The Woman Who Heard Color (46 page)

Lauren felt as drained as the tea glass. She took out her notebook and wrote down a couple of possible insurers for Isabella, aware that there were few that even wrote such policies. “They will suggest an appraiser you might contact,” she told Isabella as she handed her the names.

“But can’t you do that?” she asked. “Appraise the painting?”

“That’s really not my area of expertise.”

“But you’ll verify that the papers are all here?”

“Let’s have an appraiser come in, verify the authenticity and value for insurance purposes, then we’ll go from there.”

“Yes, that sounds right,” Mrs. Fletcher said. “Thank you.” She rose as if about to escort Lauren to the door.

Lauren stood and glanced down at the envelope and then at the Bubble-Wrapped glass.

“Are you sure I can’t help you put the glass in the frame?” she asked again. She just couldn’t leave yet. Too much of Hanna’s story had yet to be told.

“No, that’s fine,” Mrs. Fletcher replied. “I’m sure I can take care of it. Thank you.”

Neither spoke, yet neither moved. Lauren knew she couldn’t let go.

“Yesterday when I came,” she finally said, her voice low and controlled, “you said you wanted to tell the true story of your mother.”

Isabella said nothing. A tight, composed smile spread over her face, and Lauren guessed that she’d share nothing more about Hanna Fleischmann. The old woman was done.

“The truth,” Isabella replied after a long hesitation, “and you said you weren’t afraid of the truth.”

“Yes.”

Now Isabella stared down at the table. She looked up at Lauren again and something had changed, something around her eyes. It was not that confident, controlled facade that Lauren saw now, but an expression that held a hint of relief.

“Perhaps you could,” Isabella said, “yes, perhaps you could help me.”

She went back to the bedroom and returned with the photograph of Isabella and Willy. Lauren noticed she had removed the broken glass and placed the picture back in the frame, unprotected. Isabella set it on the table beside the wrapped glass and studied it for several quiet moments before she said, “You do know there is more to this story. My mother’s story.” Her eyes were still on the photo.

“Yes,” Lauren replied.

“After my mother died, after I cleaned out the apartment in New York that summer, I returned to my aunt and uncle’s farm, and”—she looked up at Lauren—“there was a phone call.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

 

After going through Hanna’s things in the apartment in New York, Isabella realized how little her mother had left—nothing for her daughter to hold on to, no memories of their life in Germany. A few letters. One photograph, taken in America—a smiling Willy and a young Isabella, staring into the camera with an uncertain look. A few worn dresses and skirts. Hanna had come to America with one small suitcase, and she had left this world with little more.

The last week of August, Isabella was sitting in the kitchen at the farm with Käthe when the phone rang. Aunt Katie got up to answer it.

“No,” she said tentatively, “my sister passed away in June.”

Käthe nodded as she listened for several moments. She said nothing, though Isabella detected a tension in the way she ran her fingers up and down the telephone cord. Her back stiffened as she turned away from her niece. She glanced over her shoulder at Isabella. “Yes,” she finally said. She held the phone out for Isabella. A hesitant look had settled on her face. “A gentleman wishes to speak with Isabella Fleischmann.”

Isabella took the phone. “Yes,” she said, “this is Isabella Fleischmann.” She hadn’t used her real name for several years now and it seemed strange, yet comfortable.

There was no reply, and for a moment she thought whoever was on the other end would hang up. The line was silent, though not dead.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said, “for the loss of your mother.”

His voice, oddly, sounded very much like Isabella’s father, Moses Fleischmann. He spoke English with an accent. It was a beautiful, comforting voice. “To whom am I speaking?” she asked.

Even before he said, “My name is Johann Keller,” Isabella knew. She had always known that one day she would speak with Johann Keller. As if this man were the key to unlock the mystery. Everything about her mother would finally make sense.

“Your mother and I were friends,” he said, his voice cracking. “Friends in . . .” Again, silence. “I have something I would like you to have, something I believe your mother would like you to have. If you will let me know—”

“I’d like to meet,” Isabella broke in.

