The Woman Who Heard Color (3 page)

“Tell me a little about the painting,” Lauren said, her voice tight, but calm.

“It’s one of his earlier works, not that geometric . . .” Isabella paused and shook her head as if envisioning something distasteful. “His later work, produced during his Bauhaus period, all circles and squares. I’m not fond of this period of the artist’s work. I much prefer the paintings he did in Munich.” She let out a little laugh. “But to each his own. I’m sure that’s what my father would say. My mother, too. Everyone should be allowed the freedom to choose what he or she likes or dislikes. Our Kandinsky was painted about 1910, long before I came into the world.”

Again Lauren waited, hoping Mrs. Fletcher would add more, but the woman said nothing. Finally Lauren asked, “Will you tell me how this painting came to your family? When it was purchased?”

“Originally the year my brother was born, nineteen eleven. A gift to my mother from my father in celebration of my brother’s birth. It hung in our music room. We called it ‘Willy’s Colors.’ He loved it.”

“Willy? Your brother?”

Isabella nodded. “Wilhelm. He’s been gone many years.”

“
Originally
purchased?”

“
Originally
, yes. It was actually purchased twice.”

Twice? Lauren wondered. What did this mean? “You inherited the painting from your parents?”

“Yes.”

“You came to America with your parents?” Lauren asked just to see what she’d say.

“My father died in Germany.”

“Your mother?”

“She escaped.”

“Escaped?” Lauren was intrigued by Isabella’s use of this word. Left illegally, with false documents, her pockets stuffed with cash, her luggage with art—that would be a more accurate description. “Escaped with the painting?” she asked.

“It came later.”

The woman’s answers were becoming more terse. One moment Mrs. Fletcher seemed ready to share, opening up. Then she closed like a blossom deprived of light. Lauren waited patiently, busying her hands again along the edge of the pillow.

Isabella said, “To understand the history of this painting, my parents’ story must be understood. My mother’s story. Yes . . .” She let out a small, quiet laugh. “Mother always considered Kandinsky
her
artist.” The woman fixed her eyes on Lauren, and once, then twice, she blinked, her wrinkled lids skimming moist, soft blue eyes. “The truth must be known.”

“I have nothing against the truth,” Lauren replied, the edge to her voice much sharper than she’d intended, so sharp it cut like a challenge.

Mrs. Fletcher nodded and her gaze, steady on the younger woman, did not waver. The firm set of her mouth, the slight lift of her chin, seemed to be telling Lauren that she was up to this challenge.

“Paintings by Kandinsky,” Isabella said, “as well as work by other progressive artists, were considered elitist art by Hitler, as if one needed some kind of pedigree to understand it. His theory was that if the common man off the street didn’t get it, it was crap.”

Lauren swallowed a laugh, surprised at Isabella’s use of the word
crap
. The older woman let out a small refined chuckle, as if she had surprised herself.

She continued, “He often associated the word
elitist
with the Jewish race.”

Lauren touched the rim of her still-almost-full cup of tea, running her fingers over the fine, fragile edge. She could feel her breath going in and out with a quick, uneven rhythm.

“My mother,” Mrs. Fletcher said, “she certainly didn’t come from an elitist background, yet she had a great love for this type of art.”

“You said she was born in the country, on a farm. How did she end up in Munich?”

Isabella pondered the question, as if deciding how to reply. “It began because she was unhappy. I guess she was probably searching for something.”

“Like what?”

“Independence. Excitement. A better life. What do any of us search for?”

“Did she find it?”

“I believe there were moments of true happiness.” A faint smile flickered across the woman’s face. “She grew up as part of a large family with a strict German father. When her mother was alive she was very happy. After she lost her mother, her father remarried. I know my mother despised her stepmother, though later I think she might have had some regrets that they never established a real relationship.”

“What year was that?” Lauren asked. “When she went to Munich?”

“She was just sixteen.” Isabella thought for a moment. “Nineteen hundred.”

“Turn of the century. She was just sixteen? She went alone?”

