The Woman Who Heard Color (23 page)

Lauren perked up and Isabella waved a finger. “No, not like that—a friend, a dear, true friend. He worked at the gallery. His name was Josef, and even as a child I could see he and Mother were very close. He would show us the paintings and tell us about the different artists. I couldn’t have been more than six or seven then. Josef was always delighted to see us. When I think of Josef, I smell peppermint.” She took in a little sniff as if the scent hovered in the air that very moment. “He kept a crystal bowl of candy on his desk, and Willy and I always filled our pockets before leaving the gallery.” Her lips moved as if verging on a smile, but Lauren could see they were trembling. “The whole idea of looking back on something and seeing it in a completely different light . . .” Her voice trailed off as she ran her fingers over the brim of her teacup. Lauren had given up on the tea long ago, but Mrs. Fletcher seemed to find comfort in having something to keep her nervous hands busy.

“Helene came often from Berlin,” she continued, “and we used to go on outings with Aunt Leni and her family—so many cousins—to the park, the beautiful Englischer Garten. I remember one beautiful spring day we went to the park for a picnic. It was just Mother, Willy, and Sasha, a woman employed in our home. I wandered off by myself and then suddenly realized I was alone. Lost. My mother screamed at me when she found me. I thought she should be happy. Do you have children, Ms. O’Farrell?” she asked abruptly.

“Yes,” Lauren replied with a smile. “Adam. He’s three.”

“A son. That’s nice.” Mrs. Fletcher glanced at the photo of her husband. “Andrew and I would have liked children, but life doesn’t always turn out as one might have planned.” She turned back to Lauren and asked, “You’re married?”

“Yes.”

Isabella laughed lightly. “I didn’t mean to be rude. But, with young women these days you never know. It seems a husband isn’t a prerequisite anymore for having a child.”

“True.” Lauren smiled and nodded in agreement.

“To an Irish boy, I gather,” Isabella said. “So, it’s Mrs. O’Farrell, not Ms.?”

“Lauren is fine,” the younger woman replied.

“Being a mother, you understand my mother’s reaction when she finally found me after searching the park. Her anger.”

“Yes, I do understand,” Lauren said, recalling the time she’d taken Adam with her to a sale at Macy’s. A one-day sale. She’d had her eye on a particular blouse and hoped to find it at a bargain price. She was shuffling through a rack, searching, when she turned around and he was gone! Even now, more than a year later, she could feel that knot of panic tightening low in her gut. How could she have been so inattentive? Her first, and worst, thought was that someone had taken him. Her prayer was that he’d merely been curious and set off to explore, that his tiny hand was now slipped into the kind, warm hand of a grandmotherly salesclerk who would bring him back to his mother with understanding. Or even reprimand. Yes, she would gladly have taken a severe scolding.

She’d found him within minutes. He was hiding behind a rack of clothes as if they were playing a game of hide-and-seek. He was giggling when she pulled him out, her hand trembling all the way up her arm to her shoulder. She still remembered how furious she was with him.

No, she was furious with herself.

“You do understand that fear can often masquerade as anger,” Isabella said, and again Lauren found herself nodding in agreement. Yes, she understood this. But then, she wondered, was Isabella Fletcher talking about something more than this incident in the park?

“I know now how frightened my mother was,” Mrs. Fletcher said. “I remember when she found me, I was talking to a man. I knew I shouldn’t talk to a stranger, and I knew I was lost. He asked me my father’s name, and asked me if he was a Jew. I adored my father—he was so confident, so brave, so smart.” Again, the woman’s posture became more erect. She smiled. “Of course, I said yes, he was a Jew. Then I announced that I was a Jew, too. I wanted the man to know that I was brave. I had no idea what it meant then to admit you were a Jew. I was sure it was a very good thing.” She laughed a little at the sad irony of the thought.

