Her Husband’s Secrets

The cafeteria, or eating area, is bare and orthodox. It’s relatively quiet, compared to the school dining rooms of my youth, but it fills fast and voices crowd the fuggy air, thick with the smell of institutional food. Meals are brought in large warmers from the main kitchen in the castle and distributed to each living block. Occasionally I take my plate of food to my cell and eat alone. But most of the time I eat in the dining area so the food doesn’t stink up my living space.

Sporadic snippets of conversation in a multitude of tongues stab the atmosphere. Depending on who is sitting together, the room sometimes feels like a clinic for the deaf, communication reduced to sign language accompanied by ‘mm’s and ‘aah’s when an idea becomes too challenging to convey. Today it sounds like a telephone exchange where all the operators have been designated different languages. The Tower of Babel prior to the scattering of the people.

Dolores is sitting with me, and now that Fatima and Yasmine have joined us, I know she will want to use her limited skills to talk English. Dolores has been teaching me a few words of Spanish in return; it’s useful to know the basics in any language here – Russian and Greek would be the next priorities on my list. I am fascinated by the anthropological implication of European linguistics, how languages developed from prehistoric tribes have blossomed like ink blots to fill the borders of the countries we see on a map. Pockets of humanity have been allocated their spaces, coloured within the designated lines like shapes in a painting book. Hindelbank has an extensive selection, jumbled within its cramped borders.

‘Why you don’t sit with your people?’ Dolores asks as Fatima sits awkwardly at the table, almost tipping her tray. No one leans over to help. It’s every woman for herself in this place, even if she’s carrying a baby.

‘They not my people,’ Fatima says darkly, glancing briefly at a group of Balkans sitting by the door.

Fatima shoves her tray back onto the table. One side rises and bangs back down, rattling the cutlery. Adnan’s fluffy head twitches at the noise.

‘Why you not sit with yours?’ She nods towards a small group of Latinas sitting in silence not far from us. Colombian, Ecuadorian, Venezuelan.

I think I know why Dolores doesn’t sit with them. For some reason she is considered an outsider. It might be because she helps teach a Zumba class in the activities room on Tuesdays. Perhaps like me with the English classes, she’s seen as someone who sucks up to the establishment. But a more likely reason is her comrades and neighbours avoid her because she screeches down the phone in Spanish at her kids every time she gets permission to call home. She upsets everyone with her animated mourning of the distance between them. The Latinas must be sick of listening. At least the rest of us don’t understand her emotional diatribe.

‘Not today. Today I a citizen of the world.’ She pronounces the w of world like the Spanish j in Juan. ‘And I with my new friends.’

Dolores pats Yasmine on her thigh, and Yasmine passes her a handful of cigarettes. Nothing changes hands in return.

We sit back and chew on our food in silence. Yasmine looks thoughtfully at Dolores, but glances away when Dolores catches her.

The conversation among the group of Balkans in the corner rises in volume, taking the attention away from us. Whether from Serbia or Macedonia, the group is able to communicate in their various Slavic dialects. They are forever in conflict, even though the Balkan wars finished over a decade ago. Fatima bristles. She is Albanian, a non-practising Muslim, but she stares at them as though a terrible battle is still raging in her mind, ever aware of the nations who destroyed each other to the north and the east of her country in the name of ethnic cleansing.

‘They are most definitely not my people,’ Fatima says, a little louder than before.

The Slavic argument abates briefly, and they all lean in, one of them gesticulating in our direction. A Serbian woman stands and scrapes her chair back noisily from the table with the backs of her legs.

The guard in charge of distributing the food raises her spatula like a fly swatter. She is pre-empting intervention from a distance, and I can tell she’s silently willing them to calm down.

The woman who has risen from the table stomps to the trolley and shoves her tray into a spare slot. The plate and cutlery crash against the edge of the tray, and a fork clatters over the side to the floor. Instead of walking out of the room, the Serbian girl marches over to our table. I can see her over Fatima’s head. I gulp. Fatima hasn’t seen her yet.

‘You think you so high and mighty, sitting here with the bourgeoisie,’ she says to Fatima. ‘You think baby gonna protect you?’

