The Woman Who Heard Color (14 page)

Had it survived,
Lauren thought, picturing an intricate Italian chandelier with its scrolled glass branches and pastel florals, sparkling with reflected light. Had this lovely piece been looted? Or had it come crashing to the floor in a wartime bombing, sending shards of glass everywhere? As she imagined this disturbing image, Lauren wondered when Isabella would get back to the
Composition
, a painting believed to have been lost in World War II. At moments she questioned if the old woman was fabricating parts of her story, particularly those relating to the Kandinsky.

“Andrew and I could barely take two days when we married,” Mrs. Fletcher went on. “We spent one night at a little inn in Upstate New York. But those were different times.” She gazed over at the photo of her late husband, emitting a restrained sigh.

They sat quietly for a moment, Lauren wondering how she could encourage Mrs. Fletcher to continue revealing Hanna’s story as well as more about the Kandinsky, without seeming overly eager. And how could she keep her from veering off on another tangent without appearing disrespectful? Yet she knew now that Hanna Schmid
was
Hanna Fleischmann, a fact that Isabella had provided without prodding.

Listen,
she told herself once more.
Be patient.

“My parents waited several years to have a child,” Isabella said. “I don’t mean wait in the sense that young people wait now—I believe that they truly wanted a child, but their inability to do so right away allowed my mother to establish a career. She was definitely ahead of her time. A woman with more than just husband and children.” Isabella Fletcher’s face shone with unmistakable pride.

Then she stood, picked up the drawing in the tube, and again left the room.

Lauren reached for her BlackBerry to check if Patrick had replied to her text. He hadn’t. She needed to know soon if he could pick Adam up from day care. If she didn’t hear from him, she’d have to leave. She felt that familiar tug of maternal conflict and guilt.

She left a message asking that he send a text to let her know. Would Mrs. Fletcher invite her again, Lauren wondered, if she had to leave? The woman had never had a child; she wasn’t a mother, and Lauren didn’t know if she would understand. Hearing footsteps, Lauren slipped the phone back into her bag.

Mrs. Fletcher held a photograph, which she placed on the table as she sat.

It was black and white, fairly old, Lauren could see, and protected in an ornate frame that appeared equally as dated. The girl in the photo was about eight or nine, the age of Lauren’s niece, Amanda, her brother Aaron’s daughter. She wore a white frock, a big bow in her hair. From the thirties, Lauren guessed. The girl was sitting in a wicker chair. A boy stood next to her wearing a suit and tie. The girl looked very serious. The boy was smiling. Lauren couldn’t even guess how old the boy was, but it was obvious that he had Down syndrome.

“I was almost nine in this picture,” Mrs. Fletcher said. “My brother was twenty-five.”

Lauren studied the photograph, attempting to come up with appropriate words. The girl, a young Isabella, was a beautiful child. Very pale, with soft blond curls, evident even in the black-and-white photo. There was a sadness about her. The boy looked happy and proud and innocent, unaware of what was troubling the girl.

“There was a fair gap in your age,” Lauren finally said.

“Yes,” the older woman replied, staring down at the picture as she ran her fingers over her skirt. She looked up at Lauren and a slow, hesitant grin lifted her lips. “I believe I was an unexpected surprise for my parents.” Her smile softened. “And, yes, he was mentally challenged, intellectually disabled—isn’t that what they call it now? That’s not what they called it back then. Not in Germany, anyway. And I believe the Americans would have said
retarded
or
Mongoloid
. My parents were advised to put him away. That’s what they did with children like Willy back then. But Mother refused.”

Lauren couldn’t even think of what to say now so she said nothing. She thought back to her own pregnancy, the day Adam was born, the relief she felt after every toe and finger was counted.

“He was a dear, sweet boy,” Isabella said. “My mother and father adored him, as did I.”

Remembering what Mrs. Fletcher had told her earlier—that her father purchased the Kandinsky as a gift to celebrate her brother’s birth in 1911—Lauren guessed this photo would have been taken about 1936. And she knew exactly what was happening in Germany in the mid-thirties.

