The Gallery of Vanished Husbands: A Novel

by Solomons, Natasha

She stood for a while, watching the white horses rise out of the painted sea and night-time gulls encircle the flying girl, until the man pointed with his brush to a bench.

  ‘Sit. You’re making my legs ache.’

  ‘But I won’t be able to see.’

  ‘Then I shall break and sit with you.’

  The painter stood and turned to face Juliet. He grinned, raising his sunhat, a herringbone trilby, in salutation. He was in his sixties, hair thinning and grey, eyes the same blue as the sea in his picture.

  ‘Tibor Jankay,’ he said, offering a smudged hand.

  ‘Juliet Montague.’

  They shook hands, smiling, pleased with one another, and settled side by side on the bench.

  ‘Who’s the girl in the picture?’ asked Juliet.

  ‘You,’ said Tibor.

  Juliet laughed.

  He pulled a large sketchbook out of a bag, passing it to her.

  ‘You can look, if you’re interested.’

  He lit a cigarette and pulled his hat low to shade his eyes, dozing contentedly in the sunshine, humming to himself. Juliet thumbed through a series of sketches, most of them in charcoal, most of them of the same girl drawn in bold, simple lines, her hair tumbling like rushing water and her profile displaying a good strong Jewish nose. Every now and then she was drawn in colour – her hair was usually red-brown, but here and there it was crimson or yellow, but it didn’t matter, it was always the same girl. Juliet sighed.

  ‘You don’t like?’ said Tibor, opening an eye.

  ‘I do, I do. I’m on holiday and I hadn’t realised how much I missed looking at pictures,’ she said.

  ‘Ah well,’ he said. ‘I like pictures too. Pictures and sunshine. This is the best quality sunshine in all the world, fifty-three per cent better than every other kind, did you know that?’

  Juliet shook her head, unsure if he was kidding. Tibor produced a fat Hershey bar from his pocket.

  ‘You want some chocolate? It’s not like the good stuff from Europe, but it was either good quality chocolate or good quality sunshine.’

  He spoke with the same Mitteleuropa accent as Vera, only the notes from the old country were stronger, closer to the surface. Not wishing to be rude, Juliet accepted a soggy square. Apart from this elderly man, the only person she knew who wanted chocolate for breakfast was Leonard. She supposed she ought to get back to the apartment and rouse the children, but it was pleasant sitting on the bench with Tibor, basking in the warmth of the Californian morning. As he passed her another square of chocolate, Juliet realised with a jolt like a hunger pang that she was lonely.

  ‘You’re the first grown-up I’ve really talked to since we got to America,’ she observed.

  Tibor smiled. ‘I’m not so sure I’m a grown-up.’

  Juliet laughed. Most people would have asked why her husband didn’t keep her company, or else commented on the fact that she was a woman travelling alone.

  ‘Come back tomorrow, same time, same place and I’ll paint you.’

  Juliet started. She’d never even considered that she might have her portrait painted over here. She closed her eyes, filled with warmth at the thought. The city was so busy, everyone zooming from place to place in their cars, the Montagues had slid unnoticed into its slipstream and no one would notice when they left. But a portrait painted here on Venice Beach would connect her to this place. It would last even after they’d sailed for home.

  ‘It would be nice. I’ll try to come tomorrow,’ she said, regretting a vague promise to take the children to see the Hollywood sign.

  ‘You’ll come.’

  Juliet licked the chocolate off her fingers. Yes, of course she would come.

  • • •

  The next morning Tibor was waiting for Juliet as she traipsed along the walk path, a huge string beach-bag clutched in her hand and the children at her side. Leonard was curious and Frieda snarled in a temper. Why did everyone want to paint Juliet? But then she caught sight of Tibor and her mood improved. She’d assumed that most painters were like Philip or Charlie or Jim but this man was more like Grandpa. He was welcome to paint her mother – Frieda wouldn’t pose for him, even if he asked.

  The wind was up and the beach busy with tropical flocks of kites, while a handful of surfers dabbled in the waves – most of them flopping about in the shallows pummelled by the tide, but one or two galloped across the cresting surface like bareback circus riders.

  ‘I’m going for a swim,’ announced Frieda, wriggling out of her jeans and strutting off across the sand towards the surfers.

