The Woman Who Heard Color (6 page)

After replacing the maps and books on the bookshelf flanking the fireplace, Isabella settled once again into her chair and offered more tea from the pot, though Lauren guessed it was now lukewarm at best.

“Yes, please,” Lauren said. And then she asked, “Your mother adapted well to life in Munich?” She would attempt to keep the conversation centered on events in the city, those that might relate to the art.

“Oh, yes, she adapted very well,” Mrs. Fletcher replied as she poured more tea for Lauren and then herself. The older woman, in her expensive-looking suit and pearls, might have been a society lady serving as hostess at some social gathering. Lauren felt underdressed in her slacks and simple cotton blouse.

“She saw it as a grand adventure,” Isabella explained. “My mother had little formal education—well,
none
to speak of—but her experiences in the city, her exposure to the more modern movements, yes, it was in Munich that she became acquainted with the art. She certainly didn’t get this exposure at the farm.”

“She learned about art from studying the paintings in the home where she found work?”

Isabella nodded. “Yes, and later in the gallery.”

“The gallery?” Lauren asked.

“Yes, the Fleischmann Gallery, of course.”

Lauren felt an increase in the beat of her heart as well as her breathing.
Fleischmann.
Exactly the name she was searching for. She knew now that she was on the right track. She had so many questions, but feared if she spoke, Mrs. Fletcher could detect a change in her tone. It would be difficult to keep the excitement out of her voice. She took a sip of tea, gulped, and then coughed nervously, hardly believing this information had just been unceremoniously placed in her hands. Mrs. Fletcher asked if she needed a glass of water. Lauren shook her head and took another small sip of tea.

“Initially my mother learned by observation,” Mrs. Fletcher continued, “and then she became involved in the
business
of art.”

“The
business
of art?” Lauren asked, placing the same emphasis on the word
business
.

“Oh, yes, next to family, art was the most important aspect of my mother’s life.”

“This exposure in Munich eventually developed into a career for Hanna?” she baited the older woman.

“She was very much involved. She and my father formed a true partnership. She knew many of the artists,” Mrs. Fletcher added, waving toward the painting that Lauren had earlier identified as a Franz Marc, a colorful mosaiclike piece with two horses in an unnatural shade of blue. “She became acquainted with most of these artists.”

“Kandinsky?”

“Oh, yes.”

“She purchased the Kandinsky,” Lauren asked, “from the artist himself? In Munich?”

“Yes.”

“You said the painting was purchased twice?”

“I did say that.” There was a note of annoyance in Mrs. Fletcher’s tone, as if she were warning the young woman to be patient. Lauren thought of all the documents she’d examined, German records, American immigration papers, all the hours she’d already spent on this project, how very close she felt right now.

“Yes, originally purchased from Kandinsky,” Mrs. Fletcher said, “but we are getting ahead of the story.” Lauren smiled and nodded, detecting a little shake of the finger in Isabella Fletcher’s voice.

CHAPTER FOUR

 

When Frau Hirsch took ill, and was confined to her bed, Frau Stadler, the head cook, asked Hanna to take the tray in to the mistress, a request she eagerly accepted. She was curious to get a look at the wife who had sent her stepdaughter away, a woman Hanna had already decided she did not like.

Frau Fleischmann was sitting up in bed when Hanna entered the room. Her skin was soft and pale with the slightest blush in her cheeks. Long blond hair fell over her thin shoulders, and an oval-shaped locket lay in the hollow of her slender neck. As Hanna approached she noticed the woman’s eyes, rimmed with dark lashes. They were the most unusual color she’d ever seen. They were not brown, or blue, or green. Her eyes could only be described as golden, and there was the softest, sweetest, saddest timbre in the color. Hanna could hear it clearly.

A book was folded across her lap. She looked up and smiled, and instantly Hanna knew she could not hate this woman who smiled at a stranger.

“Thank you, Hanna,” she said, addressing her by name. “
Bitte
, the tray goes here.” Her voice was nearly the same color as her eyes, which startled Hanna.

“You are Käthe’s sister?”

