The Art of Deception

I opened the bottle, poured some wine into our two glasses, and took a handful of pretzels Anne offered me as we sat on our beds facing the windows. The setting sun cast a pinkish glow on the toothy ridge of the Dents du Midi. She reached for her camera on the shelf by the bed and tucked it beside her, waiting for the perfect alpenglow.

‘Then it’s good they hired you at the hostel. But it’s poor pay for cleaning work. Your funds won’t last long in this country. I’m a bit better off on a receptionist’s salary, especially after the peanuts I earned when I travelled in the States. Bon appétit,’ she said as she offered me the pot of olives and popped one in her mouth.

‘You speak excellent English.’

‘The multilingual skills of the Swiss, I guess. What made you give up studying art?’

‘I don’t know really. I love my art, but I had the feeling I’d never be able to find a job I would enjoy. Plus I’ve always had this secret dream to travel abroad, and wanted to do it before getting bogged down with a career.’

‘I can’t wait to get out of this room,’ said Anne, looking around at the three rumpled beds and a jumble of mismatched furniture. ‘They want me to stay on for the next couple of seasons. But there’s only so long you can spend living in a dorm. I’ve saved up enough money to rent my own flat. It’ll be so much easier for François and me. Will you look for another job in the village, or move on from here?’

‘I’m not sure. It depends.’ I turned to a poster. ‘Your photos are beautiful.’

It depends on Matt, I had wanted to say, but now found it hard to admit that an impulsive decision might be based on the outcome of meeting one person. Anne’s mention of her boyfriend made the heat rise to my face.

When we had finished the bottle of wine, she showed me some more of her photographs. I swirled the last of the Valaisan gamay in the glass tumbler.

‘Do you know Mathieu, the ski instructor? The local guy?’ The wine had loosened my tongue, and I blushed as I said his name.

Anne’s smile didn’t touch her eyes. ‘Has he been flirting with you? He’s a looker. I don’t know him very well. Only that he often comes to the bar. He had … He and François don’t get on, something to do with a group of students François’ dad had to ban from the hotel after a rowdy night out in their college years. They don’t mix in the same social circles.’ Anne hesitated. ‘And I find his attitude a little arrogant for my liking. Plus, I’ve heard he’s … I would be careful.’ Anne bit her lip.

I wasn’t sure whether my heart beat a little faster at the mention of his name or hearing the edge to Anne’s comments. Before I could dig further, she took her camera and opened the dorm window to click a few shots of the view, and I felt too awkward to ask her to elaborate.

‘Come on, I’m starving,’ she said, snapping the cover onto her lens. ‘Let’s see what chef has for the workers tonight.’

* * *

My life revolved around the hostel and the bar for the remainder of the week until I received my pay packet. The whole time I was stripping beds, scrubbing floors and cleaning windows, I couldn’t stop thinking about Matt. The drudge work I was doing was worth every cobweb and dust ball if it meant I could see him at the end of each day. The anticipation of our budding romance was delicious. I relished the apprehensive thrill of not knowing whether he would be there when I walked into the bar. Or the expectation every time the door opened to admit new customers, and the powerful heated rush when he finally appeared on the threshold. I was behaving like a besotted teenager.

But he always came. Each night he captivated me with stories of his adventures, and at the point where his descriptions verged on bragging, he would reel me in with promises to show me his world. The lure of sailing in his sloop, the desire to mirror his tracks down the ski slope, all whispered in my ear, sending shivers down my spine, with the security of his arms around me. Fuelled with a blind hormonal passion, I knew I wanted this man beyond anything else I had ever desired.

How could I let myself fall so quickly? I knew I was throwing caution to the wind. I had only met Matt days ago; I knew nothing about him, and Anne wasn’t able to provide much information, although the things she said, or didn’t say, made me think she might be hiding something. But my yearning for him eclipsed the warning bells of losing control in my head. Despite being a relatively inexperienced 19-year-old, I knew the danger of succumbing to these emotions, but could do nothing to control the fire.

* * *

I am shaken from my reverie by a gentle fluttering at the window. It sounds like a moth batting the pane, and thinking I should let it out, I look up to see the first splats of today’s rain blowing against the glass through the bars. The forested ridge to the east has disappeared in a smudge of weather released from the grey belly of the sky.

