The Woman Who Heard Color (42 page)

“We had to sell the gallery,” Hanna explained, “then the house.”

“The house?” Isabella asked, as if this had not even occurred to her.

Hanna nodded.

“What of the art from the gallery?”

“All sold,” Hanna replied.

“How very sad.” Isabella gazed out toward the hillside. Herman called them mountains, which made Hanna laugh. The Alps were mountains. These were hills.

“Your father was able to send some of the proceeds here to Uncle Hans,” Hanna explained. “He has invested the money for your education.” Shortly after she arrived, Hans had gone over the finances with Hanna. He told her they had put the money Moses sent into a savings account for Isabella.

Neither of them spoke again until they approached the main road into town. “The paintings in our home in Munich?” Isabella asked. “Were you forced to sell all the art to escape?”

This was the first time Isabella had used the word
escape
, though Hanna had shared no details on her rescue.

“Yes,” Hanna replied, “we had to sell the paintings.”

“Sometimes,” Isabella said as she rested her head dreamily on the seat back, “I see it, the painting from the music room. Remember you and Papa called it Willy’s Colors?” She turned to her mother and Hanna saw that she was smiling. “Remember how he used to dance to the music of the painting?”

Hanna smiled now, too, as she pictured Willy, prancing about with a big grin on his face. She imagined Isabella was seeing the same vision in her own head. It was good that they could speak of these things, that they shared these memories.

“Who was the artist?” Isabella asked.

“Wassily Kandinsky.”

“Not a German artist?”

“Russian.”

“You knew Wassily Kandinsky?”

Hanna nodded. She had not yet told her daughter that Helene had purchased the painting, that it was stored at Uncle Frederick’s. Her brother was gone now, and Hanna wondered if the painting was, too. Sometimes she dreamed that it was still in the barn, waiting for her to come back home to reclaim it.

“I remember,” Isabella spoke softly, “when I was very young, going to the gallery with Papa. He would show me the paintings and name the artists. Some of them I loved—especially the ones with the colorful animals—but some of them I thought were silly and horrible.” Isabella smiled. “He always said, ‘You don’t have to like them all.’ One day we were standing before a picture in the gallery,” she continued, “and Papa whispered to me, ‘I don’t really like that one either.’ ” Isabella laughed and Hanna thought she had never heard such a delightful sound, something she had feared was lost to her daughter forever.

Hanna laughed, too, but she knew Isabella was having a false memory. It was her mother who stood in the gallery and whispered this into her ear.

In May a letter arrived. Käthe handed it to her sister without words, though again, Hanna could see the question in her eyes.

“Thank you,” Hanna said, taking the letter, glancing at the outside of the envelope. The address was written in a steady script that she easily recognized, though she had seen it but once—on a small crumpled note slipped into her hand at the Grand Hotel in Lucerne. The return address was Basel, Switzerland.

Hanna stepped outside, feeling Käthe’s curious eyes follow her as she walked quickly down past the barn. She caught her breath and opened the letter.

Hanna knew she must destroy the letter. How could she explain if Isabella discovered it? She trembled as she made her way back toward the barn. She found a match on the window ledge and struck it on the old barrel that Hans used on the farm as an incinerator. She put the letter to the flame and watched the charred paper fall bit by bit into the barrel.

As she walked back to the house, she looked up and saw Isabella staring down at her from the upstairs bedroom window. Their eyes locked for a moment, and even from the distance she could see her daughter’s eyes narrow, her mouth tighten. Isabella turned and walked back into the room.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

America
December 1941
—
October 1942

 

“It’s a long one down to around the three-yard line,” the announcer’s voice blared from the radio in Hans and Käthe’s living room.

Hanna and Isabella had dropped by after Mass as they did every Sunday since moving into their own apartment. Isabella was in the living room with the men and cousins, listening to a football game, a strange American sport that Hanna did not understand. She sat with Käthe and two of her daughters in the kitchen, drinking coffee.

It was December 7, 1941.

“Up to the twenty-five and now he’s hit and hit hard,” the announcer’s voice grew loud with excitement.

“Can you turn that down?” Käthe called out.

“That a boy!” One of the cousins let out a loud whoop from the living room.

“Hit ’em hard!” another joined in.

Käthe shook her head and started to get up.

“We interrupt this broadcast,” an announcer broke in, “to bring this important bulletin from United Press.”

Hanna and Käthe exchanged glances.

“Flash . . . Washington . . . The White House announces Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.”

The women rushed into the living room.

Hans held up a hand, palm out. A finger rose to his lips. Käthe and Hanna stood paralyzed. The younger women dropped to the floor in front of the radio.

The announcer said something about a Navy base at Pearl Harbor, but the words were coming to Hanna in stops and starts, in a confusion of tones and colors, jerking with the same rhythm as her heartbeat.

“Pearl Harbor?” Herman asked. “Where’s Pearl Harbor?”

Isabella jumped up and hurried to the bookcase.

By the time she returned with an atlas, the announcer had gone back to the football game, as if nothing had happened, with little information offered other than that the United States had been attacked. Hanna wondered for a moment if this
had
really happened, if she had heard correctly. She glanced around the room at the faces of her nieces and nephews, eyes wide, faces ashen, blank stares, as if they were all in shock. No one said a word.

Hans flipped to the atlas index. The football announcer droned on.

“Pearl Harbor?” Hans wondered, his voice barely audible.

Hanna didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was either. But she knew that Japan was aligned with Germany in this war that now engaged every major world power, save for the United States. She studied Herman as he sat next to his father, the boy’s finger moving along the page of the open atlas. Herman was twenty, with a sprinkle of freckles across his face. He looked so young, so much like Hanna’s brother Peter, who had not lived to twenty-one. The others gathered, looking over Hans’ shoulder.

