here and now, in the big house in Napa which had been home for nineteen years. If life threatened to become too much for her, if reality became too intrusive, there was always the garden to admire: wisteria, heliotrope, lemon tree, pomegranate, hibiscus. And there was Max to save her from dealing with messy situations, who sorted out things with a squeeze of determination and set them up right. She was so grateful to him. He took care of reality for both of them. When he died, she was hoping to find someone, she was hoping that Zoltan — but he wasn’t the kind.

  You’ve always preferred innocence to experience, he said. You like living in a dream. Yes, she did prefer innocence. Being jaded was so unattractive, a sort of aging process of the heart and mind. She wanted to stay young within and without. It was different for men. They could handle experience. Max had been almost twenty years her senior, but he aged well. His skin was like century-old silk, and his white hair like a halo. He had dignity. True, he wasn’t much of a talker, not like Zoltan, but he was skilled at carrying conversations forward with little nods and approving smiles. And all he wanted in return for his unconditional generosity to the world was being respected and remembered, and there he was in the Timothy J. Chambers portrait (oil on canvas, 42x64), hanging in the study — perhaps it would be better to have it in the upstairs hall. Max looked so distinguished in the Chambers portrait, almost majestic, although she preferred the black-and-white Karsh photo in which he looked gallant and steadfast. With a little pang, she remembered the little solemn rituals that made him so uniquely hers, the cigarette he smoked after dinner, to within an inch and a half of the filter, no more, no less, before he put it out, tamping it, tip neatly folded under, in the Swarovski ashtray. And the intimate gestures — one fingertip raised, just a moment, dear — when the telephone rang, and the post-its, grey, with pencilled notes, pencilled with a freshly sharpened tip (HB grade) on the bedside table, so he would see the reminders first thing in the morning when he opened his eyes. And his judicious use of proverbs — “what’s good for the family is good for the individual,” “we make decisions with the mind and implement them with the heart” — the proverbs saved so much time and anxiety when it came to decision-making, they were like so many ready-made conclusions in the orderly file cabinet of Max’s mind.

  Nancy felt an upsurge of commemorative love and did her best to erase the post-stroke images that weren’t fair to Max, that made him look so undignified, the drooling mouth, th
e twitchy hands, the mangled words, no, no, she waved away those ugly thoughts, rolled over them with a corrective brush, a second take of Max, smiling at her with good-humoured grace. There.

  But those lawyer and accountant and stockbroker friends of yours, Zoltan said, and their trophy wives, or even their old wives, so boring! He didn’t say “boring,” but that’s what he meant. Set in their ways, always thinking inside the box, he said. In a way it was true, although they never bored her, and not everybody had Zoltan’s intellectual resources. Of course, she understood what Zoltan objected to, the uniformity, the predictability. Everything was pre-planned, Zoltan’s words again. Well, what was wrong with pre-planned? Life with Max had been of the ordered kind, serene. The Nagys, when they arrived in ’78, gave her a seismic shock. She never thought she would get to like Zoltan, or that he could be so. So comforting? So entertaining? So indispensable to her?

  We must see what we can do for the Nagys. They are like family, Max said when they arrived. But it was awkward. They were too colourful. They didn’t fit in. Then Zoltan enrolled in graduate school and, when he had his degree, he set up as a therapist. By that time, his accent was quite acceptable, and Laura’s practically unnoticeable. Of course, she was just a young girl when she came over. In any case, within two years, they were presentable, and you didn’t have to worry about social bloopers anymore.