Fatima starts a keening wail. This is the one she usually saves for the middle of the night. It doesn’t seem so unsettling during the day, lends itself to comical lunacy rather than ghostly guilt without the cover of darkness. But before I can feel sorry for her, I hear a loud ‘Fertig, jetzt!’ from Müller in the corridor. Enough now!

Müller is one of the guards, or carers, as they like to call them here. Makes us sound like we’re in an old people’s home, or a mental institution, which is probably closer to the truth. She is assigned to our block and spends most of her duty time on our floor.

Fatima’s tone reduces to a series of self-pitying sobs. I barely tolerate her ranting. But when I hear Adnan crying I go to pieces. By some administrative quirk, I ended up next to Fatima when I came in. She was already pregnant, and gave birth not long afterwards. She won’t be on our floor for long though. There are only six units on the mother–child level, and one of them will become free in a couple of days when another inmate’s toddler goes to a foster home. However sad it is for the mother, at least she had some time with her baby. Fatima might face the same fate if she is still here in three years’ time. I’ve never asked how long she’s in for.

It’s a cruel coincidence that they are next to me, given that I would love to have my son at my side. There is already some confusion as to why I am here and not at La Tuilière prison in Vaud, the canton where the crime took place and where I was sentenced. My incarceration here is unprecedented in a country where the legal process is decentralised. It must be the ambiguity of my origin. Although I have lived in Vaud for several years, in the French-speaking part of the country, I never went through the procedures to become a naturalised Swiss citizen. But I have begun to suspect that’s not the only reason I am so far away from JP.

My sketchpad is open on the desk. I pick up a pencil and try to draw, but can’t concentrate with Fatima going on, so I take two paces to my window. I have to lean past the narrow shelf of the desk bolted to the wall to peer outside through drops of water on the glass. Blue curtains frame the window, a lame attempt at helping us to forget where we are, absurdly contrasting the lattice of the bars.

The sky lies like a wet blanket over the flat landscape. The prison sits on a slight mound above the village of Hindelbank. A forested ridge blocks our view of the sunrise, which isn’t visible anyway behind today’s miserable weather. Beyond the community to the north stretches the vast unexciting plateau where the River Emme meanders out of a broad valley. We are a long way from the romantic alpine meadows at the source of its waters in the Bernese Oberland, home to the cows producing the milk synonymous with the famous Emmental cheese. In the distance to the west lie the ancient mountains of the Jura, marching their sheer cliffs along the boundary of France. An almost static curtain of cloud spills slowly like Niagara down their gullies.

If only I could see the mountains on the other side, to the east. If only I could touch in my mind the familiarity of altitude, forever inciting a melancholic longing for home.

Or a place I used to call home.

Chapter 2

Yasmine is sitting on my bed. Today is Sunday, our day off. I was enjoying my solitude until she walked in. I’m a little irked by her attitude, thinking she can barge into my cell whenever she wants. I don’t say anything, as it’s better to avoid provocation in this place. Everyone is unpredictable, and I just want to get by without attracting attention. I’m not completely comfortable in her company. I busy myself watering my plants – a dragon palm, a small ficus and a fern. They will soon suffer from the brittleness of the dry winter air. I can pick and choose my houseplants. That privilege comes from having access to the greenhouse.

Yasmine sifts through a few photos of JP lying on my pillow, and stares at one of him as a baby. I want to tell her to take her hands off my child.

‘You know they used to lock up young girls in this place who became enceinte when they were not being married. And they hadn’t done anything wrong. No stealing. No kill—’

‘It was called the “re-education” of unmarried mothers then,’ I interrupt. ‘The system was tailored for the likes of Fatima. Usually put here by their own parents who didn’t know how to deal with their daughter’s pregnancies.’

‘The worst is they were still doing this thing until the 1980s,’ she says. ‘Imagine, in our lifetime! They will not take Adnan away from Fatima permanently. They cannot do this. To provoke such publicity again would be, how do you say, une atrocité.’