“I’m staying here in New York with my sister . . . We could—”

“There’s a coffee shop near the Metropolitan Museum,” she said, thinking instantly of one of her mother’s favorite places. “Tomorrow. I can be there by tomorrow morning.”

 

 

“ ou are at university?” the man asked. “Yes,” Isabella replied. He had come in carrying an official-looking briefcase, ten minutes early, and she guessed he had intended to be there waiting for her. But she had arrived fifteen minutes before the agreed time. When he entered the coffee shop, he did not glance about searching for her, but walked over without hesitation and said, “Isabella.”

He was a handsome man, tall and thin. She took him to be in his early sixties. His hair was white, his eyes very blue. There was something reassuring and confident in his looks, as there had been in his voice when she spoke to him on the phone. Would this man reveal to Isabella the truth Hanna had kept from her daughter ? Was this man a Nazi? And then another question worked its way into her mind:
Were my mother and Johann Keller lovers?

“What are you studying?” he asked thoughtfully. “At university?”

“I’ve just finished first year,” she answered, wondering if they would make small talk as they warmed up to speak of why he was really here. “I haven’t decided on my major just yet. I’ve always had a knack for language.”

“Yes,” he said, as if he knew this about her.

He glanced at her left hand. “You’re married?” His pale eyebrows rose. Did he think she was too young?

“Engaged,” she said. “I promised Mother I would finish school.”

He nodded in agreement.

The waiter appeared with the coffee they had ordered.

“American coffee,” Mr. Keller said with a smile, shaking his head in mock horror. He added cream and sugar, and picked up his spoon to stir. His eyes moved around the room. Reproductions of art from the Metropolitan hung on the walls. “You like art?” he asked.

“Yes, as did my mother. We often came here. She loved going to the Met.”

Again he nodded and she could see this pleased him. He commented no further on the place she had chosen for this meeting.

Isabella regarded her coffee, but her stomach turned with nerves, and she knew she could not drink any.

Finally he said, “I don’t know how much your mother told you.” He stirred his coffee, and once more Isabella thought how comforting she found his voice.

“There were things she couldn’t,” Isabella said, “
wouldn’t
talk about. In many ways I had accepted this, that there were parts of her life . . .” Isabella looked directly into Mr. Keller’s eyes. He did not blink. He was studying her as she had studied him. Did he see something of Hanna in Isabella? “After the war,” she continued, “after the soldiers discovered what had taken place in the camps, the murder of so many Jews, she seemed even more reticent.”
She knew she was dying,
Isabella thought,
and even this she did not tell me. Did she think she could protect me from the reality of death?
“I knew she had suffered, that she had escaped. We lost my father, then Helene, his older daughter—my half sister—and her husband, Jakob.” Somehow she sensed that this man knew of these people, that he knew more about her life than she knew herself.

Yet now he seemed hesitant to speak—they sat quietly.

After several more moments, he lifted his briefcase from the floor and took out a sheet of paper. He handed it to Isabella.

She unfolded it on the table. It was written in German. Her eyes moved quickly down the page. It was a bill of sale for the Kandinsky
Composition II
, made out to Helene Kaufmann from Botho von Gamp, dated March 15, 1939, Berlin, Germany.

“How did you get this?” she snapped. She had recently received correspondence from Anna Schmid outlining the arrangements Hanna had made to have the painting shipped to New York.

“Your mother told you nothing?”

“Very little. She told me about the painting, how Helene had purchased it, how it was being hidden on the farm in Bavaria. But no, she told me very little. Why are you now in possession of this document?” Her tone remained sharp.

With composure, Mr. Keller produced a rolled paper and handed it to Isabella. She unrolled it, securing the paper with one hand, Mr. Keller placing his hand on the opposite end to allow it to lie flat. It was a drawing of a young woman.

