The Woman Who Heard Color (7 page)

Suddenly it came to her. She could see it—this note for the green tone, this for the golden yellow. “It’s the golden sound,” she exclaimed, realizing she had said it aloud, only after Frau Fleischmann straightened her back and stared at Hanna with disbelief, then puzzlement.

“Golden sound?” Frau Fleischmann asked.

Hanna didn’t want to tell her about the colors. She didn’t want her to think she was insane.

“What do you mean,
golden
sound?”

“Nothing,” Hanna replied.

“This sound makes you think of gold?”

“Not think.”

“But?”

“See,” Hanna replied in a whisper.

“You see a color?” Frau Fleischmann’s voice was soft.

Hanna nodded.

“And this?” Ever so lightly, Frau Fleischmann tapped a key on the piano, a deeper tone to the left of the keyboard. She seemed both amused and curious.

“Blue,” Hanna said.

Frau Fleischmann tapped another key. “What color?”

Hanna didn’t answer.

“Please,” Frau Fleischmann wheedled in a gentle voice, “tell me. Do all of the notes have color?”

“Blue,” Hanna said.

“Like this?” Frau Fleischmann repeated the first note the girl had called blue.

“But a different blue.”

“This?” Frau Fleischmann pointed to a dark blue velvet pillow on the love seat.

Hanna shook her head. “No. A very soft blue, like on an earlyspring morning, the blue of the sky nearest the horizon.”

“Quite specific. Very interesting. And this?”

They worked through the keys on the piano, Hanna describing the colors. Then Frau Fleischmann combined several together. Hanna couldn’t just say orange, or pink, or blue, because that wasn’t the way it was. That wasn’t what she saw. Every note had a particular shade or tone, some of them without any names that she could name, so she compared them to colors she knew, mostly in nature, not always getting them exactly right. If only Frau Fleischmann could see what she saw. How inadequate words are to describe what we see.

“Pumpkin, just before the harvest, and honey melon, ripe and fresh and sweet.” Hanna could see the colors clearly with each note. And she could see Frau Fleischmann was testing her, repeating over and over to make sure she named the same specific color for the same sound.

“You really do see color in the music!” Frau Fleischmann said, her voice ringing with excitement.

Hanna nodded, delighted for the first time with this talent that seemed to please her mistress so.

 

 

Every afternoon, following her midday meal in her room, after Hanna had read to her, Frau Fleischmann fell into a deep sleep. The doctor who came often to the house—as an art patron and friend, as well as to attend to Frau Fleischmann—had given her medication to help her sleep. Hanna knew she was told to take it only in the evenings, but she also knew her mistress often took it during the day. Always she slept for at least three hours in the afternoon, often more. At first Hanna lingered in the kitchen with Käthe, visiting, sometimes helping out with dinner, but when she realized she had no obligation, she took to walking in the afternoon.

She started exploring the city and found her way quite easily. So many sounds and smells and colors. Hanna realized the way her senses were all mixed together, she had extra ways to remember places and names. She loved riding on the streetcars. She visited the art museums, the Alte Pinakothek, the Neue Pinakothek, and stood before the paintings of Dürer, Rembrandt, and the Italian Renaissance artists she had learned about from Frau Fleischmann’s books. She studied the paintings up close, then from afar, and wondered how the artists had known to put a splash of color here, a shadow or patch of light there, and why some of the artists whose paintings hung in the Fleischmann home had decided to do it so differently. She could see that the way artists painted would change from time to time, from place to place, just as the fashions the women wore in Munich were so different from those her family wore at the farm. In Munich there were so many different possibilities. And were there not many possibilities in the way an artist might paint a scene? A human figure? She wanted to see how it was done. She wanted to go to the Academy of Fine Arts where the students learned how to do this.

One morning she asked Freda about her cousin, who did indeed model at the Academy. “It’s very good money,” she said. “A few hours a day and she makes what I make working for a full week.”

“She takes off her clothes?”

“
Ja
, naked,” Freda answered, putting her hand over her mouth to suppress her giggles.

“Do you know where it is?” Hanna asked. “The Academy of Fine Arts.”

