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the trend, who will sell at the prestigious galleries.
     
     
    “I’d love to go,” Hanna said as she slipped off her skirt and hung it on the hook next to the bed that night.
    “To Paris?” Käthe folded back the covers. “To see the artists who paint with light and color?”
    Hanna had shared much of what she’d overheard that evening as she and Käthe cleaned the kitchen after the guests had retired to the parlor for a smoke and after-dinner drink. Somehow Hanna felt by repeating it she could hold on to it longer, and she was surprised that Käthe had been listening that carefully.
    “Yes, Paris, and Vienna, too,” Hanna replied, unable to hold her grin. She reached up and turned out the light so Käthe would not make fun.
    “Where else, you little dreamer?” Käthe laughed as she slipped into bed. Käthe, Hanna feared, had no dreams other than marrying Hans Koebler, the cheesemaker’s son from Kempton with whom she corresponded regularly. Her mouth would turn up into the most ridiculous smile when she received a letter, and her eyes would glow. When too much time passed between letters she could become rather grumpy.
    “To the Munich Academy of Fine Arts,” Hanna said.
    “Women are not allowed. You want to be an artist?”
    “Not as a student.” Hanna sat on the edge of the bed, not quite ready for sleep. She was too excited to close her eyes. She did not want the day to end.
    “As what?” Käthe’s voice rose in the way it did when she thought her little sister had said something unrealistic or stupid.
    “I want to look at the work of the different students. To see which ones will become famous. To see how they do the colors.”
    “To listen to the colors sing?” Käthe teased. “To hear the colors make music?” She stroked her sister’s back. “Come, let’s sleep.”
    Hanna crawled in beside her. She had been assigned her own small cot in the servants’ quarters, but she wasn’t used to sleeping alone, and it was so cold in the basement that most nights she slept with Käthe. “Not always music, but sound,” Hanna said quietly. She didn’t talk about it much anymore. Käthe knew. Leni knew. And, of course, her mother knew. The first time she told Käthe she laughed, and then told Mother. Hanna thought it was that way with everyone when she said, “The cows in the barn, what green sounds they are making today.” She didn’t realize that everyone didn’t hear in color. She was only three, just learning the names of the different colors, and was very confused, as there were so many colors and not enough names to call them.
    “You could go to the Academy,” Käthe said, yanking the covers which she often accused her sister of hoarding, “if you are willing to take off all your clothes.”
    “Take off my clothes?”
    “They must have models. Freda’s cousin is a model at the Academy.”
    Often Herr Fleischmann brought a painting of a nude, such as that by Herr von Stuck, home from the gallery. And the sculptures were generally of nudes, both men and women. Hanna was more curious than embarrassed, and Frau Metzger said it was art, that the human form was one of God’s greatest creations, and artists for centuries going back to the Greeks and Romans had taken inspiration from the human body. Hanna knew that the artists in the Academy must learn how to draw and paint the human body. Surely they would need real models.
    “Freda’s cousin takes off her clothes for the artists?” she asked.
    “I’m tired,” Käthe replied, her voice distorted by a weary yawn.
    “Where is it?” Hanna asked after thinking this over for several moments. “The Academy of Fine Arts.”
    But the answer came back as a soft little snore, and she knew Käthe had already fallen asleep. Hanna was too excited to sleep, but she decided that night that somehow, someday, she would get into the studio of the Academy. Even if she had to take off all her clothes.

CHAPTER THREE
    Lauren and Isabella
    New York City