Read Online The Woman Who Heard Color by Kelly Jones - Free Book Online

young man said. “We have a life drawing class starting in . . .” He glanced at his wrist. He was wearing what looked like a gold bracelet, but then Hanna noticed it was a clock. “Just five minutes from now,” he continued, looking up at her, “and our model has not yet arrived.” She was intrigued by this timepiece. Her father carried a pocket watch on a gold chain, as did Herr Fleischmann. She had never seen a man wearing a clock that looked like a piece of women’s jewelry. “Would you be available today?” he asked.
    “Today?” she said, thinking of no other words. This had not been her intention. She was merely inquiring. She wasn’t even sure she could do this. “Today?” she repeated.
    Again, he glanced at his wrist. If she’d had her own clock she would have looked at it, but Hanna told time the old-fashioned way—by observing the sun, by listening to those internal rhythms telling her the mistress would be waking from her nap and require assistance in dressing for dinner.
    Take off her clothes? In front of a group of strangers, a group of young men? Yes, in the name of art, she could.
    “Yes,” she said.
    “Come, angel,” he replied. There was nothing salacious in the tone of his voice. She might have described it as sweet, or kind, but Hanna felt nothing like an angel. Yet, now as she followed him, she felt only a trickle of guilt, which seemed oddly disproportionate to what she was about to do. Was she about to commit a mortal sin? Temple of the Holy Spirit. Taking her clothes off for complete strangers?
    The young man led her back to the studio. It looked different than she thought it would. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but for some reason she thought the walls would be covered with paintings and drawings, like the Fleischmann Gallery on Theatinerstrasse where she had once accompanied Frau Fleischmann on one of their few outings. Hanna had only a quick glance into the gallery, as they had just stopped by for a short moment. She had been disappointed then because she had no time to look about, and now she was equally disappointed by what she saw.
    The walls were white and stark and bare. The floor was simple wood with no rugs as in the lavish Fleischmann home. Wooden chairs were scattered about the room, as were stands, similar to those she’d seen in the parlor used to hold paintings that Herr Fleischmann brought home to display when guests came for dinner. He had called them easels. An odor hung in the air, a smell that reminded Hanna of pine trees in the forest near home. It was a good, clean, comforting smell. The windows were without drapes, letting in abundant light. There was a small area curtained off where the young man said she could undress. He presented her with a silk dressing gown that looked very much like a cheaper version of the one that Frau Fleischmann threw over her nightclothes when she felt well enough to take her breakfast at the table by the window in her room. Hanna thought it strange that she was allowed a special room for undressing, when he called it the dressing room. It seemed everything was backward, and it was only now that she was overcome with that expected sense of guilt and apprehension. If she’d had more time to think, surely she would have fled from the room.
    She took off her shoes, her skirt, her blouse, and her underclothes, and hung them on the brass hooks attached to the wall. She put on the silk dressing gown and wrapped her arms around herself, feeling a chill. Now what? Should she go out into the studio? Or wait for someone to come get her? She decided to wait. She could now hear a shuffling of papers, moving about of chairs being dragged across the floor. Voices of students. All men, she thought, and felt a rush of heat come over her. What if she took off the dressing gown and her body was covered with red bumps of embarrassment? She heard laughter coming from the studio now, young men carrying on the way they do, like her brothers