The Woman Who Heard Color (41 page)

“Then the art was more important to you than me and Willy.” Isabella swiveled in her chair and faced her mother. She was making no attempt to hide her anger. She didn’t even offer this as a question, but simply a statement.

“Oh, Isabella,” Hanna cried, touching her daughter’s hand, which felt as cold as the chilled dish, “I did try to come to you, all that time. I did try desperately to come to you and Willy.”

“You’re a little late for that,” Isabella said, shoving her ice cream away. She bounced down from the stool and stood. “I’m finished. I want to go home.”

Hanna slid off the stool and followed Isabella out the door, realizing as she walked briskly to catch up with her daughter that her ankle was completely healed. If only injuries of the mind and heart were so easily mended.

 

 

T
he lack of talk, interspersed with sparse and hesitant conversations, continued in such fashion. Hanna could barely get her daughter to speak to her. When Isabella chose to talk to her mother, she picked at her for bits of information. Hanna attempted to share, though there was much she withheld. She told her daughter that she had lived with Aunt Leni, that the cousins were all well, though Hanna didn’t know if this was true. She said she had visited Uncle Frederick on the farm, that she had stayed for a while with Helene and Jakob. She could not tell her daughter that Jakob had been murdered, that Helene was probably dead now, too.

After dinner each evening, the women cleaned up in the kitchen. Hanna washed, Isabella dried, and Käthe cleared the table, put away leftovers, and swept the floor. Hanna decided this was the best time to talk—busy hands, a communal task, provided a casual setting in which the conversations came more naturally, more generously. She asked Isabella about her friends, what they liked to do, trying to keep it light, not too invasive.

“Today Theresa and I were riding bikes and we went by the lake,” Isabella offered one evening. “This boy named Andrew Fletcher was showing off with the other boys, doing fancy dives.”

“Andrew? The oldest Fletcher boy?” Käthe asked. Hanna was learning much about this little community from dinner table talk, from their evening chats over the dishes. Käthe seemed to know everyone, could tell you who was related to whom. Hanna knew the Fletchers owned one of the largest dairy herds in the county, that the Koeblers were well respected, that Hans’ creamery was supporting a good many small dairies in the community.

“Andrew’s fourteen,” Isabella replied, as she dried a dinner plate. “His sister Mary is in my class.”

“Mary is the tall girl with the dark hair?” Hanna asked.

Isabella nodded. “Theresa thinks Andrew is very handsome.”

“Do you?” her mother inquired casually.

“Oh, he is rather nice-looking,” she said shyly, but it seemed she was on the verge of a grin.

Hanna treasured these little bits of mother-daughter talk. Gradually she would win Isabella back.

But then, just two days later, as they were finishing up, Isabella seemed in one of her moods. The girl could shift from shy, giggly preteen to sullen young woman quicker than Hanna could scrub a dinner plate.

“Why do you refuse to use father’s name?” Isabella asked.

The dishwater had cooled. Hanna was about to add some hot water when these unexpected words came out of her daughter’s mouth. She felt her body tremble.

“I saw the passport,” Isabella said. “You’re using your family name, not Fleischmann.” She was taking the clean, rinsed dishes from the rack and drying them, not missing a beat as she began this interrogation. Hanna could hardly keep the slippery plates from sliding from her fingers. She continued stacking and rinsing, saying nothing. Isabella picked up another plate, dried it, and shoved it into the cupboard with such force Hanna feared it would break.

Finally Hanna said, “In my drawer?” She heard the harshness in her voice, though it came out in such a way because she was trying to control the tremor.

“Yes,” Isabella came back with defiance, not even trying to cover the fact that she was snooping in her mother’s personal belongings.

“I was unable to use my name,” Hanna replied.

“Because we are Jews?”

But we aren’t Jews,
Hanna thought.
You don’t even have a Jewish father.
This thought made her shudder even more.

“I listen to the radio,” Isabella said. “On occasion, I even see a newspaper or a magazine, when Uncle Hans is unable to get them out of the house quick enough. I know that Hitler does not like the Jews.”