  ‘Stay where I can see you, and keep an eye on your brother,’ called Juliet.

  ‘I’m right here,’ said Leonard. ‘I’d rather stay and see the picture.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Tibor. ‘You may assist.’

  ‘Are you using oils or acrylics?’ asked Leonard.

  Tibor chuckled. ‘You are a painter too?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Leonard, preening a little. ‘But I don’t mind just being an assistant today.’

  Juliet spread out a towel and lay across the bench, watching the kites flap against the sky, and listened to the patter of the men.

  ‘You’ve got a foreign accent,’ remarked Leonard.

  ‘So do you,’ replied Tibor.

  Leonard paused, considering. ‘I suppose for you I do. But your accent isn’t American foreign or English foreign, it’s foreign foreign.’

  ‘Hungarian.’

  Juliet glanced at Leonard, wondering if this meant something to him, whether he remembered that his father was Hungarian.

  ‘Did you always like doing paintings?’ Leonard asked.

  ‘All my life. And that is a long time,’ said Tibor stretching out his arms. ‘It would have been a short time, but a picture saved my life.’

  Leonard stopped rinsing brushes and looked up at Tibor. Juliet wriggled round on the bench.

  ‘You,’ he said pointing with a palette knife at Juliet, ‘don’t keep fidgeting. Stay still and I’ll tell you.’

  • • •

  His brush moves across the canvas, quickly in bold red strokes – he has the confidence of an artist of many years who doesn’t much care whether anyone else likes his picture or not. He’s never sold a picture, not in sixty years. He likes to joke that he’d sooner sell his kids but he doesn’t have any kids, only a house full of pictures. Pictures all the way up the stairs, on the landing, in the bedroom, piles of them stacked against the wall in the spare room and leaning against crates in the garage. He doesn’t care that there isn’t any room left – they’re not for sale. Not now. Not ever.

  Her hair appears first, flying in the wind like the tail feathers of the kites. Next comes the hot disc of sun, bouncing on the horizon like a yellow beach ball. He talks. They listen.

  • • •

  ‘I was on a train, a terrible train headed for somewhere unspeakable. One of those places that steal men’s souls. We were packed in so tightly that even when someone fainted or died, they kept standing up, rooted in place by the others. But in my pocket I had my chisel and I chipped away at one of the wooden panels until it was just wide enough for a skinny man to fit through and I was skinnier even than you.’

  He wiggled a brush at Leonard, who sat watching, not wanting to interrupt.

  ‘My neighbours screamed at me, yelling curses that I’d brought trouble on them all and everyone would be punished for what I had done. I argued and begged for them to come with me. But do you know how many did?’

  Leonard shook his head and Tibor continued.

  ‘None. Not one. So, I went alone. I spied through my peephole, watching the white landscape rush past. Sometimes there was a farmhouse and sometimes a few of them together, little wooden houses huddled to make a village, but I waited until the train was far, far from anywhere, and then as the women screamed at
me and the men rained fists down on my head, I slid out through the broken panel and onto the snowy tracks. I lay still as a mouse when he knows a housewife with a rolled-up newspaper is waiting to clobber him. The train roared over my head and I thought that probably I should die but I choose that I die like this than shot in the back of my head or—’

  He paused, catching sight of Juliet who shook her head, ever such a little. He shrugged and continued.

  ‘Your mother is quite right. You don’t need to know all these things just now. So the train goes on for ever, cars and cars of it rattling above my head and then suddenly it is quiet and I’m alone. It’s dusk and the cold is getting colder. You are from England?’

  Leonard nodded, blinked.

  ‘Then you don’t know what real cold is. Your country is a little damp but you are a summer boy. In the East, the cold freezes your bones so they shatter into dust and make more snow. I knew that I must find somewhere to spend the night or I would die anyway. But I was nowhere. A big empty nowhere with nothing but white snow and black trees and here and there the hungry yowl of a wolf, skinny as me. My coat was thin and I had no scarf and I walked until the moon was up in the sky, until at last I saw a light. A lonely farmhouse on the edge of the waste.’

  ‘Did they let you in?’ asked Leonard. ‘Did you get supper?’

