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

and father, the men at the dairy farm. What was she doing here? Could she still change her mind? Throw on her clothes, run from the studio? Was Frau Fleischmann waking from her nap?
    Hanna heard a man clearing his throat on the other side of the curtain. “Fräulein, are you ready? The students have arrived.”
    She stepped out.
    He smiled, not in a suggestive or deviant way, but in a way that said welcome. Yet at the same time a line of surprise formed across his forehead. Hanna recognized Herr von Stuck, the handsome art instructor with the dark curly hair and thick black mustache. The painter who wrapped snakes around his naked women. She felt a tightening about her throat, and for a moment she thought she might faint, or perhaps burst into tears.
    “I was expecting Magda,” he said.
    “I fear Magda hasn’t made it today,” she replied, regaining the small amount of composure she’d once possessed, sounding very official, as if it were Magda herself who had sent Hanna in her stead.
    “Well, fine, you will do fine.” He pointed to a chair in front of the dressing room with the curtain as a backdrop. After several moments of hesitation, slowly, her hands trembling, she removed the dressing gown. In a businesslike manner, he instructed her to sit, asking her to place her arms folded across her lap, to angle her shoulders back just a bit. “Are you warm enough?” he asked thoughtfully.
    Hanna knew she was visibly shivering. “Yes, thank you, sir.”
    She couldn’t look out toward the students. She lowered her eyes. When finally she glanced up she could see they were all busily at work. There were no lecherous stares, no rude comments about her body. It seemed she had become invisible as a person. She might have been a cluster of grapes, an apple, a bottle of wine set upon a velvet cloth. Hanna listened to Herr von Stuck as he walked about the room, moving from pupil to pupil. She couldn’t see any of the art, as everything was turned toward the artists and away from her. “The light source,” he said, motioning to the window on the left, “always consider your light source. How can we have a shadow here”—he pointed at the drawing—“if the light comes from there?”
    She recognized several as those who had come weeks ago for dinner. The young twitchy artist with the greasy hair that kept falling into his face, the distinguished gentleman with the lovely accent, who she now realized was not an instructor as she’d then thought, but merely a student himself.
    “Ah, Herr Kandinsky, I test your patience,” Herr von Stuck said as he stood behind the Prince. “Or, perhaps, it is you who test my patience.”
    Kandinsky smiled, but said nothing.
    “The color will soon come, but first we must become aware of the values of the color, and we must learn these values by doing it all without color.”
    Even though Hanna could not see the art, she could see that they were not painting as she’d hoped, but merely drawing with pencils. The redness that she was sure colored her entire body from head to toe would not show up in a drawing in black and white.
    “It is indeed my patience you test,” Kandinsky finally replied, “because the colors are singing in my mind. How do I draw in black and white a woman whose hair shouts with color?”
    Hanna felt a warmth deepen within her as he spoke of her as a woman. She no longer felt like an inanimate prop, a model for the artists. She was a woman.
    The room was soon filled with smoke. Must every artist feed his creativity with tobacco? she wondered. The greasy-haired young man opened a window. They took a quick break about halfway through. Hanna put on her dressing gown and walked back behind the curtained area and stood by herself until she was summoned once more by Herr von Stuck.
    When they finished the second half of the class, she dressed hurriedly, but even so, when she went back into the studio, the students had left, the easels were empty. She would never see the