“And I understand now,” Mrs. Fletcher said, “why my mother decided to take us to America. My father remained in Germany. Mother explained he had business to attend to before we could all be together. It was her intention to move the family like Aunt Katie and Uncle Hans, but I truly didn’t understand at the time about Hitler and the Jews.” Isabella stared directly at Lauren and asked, “You’re Jewish?”

Lauren nodded. She thought that Isabella was going to ask about her family, but she didn’t. They sat without further conversation. Finally Lauren asked, “You said your father died in Germany? He never made it to America?”

“He became very ill. Mother left Willy and me in America with our aunt and uncle and went back to Germany for him. I never saw my father again.” She set her teacup on the end table and then ran her fingers over her throat, touching the pearls, gazing out as if she were looking far beyond the confines of the walls of the room.

“I’m sorry,” Lauren said.

Isabella continued to stare, but said nothing.

Once more a heavy silence invaded the room. Lauren waited several moments before asking, “Your mother was able to make it out of Germany?” The word
escaped
—a word Mrs. Fletcher had used earlier—kept coming back to Lauren. She wondered what Isabella meant by this, if she did indeed know the true story of her mother’s escape.

“Yes, much later. She was forced to stay in Germany for quite some time before she was able to come to America.”

Lauren’s grandfather, Dr. Rosenthal, too, had intended to reunite with his family.

“The painting, the Kandinsky
Composition
,” Lauren said, “you mentioned earlier that she didn’t bring it with her. It came later?”

“Yes, it came later.”

“Am I right that you also said that it was purchased twice by the family?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Fletcher replied slowly, her body shifting with fatigue, “and I am getting to that.”

But Lauren wondered if either of them had the energy to continue.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

 

Hanna’s nerves were tender and on edge as she embarked from New York to return to Munich, and she felt as she had during those last months in Germany, as if she were always looking behind her, in front of her, and to her side for something that was so evil it didn’t feel real. When she heard from Helene and learned of Moses’ failing health, just weeks after she had arrived in New York with the children, Hanna immediately made arrangements to return home. She left Willy and Isabella in America with her sister, and planned to bring Moses back with her when he was well.

He was heavily medicated to fight the pain and at times delusional. Sometimes he called her Helene, though Hanna didn’t know if he thought she was his dead wife, Helene, or if he was mistaking her for his daughter, who had come from Berlin as soon as she heard her father was ill.

Sometimes, in the mornings after breakfast, Hanna sensed that she and Moses were actually speaking to each other, carrying on a real conversation, and then as the day progressed, his words would shift from complete clarity to utter confusion. She feared it was the medication as much as the illness. She wanted to speak with Dr. Langermann, whom she trusted completely. But Dr. Langermann, who had been their physician for many years, was now living in Switzerland. It was almost impossible to find a doctor who would tend to Moses, the Jew. The medicine to ease his pain was ten times the cost it would have been just a few years ago. Pharmacies were instructed not to sell to the Jews, and it was difficult to legitimately get what was needed. Hanna felt there was no one left in the country that she could trust.

One morning, feeling the comfort of the music would ease her pain and help her nerves, she wandered into the music room. But before she could sit at the piano, she noticed how eerily quiet the room was, and then she realized that the large Kandinsky, the
Composition
they had purchased years ago, no longer hung on the wall. In a panic she fled from the room, rushing through the house searching for it, soon realizing that other paintings were missing. Consumed with tending Moses, worrying about her children, Hanna had not noticed that many of the paintings in their home had disappeared. She hurried through the house, going into rooms she had not set foot in since her return. In a flurry of frustration she went to the guest room where Helene was staying.

“What is it?” Helene said as she opened the door.

“It’s . . . the paintings,” Hanna said. “So many are missing. Do you know where they are?”

“The paintings?” Helene said in a faraway voice, telling Hanna that she had not been aware, that she, too, had been preoccupied with concern for Moses. After several moments she said, “Perhaps they have been taken back to the gallery.”