“Yes, Frau Fleischmann,” Hanna answered, placing the tray on the table beside the bed. She removed the lid, just as Frau Stadler had instructed her, poured coffee from the silver pot, added two drops of cream and a lump of sugar, and placed a spoon on the saucer.

“You look very much like your sister.”

Hanna was surprised, again, that she knew her sister’s name, that she knew what Käthe looked like. She had a thought lodged in her mind that Frau Fleischmann cared little about the household help. Hanna studied the cover on the book. A novel. The author Theodor Fontane.

“Do you read?” Frau Fleischmann asked, stirring her coffee. Her eyes rose up to meet Hanna’s. She was much younger than Hanna had expected. She knew she was younger than her husband, but she looked barely older than Käthe, who at eighteen was two years older than Hanna. And yet there was a weariness about her, shadows under her golden eyes that made Hanna think she had lived for many years.

“Yes, I read.” She had never officially gone to school, but her mother, who believed an education was important even for a farmer’s daughter, had taught the children to read, or perhaps they had taught one another, as there were no grade levels, no tests, and everyone advanced at their own pace. Hanna was always curious—“my curious little bunny,” her mother called her. And a dreamer. She loved the stories, but also the histories. She would read anything and everything she could find, and her mother would take them to the lending library in Kempton once or twice a month when she was well.

Frau Fleischmann asked that Hanna read from the book, then motioned that she draw the chair, which sat near the vanity across the room, closer to the bed.

Hanna sat on the soft pink cushion, opened the book, and began to read. She didn’t understand much of what she read. Frau Fleischmann listened intently, tore pieces from her breakfast roll with nervous fingers, and drank two cups of coffee, then wiped her delicate, thin lips on the white linen napkin that Hanna had folded on the tray just as Frau Stadler had instructed her.

“Danke,”
she said after a while. “Thank you.” She placed her napkin on the tray and lay back as if the effort to eat had exhausted her. “Please inquire of Frau Hirsch’s health. I hope that she is doing much better.”

Hanna never had the opportunity to wish Frau Hirsch well. She learned when she returned the tray to the kitchen that morning that the old woman had passed.

 

 

This was how it began, how Hanna worked herself into the intimacies of the Fleischmann household. After Frau Hirsch’s death, she became the personal maid to Frau Fleischmann. She was not in the least upset at giving up her role as assistant housekeeper, though at first she missed having time to study the paintings as she cleaned.

On the days when Frau Fleischmann was feeling well, Hanna helped her dress for dinner. She tired easily, ate little, and often left before the meal was finished, particularly when they had guests.

After dinner, as Hanna helped her prepare for bed, put away her evening gown, and combed through her long golden hair, the mistress told her stories—of those who had come that evening, their places in Munich society, the particular interest of each in the world of art. Sometimes she described the way in which her husband had made a sale on that particular evening. Hanna could see that she loved him dearly—for his kindness, for his skill, and for his ability to entertain, to make his guests comfortable, to put them in the mood to buy a valuable, terribly expensive painting, to convince them that a particular artist could change the world of art and carry them along as an investor to the top. Frau Fleischmann understood this was a business, though she also had a deep respect and love for the work of the artists themselves. And she knew them all, could describe in detail the specifics of their work. She lent Hanna books from her library that told about the art from the past, the classical sculpture of the Romans and Greeks, the lovely paintings from the Italian Renaissance, the Baroque art from Germany, Holland, and Spain.

Hanna read to her from the latest novels, from books of philosophy and religion, from the fashion magazines that came from Paris. Frau Fleischmann said that when she was feeling better, they would go to Paris with Herr Fleischmann to shop and to visit the galleries, to see the current trends in the very active, everchanging world of art in France where artists were using colors and shapes in innovative ways.

Frau Fleischmann was delicate and feminine, and yet there was a quality in her that was almost like a man. She took an interest in everything, asking Hanna to read from the newspaper each day, commenting on the political situation. Her interests were not those associated with the kitchen or household but those of the world, which she seemed to embrace even from her small world that was often confined to her bedroom.

Her name was Helene, she told Hanna, after Helen of Troy in Greek mythology. The most beautiful woman in the world, the daughter of Zeus.