  Laura could be troublesome, but you couldn’t blame her for the situation with Jerry. It wasn’t her fault. To be fair, the trouble started earlier, with Jerry changing from the angelic boy he was at six when she married Max, to the diabolical, well, no, maybe that was too strong a word, wicked? tricky? difficult? She was running out of words to describe the teenager Jerry became. At first he was so delicate, a child saddened by the death of his mother, Nancy’s heart went out to him, such a beautiful child with that strawberry blonde hair of his, and those cheeks, like a putto in a Raphael painting, you expected feathery wings to sprout from his back. But he lied, oh, he lied, and no matter how often Max talked to him sternly about fibs, he fibbed again, it was as if Jerry could not tell the difference between truth and lies, and there was nothing useful in Maccoby’s Psychological growth and the parent-child relationship or Piaget’s Science of Education and the Psychology of Childhood or Papalia’s A Child’s World: Infancy Through Adolescence, or even Gardner’s Children with Learning and Behavior Problems. Nancy read them all. Zoltan couldn’t do anything with Jerry either. You’d think a therapist, but no. He said it ran deeper than fibbing, and besides, he asked, was imagination really such a bad thing? You should encourage Jerry to act out his fantasies, he said, but that’s Zoltan for you, that’s what he does: act out his fantasies, and look at the result. It almost spoiled their Nile cruise. Why, why, why? she said when Zoltan told her, and he gave her a thousand reasons why it had been necessary for Cereta to come to L.A., none of which made any sense to her. It was one of Zoltan’s caprices. But in the end, she forgave him everything. She could never be cross at Zoltan for very long, it wasn’t in her nature, and Zoltan loved her after all even if he didn’t say so, and why didn’t he?

  But Jerry now, she just wanted everything to be bright and beautiful between them, she wanted to be a good mother and to fuss over him, and for a while he let her. Max, she didn’t like to say it, but he wasn’t everything a parent could or should be, it was the one area in which Nancy got no support. Max had to take some blame for the way things turned out. He was too distant, too successful, too authoritative, and there were too many silences. Max was a man of few words. He made it up to her with embraces, but he never touched Jerry. And her Mommy mammoth embraces, that’s what she called them, let Mommy give you a Mammoth hug, were not enough, apparently, and no longer wanted by the time Jerry turned into a teenager. He wasn’t churlish like the other boys, just slippery, evasive, dodging her embraces, a sneer hidden under his smile. She was afraid to think what he was doing behind her back, she felt helpless. Don’t worry, Max said, it’s natural in a teenager, but it wasn’t natural. And then there was Jerry’s whispering, sniggering, touching closeness with Laura. Childish secrets, Max said, except that they were no longer children. Nancy could guess what was going on, she had eyes, she had ears, but the thought was unbearably ugly, she didn’t want to catch them out, she didn’t want to think about it even, no, it would have been too unpleasant.

  When the childish affair between Laura and Jerry survived into adulthood, when it could no longer be brushed off as puppy love, it was too late. Max said so himself. He should have dealt with it sooner. Now they had to let it go. And, she thought, perhaps something good will come of it in the end. Maybe Laura could cure Jerry’s unfortunate propensities. And maybe their relationship could smooth over the business of the Liebermann painting as well, the question of who owned it, who had the legal title to it. Cereta kept insisting and insisting, the little snake, insisting on what, for heaven’s sake, that Leo Auerperg hadn’t been generous enough? And Livia, Cereta’s mother, wrote an impertinent letter to Max, telling him to keep his wedding present to Cereta and return the painting instead. And it all got worse when that woman in New York, Maria Altmann was her name, when she took the Austrian government to court in 1999 over the Klimt painting, the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer; 135 million they said it was worth. Every time someone mentioned the Klimt, she and Max exchanged looks, what kind of looks, it was hard to say, she hoped it wasn’t guilt that darkened Max’s eyes and gave them a mauve shade, she hoped it wasn’t fear in her own eyes because there was no reason to feel guilt, Max said, and no reason to be afraid. One time Zoltan was at their house, when Maria Altmann and the Austrian Klimt came up in conversation, and there was something like an electric current running between him and Max, the Liebermann question was in the air, but no one said anything. Laura never brought it up, she was discreet at least, but Cereta was implacable. Or her mother was, Zoltan’s ex. The law suit was settled and Maria Altmann got the painting and sold it to a gallery in New York, which made everything worse. Cereta had millions dancing in her head, although Max said the Liebermann painting wasn’t worth more than 500,000, and that’s what Opa Auerperg likely paid for it, or the 1939 equivalent, or close to. You had to take the circumstances into consideration, the risk he ran, the rush in which he had to come up with the money.