‘Fatima must have the ghost of one of those girls in her room,’ I say. ‘She often screams as though she might never see Adnan again. Maybe tomorrow she won’t. It’s hard to imagine the destinies of the babies. Who knows where Adnan will end up if he is farmed out to a foster family? I don’t know if it’s any less barbaric than back then.’

Yasmine looks at me and raises one eyebrow. I’m not sure she understands everything I say, but she doesn’t ask for clarification.

She has shuffled the photos out of order and my breath quickens to see the images carelessly handled. They are so valuable to me, and I’m worried she’s smearing them with hand cream or grease from the kitchens. I doubt I’ll be able to get fresh copies. The family didn’t give these to me. That would never happen. These are photos Anne has sent me, copies from her collection. Her son Valentin is JP’s best friend. I wonder what JP will look like the next time I see him. Kids change quickly in six months. I’m surprised every time.

‘Don’t …’ I start to say, and am silenced by a look that either tells me I’m being too precious, or that I shouldn’t mess with her.

Yasmine often talks about Hindelbank’s history, repeating its horrors as if trying to make the events of the recent past more believable. To make her own imprisonment more of a fantasy. Or perhaps to kid herself that she is here even though she has done nothing wrong. She came to Hindelbank after me in May, from Basel. She was part of a gang crossing the French border in a transit van, periodically relieving pre-alpine villages of their bicycles. They indiscriminately loaded up bikes, using bolt cutters on even the strongest of locks. It was on their fourth or fifth foray into the country that they were finally caught.

Yasmine is Algerian, but chooses to converse with me in English, despite knowing I can speak French fairly fluently. She pronounces all her th’s as a soft zz.

I am quite the novelty. There was another English woman here until just before I arrived. She was rumoured to have murdered a man who had been stalking her family. But she was released before I arrived, and no one wants to talk about those who get out. So I am the only one here right now. Everyone wants to practise my mother tongue, except the guards who bark their orders in Swiss German. They are aware that most of the Swiss citizens, who don’t even constitute half of the inmates here, can barely understand their guttural Bern dialect. Most of the guards speak only one of the four languages of Switzerland: the most discordant of them all.

Yasmine reaches for a pack of cigarettes in her pocket and taps it on her thigh, a pointless resettling of tobacco in those poisonous cylinders. I make a tutting sound and shake my head. First the photos, now she wants to smoke.

‘No, Yasmine,’ I say firmly.

She sighs and rolls her eyes, but silently places the soft packet of Gauloises on the table, and continues to look at the images of JP. I think back to when she first arrived, how she boasted about the bikes they used to steal.

‘You would not believe how many people leave their VTT on the street without locking them, expensive ones too,’ she’d said, using the French Vélo Tout-Terrain acronym for mountain bikes. ‘I’ve heard that all the serious road-racing bikers prefer to sleep with their bikes rather than girlfriends or wives. In any case, there is not much business in France for second-hand road bikes. People are too suspicious. Road bikers are puristes, want to know the origins of such things.’

I’d marvelled at her expertise on the bicycle black market back then.

That was in spring this year, exactly seven years since I came to Switzerland. The season of beginnings and arrivals. I can’t believe I have been in this country for that long. And I have been in prison for six months. That’s the hardest thing to understand, given my innocence. I’m 26 now. My life should be entering the next exciting phase. I once hoped I could raise my family within Switzerland’s safe society, as long as I kept my bike locked up. Its clockwork systems, true democracy and magical geography offered a dramatic but somehow tamed beauty. But in contrast, it is the rigid rules, chauvinistic values and xenophobic attitudes that have me trapped in a nightmare from which I fear I might never awake.

‘Does he look like his father? Those piercing grey eyes are not from you,’ queries Yasmine, squinting at my hazel eyes, which are now a little hot with the strain of my memories. Her eyes flick back to another photo of JP as a toddler.

‘Yes, he looks a lot like his father,’ I say, inexplicably choking up, not because of JP, but because I remember how he made me feel. JP’s father. In the resurfacing of old hatred, old blame, I’m horrified that my body still betrays me. After all that he did, after all that I have endured, he remains in control of my feelings. I recall that pooling hot sensation in my belly when Matt looked at me with his smoky eyes. He made me believe I was the only woman in his life.