Though Käthe said they were trying to protect her, Hanna knew that Isabella was curious, that even if her uncle removed all newspapers and magazines from their home, Isabella often went to the library, and perhaps even read or talked about these things when she was in school.

Maybe it was best that her daughter knew. But this personal curiosity frightened Hanna.

“You do not understand, Isabella,” she said, “how difficult it was in Germany, how difficult it was to leave. At first Hitler wanted to rid Germany of those he did not like, but then—you say you have read the articles. There are Jews now who are unable to find other homes. They are stuck. They cannot leave.”

“So, if Hitler was trying to get rid of the Jews, why didn’t you just come to us in America earlier, when you could?”

A vision of Josef murdered at the gallery flashed in Hanna’s mind, and she could hear the color of blood, and then she saw herself sifting through the charred papers and art at the gallery, going through Moses’ bank accounts, standing in line at the embassy in Berlin. If only she had been able to leave then, just after Moses’ death. How could she ever explain to Isabella why she could not get out?

“What were you doing in Switzerland?” Isabella came back.

“It was better that way.” Hanna stared out the window above the sink. Patches of yellow grass, scorched by the summer heat, spotted the yard, the mixed colors creating incompatible sounds. A big tabby cat moved slowly, stealthily, across the yard, ready to pounce on a bird that seemed larger than the cat.

Isabella snorted. “I can see there’s something you are hiding.”

“Bella,” Käthe interjected, using the name her American girlfriends called her, “can’t you see it is difficult for your mother to talk about it?” She brought the remaining coffee cups and saucers to the sink. “Just leave it at that, child.” This was the first time Hanna had heard her sister speak so harshly to Isabella.

“And what about the
packages
? Are you a spy for the Nazis, Mother? And who—though I know you won’t answer—is Johann Keller?” Isabella demanded. “What is this truth that you are so reluctant to tell me?” She threw her dish towel on the counter and stomped out.

Hanna stood, her hands still in the sink water. Though it was tepid, she shivered, feeling so cold her teeth chattered. Isabella had seen the telegram in her drawer. Hanna should have destroyed it.

“She doesn’t understand.” Käthe picked up Isabella’s towel and lifted a dish from the rack.

Neither did Käthe, Hanna thought. Even her sister did not know about Johann Keller. She didn’t know about the confiscated art in Berlin. How much longer could Hanna bear the burden of these lies and secrets? Maybe she should tell Käthe about Johann, about the art, about Hitler, about the auction. But how could she admit that she had worked so closely with the Nazis, that she had lived comfortably in an elegant hotel in Berlin, sipping wine and eating steak while Jews were being slaughtered in the streets? The heat of this shame washed over her. And what would she say if Isabella asked why she didn’t just walk away? Had she been threatened? Were there prison bars on her door and windows? Could she justify what she’d done by claiming she was attempting to save the art? Memories came to her of those days working in the warehouse in Berlin, how she had allowed herself to forget the outside world, Helene and Jakob, her own children.

How important was the art now anyway, when the world was faced with another war? When the Jews in Germany were being sent to camps, and some, like Jakob, being murdered?

Käthe slid the last plate into the cupboard. She put her hand on Hanna’s shoulder, and then wrapped her arms around her sister protectively. “We’re so happy that you are finally here with us.”

“If only Isabella felt the same.”

“She will,” Käthe assured her once more.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

America
August 1939
—
May 1940

 

At the end of August, Käthe received a letter from Frederick’s daughter-in-law. Frederick had died. He was the last of their brothers. The farm would go to his eldest son. Hanna wondered what would become of the painting in the barn, and if anyone knew it was there. It would be some time before she could return. Maybe never.

Just days later, Hitler’s army invaded Poland. Within two days, Britain and France declared war on Germany. The second Great War had begun.

Hanna’s sleep, which until now had been oddly without images, was haunted with visions.

