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

drawings, she thought with a strange sadness. It wasn’t that she wanted to see these images of herself, but just how they had put in the light and shadows, how they had made her hair, her flesh, in black and white.
    The young man at the desk thanked Hanna and asked, “Will you come again on Friday?”
    Hanna wondered if she could arrange this. Frau Fleischmann napped each afternoon, and as long as she continued with this schedule, Hanna should be able to come. She wondered about Magda, if she would show up and take her place. Hanna laughed a little at the thought—not that Magda would return, but that in her mind she was already claiming it as her place .
    “Yes,” she replied, “I will come on Friday.”
     
     
    On Friday, as Frau Fleischmann napped, Hanna ventured out and hurried to the Academy. She was greeted by the same young man, who motioned her back to the studio. Again she undressed and waited for Herr von Stuck to announce they were ready for her.
    By the time he came for her, the students had arrived and set up their equipment and, fortunately, it appeared that Magda had voluntarily given up her career as an artists’ model. Or perhaps, Hanna thought with an inward laugh, Josef, as the clerk had asked her to call him, had turned her away, thinking Hanna made a much better muse.
    She sat and arranged herself again the way Herr von Stuck had instructed her on the last visit to the Academy. He seemed pleased and did not request any adjustment. Hanna knew if she were to pass herself off as a true model she would have to show that she understood how it was done. It seemed very simple— remember the pose from day to day, ask no questions, remain silent, speak only if spoken to.
    She glanced quickly about, again aware that several of these students had been present the evening Herr Fleischmann hosted the dinner. Herr Kandinsky had smiled at her as she presented him with a veal cutlet! And now she sat before him completely naked. Did he recognize her? And there was Herr Alexej Jawlensky, also a Russian—she’d learned from the students’ banter—and also one of the dinner guests. He looked at her through his squinty eyes, his way of concentrating, she decided, as she was sure he didn’t know her. Perhaps she looked very different when she was fully dressed, with her bright red hair piled up and under her little maid’s cap. Of course, no one would take notice of a maid, she reasoned. And the thought came with a true sense of relief.
    A second quick sigh of relief escaped her body, and then she sat, perfectly still, daydreaming, as she found it the best way to hold a pose. She envisioned a painting by an Austrian artist that had recently hung in the Fleischmann home. Although Hanna was no longer cleaning and dusting, and did not linger before a painting to study it as she worked, she now had time to view the paintings with some leisure. Having been taken under Frau Fleischmann’s wing, so to speak, becoming her assistant—Hanna no longer considered herself a maid—she felt a new boldness and, daresay, entitlement as she strode about the house. Often Herr Fleischmann appeared out of nowhere, almost as though he had been waiting for Hanna to place herself before one of his paintings. And she did believe he enjoyed their discussions about the art.
    One day he asked, “Fräulein Hanna, what do you think of this painting by Gustav Klimt, my latest discovery from Vienna?” The colors vibrated with a rich, deep cacophony of sounds. Somewhat daring, she thought, the shapes and angles on the figures like nothing she had ever seen, and the music she heard was a quick, sparkling, jumbled but delightful blend from the highest notes on the scale.
    “I think it is quite moving,” she replied.
    “Moving?” he asked with a lightness in his voice.
    Why did she always describe things in such a way, using absurd words that no one else understood? she wondered with embarrassment.
    “It stirs something within me,” she