The Forgotten Painting - Gabriel Farago (mobi ebook reader txt) 📗

trump card of the evening: Jack Rogan, the famous author and storyteller, was ready to weave his magic.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, wouldn’t it be helpful to know what happened to the painting after all that?’ began the auctioneer once the applause had died down and Krakowski had returned to his seat. ‘Where has it been during the past seventy years? Well, there is someone who can answer that question: Mr Jack Rogan.’

The auctioneer then introduced Rogan and spoke briefly about the phenomenal success of his books, especially Dental Gold and Other Horrors, which had catapulted him onto the world stage and made him a famous author and Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

Jack Rogan loved nothing more than an attentive audience. A gifted public speaker with an engaging manner, he soon had everyone in the room mesmerised and under his spell.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, you just heard the auctioneer ask that all-important question: where has the painting been during the past seventy years? Intriguing, isn’t it? Especially after what Mr Krakowski has just told us. Well, I can answer that question for you.’ Rogan held up what looked like a small notebook. ‘The answers are all in here, in the Francis diary. As you know, I’m a storyteller. So, allow me to tell you a story. And what a story it is! It’s worthy of a book on its own. Who knows ... perhaps one day’, teased Rogan. ‘But for now, ladies and gentlemen, we have to go on a journey together. We have to travel back thirty years to a remote cattle station in Australia, and the worst drought in a generation ...’

Outback Queensland: December, 1985

Exhausted, the horses could barely move. The heat was unbearable and the cattle were dying. Choking on the dust, the three men riding slowly along the ridge looked dejected and defeated as the relentless outback sun sucked the life out of the parched, cracked earth, turning the meagre pastures into dustbowls. The few native creatures still alive were hiding underground and only ventured outside during the night.

The man at the front pulled up his horse and looked across the plain, shimmering in the glare of the searing midday sun. ‘I don’t know how much longer we can keep going’, he said, wiping his neck with a red handkerchief. ‘Another ten dead this morning’, he added, his voice filled with sadness. ‘There’s no point ... It’s time to get out the rifles ...’

‘We’ll get through this, Dad,’ said young Jack, ‘you’ll see.’

The optimism of youth and inexperience, thought the man, looking affectionately at his son. He shook his head, but didn’t have the heart to contradict him.

‘He’s right,’ said Gurrul, the last remaining Aboriginal drover, ‘we will.’ With most of the cattle dead or dying, all the other stockmen had been dismissed long ago. Gurrul, an Aboriginal elder, had known Jack all his life, and was part of the Rogan family. Jack looked gratefully at his friend. He loved that familiar face. Furrowed like the parched earth all around them and with deep creases and wrinkles crisscrossing the forehead, it looked as if it could hold three days’ rain. But what he loved most were the old man’s eyes, radiating intelligence and kindness.

Gurrul knew that watching cattle die day after day was heartbreaking. He also knew that worse was to come: shooting the weak survivors to end their pitiful suffering without hope. He could see that the father’s despair was having a devastating effect on his son. Seventeen was a vulnerable age, and a drought like this could break grown men three times the boy’s age. Gurrul had been through it all before, and was determined to shield Jack from the pain of seeing the family’s livelihood reduced to rotting carcasses and bleached bones. Somehow, he had to get him away from all this for a while, before it was too late and the inevitable slaughter began. Fortunately, he knew exactly how to do just that.

On the way back to the homestead, Gurrul fell in beside his boss. ‘I hear that the brothers at the Coberg Mission are looking for labourers,’ he said, ‘to help them renovate the classrooms and put a new roof on the chapel ...’

‘What’s on your mind?’

‘I was thinking of Jack ... he’s good with his hands.’

For a while the two men rode along in silence. ‘I know what you’re getting at’, said Jack’s father. ‘Good idea.’

‘I could take him over to the Mission in the morning, and then meet you to finish the job ...’ he added, lowering his voice.

Jack’s father looked gratefully at the old man. ‘Thank you, my friend; let’s do that’, he said, relieved.

 

* * *

 

Brother Francis, one of the senior missionaries, was in charge of the building works. He watched Jack carry the heavy beams up the ladder and lower them carefully into the correct slots. He’s strong and keen to learn, thought Brother Francis. What he lacks in experience, he makes up in enthusiasm. The plight of the cattlemen all around them was well-known to the missionaries and they were keen to help the best way they could. Some employment with full board and a little money was worth a lot during difficult times.

Set up after the First World War by German missionaries to educate Aboriginal children, the Coberg Mission had an excellent reputation. Most of the teaching was done by the sisters. The brothers worked in the fields, looked after the livestock and maintained the buildings, but they also taught practical skills such as carpentry and farming. The Mission was virtually self-sufficient, and the little that was needed and could not be produced, was purchased with donations and monies sent by the Order from faraway Germany. It was a successful division of tasks that had worked well for a long time.

