False Impression (21 page)

Jack climbed the
steps of the plane. He didn’t look back.

When Anna
strolled out of her hotel a few minutes after nine, she found Sergei standing
by his old Mercedes waiting for her.

‘Good morning,
Sergei,’ she said as he opened the back door for her.

‘Good morning,
madam. Do you still wish to visit your mother?’

Tes,’ replied
Anna. ‘She lives at...’

Sergei waved a
hand to make it clear that he knew exactly where to take her.

Anna smiled with
pleasure as he drove through the centre of town past a magnificent fountain
that would have graced a lawn at Versailles. But once Sergei had reached the
outskirts of the city, the picture quickly changed from colour to black and
white. By the time her driver had reached the neglected outpost of Berceni,

Anna realized
that the new regime still had a long way to go if they were to achieve the
prosperity-for-all programme they had promised the voters following the
downfall of Ceaugescu. Anna had, in the space of a few miles, returned to the
more familiar scenes of her youth. She found many of her countrymen downcast,
looking older than their years. Only the young kids playing football in the
street seemed unaware of the degradation that surrounded them.

It appalled Anna
that her mother was still so adamant about remaining in her birthplace after
her father had been killed in the uprising. She had tried so many times to
convince her to join them in America, but she wouldn’t be budged.

In 1987 Anna had
been invited to visit Illinois by an uncle she had never met. He’d even sent
her two hundred dollars to assist with her passage. Her father told her to leave,
and leave quickly, but it was her mother who predicted that she would never
come back. She purchased a one-way ticket, and her uncle promised to pay for
the return journey whenever she wanted to go home.

Anna was
seventeen at the time, and she had fallen in love with America even before the
boat had docked. A few weeks later,

Ceau§escu began
his crackdown on any individual who dared to oppose his draconian regime. Her
father wrote to warn Anna that it was not safe for her to come home.

That was his last
letter. Three weeks later he joined the rebels, and was never seen again.

Anna missed her
mother dreadfully and repeatedly begged her to join them in Illinois. But her
response was always the same.

‘This is my
homeland, where I was born, and where I shall die. I am too old to begin a new
life.’ Too old, Anna had remonstrated.

Her mother was
only fifty-one, but they were fifty-one stubborn Romanian years, so Anna
reluctantly accepted that nothing would change her mind. A month later, her
uncle George enrolled Anna in a local school. While civil unrest in Romania
continued unabated,

Anna graduated
from college and later accepted the opportunity to study for a PhD at Penn, in
a discipline that had no language barriers.

Dr Petrescu
still wrote to her mother every month, only too aware that most of her letters
were not reaching her because the spasmodic replies often asked questions she
had already answered.

The first
decision Anna made after she left college and joined Sotheby’s was to open a
separate bank account for her mother in Bucharest, to which she transferred
$400 by standing order on the first day of every month.
Although
she would rather have...

‘I’ll wait for
you,’ said Sergei, as the taxi finally came to a halt outside a dilapidated
block of flats in Piazza Resitei.

Thank you,’ said
Anna, as she looked out at the pre-war estate where she was born, and where her
mother still lived. Anna could only wonder what Mama had spent the money on.
She stepped out onto the weed-covered path that she had once thought so wide
because she couldn’t jump across it.

The children
playing football in the road watched suspiciously as the stranger in her smart
linen jacket, jeans with fashionable tears and fancy sneakers walked up the
worn, pot-holed path. They also wore jeans with tears. The elevator didn’t
respond to Anna’s button-pressing – nothing changes – which was why, Anna
recalled, the most sought-after flats were always those on the lower floors.

She couldn’t
understand why her mother hadn’t moved years ago.

Anna had sent
more than enough money for her to rent a comfortable apartment on the other
side of town. Anna’s feeling of guilt grew the higher up she climbed. She had
forgotten just how dreadful it was, but like the children playing football in
the street, it had once been all she knew.

When Anna
eventually reached the sixteenth floor, she stopped to catch her breath. No
wonder her mother so rarely left the flat.

On the floors
above her resided sixty-year-olds who were housebound.

Anna hesitated
before she knocked on a door that hadn’t seen a splash of paint since she’d
last stood there.

She waited for
some time before a frail, white-haired lady, dressed from head to toe in black,
pulled the door open, but by only a few inches. Mother and daughter stared at
each other, until suddenly Elsa Petrescu flung open the door, threw her arms
round her daughter and shouted in a voice as old as she looked, ‘Anna,

Anna, Anna.’
Both mother and daughter burst into tears.

The old lady
continued to cling onto Anna’s hand as she led her into the flat in which she
had been born. It was spotless, and Anna could still remember everything,
because nothing had changed.

The sofa and
chairs her grandmother had left them, the family photographs, all black and
white unframed, a coal scuttle with no coal, a rug that was so worn it was hard
to make out the original pattern. The only new addition to the room was a
magnificent painting that hung on otherwise blank walls. As Anna admired the
portrait of her father, she was reminded where her love of art had begun.

‘Anna, Anna, so
many questions to ask,’ her mother said. ‘Where do I begin?’ she asked, still
clutching her daughter’s hand.

The sun was
setting before Anna had responded to every one of her mother’s questions, and
then she begged once again, ‘Please,

Mama, come back
with me and live in America.’

‘No,’ she
replied defiantly, ‘all my friends and all my memories are here. I am too old
to begin a new life.’

‘Then why not
move to another part of the city? I could find you something on a lower...’