“On Akademiestrasse in the University District.”

The following day, Hanna set out to find the Academy of Fine Arts. She took the tram to Leopoldstrasse near the Englischer Garten, and then walked but a short distance where she easily found the Academy on Akademiestrasse. She paced in front of the building, watching the students as they entered—first the young man with the greasy hair, a skinny young stoop-shouldered lad she remembered seeing that evening when Herr Fleischmann entertained the students and instructors. She watched for Herr von Stuck and Herr Kandinsky, but saw neither.

The next day, after Frau Fleischmann’s eyes lowered and Hanna heard that gentle, rhythmic breathing that told her the mistress had fallen into a deep slumber from which she would not return for several hours, Hanna hurried down the stairs and out the back door. She dashed through the streets, hopped onto the tram, and then jumped off, running quickly to the Academy. She stood on the street outside, waited until she’d gained enough breath to speak, and then she climbed the steps, opened the door, and walked in. Quietly and respectfully, she moved along the hall, nodding to those she passed, trying to comport herself as if she belonged there. Finally she could see an open door and she entered and found a young man sitting at a desk.

He looked up from the ledger on which he was making an entry.

She was about to inquire if she might observe the students at work, but realized this request was unlikely to get the desired results. A young woman would not be invited into the studio, unless . . .

“May I help?” he asked.

“I’d like to inquire,” she said, forming the words first in her head, “about a position here at the Academy of Fine Arts.”

“A position?” he asked. His brows pressed together tightly, and then pulled apart in amusement. He had very dark eyes with long lashes, and brows that seemed too perfect, as if they had been painted on with a brush. “As . . . ?” he asked, holding out his hands dramatically.

“A human model,” she said. The words sounded strange even to Hanna’s ears.

The amusement deepened around his eyes. “Have you had experience as a
human model
?” There was a smile in his voice, almost as if he were making fun, but then his demeanor shifted and became very businesslike. “You’ve worked as an artists’ model?”

Hanna nodded. She couldn’t quite bring herself to put the lie into words.

He studied her for a moment, perhaps determining if she had the right proportions to be a model. This made her somewhat uncomfortable. She should leave now, immediately, she thought. But there is no shame in the body, Hanna told herself.
Temple of the Holy Spirit.
Why, it had been the subject of art for centuries, just as Frau Metzger had told her, just as she’d seen in the books that Frau Fleischmann had lent her, and in the museums of the city. She should not be ashamed of her body.

“How old are you?” he asked, his perfect brows pushing together in doubt.

“Eighteen,” she replied without hesitation. She could become quite proficient at telling lies, Hanna realized as the number slipped from her lips with such confidence.

“Where have you worked?”

“At a private school,” she answered, remembering a discussion at dinner the night the artists from the Academy came. Hadn’t Herr Kandinsky said that when he first came to Munich he had studied at a private school? “Anton Ažbe,” she added, remembering the name.

He nodded as though she had supplied the correct answers. For a moment Hanna wished that he had caught her in her lies. What was she doing here? Burying herself in her own deceit?

“You must be an angel sent to us today,” the young man said. “We have a life drawing class starting in . . .” He glanced at his wrist. He was wearing what looked like a gold bracelet, but then Hanna noticed it was a clock. “Just five minutes from now,” he continued, looking up at her, “and our model has not yet arrived.” She was intrigued by this timepiece. Her father carried a pocket watch on a gold chain, as did Herr Fleischmann. She had never seen a man wearing a clock that looked like a piece of women’s jewelry. “Would you be available today?” he asked.

“Today?” she said, thinking of no other words. This had not been her intention. She was merely inquiring. She wasn’t even sure she could do this. “Today?” she repeated.

Again, he glanced at his wrist. If she’d had her own clock she would have looked at it, but Hanna told time the old-fashioned way—by observing the sun, by listening to those internal rhythms telling her the mistress would be waking from her nap and require assistance in dressing for dinner.

Take off her clothes? In front of a group of strangers, a group of young men? Yes, in the name of art, she could.

“Yes,” she said.

