The Woman Who Heard Color (24 page)

“You think he’s been taken prisoner?”

The woman nodded.

“What had he done?” another asked.

“He was Jewish,” she said, the words spoken so quietly Hanna wondered if she had misheard. Though she knew she had not.

Hanna could hardly stand being around Leni anymore, and there were many friends who would no longer socialize with her. Most of their Jewish friends had left or were living their lives as quietly as possible.

But Leni was family, and Hanna would not allow these differences to tear them apart. She invited her sister to come by one afternoon for tea. Leni’s two youngest accompanied her—as a good German mother Leni had a total of eight, patriotically reproducing as German women were encouraged to.

After they had been served in the parlor, they visited, carefully avoiding any controversial subjects, stepping cautiously in their conversation. The children finished quickly and went upstairs to the nursery.

“They’ve grown so much,” Hanna said.

“
Ja
, they grow up so fast,” Leni replied lightly.

Hanna knew they were both thinking of Willy and Isabella in America. It was an uncomfortable topic. Sometimes Hanna wondered if Leni even understood why she was afraid to bring them home.

“Would you like more tea?” Hanna offered.

“Bitte,”
Leni said. “The almond cookies are delicious.”

Max, the smallest, stood in the doorway, rubbing grubby hands to moist cheeks.

“What is it, my precious?” Leni asked as the boy approached. She wiped away a tear with her napkin.

“Albert says that Uncle Moses is bad, that he is a Jew and that’s why he is sick.”

“No, Moses is a good man,” she replied.

“But Jews are bad.”

“Run along, now.” Leni handed him a ginger cookie, and he seemed pleased, no longer unhappy.

Had she not heard these words from her child? Hanna wondered.

After Max left, she asked, “Why didn’t you correct him?” She was shaking with rage.

“I told him Moses is a good man,” Leni said defensively.

“But you left it at that, as if you want him to believe that Jews are bad, that Moses is a bizarre exception.”

“I’m only protecting him, Hanna. Surely you understand. If I defend the Jews . . .” She reached up and rubbed her hand across her cheek. “He’s just a boy, and he will repeat this at school. He will be ridiculed, perhaps bullied and beat up. I want my children to have an education, not to be afraid. Later when he’s older—”

“Ideas put into a child’s mind are difficult to dislodge,” Hanna said, feeling a twitch at the corner of her mouth.

Leni nodded in agreement, but Hanna knew they could not continue this conversation. She was thankful that her own children were not there to witness the increasing strain between herself and her sister.

 

 

T
hat winter they found a wonderful doctor who adjusted the medications and it seemed at times that Moses’ health was improving. Hanna dreamed that they would soon leave for America to be with the children. In moments of even grander delusion, she dreamed that she would awaken one morning and learn that Hitler was gone, that the country was once more restored—the economy good for all, not just those designated worthy to claim Germany for themselves. The children would come home.

Moses missed his children terribly, and on occasion he apologized as if both his illness and the dire conditions in Germany were his fault. Some days he was extremely confused and Hanna wasn’t sure he understood anything. On a good day, he would request that she take him to the music room and play for him. Wrapped in a blanket, he would lie on the divan, close his eyes, and request a piece she knew had been his wife Helene’s favorite.

“Tell me about the colors,” he asked one morning. “Tell me what you see.”

His own sight had become dim, a
haziness
, he called it, which was especially unjust for Moses, a man who made his living in what he saw, a man whose true love all along might have been the art rather than the women who had come in and out of his life—his three wives. This saddened Hanna greatly, that her husband’s sight had diminished so. Yet in the saddest, most selfish way, it pleased her that he would ask about the colors, because it was she who saw the colors in the music. It was Hanna to whom Moses now spoke.

“Tell me the colors,” he asked again, his voice a strained whisper. “Tell me, my dearest Hanna.”

“Blue,” she said as she played.

“The color of the sky?”