  It was so unfair, when you think that Max ignored Livia’s impertinent letter and welcomed Cereta in ’86, was it really sixteen years ago that she married that dowdy man? Max paid for their honeymoon and welcomed Cereta and her accountant husband, whose English was dreadful, and who wore baggy pants of poor quality and a grey jacket, unspeakably ugly. Max had to outfit him with decent clothes, or he would have been taken for a bum.

  In spite of all that, Cereta brought up the subject of the Liebermann painting, very nonchalantly, in her accented English, accented but impeccably correct, grammatically, that is, and idiomatically, she was studying English and was going to teach high school in Hungary.

  “I think we should talk about the Liebermann,” she said. “Opa Auerperg said he bought it from my grandparents, but the truth is he acquired it after they were deported. He got the painting from Aunt Eva and gave her a pittance for it, but she had to take what she could get. It was blackmail.”

  Max cut in right away. “Excuse me, Cereta, but I must object to the term blackmail. Where does that come from? Did Zoltan’s aunt call it blackmail?”

  “I call it blackmail,” Cereta said in her brash voice, or at least that’s how it came across. Perhaps it was only her Hungarian accent.

  “That’s your interpretation, then,” Max said politely.

  He spoke softly, Nancy thought, but I could tell he was very, very angry. “And it’s a misinterpretation,” he said. “Zoltan will tell you that my father was scrupulously fair, and I am sure he paid a fair price for the painting. What exactly does anyone know about this business, and why wasn’t the question raised when Opa Auerperg was still alive and co
uld have answered it?”

  Zoltan agreed with Max.

  “You are absolutely right, Max,” he said. “None of us knows the particulars. My aunt never mentioned an exact figure. She never said what your father paid for the painting, only that money changed hands, and your father was very good to us, both to me and to Livia. He treated us like family. I will always be grateful to him. I think we should give that Liebermann business a rest,” he said, and Max nodded, but Cereta wasn’t the kind to give it a rest.

  “Gratitude is one thing,” she said pertly, “and business is another.”

  Zoltan does what he can, Nancy thought, but he isn’t like Max, he can’t or won’t control things. He has a soft side to him, something bendable and elastic, he meets you halfway, maybe it’s his imagination, he can see your side, he can see everyone’s side, he wants to talk things out, which is very nice in a way, but it doesn’t settle things, and it makes me so unhappy, because the Liebermann painting is part of a whole, it’s integral to, it belongs, it would leave a huge hole in the the Vienna apartment, it would leave a hole in my heart, I don’t think I could stand losing it. I don’t know why I get so attached — why do you get so attached to things, Zoltan says — but it’s not things, it’s patterns, I can’t see a beautiful pattern destroyed, it hurts. Then, thank God, Cereta and her accountant husband, Laszlo was his name (I wonder whether he dresses any better now, but I think he has no sense of fashion), they went back to Hungary, and I thought we had heard the last of the Liebermann business, especially since it looked like Jerry and Laura were getting married. They lived together for two years, I didn’t like it at all, it was embarrassing, although people were kind enough to ignore it, nobody raised an eyebrow, a lot of young people started living together in the ’80s, but why not legitimize a relationship if you are serious about it? No, not even Max could manage it. In retrospect, it was just as well, but at that time I thought, things had reached a certain point, and they should get married. It was the proper thing to do. And it would have simplified matters a great deal, the Liebermann would have stayed in the family, but then Jerry — why do we allow such things to happen? Society has become so permissive — I still can’t bear the thought of Jerry, I’m just glad he didn’t while Max was alive.