False Impression Read online

  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 prewar 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 soccer in the road watched suspiciously as the stranger in her smart linen jacket, jeans with fashionable tears, and fancy sneakers walked up the worn, potholed 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 soccer 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 around 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 to 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 and 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 around the room. “But why haven’t you spent some of the money I’ve been sending to you each month?”

  “I have,” said her mother 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 Ceauşescu 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. “I’ll 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 curb.

  28

  ANNA 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 toward 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 theater 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, 7:00 P.M.

  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 theater was in darkness. She walked up the steps at the side of the hall and took a seat toward 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 bomb