The Woman Who Heard Color by Kelly Jones Page A

replied.
    “This sound makes you think of gold?”
    “Not think.”
    “But?”
    “See,” Hanna replied in a whisper.
    “You see a color?” Frau Fleischmann’s voice was soft.
    Hanna nodded.
    “And this?” Ever so lightly, Frau Fleischmann tapped a key on the piano, a deeper tone to the left of the keyboard. She seemed both amused and curious.
    “Blue,” Hanna said.
    Frau Fleischmann tapped another key. “What color?”
    Hanna didn’t answer.
    “Please,” Frau Fleischmann wheedled in a gentle voice, “tell me. Do all of the notes have color?”
    “Blue,” Hanna said.
    “Like this?” Frau Fleischmann repeated the first note the girl had called blue.
    “But a different blue.”
    “This?” Frau Fleischmann pointed to a dark blue velvet pillow on the love seat.
    Hanna shook her head. “No. A very soft blue, like on an earlyspring morning, the blue of the sky nearest the horizon.”
    “Quite specific. Very interesting. And this?”
    They worked through the keys on the piano, Hanna describing the colors. Then Frau Fleischmann combined several together. Hanna couldn’t just say orange, or pink, or blue, because that wasn’t the way it was. That wasn’t what she saw. Every note had a particular shade or tone, some of them without any names that she could name, so she compared them to colors she knew, mostly in nature, not always getting them exactly right. If only Frau Fleischmann could see what she saw. How inadequate words are to describe what we see.
    “Pumpkin, just before the harvest, and honey melon, ripe and fresh and sweet.” Hanna could see the colors clearly with each note. And she could see Frau Fleischmann was testing her, repeating over and over to make sure she named the same specific color for the same sound.
    “You really do see color in the music!” Frau Fleischmann said, her voice ringing with excitement.
    Hanna nodded, delighted for the first time with this talent that seemed to please her mistress so.
     
     
    Every afternoon, following her midday meal in her room, after Hanna had read to her, Frau Fleischmann fell into a deep sleep. The doctor who came often to the house—as an art patron and friend, as well as to attend to Frau Fleischmann—had given her medication to help her sleep. Hanna knew she was told to take it only in the evenings, but she also knew her mistress often took it during the day. Always she slept for at least three hours in the afternoon, often more. At first Hanna lingered in the kitchen with Käthe, visiting, sometimes helping out with dinner, but when she realized she had no obligation, she took to walking in the afternoon.
    She started exploring the city and found her way quite easily. So many sounds and smells and colors. Hanna realized the way her senses were all mixed together, she had extra ways to remember places and names. She loved riding on the streetcars. She visited the art museums, the Alte Pinakothek, the Neue Pinakothek, and stood before the paintings of Dürer, Rembrandt, and the Italian Renaissance artists she had learned about from Frau Fleischmann’s books. She studied the paintings up close, then from afar, and wondered how the artists had known to put a splash of color here, a shadow or patch of light there, and why some of the artists whose paintings hung in the Fleischmann home had decided to do it so differently. She could see that the way artists painted would change from time to time, from place to place, just as the fashions the women wore in Munich were so different from those her family wore at the farm. In Munich there were so many different possibilities. And were there not many possibilities in the way an artist might paint a scene? A human figure? She wanted to see how it was done. She wanted to go to the Academy of Fine Arts where the students learned how to do this.
    One morning she asked Freda about her cousin, who did indeed model at the Academy. “It’s very good money,” she said. “A few hours a day and she makes