“Looking straight up,” she replied, “on a clear, summer day.” Hanna knew Moses loved this—for what did one mean by the color blue? There were thousands, perhaps millions, of blues in nature, in art, in the paintings he loved—myriad different ways in which God presented them with the color blue, an abundance of shades in the painter’s mix of pigments. What was blue? What did it look like? What did it sound like?

“Yes, the cerulean of the summer sky,” he said. “I can see it.” He laughed. “Now I can hear the color.”

Hanna laughed, too. “No,” she teased him, “I don’t believe you.”

“Hanna,” Moses said, “what a gift you have been to me.”

 

 

S
he waited anxiously for the letters from America, tearing the envelopes open excitedly, nervously, for news of the children. Käthe always assured her they were doing fine, though they missed Mama and Papa. In fear, Hanna did not write of Hitler. Käthe sent a photograph of the children. Hanna studied it carefully. Willy looked the same—with his wide, open grin. Isabella had grown. She looked taller, older, and her smile, unlike Willy’s, held an undeniable touch of sadness.

Willy sent lovely painted pictures. Isabella wrote letters in her pretty, even hand. She was now attending an American public school and had started writing in English. “Mama and Papa, you must practice your English for when you come to live with us in America,” she wrote. Hanna’s heart dropped at the word
us
—as if she and Moses were no longer Isabella’s family.

During one of Helene’s frequent visits, she and Hanna sat in the parlor, each held within the quiet emptiness of their own thoughts. The time crept so slowly, so deliberately, that Hanna imagined she could hear each tick of the clock in the hallway upstairs. Or perhaps it was just the tick of her heart, counting out each minute.

“He’s built an enormous new stadium.” Helene looked up from the cross-stitch on her lap.

They were continuing a discussion they had started at breakfast. Hanna closed the book she was attempting to read. She was well aware that Hitler had invited the world to come visit. Germany was hosting the Olympics in Berlin. The bid had been taken before the Nazis came to power, but now Hitler saw this as the perfect opportunity to show the world how healthy, happy, and athletic his people were. A massive Olympic stadium had been constructed in Berlin. Hanna had not been to the capital city, but knew of the stadium from news accounts praising the Führer’s impressive preparations for this world event.

“It’s a hideous, monstrous construction,” Helene said, jabbing the needle into her cross-stitch.

Hanna also knew that Hitler had plans for architectural monuments all over Germany, particularly in Munich, where the Haus der Deutschen Kunst, the national art gallery, was still under construction. It, too, could be described as hideous and monstrous. Hanna couldn’t help but think of the encouragement that she had given him to pursue his talents in architecture.

“Surely symbolic of failings in personal areas of his life,” Helene added dryly. “The bigger, the better, he seems to think.” She gave off an unladylike snort, followed by a harsh laugh. “The shriveledup little . . .” And then she used a word Hanna had never heard come out of Helene’s mouth—a vulgar word to describe a man’s body part, a word unsuited for a woman of good breeding. Hanna shook her head and blushed with embarrassment, though she couldn’t help but smile. Helene repeated the word slowly and deliberately and they both started giggling, which was sad and funny at the same time. “Huge monoliths marking the entrance,” she said, describing with her hands. “Oh, but those will soon fall, will go over with a . . .” She made a sound like the deflating of a balloon, the air being released, or perhaps it was the sound of a bodily function, which made them both laugh even more. Oh, how they needed something to break through the heavy darkness that hung over them all, Hanna thought, and if it could be at Hitler’s expense, all the better.

“Do you know the signs are coming down?” Helene’s mood shifted abruptly. “All the signs that say, ‘No Jews served here,’ ‘Non-Aryans not admitted.’ As if the world cannot see what Hitler is doing to the Jews. He wants the world to think he’s leading a very progressive, tolerant society.”

Hanna wondered—could the world truly not see? During her short time in America, she had talked to Käthe and Hans about what was going on in Germany, but they had little knowledge of Adolf Hitler. Since she had not sent for her children, surely they now understood.

Hitler asserted that Germany would once more claim its position as a world power. The military was growing with the introduction of conscription, openly defying the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Certainly those outside of Germany could see he was setting up for world domination.