She pokes Fatima’s shoulder with a finger, and Fatima suddenly rises with a nimbleness I didn’t think possible with Adnan strapped to her chest.

‘No, no, no … the baby!’ I try to shout after swallowing a hunk of unchewed bread.

Fatima doesn’t hear me, and a stream of incomprehensible words fly like ammunition from her mouth. A bubble of spit lands on Adnan’s head, and I reach up to grab her arm. Before I get there, her hand lashes out and she pushes the Serbian girl with her palm in the middle of her chest. The Serbian staggers backwards, but doesn’t fall.

‘Fucking bitches,’ the Serbian says as she regains her balance.

Adnan begins to cry, and the Serbian turns abruptly, making a sucking sound through her teeth, and leaves. The exchange has ended with a phrase everybody understands. I don’t take it personally. It causes me to smile involuntarily, feeling vaguely fortunate the universal language in this place is my mother tongue.

‘What you smile about, husband killer?’

Fatima’s question wipes the smile off my face.

She’s gone from ally to adversary in a matter of seconds. I don’t even try to explain. It’s true that Fatima is wearing Adnan like a shield. Thinks she can say anything. Things would have been a lot messier if she didn’t have the baby at her chest.

The low pressure of the autumn weather is getting to all of us. In the mugginess of the canteen, I am beginning to yearn for snow.

Chapter 4

Müller walks right up to my desk without checking my tidy cell, and I expect her to click her heels together like a sergeant major as she stops beside me. I look up from the letter I am writing to JP, annoyed that my train of thought has been interrupted. I clack the pen on the desk, and press my lips together.

‘Come. We have not much time,’ she says, turning to walk straight back out of the cell, and a retort of refusal sits unspoken on my tongue. I know I’m in prison and at the mercy of my captors, but I don’t want to appear so easily compliant.

I follow her nonetheless, curiosity getting the better of my belligerence.

‘Where are we going?’

‘You will see,’ she says, without breaking her stride.

We head down two flights of stairs to the door by the garden and she uses her key card to open it. A stiff breeze lifts the wisps of grey hair like wings at her temple and I shiver in the sudden freshness. It feels like a clandestine trip to a forbidden world. The cold blue-grey dimness of the autumn dusk plunges the bare plots into shadow.

Across from the allotment sits the main Hindelbank castle, its faux-Versailles annexes enveloping a courtyard at its centre, surrounded by a high brick and plaster wall. As we walk down the track to the main entrance, I peer through a gate to the courtyard, gravel raked to Zen precision. Red and white striped shutters flank the thick beige limestone frames of the arched windows, normally jolly in the daytime, but appearing menacingly violet in the fading light. Cupolas and round dormer windows adorn the shingle roof, sweeping down in an almost Dutch-style gable, darkened after the recent rain. The roof ridges are decorated with large urn-like finials, topping off an architecture that speaks of once opulent aristocracy. I told JP at the beginning that I was imprisoned in a castle. He drew me as Rapunzel for several weeks afterwards.

‘The Schloss, is it not magnificent?’ asks Müller proudly, as if it’s part of her own ancestry.

‘I guess, under different circumstances …’

‘It was being built in 1720, by a man named Friedrich von Erlach. When he died, the building was made a poor house for women. It is how this place developed into a prison. But there is something I want to show you. We go into the Schloss. Come.’

We walk along the wall into a cobbled courtyard and Müller leads the way up the steps into the castle. The door is unlocked. I wonder whether she always has access, or whether she arranged this for us.

Along the hallways and up the stairway of the castle, there are numerous portraits on the walls, but the paintings on the ceilings in the reception rooms are the ones that catch my eye. Müller throws the light switch and I stare up at the scenes painted between the plaster mouldings of what must once have been a great dining hall. There are exquisite scenes of angels and kings. I crane my neck, reminding me of a bygone class excursion to the Sistine chapel.

‘Yes, yes, beautiful, but this …’ Müller opens the doors of what looks like a formal salon, free of furniture. The antique parquet floor creaks under our feet. It is a space designated for parties and gatherings. By trickery of the brush, the room has been made to look larger with rococo trompe l’oeil scenes of Tuscan pillars encircled with vines and Romanesque garden archways, through which there is a hint of dreamy Italian summer skies. The effect is striking, and a complete juxtaposition to the renaissance paintings in the other rooms.