  Tibor smiled. ‘I was much too frightened to knock on the door. Instead I crept into the farmyard where there was a huge haystack made of straw and chicken shit and I crawled inside, stuffing handfuls of the stuff inside my clothes to keep warm.’

  ‘Wasn’t it scratchy?’ asked Leonard.

  ‘Terribly itchy. There were wriggly creatures inside the straw too.’

  Tibor glanced up and caught Juliet’s eye so that she understood this bit was for Leonard’s benefit.

  ‘So, I fall asleep. So fast asleep that I fall through the world and then the sky, past the moon and yellow stars.’

  As he said this, Juliet saw that in the corner of the picture he was painting a bright starfish in the sand. He leaned back, examining it, and with a tiny shake of his head smeared yellow beach across the starfish and it vanished into the canvas, hidden in the layers of paint like a fossil.

  ‘And in the morning, I wake up to a fierce pain in my leg and then my backside – something is biting me. I burrow out of the haystack and the farmer stands over me with his pitchfork, ready to jab it into me again. “Thief! Jew!” cries the farmer and he grabs at me and I know that he’s going to fetch the police. He’s got me by the collar and I am choking but I cry out, “I’m not a thief. I’m going to pay for my night’s accommodation!” The farmer stops jabbing at me with his wretched pitchfork in order to laugh. It’s a nasty thin sound like the rattling of an empty tin can. “What will you pay me?” he says. “Your coat? Your shoes?” I look at my broken boots and my coat and I think, “If I give these to you, I’m already dead. I’ll die tonight of cold.” And then I remember that in my pocket, I have a pencil and a sketchbook. “Your portrait!” I say. “I’m an artist and I shall draw your picture, if you don’t like it, then, you can turn me in or take my shoes, whatever you like.”

  ‘He grunts something, and I think it is a yes as he takes me into the farmhouse kitchen so he can sit in the warm. I’m grateful as I don’t think I can draw outside with shivering fingers. It is a bare room with a single table and a dirt floor and a tiny stove that is not too clean and two chairs. He sits on one and I take the other and I begin to sketch knowing that my life depends on it. My fingers are swollen with chilblains and they don’t move the way they should – I’m like a piano player trying to perform Beethoven in gloves – but I force them to do my work. I draw him as he wants to be seen – a heroic figure, strong and fierce, but I make awful sure that it is still him. He won’t want his friends to laugh and deny the likeness – I keep in the piggy eyes and the vodka nose. I show him.’

  Leonard leaned forward. ‘And? What then? You didn’t finish the story.’

  Tibor was silent for a moment, then he stood, squinting against the sun. Juliet gazed at him, eyes big with sadness, understanding he’d softened his story into an adventure for Leonard. She wanted to say something, didn’t know what it should be. Tibor acknowledged this and nodded at both Juliets – the flesh and the painted. He adjusted his hat and turned to Leonard with a shrug.

  ‘And what then? I live. I spend the rest of the war as a pedlar-painter going from house to house, drawing farmers and their wives and their pretty daughters and their ugly ones and I live.’

  Juliet watched as Tibor turned back to his easel. A painting saved me too, she decided. Charlie’s portrait rescued me from quiet despair and brought me into a world of colour.

  • • •

  The next morning Tibor continued his painting of Juliet. Leonard stuck beside them, at first watching Tibor and then asking for a piece of paper for his own picture.

  ‘What are you going to draw? The sea? A portrait?’ asked Tibor. ‘An artist needs the correct tools for the job.’

  Leonard cast his eye across the beach to where Frieda sprawled a few yards away sunning herself.

  ‘Portrait.’

  Tibor reached into his bag for a set of pencils. ‘Start with these.’

  Frieda glanced round and glared at Leonard. ‘Who says you can draw me?’

  ‘Be quiet or you’ll ruin my concentration.’

  Frieda grumbled and closed her eyes but the trickle of a smile revealed she was pleased. After half an hour Tibor set his own brush down and leaned over Leonard’s drawing, studying it with solemn concentration. He gave a single nod.

  ‘Yes. The kid has got her. The mouth is a little big, and her chin is not so sharp but the eyes. Yes. There she is.’

  Juliet looked at the picture and kissed the top of Leonard’s head. Frieda wriggled round to see.