I glance at Yasmine, worried she has a window to my thoughts. I swallow the tears that threaten.

I’m ashamed of my vulnerability.

* * *

Seven years ago

On the last Friday evening of the season, with the pub full of workers spending their weekly wage, the barman turned up the volume on the stereo and played a series of Latin American numbers. A few people began to move to the music.

It was then I discovered that along with his other seductive traits, Matt was a talented dancer. He gathered me into his arms, moulding me to his body with one strong hand splayed over the base of my back, applying enough pressure to claim complete control without force. With my hand on his shoulder, he pressed my other hand close to his chest, gently sweeping the backs of his fingers across my breast. His warm dry breath raised the fine hairs on my neck, and he turned his hips slightly, his leg pushing between my thighs.

Not a flutter of air passed between our bodies as we danced a grinding merengue in the crowded darkness of the bar. Our movement together was hypnotic, arousing a fervour of unreleased passion as I involuntary pressed myself to him and felt his desire against my thigh. My cheeks burned as he swung me around to the desperate fiery strumming of ‘Bomboléo’ and I could hardly breathe with the anticipation of what might follow.

We drew apart when the song had finished. He took my hand to lead me out of the door of the bar. The night air chilled my cheeks, but my body was on fire. At the side of the woodshed, he leaned in to me, the pungent smell of creosote eclipsed by the sweet, beery scent of his breath. He kissed me deeply with his hot mouth, pulling my shirt and bra up to expose my breasts to the night. The tightening of my nipples in the sudden cold craved his touch and his lips.

Clothes crumpled, zips sawed, underwear pushed to the side and I welcomed the exquisite, almost violent force of him thrusting into me. Throwing my head back, my hair caught in the splinters on the woodshed wall. We wedged our feet into a drift of packed snow under the roof overhang, jeans pooled at our feet in a tangle. I gasped from the long-awaited satisfaction and release, oblivious to the discomfort of shoving against the rough wall.

Afterwards, the sounds of the night filtered back in. The bar door screeched open; a waft of voices strained over the music. As the closing door clapped the raucous voices suddenly mute, I became aware of our stark surroundings. A weak moonlight reflected off patches of snow on the slope between a few chalets clustered in this area of the upper village. I was grateful for a copse of pines shielding a clear vision of the woodshed from the nearest house.

Two thoughts briefly crossed my mind: the sordidness of this quick bang outside the pub, and the fact that neither of us had used protection. Those thoughts were soon replaced by a blindly misguided feeling of smug possessiveness. Seduction complete, my bruised lips stretched into a satisfied smile. As the passion subsided, distinctly quicker than it had risen, the seeping cold and the worry that someone might have seen us made me hastily pull my clothes back into place. Matt gently stroked the hair off my face, drawing my worried gaze back to him.

‘You surprise me, my beautiful beach-seeker. Such passion. You have been wanting me since we met, no? I love how you give yourself, this spontaneity. I think I need to explore you more.’

He kissed me again, holding my chin. His comments, initially making me feel slightly sluttish, warmed me with the thought that he wanted me again.

This was the one.

A handful of flings through the few months I’d spent at art school, and a disappointing initiation into physical love had never aroused such savage passion as this in me. I’d given myself to him so readily, and couldn’t control myself. Thinking I had succeeded in making him mine, in reality it was Matt who had made me his. What would he be thinking? I was so easy, a conquest complete.

I hoped we would leave the bar together. Perhaps I would wake in his arms at his apartment, follow through with a sweet aftermath of that initial passion. But he led the way back inside. Music rang in my ears. Beer and sweat soured the air. Matt looked distractedly at his watch, a frown on his face, his focus no longer on me. And then suddenly: ‘I have to go.’

Abandoned, pleasure still stinging between my legs. Just like that, with a fleeting brush of his lips on mine, he was gone.

* * *

I was the first girl back to the dorm room that night, and glad for a moment alone. Anne was on a date with François. It was possible she wouldn’t even come back. She often stayed at his studio in the attic of his father’s hotel.