But the final pièce de résistance, and different again, is a relatively small panelled room crammed from floor to ceiling with mountain and country landscapes reminiscent of the Swiss painter Calame or the German artist Bierstadt. The dozens of painted panels take my breath away. It is so hard to believe that this is located in the middle of a prison compound.

‘There was a time …’ Müller leaves her sentence unfinished and bites her lip.

‘You paint too?’ I ask. She shakes her head once.

‘You think you can do?’ asks Müller, my question unanswered.

I stare at her, blowing air through my lips. ‘You are kidding.’

‘I think you can do. Copies. You can copy these. I have been having the idea. You know that every year we have a market here. The Schlossmärit. Everybody makes something to sell. I think you can do painting. You can make your own paintings, but copies of some of these works would get good money.’

I narrow my eyes. Her enthusiasm makes me think she’s not merely considering the lucrativeness of the prison market.

‘I can’t paint like this. I could never match this skill.’

‘I think you should try. Come, let me show you where.’

Curious, I follow Müller out of the castle and back across to the prison outbuildings. We approach the block where many of the handcraft departments are housed and Müller uses her key to enter. The place is empty now at the end of the workday. We walk the length of the building, past the cardboard packing room, a room with computers, and a library where some classes take place for those wanting to study specially offered apprenticeship courses. A stairway leads to the weaving and sewing rooms on the first floor. Beyond the stairs is the pottery where Dolores and Fatima work. On the other side of the corridor there’s a room called the Werkatelier.

‘I’m not working in here!’ I protest.

This is the place where those who can’t concentrate or sit still for long periods of time are employed. Mostly because they’re zoned out on drugs. Müller shakes her head and keeps walking. We pass tables of half-finished pre-printed mandalas. Simple, mind-numbing work.

It’s quiet, except for the humming white noise of the kiln on the other side of the wall. A faint smell of porcelain dust permeates through from the pottery. We go through a door at the end of the block. A little light seeps in through the windows on the north end of the room, through which I can see part of the main greenhouse. The dark blue luminosity reveals easels folded against the back wall, jars filled with brushes and charcoal, trays of half-used tubes of oil and acrylic paints. Different-sized canvases, some blank, some half painted, lean against a cupboard next to rolls of butcher paper. The floor is splattered with the masterpiece of years of spilled and dripping paint.

The airless room smells faintly of turpentine. It feels like no one has been in here for a while, confirmed by a thick layer of dust that lies on the bench. It is almost the artist’s Zion, if it were not situated within the walls of a penitentiary.

‘I had no idea this was here,’ I exclaim.

If I had known of its existence, I would definitely have been more proactive in seeking work in here.

‘That’s what you get for your solitude and Indifferenz. I have suggested to the administration that you should work in the atelier over the winter. I don’t think you will do the asking, so I do it.’

‘Why would you do that for me?’

‘I have seen many criminals in this place over the years. Some have done terrible things without remorse. I would not normally speak like this. We are to be unattached, unemotional, and I don’t know if you killed your husband. Maybe, but I’m sure not on purpose.’ I narrow my eyes at Müller’s grammatical errors. ‘But it is our Ziel, our goal, to integrate all prisoners back into society and some have skills that can be used after you are free. You need to continue to build your skill. And more important, I am somebody who appreciates good art. These things mean that you have a little of my sympathie, Lucie.’

It is the first time any guard has used my first name. We are all referred to as ‘Frau’ and our last names, to avoid the very sociability in which we now find ourselves.

‘Well, I think I should like that. Thank you. To work in the atelier … What is your first name, Frau Müller?’ I think she realises the line she has crossed, and ignores my question.

‘I’m glad you have decided. It is time to eat. We must get back,’ Müller says gruffly as though she has read my mind, and she herds me out of the door and down the stairs.

* * *

Seven years ago

‘My father, Didier, is Swiss, and my mother, Natasha, who we all call Mimi, is Russian by birth,’ explained Matt.

