‘What do your people do?’
It amused me to hear him refer to my parents in such an old-fashioned way, especially as my relationship with them was somewhat strained with my unexpected voyage to the continent.
‘My father is an ex-naval officer. My mother’s a nurse. She used to be an expat locum, Middle East mainly. I suspect I have a genetic predisposition for travel. Which is why I’ve … delayed my studies for a year,’ I said, twisting the truth.
‘Nothing wrong with a journey of self-discovery, throwing a few wild oats.’
I smiled, the misquoted idiom making him appear suddenly naive.
‘You should come and visit the studio sometime. Pop by next week – we won’t be too busy when this exhibition is out of the way.’
* * *
I wasted no time taking the professor up on his invitation. By the following week I hardly had two centimes to rub together. The few francs I had earned were long spent. I’d sold my Eurorail ticket to a departing backpacker when the hostel closed. But that money was rapidly running out, and Anne, although a generous hostess, must have been getting tired of my presence in her home. Her relationship with François was getting serious, and I could tell she wanted her space to herself.
‘I was Professor Hibbert’s assistant for a term in my first year,’ I told Iain Patterson when I visited his studio.
I was trying my best to both charm and maybe impress the old fellow.
‘A Hibbert protégé! I could do with an assistant in the studio. Are you looking for work?’
Yes, yes! I wanted to shout. Everything was falling conveniently into place.
Iain Patterson, self-professed artist and wine connoisseur, flaunted an ample belly upon which he would amusingly rest his brushes as he painted, tucked between the buttons of his brown smock. I had never seen anyone paint with so many brushes at once. He balanced the smaller ones over his ears. They even protruded from his mouth, a substitute for the tortoiseshell pipe his long-suffering wife insisted he smoke outside the studio, to avoid bringing home the cloying scent of Latakia smoke on his hair and clothes.
Patterson, as he preferred to be called, had enough seniority to secure me a job as his assistant, and although he was past retirement age, it was evident his teaching was highly valued.
I was unable to obtain official working papers, but the college secured me a study permit, to fool the authorities into thinking I was a full-time student. I was even able to earn one credit a term in Patterson’s classes, which marginally satisfied my parents’ concerns about taking up the reins of an education I had left behind in England. Although it was unlikely I would ever fulfil enough credit requirements for an undergraduate degree.
I soon blended into the village and local life, and after a slow start, learned to speak French. Not that it mattered in a resort where so many foreign tourists passed through, and given that non-language courses at the college were all taught in English.
Being seen at Matt’s side, a local boy, should have made me feel secure, knowing the authorities were always on the search for illegal workers without permits. The news about my semi-legal permit status quashed his hesitancy about me finding a job at the same college where he worked. And my love for him eclipsed the feeling of unease everyone else seemed to have when I was in his company.
* * *
We are sitting at a table in the cafeteria when Fatima comes in with Adnan bound to her in a perplexingly fashioned wrap, resembling a haphazardly knotted sari. She moves along the canteen counter, collects random items of food for her tray. As she comes to sit near us I wonder how she can place so many opposing food groups together on one plate. Perhaps she still has the disturbing gastronomic leanings of an expectant mother in her third trimester, and yearns for unidentified chemicals her body is missing. I vaguely remember a craving for horseradish and caramel fudge.
She starts plucking morsels off her tray and pops them into her mouth before she has even reached the table. She looks slightly manic. Adnan whimpers and squawks quietly in his sleep at her chest.
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