“It’s on an island in the Pacific Ocean,” one of the girls said.

“Part of the Hawaiian Islands,” Herman added.

Visions entered Hanna’s head of her two younger brothers, Peter and Karl, both killed in the war. With a quick glance, she knew Käthe was thinking the same thing. Would her own son be called to fight for America, the country of his birth, and might he meet his German cousins on the battlefield?

The next day America declared war on Japan. The following day, Herman enlisted. Two weeks before Christmas, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

Hanna’s nightmares grew more intense. She could not close her eyes without seeing images of Hitler. He was the greedy glutton of her earlier dreams, and then he was a wild beast, preying on every other living creature of the forest and jungle. One night he appeared as the figure in the painting of Saturn by Goya, a monster consuming his own son.

Germany had taken France and was assaulting Great Britain by air. Aligned with Japan and Italy, Hanna feared Hitler would take over the world.

The mood of the nation had shifted. Families sent young sons off to foreign lands. The government issued war bonds. Aircraft and munitions plants employed thousands, many women taking the place of the absent men. Citizens donated blood, recycled rubber, volunteered as airplane spotters.

 

 

I
sabella was now in high school. Her teachers told Hanna that she needed more challenges, that she was gifted, particularly in language, and their small school didn’t offer the variety of classes she needed. Hanna had sent for information on several private schools in New York City, though Isabella resisted.

But that summer, after America had entered the war, Isabella began to talk as if she were ready for a move.

“I’d like to take more language classes,” she told her mother. “I speak better French than Mr. Raymond. Maybe in a larger school I’d be able to take art history as an elective. The city might provide more opportunities for you, too, Mother. You could find work in a gallery in New York City.”

Hanna understood her daughter’s change of heart was unrelated to the reasons she had outlined with such thoughtful consideration and detail. She knew Isabella would never admit that she wished simply to disappear. The girl was embarrassed by her mother’s accent, by how easily she could be identified as a German.

Isabella had no accent, no outward sign that she was anything but a true American. But everyone at her school knew. She was part of the big Koebler family, and they had come from Germany. Hanna suspected there might be taunting at school, unkind words toward the German families, though Isabella did not speak of it. But in New York City she could start over again at a new school. No one would know.

Käthe begged them to stay. “If we are attacked, they’ll hit the larger cities like New York. We’re all safer here in the country. Please don’t go.”

Hanna thought of family back home—particularly Leni and her family in Munich. She knew Frederick’s son and his family would probably be safer in the country. For a moment the colors of the Kandinsky painting flickered in her head, and she felt ashamed that her thoughts had turned to the safety of a painting. And then, unbidden, an image of Johann came to her, and then the small drawings and paintings which he held safely in Switzerland, still neutral, unlike the United States. Would she ever see any of them—family, painting, Johann Keller—again?

 

 

I
n New York City, Hanna attempted to find a job. She enrolled Isabella in a private Catholic girls’ school, registering her under the name of Isabella Smith. She told her they were Americans now, and her daughter did not object. Hanna sold her car and cashed in additional diamonds for tuition. But she needed to earn her own money for general living expenses. She wouldn’t touch the money Moses had sent from the paintings. It was for Isabella’s university education.

She went to a small gallery, reluctant to present her resume. How could she explain that she worked in an art gallery in Munich? She filled out the form using the name Hanna Smith.

“You are German?” the proprietor asked.

Hanna didn’t reply, but she knew her silence answered the question.

“I don’t believe we have an opening.”

How stupid of me,
Hanna thought as she left and walked down the street.
“Dummkopf,”
she scolded herself. No one would hire a German immigrant, even if she called herself Mrs. Smith.

At the following interviews, she said, “I am Swiss.” And didn’t she have the passport to prove it? Yet this provided her no experience working in a gallery. She could add an additional lie. She could say she worked in a museum or gallery in Switzerland, perhaps the Kunstmuseum in Basel.

But even her lies produced no results. She had an accent.

Finally she found a job doing alterations for a dry-cleaning store. She worked out of the apartment on a used machine she had purchased at a pawnshop. The work was sporadic, and she barely made enough to cover rent and groceries. She found the city much more expensive than the country. But, she would not dip into the money set aside for Isabella’s education.

Isabella brought no friends home from school. Sadly, Hanna wondered if she had any.

“Do you miss the music?” Isabella asked one evening as they finished supper, a meager meal of soup and bread. With the rationing that began in the spring, Hanna had become proficient at stretching a small piece of meat through the week. The vegetables came from the Victory Garden the superintendent’s wife had planted on the rooftop. She’d befriended Isabella, who often helped with the garden after school.

The girl blew lightly on a spoonful of hot soup. “The music, do you miss it?” she asked again.

“The paintings?” Hanna asked. The colors and sounds had been coming to her in her dreams, SS officers in dark uniforms and shiny black boots and helmets, slashing the canvases, kicking holes in them, or setting them on fire. She shook the thought from her head, realizing this probably wasn’t what her daughter was asking.

“The piano?” Isabella clarified. “I remember how beautifully you played the piano.”

At the farm, Käthe and Hans had an old piano in their parlor, but no one played. Hanna imagined it had been purchased for the children. All had now moved out and lost interest. Perhaps someday one of the grandchildren would want it. Once, when they were still at the farm, Hanna sat and attempted to play. The piano was terribly out of tune. She’d actually laughed, not without bitterness, she reflected now. At the time it seemed her entire life was out of tune.