We were tucked into the corner of a rustic restaurant eating fondue. Matt showed me how to stir the cheese vigorously, to avoid separation or burning on the bottom of the caquelon.

‘That makes my English roots sound so mundane in comparison,’ I said. ‘How come you speak such good English? You should be fluent in Russian.’

‘I don’t speak much Russian. The language at home while I was growing up was English. I think Mimi thought there was some sophistication in that – can’t think why.’ He smiled cheekily as I brandished a cheese-laden morsel of bread at him on the end of my fork.

‘If your mum’s Russian, how did she end up here?’

‘Via London actually, hence the association with English, ma belle Anglaise.’

He held up his shot-sized Vaudois wine glass and we clinked, kissed and sipped before stabbing and dipping our next pieces of bread.

‘Mimi’s parents, my grandparents, escaped Petrograd which is now St Petersburg, and fled to England before the February Revolution of 1917. They could see that the Duma was gradually becoming unstable over the years since its formation, and had prepared for a possible uprising.’

‘But the language of the aristocracy in Russia was French for many years, if I’m not mistaken,’ I said.

Matt nodded. ‘Even at the beginning of the twentieth century, French was the language of la noblesse. Mimi was bilingual until she was about 5, and then trilingual, as English became her third language. She and my aunt went to a private school in London for a few years until my grandfather was offered work as an interprète at the newly founded League of Nations, and they moved to Geneva. They lived in a big house on the shores of Lac Léman, near Versoix.’

‘Could an interpreter’s salary at the League of Nations support those costs – an expensive private school in London and a mansion on the lake?’

‘My grandparents managed to, how would you say, smuggle, some accumulated tsarist funds out of pre-Communist Russia, probably in the form of gold and precious stones.’

‘How did your parents meet?’

‘Mimi met my father at an art conference in Genève. He dabbled with art in his youth, worked in acquisitions at a gallery for a few years until he realised his dream of becoming a writer. After they married, he persuaded Mimi to move to this more rural pre-alpine region so he could concentrate on his writing. He published a few books, but none became bestsellers.’

For all the romanticism a carefree seasonal fling with a ski bum conjures, Matt had an equally impressive background born almost of the stuff of Ian Fleming tales. I was happy he was opening up his past to me, but I wondered how Matt’s parents could survive on the earnings of a writer of second-rate commercial fiction without the publication of a successful novel.

The fondue pot was now empty. Matt placed the cap over the burner to put out the flame. I folded my napkin and laid it on my plate.

‘Not finished yet, ma belle.’ Matt smiled, grabbing the caquelon.

He began scraping at the large coin of cheese burned onto the base of the pot with his fork, deftly lifting the golden disc and taking it between his fingers when it had cooled. Tearing it down the middle, he handed half to me. ‘The best part – la religieuse.’

I was doubtful – a piece of burned cheese – but the salty offering tasted like the best crusty bits round the welsh rarebit my mother used to serve me as a child. It silenced my thoughts about heritage and financial means.

* * *

The first time I properly encountered Natasha and Didier Favre, we chose to meet at a busy Italian restaurant in the lower village. I figured the distractions of the animated chefs in the open kitchen and the bustle of the waiters around the customers would reduce the scrutiny I might be subjected to by Matt’s rather exotic parents. I was flattered that for one who was keen to maintain our relationship on a casual level, he had wanted me to meet them.

Matt’s mother, Natasha, was a beautiful, poised woman. She raised her chin and looked down her nose at me as we shook hands. There was to be no traditional Swiss embrace one would expect for the girlfriend of a son, and I was sure she didn’t approve of me. Her supercilious attitude gave the impression that she didn’t appear to approve of anyone, including Matt and his sister Marie-Claire. His sister was barely out of her teens when she married and moved to California with the American husband she had met at the very same college where Matt also studied, and where we both now worked. Exchanging one surreal family situation for another.

‘You never speak of Marie-Claire,’ I said, and Matt shifted in his chair a little awkwardly.

‘MC rarely returns to her alpine roots,’ he said.