She picked up the picture of the two children, carefully examining the details as if there was something hidden within that might give her a clue as to where to go from here.

Yes, Lauren knew what was coming. She knew what was happening in Germany at the time of this portrait. A new government had begun to take shape, a government that would control every aspect of German life. A society in which a premium was placed on physical perfection. A society in which a boy such as Willy Fleischmann would be regarded as disposable rubbish.

Lauren felt a sudden, sharp heat prick at her chest. She was a spectator, positioned more than seventy years from the day the son and daughter of Hanna and Moses Fleischmann sat for this portrait, and she was aware of what history had now revealed.

She also knew, as Isabella had said, that children with such disabilities were usually sent to institutions back then, yet here Isabella sat along with Willy. Brother and sister. A Jewish father. A Christian mother. Children born into a world that would turn so very unkind.

As Lauren was about to set the photo back down on the table, her unsteady hand bumped her teacup, and in an attempt to catch it, she dropped the photo, which crashed against the leg of the table. She heard a crack. A fist of tension clenched around her heart, and then an enormous weight dropped to the pit of her stomach. Bending to pick up the picture, she exchanged a wideeyed look with Mrs. Fletcher, who had risen, napkin in hand, to lap up the spilled tea.

“I’m so sorry,” Lauren said, turning the framed photo over, seeing that, just as she suspected, the glass had broken. None of the pieces had fallen out of the frame, and thank God it didn’t appear to have scratched the photo. “Mrs. Fletcher, I’m so terribly sorry.” Her voice was unsteady, her tone anxious as well as apologetic. She took her own napkin, dabbing as she glanced down at the table leg, grateful to see no visible damage.

The woman gazed down at the photo of her young self and her brother. “It’s just the glass.
That
can be fixed.”

“I’d like to take care of it, replace the glass. I must apologize for my clumsiness.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Isabella answered sharply, gathering the cup—fortunately and miraculously unbroken—and the sopping napkins and plopping them on the tray. “Now, let’s continue, please.”

“Yes, please,” Lauren replied, though she felt on the verge of tears.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

Hanna sat at the piano, little Willy on her lap. At two and a half, he was finally starting to talk, though his words were undecipherable to anyone other than his mother. But what a joy this child was to both herself and Moses.

The little boy looked up at his mother with a grin. This was their magic room. Each morning after breakfast they came here and Willy sat on her lap as she played. He was always very still until she had finished, and then he would play his own tune, tapping the keys with his chubby little fingers, his mother guiding him along, the child delighted with the sounds he created.

When he was born, she didn’t know if he would survive; she didn’t know if her marriage would survive. Those early years had been happy, though interspersed with Hanna’s thoughts of Helene, her guilt over having married her mistress’s husband—having coveted her husband, even as Helene lay on her deathbed. Often Hanna struggled with the thought that Moses did not love her as he had loved Helene, that she was competing with a dead woman, and she questioned how she could possibly be jealous of a woman who had been gone from this earth for years. But she was not Helene, and she had made a new place in Moses’ heart. They worked together at the gallery, shared their thoughts about the art as they sat for supper, entertained collectors and art patrons in their home where Hanna, unlike Helene, could act as hostess. Sometimes she’d catch a glance from Moses as she spoke with one of their guests about a particular painting that she knew they would love, and Hanna could see the admiration and respect in her husband’s eyes, in his subtle smile.

They talked about having a family. They had assumed they would. Hanna was young and healthy. But then it didn’t happen. A year passed, then another.

When finally Willy arrived, Hanna often felt that Moses hated her, as if this defective child were her fault. The doctor said they should put him in a mental facility where he could receive proper care. She remembered clearly shouting at Dr. Langermann, “No, I will not. He is my child and you cannot take him away from me.” She’d hated Dr. Langermann then and, at times, she hated Moses because he had not one comforting word to offer her.

She thought back further to the great happiness she had felt when she realized, finally, after almost seven years of marriage, she was with child.

She knew by then that Moses and Helene had wanted a child but she had been unable to conceive. And Hanna thought that if she could only give him this son, he would love her as much as he loved the beautiful Helene, perhaps even more. She knew when they married he did not love her as he had loved his second wife, perhaps even his first, so Hanna set out to earn his love. She would present him with a son.