Over the years, the missionaries had earned the trust of the local Aboriginals, who left their children in their care during the school term to be educated while they went ‘bush’. Walkabout had been the way of life of their revered ancestors since the Dreamtime, and the older generation still followed this age-old tradition.

However, during the nineteen-seventies, numbers began to decline rapidly in the missionary ranks. The number of headstones in the little cemetery next to the chapel was increasing faster than the seats occupied by new arrivals around the refectory table. For years there had been virtually no new missionaries, and the average age of those remaining was well above seventy. The days of the Coberg Mission were numbered, and the sisters and brothers knew it. Times were changing. They were content to live out their lives in this harsh new country, far away from the place they used to call home, and the people they once held dear. Every refuge has its price.

Always eager to please and with a sunny nature and agile mind, Jack slipped easily into the mission routine. Nothing was too much trouble for him. Helping the sisters in the morning to light the cooking fires before sunrise, or preparing the tools and provisions for another day of drudgery in the fields for the brothers, Jack was always ready to crack a joke and lend a helping hand.

In the evening, he would sit around the refectory table with the brothers to share the evening meal. This was his favourite time of the day. Fascinated by the stories told after dinner—mainly about the war, because most of the brothers had been soldiers—he listened in awe to stories about battles in North Africa, U-boat raids in the Atlantic, Messerschmitt dogfights over Berlin, and carpet bombing in Dresden. To an impressionable seventeen-year-old boy who had grown up on a remote cattle station in outback Queensland, this all sounded very exciting, the romance of adventure masking the tragedy and suffering that stood behind all of the stories, like ghosts of a bloody past.

At first Jack didn’t notice the obvious hierarchy and discipline among the brothers. There appeared to be a strict, almost military chain of command governing everything they did. Jack put this down to how missionaries operated and how a religious order worked. It wasn’t until much later that he realised there was much more to it than that, and it had nothing to do with religion or missionary life.

Impressed by Jack’s sparkling intelligence and inquisitive nature—he appeared interested in just about everything and was eager to learn—Brother Francis took Jack under his wing. They sat next to each other during meals, worked on the chapel roof together, went for walks before dinner and sat on the veranda, talking, long after everyone had gone to bed. At seventy-seven, Brother Francis’ life was almost behind him, but Jack’s was just beginning. Despite this generational gap, their mutual respect had developed into a deep friendship.

Brother Francis was a wonderful storyteller, and without knowing it at the time, this was the beginning of Jack’s fascination with storytelling that would dominate his entire life. They spoke about history and music, astronomy and warfare, philosophy and religion, and the cruelty of man, which often saw them turning in well after midnight. After that, Jack would lie on his swag, looking up at the stars blazing above. Unable to sleep and with his head spinning, he would go over the stories Brother Francis had told him until it was almost time to get up and face another day.

Jack stayed at the mission for three months. By the time Gurrul came to collect him and take him home, Jack the boy had matured into a young man with a dream.

 

***

 

‘I am telling you all this, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Jack, addressing the spellbound audience in the auction room, ‘because it will help you understand what happened next. I returned home to a cattle station without cattle, a desperate father who drank to avoid going mad, and a mother at the end of her tether—the bank manager had just refused to further extend credit to an enterprise without foreseeable prospects. But six months later, my family was thrown a lifeline from an unexpected quarter. I received a note from the Coberg Mission: Brother Francis had passed away. But that wasn’t all. He had made me his heir. After the funeral, I was handed a note Brother Francis had written just before he died.’ Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, creased around the edges. ‘This is it here’, he continued. ‘Allow me to read it to you:

 

Dear Jack,

By the time you read this, I will be in the Good Lord’s hands. I realise we knew each other for only a short time, but the length of days has nothing to do with friendship. There are many things about me and my past you don’t know, and when you do find out, you will be shocked and no doubt disappointed. Words cannot express the regret I have felt over the years for the things I have done.

As a dying man and your friend, I ask you to help me right a great wrong. I know this is a big ask, but there is no time left to explain it all. The best I can do is point you in the right direction and hope you will one day grant me this last wish. Just before I left Europe after the war, I buried something in a cemetery. If you follow the instructions on the back of this note, you will find all the answers, and a lot more...

 

You are the son I never had.

Your loving friend,

Francis

 

Jack held up the note. 'On the back here is a diagram of a cemetery in Berchtesgaden, a village in Bavaria,’ said Jack, ‘with directions pointing to a particular grave.’

Jack paused,