Isabella nodded. “Yes. Well, no, not exactly. My aunt Katie—Käthe, then—was already working in Munich. Mother hoped she too might find a position in the house where her older sister was employed as a cook. She used to write home to my mother—they were very close. Their home in Bavaria was set in one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. As a child I often visited my uncle and cousins on the farm. Have you ever seen the Bavarian Alps, Ms. O’Farrell?”

“Yes, I have. They’re beautiful.” She’d spent a semester in Europe, studying art, taking advantage of every opportunity to travel, and she’d been back to Germany twice, going through Nazi archives.

“The Munich house was lovely,” Mrs. Fletcher said. “Quite exotic, particularly for a girl from the country, but something you might expect to find somewhere on the Mediterranean rather than in the heart of a German city. Red tiled roof. Marble floors. Handwoven rugs. Sleek walnut banisters.”

Isabella closed her eyes as if imagining this scene, as if returning in her mind to her homeland. And then her eyes opened wide and again she looked directly at Lauren. “The story must be told. The true story.” These words were delivered with a heaviness that Lauren could actually feel, as if the older woman was about to hand over something of great importance, as if it were Isabella Fletcher now issuing a challenge.

CHAPTER TWO

 

Bright reds, then muffled tones of blue, flashed before Hanna’s eyes—the train screeching to a halt, the rustle of passengers gathering bags and parcels. The man sitting beside her stood, lifted a small case from overhead, handed it to his wife, and nodded a farewell to Hanna, who had nothing to gather.

“Enjoy your visit, dear,” the woman said sweetly, touching Hanna’s arm.

Passengers filed down the narrow aisle of the train carriage. Hanna remained seated, pressing her fingers to her ears, closing her eyes, seeking protection in the muted light beneath her eyelids. When she opened them, the passenger car was empty, save for a young mother and child who had occupied a seat in the back. Clutching a bag in one hand, pulling her small daughter by the other, the woman made her way down the aisle. The girl looked back at Hanna, her eyes growing wide with concern as if to ask,
Are you not getting off?

Hanna forced a smile, nodded, and then rose, walked down the aisle, out the door, down the steps, and planted one shaky foot and then the other on the wooden platform of the Munich Bahnhof.

What have I done?
she asked herself as she threaded through the crowd and followed the bustle into the station. Gazing up at the wide expanse of ceiling, she nearly tumbled over a small boy stooping to pick up a pfennig.

“Entschuldigen Sie, bitte,”
she said, patting the child on the head. She continued past a family sitting on a bench sharing sausages and bread, around a man and woman engaged in lively conversation, and moved along with a collection of people leaving the station as an assortment of hurried travelers came in. Some were dressed as Hanna in Bavarian country clothes: women in dirndls, crimped skirts, and country shoes; men in lederhosen, jankers, warm woolen socks, and alpine feathered caps. Most wore dark city clothes.

She stepped out of the station into the busy Bahnhofplatz. Light reflected off the windows of tall stone buildings surrounding the square. Puffs of smoke rose from chimney stacks. Horses’ shod hooves clicked heavily against the cobblestones, sending off a splash of color.

Moisture hung in the air, clouds dimming the pale blue sky. Hanna reached up and slid her hand down one braid, then the other, giving each a little tug to smooth out the frizz. As always, she had braided it that morning, after helping Dora and then Leni with their hair. Unlike her stepsister and sister, who both possessed agreeable, fine, straight hair, Hanna’s hair was a mass of unruly curls, and even when confined to braids it seemed to protest. On a humid day her hair was most rebellious, red spirals and wisps attempting to escape.

She made her way through knots of carriages outside on the wide street. She had been to the city just once, four years ago when she was twelve and had come with her father, mother, and older sister, Käthe. Their mother had presented the trip to Munich as a grand adventure for her two eldest daughters, though Hanna had little recollection of the city other than that it was large and noisy with many sounds and colors. She had been preoccupied with fear for her mother, and the memory that stayed with her was the smell of the doctor’s office, and then the long, silent train ride back home.

She dipped her hand into her left pocket, fingering her remaining coins. After the train fare she still had enough for something to eat. She imagined her family sitting down for dinner. By now her father and older brothers, Frederick and Karl, would have returned from the upper pasture where they had gone to check on the cattle. Her stepmother, Gerta, would be home from Weitnau, the fabric and notions she’d gone to fetch tucked into her shopping basket. Would Leni tell them when they asked—for surely they would notice the empty seat at the table—that Hanna had simply walked out of the house and left them? She shivered at the thought of what she’d done.