“Yes, of course.” She guessed that Helene was correct. They had closed the gallery, though they still owned the building. She knew Moses was unofficially dealing art, or rather had been before he took ill. Paintings were being stored in the building on Theatinerstrasse. Surely he’d taken them there as he was getting business in order before joining his family in America. She would ask Josef, who came to visit several times a week. He was running the business as well as the household finances, since Moses had become incapable of doing so.

“Josef, where has my lovely Kandinsky gone?” she asked the following morning.

“Fled to Paris,” he replied with a wry smile. He still had his humor intact even in such dire times. And Hanna loved him for that.

“Yes,” she said with a laugh that felt so good, as it seemed she’d not laughed in years, “I know the artist Wassily Kandinsky, along with just about anyone else with any sense, has fled.”

The Bauhaus, which had been substantially supported by the liberal German Republic, had moved from Weimar to Dessau and then to Berlin, attempting to keep one step ahead of the Nazi Party. It had now closed down completely.

“But what of the painting? The Kandinsky
Composition
?” she asked. Hanna wasn’t yet concerned about the smaller Kandinskys, the Picasso drawings, the Matisse, the Chagall, which she’d also noticed missing.

She could see now, Josef was reluctant to answer her.

“They’re being stored at the gallery?” she asked.

“Yes . . . well, some.”

“Some? What of the others? The Kandinsky?”

“Sold,” he said quietly.

“Out of the country?” She tried to calm herself.

“Unfortunately, no.”

Hanna wasn’t sure why Josef said this—
unfortunately
—but she guessed because he realized the art, as well as the Jews, would be much safer outside of Germany. Hitler often referred to the “modern” art as Bolshevik art, or Jewish art. Anything he found distasteful was labeled Jewish, even if the artist who had created it had not an ounce of Jewish blood.

“Where?” she asked.

“In Berlin.”

“Botho von Gamp?”

Josef nodded.

Botho von Gamp, an artist himself, was a great admirer of Kandinsky and owned one of Kandinsky’s earlier pieces,
Composition III
. Hanna knew he had attempted to add their
Composition
to his collection earlier, but Moses had turned down a very generous offer because he knew how much both she and Willy loved this painting.

“How can this be? Moses knows it has a special meaning for me.”

“It’s difficult now,” Josef explained, “financially. With the gallery closed, the less-than-favorable conditions for a Jewish business.”

Hanna tried to understand. She didn’t ask Josef the price, as she guessed it was much less than had been offered several years ago. She also suspected that they needed the money.

She did not ask her husband about the paintings. Hanna knew he would not have done this if there had been any other way.

Hanna waited at Moses’ bedside. She seldom went out. The news of what was happening in Germany came to her through Josef, through the help in the house, though several had been let go since Hanna had left Munich. She’d released Sasha herself before she took the children to America, encouraging the woman to take a position with a non-Jewish family. Hanna prayed that Sasha understood she was trying to protect her.

In September a law had been enacted designating Jews as “subjects,” which meant they were no longer considered citizens of Germany.

Jakob, who on occasion came along with his wife from Berlin, said, “It’s not just the Jews, all German citizens have lost their rights.” And Hanna could see this was true. The Republic was long gone. They were living under a dictatorship, though there seemed to be little protest from many. People were working again. For most there was food on the table, and the promise of a brighter future.

Hitler was building a new highway system, the Autobahn, which he described as the greatest network of roads in the world. Leni told Hanna that she and her husband would soon be able to purchase an automobile, that Hitler intended for all citizens of Germany—which meant only those he considered Aryan—to own an automobile. Of course, the Fleischmanns, the wealthy Jews, had had an automobile for many years.

Hanna could see that Hitler had taken control of every aspect of the economy, the culture, the educational system, the press. There was no way to truly understand what was going on, as there was nothing that was not controlled by the Nazis.

On occasion, when Hanna went out—to the market, for a walk to breathe fresh air—she could feel it, a tension moving about these people who claimed to be so content. On the streetcar, she heard whispers of camps, places set up by the Nazis to house political enemies.

“One morning, he was gone, simply gone,” a woman said in a low voice.