‘Mon Dieu, I wish you wouldn’t call her that,’ said Natasha. ‘Such a beautiful name, Marie-Claire, and she reduces it to some sobriquet of a delinquent musician.’

‘Do you have any grandchildren?’ I asked.

Natasha hesitated. ‘Unfortunately not. Marie-Claire is unable to conceive.’

‘But she’s still so young, surely there is time.’

‘No, she will not have children,’ she said firmly, as though it was a family decree.

I raised my napkin to my mouth so she wouldn’t see the shock on my face. Natasha cleared her throat before continuing.

‘They think the world is far too populated and she is concentrating on her career as a designer. She cannot have children, something wrong, down there.’ She waved vaguely at her lower body. ‘She and that American husband of hers have decided not to adopt. I am grateful that Mathieu stayed on the mountain when Marie-Claire left for California. He may eventually provide us with the future generation when he finds the right girl.’

She stopped abruptly. Heat rose to my face. Not because she must be aware our relationship had progressed beyond simple courtship, but with indignation that she thought Matt had not yet met the ‘right girl’. I looked down and sliced into a wild-mushroom raviolo on my plate. This was turning out to be harder than I had thought. The stereotype of a boyfriend’s acerbic mother. I already felt sorry for Marie-Claire’s husband, having to put up with all this family snobbery.

‘When did Matt first become interested in sailing?’ I asked to change the subject, continuing Mimi’s habit of talking about him as though he wasn’t there.

Having used the yacht as his trump card when trying to impress the girls, I wanted to find out whether Matt had been telling the truth in the bar on the night we met.

‘Natasha’s sister, Matt’s Aunt Alesha, moved to London when she finished her schooling in Geneva to study economics at LSE,’ said Didier. ‘Unfortunately she died of cancer a few years ago, but she left Mathieu a handsome sum of money in her will on the one condition that he buy himself a sailing boat, to continue her legacy.’

‘Alexandra …’ Natasha glared pointedly at Didier. She definitely had a thing against the use of diminutives. Ironic that everyone called her Mimi and she didn’t seem to mind. ‘… was one of the first female students of her generation at the school. She married a London financier who was a great yachtsman, and they used to take Mathieu sailing with them on the Solent during the summer months. They had no children of their own, and became very fond of young Mathieu.’

I guessed we were skirting back to the subject of succession.

No matter the tack of our discussions, every conversation returned to Matt during the evening. It was as if he wasn’t actually there, although he appeared to be basking in their passive attention. It was a relief to keep my own history to a minimum. After the initial questions about where I came from, what my parents did, and the awkward quandary about my forsaken studies – taking a gap year out seemed to be the most comfortable explanation, giving Natasha the satisfaction of thinking I might one day leave and return to my academics – they remained entirely incurious as to my feelings or ambitions.

‘You’ve never mentioned your sister before,’ I said as Matt took me home that evening.

‘You never asked.’

‘I thought it would be natural …’

‘I’m sorry, Lucie, I don’t want to talk about her, okay?’

It was hard to believe he had been so open and forthcoming about his family a couple of weeks before in the fondue restaurant. The encounter with his parents left us both feeling uncomfortable.

We kissed briefly outside the door to Anne’s apartment before Matt turned to leave, and I watched his back for a few seconds before letting myself in.

* * *

Matt’s mother Natasha never warmed to me, even after I had been initiated into one of her traditional Russian evenings several weeks later.

It was Didier’s birthday, and the first time I had been invited to the chalet. A heavy tablecloth adorned with richly embroidered silk tassels was flung onto the massive round table in the middle of the dining room. There were eight of us in total, including two other couples, friends of Didier and Natasha. A variety of Russian delicacies covered the table – blinis, rollmops, pirozhki with different vegetable and meat fillings, salty fish and caviar dishes.

‘A stunning spread, Natasha.’

Matt’s mother tipped her head to one side, acknowledging my compliment. I expected ‘Please, call me Mrs Favre’ to slide from her tongue, such was her supercilious look. I could see it was going to take some diplomacy to worm my way into this woman’s icy heart. Although at that stage I already wondered if I’d ever want to. It was possible she thought only a superwoman would be the perfect match for her son.