She reached into her other pocket for Käthe’s letter. Perhaps Hanna, too, could find work in Munich. And then she chided herself for thinking such thoughts. She had not come to Munich seeking employment. She was just off for a little holiday in the city.

She walked, gazing into one store window after another, finally stopping at a bakery. Her empty stomach rumbled as she admired the cakes, breads, and tarts in the window. Buttery smells, the aroma of cinnamon and apples, wafted out as she opened the door.

“Guten Tag,”
the woman at the counter greeted Hanna. Her plump round cheeks dimpled as she offered a smile.

“Guten Tag,”
Hanna replied, surveying the fresh pastries. She bought a raspberry marmalade tart and stood as she ate. She licked the sugary jam from her fingers, then pulled the letter from her pocket again and asked where she might find the street address on the envelope from Käthe, which she showed the woman to make sure she understood.

“My sister Käthe Schmid is employed by Herr Moses Fleischmann,” Hanna explained proudly.

“The Jew. His gallery is on Theatinerstrasse,” the woman replied with a wave of the arm, as if the gallery might be just down the street.

Hanna nodded. “Yes, but she works in his home as a cook.” She pointed again to the address on the envelope and then read it aloud, guessing from the woman’s quick squinty glance that she could not read.

She instructed Hanna to go to the Marienplatz, which she described with gestures, her hands going this way and that. “Catch the tram with the number one hundred eighty-seven painted on the front, then get off at the fifth stop and walk left about two blocks.”

“Danke,”
Hanna thanked her and stepped back out onto the street. She walked, following the woman’s instructions until she arrived at a large square. Her eyes spun, first to the enormous Rathaus with its spiky steeples, then to the lovely golden statue of the Virgin on the tall pedestal in the center of the square. The Marienplatz—dedicated to the mother of Christ. People scurried about, stylish women in dark skirts and fitted jackets, hair arranged neatly in sophisticated chignons; men in long pants and tall city hats, hailing carriages, greeting friends. Busy people with events to attend, invitations to honor, business to deal with. Hanna felt a sudden rush of excitement. Surely this was the adventure her mother had intended for her in Munich.

Two sets of tracks ran along one side of the Platz and a cluster of single train carriages, attached to a line overhead, stopped and then started in an orderly fashion as passengers stepped off and others got on. Hanna walked between a line of horse carriages and the trams, until she spotted the car the woman had told her to board. She paid for a place with her remaining coins, sat, and watched the street signs as they passed, Käthe’s envelope clutched in her hand. At the fifth stop she got off just as the woman at the bakery had advised her. Then she walked two blocks, and a small but ever-growing twist of delight turned in her stomach, pushing aside the shame and trepidation that had sat like two stones in her belly since she’d stepped onto the train in Kempton.

When she approached the large house with the red tiled roof she knew she had found the Fleischmann home. It was just as Käthe had described. A fountain with mermaids and sleek winged horses carved about the base stood in the garden in front of the house. The horses spewed water from their mouths, creating a lovely, colorful rhythm. The grounds still held a hint of latesummer bloom.

Hanna thought of Käthe’s earlier letters, telling of the modern kitchen with the latest equipment, the rooms with electric lights, silk drapes, flocked wallpaper, marble and wood-carved moldings around the doors, upholstered furniture, and lovely paintings and drawings hanging on the walls. Her letters were filled with details of the beautiful gowns and jewels worn by the wife of the distinguished Herr Fleischmann, of dinners and parties, of entertaining wealthy and famous guests who stayed long into the evening, eating, drinking, conversing about topics of great interest, playing games, and listening to music. Käthe’s letters were so descriptive Hanna could smell the dumplings and strudels as she read, and she could hear the music Frau Fleischmann played on her piano. Now as she walked along the street in front of the house, she tried to imagine which window she might gaze through to look into the kitchen, the dining room, the parlor, the music room. It was an enormous house with so many windows, so many rooms.