‘This is where I
was married,’ her mother said quietly, ‘where you were born, where I lived for
over thirty years with your beloved father, and where, when God decrees it is
my time, I shall die.’ She smiled up at her daughter. “Who would tend your father’s
grave?’ she asked as if she’d never asked the question before. She looked into
her daughter’s eyes. ‘You know he was so pleased to see you settled in America
with his brother -’ she paused – ‘and now I can see that he was right.’

Anna looked round
the room. ‘But why haven’t you spent some of the money I’ve been sending to you
each month?’

‘I have,’ she
said firmly, ‘but not on myself,’ she admitted,

‘
because
I want for nothing.’

‘Then what have
you spent it on?’ Anna queried.

‘Anton.’

‘Anton?’
repeated Anna.

‘Yes, Anton,’
said her mother. ‘You knew that he’d been released from jail?’

‘Oh yes,’ said
Anna, ‘he wrote to me soon after Ceau§escu was arrested to ask if I had a photo
of Papa that he could borrow.’

Anna smiled as
she looked up at the painting of her father.

‘It’s a good
likeness,’ said her mother.

‘It certainly
is,’ said Anna.

‘They gave him
back his old job at the academy. He’s now the Professor of Perspective. If
you’d married him, you would be a professor’s wife.’

‘Is he still
painting?’ she asked, avoiding her mother’s next inevitable question.

‘Yes,’ she
replied, ‘but his main responsibility is to teach the graduates at the
Universitatea de Arte. You can’t make a living as an artist in Romania,’ she
said sadly. ‘You know, with his talent,

Anton should
also have gone to America.’

Anna looked up
again at Anton’s magnificent portrait of her father.

Her mother was
right; with such a gift, he would have flourished in New York. ‘But what does
he do with the money?’ she asked.

‘
He buys canvases, paints, brushes and all those materials that his
pupils can’t afford, so you see, your generosity is
being put to good
use.’ She paused. ‘Anton was your first love, Anna, yes?’

Anna wouldn’t
have believed that her mother could still make her blush. ‘Yes,’ she admitted,
‘and I suspect I was his.’

‘He’s married
now, and they have a little boy called Peter.’ She paused again. ‘Do you have a
young man?’

‘No, Mama.’

‘Is that what
brings you back home? Are you running away from something, or someone?’

‘What makes you
ask that?’ Anna asked defensively.

‘There is
a sadness
in your eyes, and fear,’ she said, looking up at
her daughter, ‘which you could never hide as a child.’

‘I do have one
or two problems,’ admitted Anna, ‘but nothing that time won’t sort out.’ She
smiled. ‘In fact, I rather think that Anton might be able to help me with one
of them, and I’m hoping to join him at the academy for a drink.
Do you have any message you want passed on?’
Her mother
didn’t reply. She had quietly dozed off. Anna rearranged the rug on her
mother’s lap and kissed her on the forehead. Til be back again tomorrow
morning, Mama,’ she whispered.

She slipped
silently out of the room. As she walked back down the littered staircase, she
was pleased to see the old yellow Mercedes was still parked by the kerb.

A
nna returned to
her hotel, and after a quick shower and change of clothes, her newly acquired
chauffeur took her to the Academy of Art on Piata Universitatii.

The building had
lost none of its elegance or charm with the passing of time, and when Anna
climbed the steps towards the massive sculptured doors, memories came flooding
back of her introduction to the great works of art hanging in galleries she
thought she would never see. Anna reported to the front desk and asked where
Professor Teodorescu’s lecture was taking place.

‘In the main
theatre on the third floor,’ said the girl behind the counter, ‘but it has
already started.’

Anna thanked the
young student and, without asking for any directions, climbed the wide marble
staircase to the third floor.

She stopped to
glance at a poster outside the hall:

The Influence of
Picasso on Twentieth-century Art Professor Anton Teodorescu TONIGHT, 7.00PM *

She didn’t
require the arrow to point her in the right direction.

Anna gingerly
pushed open the door, pleased to find that the lecture theatre was in darkness.
She walked up the steps at the side of the hall and took a seat towards the
back.

A slide of
Guernica filled the screen. Anton was explaining that the massive canvas was
painted in 1937, at the time of the Spanish Civil War, when Picasso was at the
height of his powers. He went on to say that the depiction of the bombing and
the resulting carnage had taken Picasso three weeks, and the image was
unquestionably influenced by the artist’s hatred of the Spanish dictator,
Franco. The students were listening attentively, several taking notes. Anton’s
bravura performance reminded Anna why she’d had a crush on him all those years
ago, when she not only lost her virginity to an artist, but began a life-long
love affair with art.

When Anton’s
presentation came to an end, the rapturous applause left Anna in no doubt how
much the undergraduates had enjoyed his lecture. He’d lost none of his skill in
motivating and nurturing the young’s enthusiasm for their chosen subject.

Anna watched her
first love as he collected together his slides and began to put them in an old
briefcase. Tall and angular, his mop of curly dark hair, ancient brown corduroy
jacket and open neck shirt gave him the air of a perpetual student. She
couldn’t help noticing that he had put on a few pounds, but she didn’t feel it
made him any less attractive. When the last student had filed out, Anna made
her way to the front of the hall.

Anton glanced up
over his half-moon spectacles, apparently anticipating a question from the
student who was approaching him.

When he first
saw Anna, he didn’t speak, just stared.

‘Anna,’ he
finally exclaimed. Thank God I didn’t realize you were in the audience, as you
probably know more about Picasso than I do.’

Anna kissed him
on both cheeks and said with a laugh, Tou’ve lost none of your charm, or
ability to flatter.’

Anton held up
his hands in mock defeat, grinning widely. *Was Sergei at the airport to pick
you up?’