  ‘It’s not terrible.’ She almost smiled. ‘Come for a swim, squirt.’

  Squabbling happily, the children raced across the sand.

  Tibor stretched and gave a great yawn. ‘So, Juliet Montague, why are you here in beautiful California? Just a simple holiday? I think France or Norfolk might be easier. Norfolk is England, right?’

  ‘I’m here because of a painting. A painting and a gallery.’ She reached into the pocket of her sundress and brought out the scrap of newspaper. He scrutinised it, his lips moving as he read the Yiddish.

  ‘The Gallery of Vanished Husbands,’ he said, translating. ‘This man with the circle round him, he is your husband?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you think he is here in Los Angeles?’

  ‘Yes. But I haven’t found him yet.’

  ‘You should try this Gorgeous George’s Glasses. It says—’

  ‘I’ve tried already. He wasn’t there. Do you know where I might ask about him? Someone must know him.’

  Tibor stared at her blankly.

  ‘He’s Hungarian,’ said Juliet. ‘His name was Molnár.’

  Tibor shook his head and went back to his painting. ‘I don’t know any Molnár. I don’t know any Hungarians any more. They all go to a cafe.’

  Juliet sat up, knocking over a vase of brushes so that a river of green water trickled along the cement. ‘Will you take me?’

  Tibor shook his head. ‘No. I never go. I tell you where it is.’

  • • •

  Juliet toyed with asking Mickey to keep an eye on the kids but decided on reflection that they’d be safer alone. She waited until they were in bed, listening to the rhythmic patter of their breath to signal they were asleep, and then crept out of the apartment, shoes clutched in her hand.

  • • •

  Leonard, who was only pretending to drift off and was a little concerned he might have overdone it with the snoring, sat up in bed and listened to the click of the door. He knew she was plotting something from the minute he saw her
put on lipstick instead of brushing her teeth. He crept down the stairs in the dark behind her, trying not to trip over his pyjamas, which were embarrassing hand-me-downs from Frieda, listening as the front door to the building opened and closed. He rushed down to the porch, watching through the glass as his mother climbed into the Plymouth and drove off. He watched the taillights of the car vanish around the corner. Perhaps tonight she’d find him. Perhaps tonight his father would come home.

  • • •

  The steering wheel slid through Juliet’s damp palms, the tyres squealing against the kerb as she parked. The lights from the cafe dribbled out onto the pavement, nicotine yellow. She wound down the window and listened for a moment to the grunts of laughter and drifting music. Years ago, she’d been to plenty of these places with George. In the first days of their marriage he’d taken her with him – and she’d even enjoyed sitting at his elbow watching as he played chess, pinking with pride when he trounced the old men who lost with Slavic melodrama, slumping back against their wooden chairs and grabbing at her arm, ‘Ach, your husband, he kills me! He robs the blood from my veins. Show a little pity and fetch a fellow another schnapps. And a little poppy seed cake.’

  A fiddle cried out into the night and boots stamped a long-remembered rhythm – a shtetl lurking in Culver City. She wished Tibor was with her but he’d been immovable in his refusal. ‘I won’t go back there. Hungary is much too cold. I told you it’s this quality sunshine that keeps me kicking.’

  Juliet hoped that the noise and the packed bodies would mean that she could slip in to the cafe unnoticed, but the fiddler lowered his bow and twenty pairs of eyes turned to stare. Looking straight ahead, she walked to the bar.

  ‘A coffee, please.’

  A balding middle-aged man bent with some difficulty, his shirt buttons straining to contain his spreading stomach. He filled her a small glass with clear, pungent liquid. She sniffed at it dubiously.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘Coffee,’ said the man with a snort.

  Behind the bar a stout woman in a flowered pinafore dried glasses with a dirty tea towel and yelled at unseen children. From somewhere echoed the sound of a TV show and canned hilarity. The patrons stopped staring at Juliet and returned to their games of chess and cards and recreational bickering. In a corner someone read the Jewish Daily Forward and Juliet wondered about the husbands featured in this month’s gallery. The faces around the cafe were familiar – there was her father’s bald head, Uncle Jacob’s smirk and Uncle Ed’s filthy laugh. She relaxed a little. The fiddler began to play again, a leisurely polka – slow enough for even the very old or very drunk to dance to.