She sat at the dinner table with Hitler. He was stuffing his mouth with cake, and then it was not cream-laden torte, but bodies—tiny charred bodies, burned torsos like she had seen on November tenth, that he shoved into his wide mouth. He smacked and snorted, and then he ran his sleeve over his lips, cream clinging to his little square mustache, and said to Hanna, “You, Frau Fleischmann, you are next.” His blue eyes bored into her. “You have betrayed me.”

Hanna woke, covered with sweat, and it seemed she could smell the man, and then her nostrils were filled with the scent of burned flesh, the smells of November. She ran to the bathroom and the stench now mixed with the putrid smell of her own vomit. She could feel the man’s presence. Hitler was intent on taking over the entire world. They would not be safe, even here in America.

Yet America seemed barely aware. She saw how easily they all went about their lives—when she went to the market with Käthe, when she attended church on Sunday with the family, when she stopped with Hans and Käthe for an occasional soda at the drugstore. As her sister had told her, unless they were directly affected, they seemed barely to care. And Hanna thought—is this any different from what she had seen in those early days in Germany?

They watched the war from a distance. While there were articles in the newspaper, questioning whether America could stay out of the war in which Germany seemed to be eating up one country after another, Hanna wondered if anyone, other than those who had family involved overseas, was even reading these stories.

With Helene’s diamond money, Hanna bought a used automobile. She wasn’t even sure why—perhaps to entice Isabella, who often hounded her uncle Hans to teach her to drive. The boys had been allowed to drive on the farm when they were her age, she reasoned.

Hanna began taking long drives in the country, to have time alone, to think. Often she invited Isabella to go, and one day she said yes. As her daughter jumped into the car, Hanna thought of the very first time she had ridden in an automobile, how giddy and boylike Moses had been, how happy she had been at the time.

They pulled out of the driveway and started down the road toward the creamery, neither speaking until Isabella said, “You had another bad dream last night.”

Hanna was not aware her daughter knew of the nightmares.

“Maybe you should have a room of your own,” Hanna suggested. “We could get an apartment with two bedrooms.”

“I don’t want to move,” Isabella said, but there was no defiance in her voice. She sounded very grown-up, as she offered her reasons: “I have my friends here, my school, Aunt Katie, Uncle Hans, all the cousins.”

Earlier Hanna had talked about New York City, where she guessed they could easily disappear, but she soon realized from Isabella’s reaction that this would never work. She hadn’t brought it up again until now.

“Something close,” she suggested. “You could go to the same school.”

“I’m sorry, Mother. I’m just not ready.”

The fact that she was implying, that at some point she might be ready, gave Hanna hope. She would just drop it for now. She was willing to concede that this relationship with her daughter would take time, just as Käthe had told her.

Several days later, after supper, Hanna was driving her daughter into town to go to the library and Isabella asked, “What happened to the art?”

Surprised by her daughter’s question—for a quick second she thought she was asking about the confiscated art—Hanna gave the steering wheel an involuntary jerk. Quickly, she straightened the car, though she heard a gasp come from Isabella.

No, Hanna reassured herself, Isabella wouldn’t know about that. Käthe still didn’t even know. They continued down the road, neither speaking.

“Why did you live with Helene and Jakob, and then with Leni?” Isabella finally asked, though Hanna had not yet replied to her first question. “Were you lonely?”

“Yes,” Hanna answered, “but there were other reasons.” She stared out the window. The trees were starting to leaf, a pleasantsounding green tipping the slender branches. The snow had been gone for weeks now. Hanna had been in America for almost ten months. “It was difficult. The business was not doing well.”

“Because Father was a Jew?”

“Yes, that made it very difficult.” Hanna wondered if Isabella remembered the boycott, which was really the beginning of the end of the business. Then Hanna and the children left for America, Hanna returned, the gallery burned, Josef was murdered. Isabella knew now that Josef, as well as Helene and Jakob, had died, but Hanna had given her no details of the circumstances of their deaths. The girl seemed to finally understand there were things her mother wished not to speak of. Perhaps Käthe had said something to her, which Hanna both appreciated and resented. She wished she might share in such intimacies with her daughter, but she knew she could not speak freely to Isabella of so many things.