At first, when she suspected she was with child, she didn’t tell Moses. She told no one. She’d had such a difficult time conceiving, she wanted to make sure, and she feared she might lose the baby in those early weeks. Even after she missed her second month, she did not tell Moses. Then, into what she believed was her third month, her husband was so preoccupied with work, she was unable to find a perfect moment to share her joyous news.

The Fleischmann Gallery was about to open one of its biggest and most controversial exhibitions, featuring the work of the Neue Kunstlervereinigung München, with artists Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter, Alexej Jawlensky and Marianne Werefkin. The group had stirred up debate concerning their artistic validity, particularly the Russian, Kandinsky. He was showing several pieces, among them two lovely paintings he called
Composition I
and
Composition II
. They were said to be inspired by his music. Hanna knew they would leave the critics baffled and confused. What did these strange shapes represent? Was that a horse? Were those figures people? Water? A tree? She wondered if it truly mattered.

Moses was completely engaged in preparations for the show and did not notice the expansion of her waistline. Josef did, but he promised to tell no one until she was ready.

On the day before the exhibition opened, as Hanna helped Josef hang Kandinsky’s
Composition II
, she felt it—the first movement. It was not the tiny burst of a bubble that her sister Leni had described. It was as if the child were leaping in her womb, as if the bright, vibrant colors of the Kandinsky, which were creating a beautiful mixture of sounds, were stimulating the child, as if he could see and hear it, too. A verse from the gospel of St. Luke came to her: “The moment your greeting sounded in my ears, the baby leapt in my womb for joy.”

After the opening of the exhibition, she told Moses that she was with child.

“How far along?” he asked with concern.

Hanna took his hand in hers and placed it over her belly.

“How did I not know?” he replied with disbelief.

“You’ve been very busy with the exhibition.”

“Yes,” he said. She could hear the worry, the fear and caution in his voice.

“I felt the first movement,” she said, “as I stood before Kandinsky’s
Composition II
, and I sensed that I had been given a sign. It was as if he were leaping. Oh, Moses we must buy this painting!” she exclaimed.

“Of course,” Moses replied, his voice rising now, attempting to share in her exhilaration. “Yes, of course we will buy the painting.”

The painting was hung in the music room, and during those months of her pregnancy, each time Hanna entered and sat at the piano in the still of the room, it would begin—a concert with trumpets and cymbals and oboes and flutes. And the baby inside her danced to the colors.

Now, as she sat with little Willy, she felt that same joy. He ran his fingers over the piano keys, delighted with the sounds, then reached up for his mother, patting her gently on the cheek.

After Willy was born, Young Helene, Hanna’s stepdaughter, came to visit and stayed for two weeks. Little Jakob, now thirteen, remained home with his father in Berlin. Hanna wondered if Helene feared his presence might remind her that she would never have a normal boy. She’d always been kind to Hanna. When she married Moses, Hanna feared his daughter would not accept her, as she had never gotten on with her first stepmother. Yet Hanna, being the younger, could never see Young Helene as a daughter. She soon discovered she enjoyed the woman’s companionship immensely. Was it because they were more like sisters? Or was it because they both knew what it was like to live in the same shadow—the shadow of Moses’ second wife, the beautiful golden-eyed Helene?

Hanna appreciated Young Helene’s coming to help with the new baby. Her sister Käthe, her husband and family, were now in America, and her younger sister, Leni, was living in Kempton with her husband, too large with child herself to be of any help. Helene said nothing about the baby being different, which was both a comfort and an irritation. She said only, “What a sweet baby you have, Hanna.”

For months after the baby’s birth, Hanna rarely saw her husband. He rose early and spent all day at the gallery. She stayed in her room all day, tending to Willy, imagining he was a perfectly normal child. Moses returned home late. They did not take their meals together. He did not come to her room. He did not visit the nursery—she knew because she asked the nurse. Hanna ate alone before feeding Willy and putting him to bed. Had she, like Helene, become a wife who slept alone in her room? A woman too weak to face the world?