Josef told Hanna that they had an offer on the building on Theatinerstrasse and should take it. She was relying on Josef to attend to the finances for the business, as well as the household. She knew she could trust him.

Josef let the remaining household help go, save for one cook and one housekeeper, though many might have left on their own, as there were few who wished to work as maids and servants in the home of a Jew. Laws had been enacted forbidding employment of Aryan women under a certain age in Jewish households. As if the Jewish master would seduce or rape the nubile young women. Hanna remembered how kind Moses and Helene had been to both her and Käthe, how they had taken such good care of them as well as the others in their employment. And the implication that a young German girl would not be safe in a Jewish household made her so angry she could not even speak of it.

Hanna didn’t know if Moses understood what was going on. She didn’t know if he had any understanding of the state of their personal financial affairs.

And, as it would turn out, neither did Hanna.

CHAPTER TWENTY

 

On a cool fall morning at the end of September, Moses passed away. It was a peaceful passing, for which Hanna was grateful. Both she and Helene were by his side.

He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Munich, where his mother and father and his two previous wives now rested.

Hanna had little time for mourning, for the shedding of tears. There was much to attend to before she would be able to leave. She needed to make arrangements for the care of the house so that she might be away for an undetermined time. She had to get the gallery cleaned out for the new owner, close bank accounts, and arrange for her travel. She would make a new life for herself in America with their children, and when the political situation was better they would return to Germany.

The following week, she and Josef spent several days at the gallery, packing up the few remaining paintings and sorting through financial papers. Just days before she was to sign the contract, Josef stayed on to finish boxing up business records. Hanna suggested he come by for dinner.

She waited. An hour passed, then another. Finally, she put on her wrap and took the tram to the gallery, fearing something had happened to him.

When she arrived on Theatinerstrasse, she saw dark smoke rising—obviously not from a chimney—and, as she got closer to the gallery, she could see it was coming from their building. She dashed down the street, her heart pumping, a pulse throbbing in every part of her body. The door was locked, and she couldn’t get in.

“Help, please, someone help!” she screamed as she yanked and pulled and kicked on the door. No one answered. She pounded on the window, but had not the strength to break it. She glanced around, looking for something with which to bash in the window, but could find nothing. Finally, a man rushed up carrying a walking stick, the golden face of a lion on the head. He raised the stick and smashed the window, stepped over broken glass, and unlocked the door.

Hanna rushed inside. The air was thick with smoke. She put a hand over her nose and mouth. A pile of smoldering paper and canvases sat in the middle of the first gallery. The man attempted to smother it. She could make out a fire in the second hall, and rushed in, took off her coat, and immediately began slapping at the flames. But then she realized—Josef! She screamed, “Josef! Josef!”

Hanna dashed into the office still shouting his name, her cries the color of what she now saw—Josef lying in a crimson puddle. Her beautiful, beloved Josef, lying in his own blood. Across the wall, two words screamed out at her, matching the high-pitched wails that Hanna knew were coming from deep within her own body.

Scrawled across the white wall in deep, dark, blood red—JEWISH FAGGOT.

 

 

H
anna remembered nothing more of that day. And the next few days were but a fog. The following two weeks were lost. She would have only vague memories, but she knew she did not cry. She could not cry.

When finally she began to piece her life back together, she realized what a tangle of financial problems she would have to deal with. The final papers for the sale of the gallery had not yet been signed, and the buyer demanded repairs now be completed. Hanna also learned the insurance policy had lapsed. Much of their remaining art had been destroyed in the fire. The pile of rubbish that she found in the smoldering heap in the gallery must have contained some of the business records as well, and it was almost impossible to put all the parts of her financial and emotional life back together. It soon became evident that she would have to sell the house. A buyer was easily found, at a ridiculously low price, and after taxes and bills were paid she had far less than she had expected. Though many of the pieces in the gallery were owned by the Fleischmanns, there were several artist-owned paintings, and Hanna felt obligated to pay for those destroyed in the fire.