The Woman Who Heard Color Read Online Free PDF Page B

a wealthy jeweler. She infrequently visited the house of her father. She did not like her stepmother. Even though Hanna had met neither of them, she, too, decided she did not like the stepmother. She understood how it felt to have a woman come, disrupt the entire household, and attempt to take the place of your mother. Hanna had also left the house of her father to seek a new life. Oh, that she would have had a wealthy jeweler from Berlin come to her rescue, to shower her with diamonds and love.
    Hanna’s duties involved a variety of tasks—dusting, sweeping, polishing, watering the plants, cleaning the lampshades, scrubbing the bathrooms, serving meals. The part she liked best was dusting the frames on the numerous pictures that hung along the walls in the hall and in every room. She was instructed not to touch the paintings themselves. Some were enormous in large gilt frames, others smaller drawings without color. Just as she was getting used to one, getting to like it, or deciding that she did not like it, it would disappear. Frau Metzger explained it had been taken back to the gallery to show or had possibly been sold.
    One day, as Hanna was carefully running the cloth along the lower edge of the frame of a new painting that had arrived the previous afternoon, staring up at the colors, studying the thickness of the paint in one particular area, wondering how the artist knew how to do it like that, daydreaming a little, a voice from behind startled her.
    “Cézanne.”
    Hanna easily recognized the voice as Herr Fleischmann’s, and it frightened her because she realized that she was not dusting as efficiently as Frau Metzger expected. Though the woman had never scolded her, as her stepmother might have, she’d once told Hanna that she worked too slowly. But if the paintings had remained the same, perhaps she could have worked more quickly. And this one was so different from anything Hanna had ever seen. The colors were brilliant. The paint seemed to dance and vibrate. At first she was unable to determine exactly what it was, but the more she looked, she could make out the shapes of a mountain, a grove of trees. She discovered if she stood back, rather than examine it up close, the strokes of paint would blend together and it actually became a scene. Hanna wondered how the artist did that, and smiled at the thought that he had painted it with a brush twice the length of his arm.
    After a long moment waiting for Herr Fleischmann, who still stood behind her, to speak, or to leave, she said, “It’s lovely.” She turned with a slight bow. “From Paris? A French painter?”
    She knew Herr Fleischmann had recently traveled to Paris, and she imagined it was one of the paintings he had acquired during his visit. She also imagined it would soon disappear from the wall, so she was taking a slow, careful look.
    Hanna found herself blushing now with embarrassment. Perhaps her curiosity made her go a step further than she should have in addressing her employer.
    “Have you ever been to Paris?” he asked, a question that seemed absurd. She was a dairy farmer’s daughter from Weitnau.
    “In books,” Hanna replied. “In dreams.”
    He smiled. “Ah, someday you will go to Paris. A girl who dreams of Paris will go one day.”
    She nodded politely, though Hanna thought he was again being ridiculous, maybe even mocking her. She continued her dusting and Herr Fleischmann continued standing behind her. Perhaps he was discovering something new, she thought, something he had not seen in the painting before.
    “Every time I look, I see something new,” he mused, “something different.”
    “Yes, yes,” she said with excitement, again with more animation than she guessed Herr Fleischmann was used to seeing in a maid. She couldn’t help herself.
    Then he said, “Very good,” and turned and walked down the hall.
     
     
    During her third week of employment, Hanna learned that finally there were to be guests, a real party. Herr