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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.
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