“Come, angel,” he replied. There was nothing salacious in the tone of his voice. She might have described it as sweet, or kind, but Hanna felt nothing like an angel. Yet, now as she followed him, she felt only a trickle of guilt, which seemed oddly disproportionate to what she was about to do. Was she about to commit a mortal sin?
Temple of the Holy Spirit.
Taking her clothes off for complete strangers?

The young man led her back to the studio. It looked different than she thought it would. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but for some reason she thought the walls would be covered with paintings and drawings, like the Fleischmann Gallery on Theatinerstrasse where she had once accompanied Frau Fleischmann on one of their few outings. Hanna had only a quick glance into the gallery, as they had just stopped by for a short moment. She had been disappointed then because she had no time to look about, and now she was equally disappointed by what she saw.

The walls were white and stark and bare. The floor was simple wood with no rugs as in the lavish Fleischmann home. Wooden chairs were scattered about the room, as were stands, similar to those she’d seen in the parlor used to hold paintings that Herr Fleischmann brought home to display when guests came for dinner. He had called them easels. An odor hung in the air, a smell that reminded Hanna of pine trees in the forest near home. It was a good, clean, comforting smell. The windows were without drapes, letting in abundant light. There was a small area curtained off where the young man said she could undress. He presented her with a silk dressing gown that looked very much like a cheaper version of the one that Frau Fleischmann threw over her nightclothes when she felt well enough to take her breakfast at the table by the window in her room. Hanna thought it strange that she was allowed a special room for undressing, when he called it the dressing room. It seemed everything was backward, and it was only now that she was overcome with that expected sense of guilt and apprehension. If she’d had more time to think, surely she would have fled from the room.

She took off her shoes, her skirt, her blouse, and her underclothes, and hung them on the brass hooks attached to the wall. She put on the silk dressing gown and wrapped her arms around herself, feeling a chill. Now what? Should she go out into the studio? Or wait for someone to come get her? She decided to wait. She could now hear a shuffling of papers, moving about of chairs being dragged across the floor. Voices of students. All men, she thought, and felt a rush of heat come over her. What if she took off the dressing gown and her body was covered with red bumps of embarrassment? She heard laughter coming from the studio now, young men carrying on the way they do, like her brothers and father, the men at the dairy farm. What was she doing here? Could she still change her mind? Throw on her clothes, run from the studio? Was Frau Fleischmann waking from her nap?

Hanna heard a man clearing his throat on the other side of the curtain. “Fräulein, are you ready? The students have arrived.”

She stepped out.

He smiled, not in a suggestive or deviant way, but in a way that said welcome. Yet at the same time a line of surprise formed across his forehead. Hanna recognized Herr von Stuck, the handsome art instructor with the dark curly hair and thick black mustache. The painter who wrapped snakes around his naked women. She felt a tightening about her throat, and for a moment she thought she might faint, or perhaps burst into tears.

“I was expecting Magda,” he said.

“I fear Magda hasn’t made it today,” she replied, regaining the small amount of composure she’d once possessed, sounding very official, as if it were Magda herself who had sent Hanna in her stead.

“Well, fine, you will do fine.” He pointed to a chair in front of the dressing room with the curtain as a backdrop. After several moments of hesitation, slowly, her hands trembling, she removed the dressing gown. In a businesslike manner, he instructed her to sit, asking her to place her arms folded across her lap, to angle her shoulders back just a bit. “Are you warm enough?” he asked thoughtfully.

Hanna knew she was visibly shivering. “Yes, thank you, sir.”

She couldn’t look out toward the students. She lowered her eyes. When finally she glanced up she could see they were all busily at work. There were no lecherous stares, no rude comments about her body. It seemed she had become invisible as a person. She might have been a cluster of grapes, an apple, a bottle of wine set upon a velvet cloth. Hanna listened to Herr von Stuck as he walked about the room, moving from pupil to pupil. She couldn’t see any of the art, as everything was turned toward the artists and away from her. “The light source,” he said, motioning to the window on the left, “always consider your light source. How can we have a shadow here”—he pointed at the drawing—“if the light comes from there?”