According to the custom of the day among the wealthy, Frau Fleischmann had her own bedroom. Hanna didn’t know if Herr Fleischmann ever visited the boudoir other than to fetch his spouse and escort her down to dinner. Rumor was that Frau Fleischmann was too delicate for the activities and duties of a wife. There was also gossip that, on occasion, her husband visited the brothels, but Hanna could not imagine a gentleman as refined as Herr Fleischmann doing such a thing.

When Hanna saw them together, sometimes sitting in the parlor after dinner, she could tell that he loved her. She could see by the way he looked into her eyes, by the softness of his touch when he placed his hand on her shoulder, on the small of her back when he walked her up the stairs, and then kissed her on the lips before she retired to her room, he to his. How did Hanna see all of this? Because she was always on hand to assist her mistress.

Frau Fleischmann’s moods shifted from day to day. Sometimes she was delighted with the breakfast Hanna brought in on the tray, and she would talk and talk, about the trips she had taken with her husband during the early years of their marriage, how they had visited the art studios in Paris. She told Hanna that the great family wealth had come more from the selling of antiquities and traditional art rather than modern-day paintings, but Herr Fleischmann, unlike his father who had started the business, had a particular interest in the modern trends.

“There is so much happening now in the world of art,” she told Hanna, “all very exciting.” Hanna could hear it in her voice, the enthusiasm, the desire to be involved in her husband’s work.

Yet sometimes she barely spoke to Hanna, asking her to leave the room. When Hanna returned to check on her, the food on the tray would be untouched.

On a very good day, Frau Fleischmann would ask Hanna to walk her down to the music room and she would sit at the piano. She gestured for the girl to sit in a chair beside her, and she played the most beautiful music Hanna had ever heard. She told her the names of the composers—Bach, Handel, Mozart, Wagner. But, as the days passed, Frau Fleischmann’s energy often failed, and her fingers refused to perform as she wished. There were days when she could not play the music. Sometimes she cried. One day she forced her fingers one by one into a ball and banged violently on the ivory keys.

After that particular outburst, they didn’t return to the music room for several days, and when they did, Frau Fleischmann said, “
Bitte
, come sit here beside me.” She patted the bench, and as Hanna sat, she placed her hands over the girl’s. “Fingers here,” she said, guiding with her own. “Press this key ever so slightly, then here with greater force. Yes, that’s right; hold it for just a moment. Yes! Yes!” she exclaimed with delight.

Strangely, it came easily, as if Hanna had known all along—which key on the piano to touch, the exact pressure and timing, the rhythm. And always she could repeat the sounds in her head, even when she did not play. The colors—she would see. Oh, yes, such lovely colors that came with the music.

After another week, in which her mistress continually praised Hanna, telling her what a gifted musician she was, Frau Fleischmann offered, “Let me teach you how to read the notes on the music sheets. One day I won’t be here to guide you.”

Hanna didn’t like these words, and she could see Frau Fleischmann was well aware of her discomfort. “Why, someday, my lovely Hanna, you will leave me. You will marry, and you will have precious little babies to tend. You will play a lovely lullaby, softly, sweetly. Don’t you want to learn to read the music?”

“Yes, Frau Fleischmann, I do.”

But Hanna did not learn as quickly as she had hoped, and she could see the frustrations building in her mistress. She wanted more than anything to please her, to become her fingers. She wanted to make her smile.

“Nein, nein,”
Frau Fleischmann shouted one morning as they sat in the music room shortly after breakfast. Mornings were usually her best time of day, but it was now late November, the weather turned cold, and Hanna could see that the winter was especially hard on her. “What is so difficult about this?” Frau Fleischmann took in a deep, exasperated breath. “Oh, Hanna, please forgive my impatience.” Her voice trembled, as did her hands. “I don’t understand why this is so difficult for you. You are such a bright girl, quicker than any I have known.” She pointed to the note written on the music sheet propped on the piano stand, and with her other hand moved the girl’s on the keys. There was a frightening jerkiness about the movement, and now Hanna was trembling, too.