Slowly, as she studied the figure, the fullness of the breasts, the thick hair, plaited and pinned up, wayward curls falling to her shoulders, Isabella realized this was a drawing of her mother, a very young Hanna. Had she been a model in her youth, and was this just one of her secrets?

“Where did you get this?” she asked again, perplexed, the harshness now gone from her voice, replaced with curiosity. Her eyes rose to Mr. Keller’s.

“When your mother left Germany, knowing she would not return,” he started in, “she carried with her several items that were very important to her. She was afraid they would be found as she passed through the port authorities, that she might be discovered.”

“Because she was traveling on false documents?” Again she regarded the drawing.

“Yes. So she sent these items back to me.”

“To you?” Isabella’s head jerked up. Mr. Keller said nothing. “Did you know my mother when she was a model?”

“No, no,” he said. “This particular drawing came as a gift from your father. It was one of the only pieces she still had when she was forced to flee.”

“She was a model.” Isabella spoke more to herself than to Mr. Keller as she considered the drawing once more. “She looks so young, and so . . . I don’t know—shy, in a way—but at the same time very brave and confident. The way she sits on the chair, shoulders back, hands folded in her lap. She looks like she could take on the world. Nothing between herself and the . . .” Isabella laughed, and felt herself blush. She was sitting here with a stranger, discussing a nude portrait of her mother. She looked up at Mr. Keller. “Do you know how I think of my mother?”

“Tell me,” he said.

“Not like this.” She touched the drawing with her free hand, running her fingers slowly along the curve of the young woman’s shoulder. “Guarded and frightened. That’s how I see her.”

“The war,” he said, as if this should be obvious.

“She lived through two.”

“As did many,” Mr. Keller replied.

“So many losses—Father, Willy, Helene, Jakob, Josef . . .”
And more we probably don’t even know of yet,
Isabella thought. “She told me that they had to sell the art to survive in Nazi Germany, to escape.” Isabella searched Johann Keller’s face, and for a brief moment it seemed she was looking into her own eyes. Into the eyes of someone who had suffered a great loss. She gazed down again, fearing she might burst into tears.

“She told you nothing about her escape?” Mr. Keller asked.

“No.” Isabella shook her head and released the paper. Mr. Keller rolled the drawing back up.

“Nothing about the work she did in Berlin?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“The auction in Lucerne?”

“ No.”

Mr. Keller hesitated, as if carefully considering his words. She could see a tightness about his thin lips, about his eyes.

“Please,” Isabella said, “I want to know.”

“Before the war,” he said slowly, adding more cream to his coffee.

“Yes,” she said with cautious encouragement.

“Hitler abhorred anything in art that was modern.”

Isabella nodded.

“Anything declared distasteful—based on his own determinations—was confiscated from the state museums.” Mr. Keller took in a deep breath, still contemplating, Isabella was fully aware, how much of this she should know. “After your father died . . . your mother was very knowledgeable, particularly with the modern artists that Hitler found so vile. She was brilliant, in fact,” he said with a smile. “I’ve never known such a woman . . .” He hesitated. “A woman who could hear the colors.”

His words startled her. Her mother had shared this with so few, and now it was as if she had slipped in between them, right here in the coffee shop, and said to her daughter,
I trust this man, and so must you.

Yes, Isabella thought once more, they were lovers. Strangely, this did not bother her. How lonely her mother must have been after her father died. If this man had brought her comfort, why should this be denied?

But why had he not come to Hanna? Was it because of the war? Had her mother given up this—the man she loved—to come to her daughter?

“Hitler saw it, too,” Mr. Keller continued. “There was value in what this woman knew. Value in the art which he claimed to detest. Hitler took advantage of everyone and everything, taking what he wanted to further his cause, discarding anything else. He used your mother. She was forced to work at his facility in Berlin to identify the art, to catalogue, to compile lists.”

Isabella gasped. Was this the secret her mother had been hiding from her all these years?

Her shame? She had aided Hitler?

Mr. Keller went on. “She also took part in an auction in Lucerne to sell this confiscated art.”