I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling, forcing myself to stay awake and remember every rushed sensation of the lovemaking. I focused only on our time together, ignoring the abruptness of our parting, and hoped desperately it had not been a one-night stand.

The door opened and my other room-mate, Terri, one of the cleaning staff, came in. She threw her jacket on her bed.

‘Hit it lucky with Mathieu, did we?’ she said jovially.

My blush gave me away, and I was embarrassed to think anybody knew what we’d done. Terri couldn’t taint my brief moment of euphoria, and if she hadn’t seen me, I was strangely elated that Matt might have been boasting about his conquest.

‘It was pretty obvious when you came back into the bar what you’d been up to. You were like the cat who got the cream. No hiding that look.’

I narrowed my eyes. Wary of Terri’s perpetual chatter, I wondered whether she saw right through me.

‘Look, I know Matt is a catch,’ she continued. ‘He’s a good-looking, charismatic guy. But the truth is, he’s getting his rocks off with you, Lucie. He just wants sex.’

Despite the crudeness, I detected a grain of sympathy. And a small part of me ignored the possibility that she was telling the truth. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to quell the uneasy feeling in my gut. I was still riding high. Let me have this moment.

Since taking the place of the girl who returned to Australia, I felt comfortable in the company of my room-mates, despite the restrictions of sharing the small sleeping space. We all worked for the hostel in various capacities, and the others had reached the end of a busy season. Although I had taken a cherished colleague’s place, I was never made to feel the imposter. I refused to let my feelings be hurt, despite the fact that I was currently back in the dorm and not going home with Matt.

The door opened and Anne came in.

‘Not staying at lover boy’s place tonight then?’ Terri asked Anne.

I wondered if Terri was like this with everyone.

‘No, not tonight. It’s going to be a busy week. I have to help with closing the accounts and I cannot be late to work tomorrow. Was it a good night at the bar, les filles?’

‘Ha!’ said Terri, and looked at me, grinning. Anne raised her eyebrows, and I blushed furiously.

‘Mathieu?’ Anne asked. I nodded with a sheepish smile, which dropped as soon as Terri continued.

‘What happened to that girlfriend of his? You know, that Somali girl he used to hang out with at the bar. Leila, wasn’t it?’ Terri asked.

I was sure she hadn’t meant to wreck my mood, but her words were like a blow to the gut.

‘She disappeared halfway through the season,’ she continued. ‘I heard things might have been a bit rough for her. Matt has a wild streak. I know he punched some guy’s lights out in the Grand. Don’t know what happened to Leila though. Do you?’ Terri turned to Anne.

Anne cleared her throat. She knew how I felt about Matt. I needed to know more about this Leila she mentioned. My stomach churned.

‘What do you mean? He hasn’t said anything about a girlfriend,’ I said, feeling witless that I hadn’t actually asked him.

This was information I naively assumed would be shared long before things went too far. And tonight, things had definitely gone too far.

‘I did know Leila. We were friends for a while.’ Anne looked awkward, put on the spot. I knew she wouldn’t want to hurt me, but she also wouldn’t want to lie. Even in the short time I’d known her, I already felt we had too much in common to ruin a good friendship.

‘She was a student at the international college for a few semesters, studying liberal arts.’

Now I really was beginning to feel like a slut. Or at least an intruder. I recalled the barman warning me that Matt was a Casanova. Jealousy instantly rose like the bow of a sinking ship, but Anne felt compelled to continue.

‘She and Matt were together for a while. It was a highly forbidden relationship, not only because of the faculty-student rule, but also in the eyes of her family. When her younger brother Kafia enrolled at the college the following year and saw what was going on, he reported Leila to their parents, and they took her away immediately. She had to return to Mogadishu and plans are underway to get her married off as soon as possible to avoid scandal. She wasn’t even allowed to write to me when she left. Kafia is still at the college, though I think he will graduate this spring, and he sometimes tells me about his sister.

‘I think he feels guilty having ratted on her, but the family doesn’t care, and to make things even worse, he has a beautiful blonde American girlfriend. The inequality of that makes me sick. Lucie, I don’t think there is anything … but Matt, he’s …’