The Exception (50 page)

‘Oh, nothing.’

Iben knows that Malene won’t believe her and twists one corner of her mouth in a small grimace that only Malene will notice, to let her know that she doesn’t want to talk about it right now. Iben has every intention of telling Malene what happened last night, but now something is holding her back, though she can’t think what.

Camilla doesn’t say anything and Anne-Lise is keeping to herself in the library.

‘Has Anne-Lise been out of the library?’

Malene looks at her. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘No special reason.’

Iben sits down and tries to hide her relief – no need to get up again until lunch time. She bends down to take off her right shoe. The lace is already very loose, but it still hurts when she eases the shoe off over the top of her foot. She suppresses the sound she wants to make so that it comes out as a very faint gasp.

Is this really what it can be like for Malene, day after day?

She can hear from the tapping rhythm that Malene is writing and then correcting the same word several times. One more mistake. Malene hits the keyboard. It slides sideways and her fingers hit the corner of the large flat surface of the mouse. It must have hurt, because she pulls her hand away at once and rubs it with her other hand. Iben and Malene exchange a smile.

Next to Iben is a stack of documentation on the Turks’ killing of 300,000 Pontian Greeks between 1914 and 1922. Although Turkey’s extermination of roughly 1.5 million Armenians has eclipsed the mass-murder of the Greeks, the issue of
Genocide News
on Turkey will be the perfect place to bring attention to the atrocity. Among other eyewitness accounts, Iben will include a description of how Turkish soldiers drove Greek families, women, children and old people away from the coast and into the desert. Once their victims were isolated, the militia left and took all the food and water with them.

Iben sits in silence, staring at the desk. She should keep working, but she’s having trouble concentrating on the material. She can barely respond when someone talks to her. Instead she reads random back issues of
Genocide News
. A large greasy stain across the top of a front page catches her eye. The headline says ‘The Psychology of Evil II’. It’s her own article: ‘ … in a war situation, men and women who kill at a sufficiently great distance from the victims are, to the best of his personal knowledge, not
traumatised later in life. The closer the soldier gets to the victim, the harder it is to kill.’

She thinks of how distant she is to Anne-Lise. If Anne-Lise were to have an accident serious enough to disable or even kill her, Iben’s head would tell her it was a tragedy but her heart would secretly be glad to be rid of her. These new thoughts make Iben interpret her writing differently.

‘The conclusion must be that simple acts, which in themselves appear to cause only limited damage, can lead to psychological changes that in turn make possible even greater and more destructive acts.’

Having read Anne-Lise’s journal entries, Iben sees how the following passage also seems to apply: ‘We tend to exaggerate the similarities of those who belong to our group, just as we exaggerate the homogeneity in other groups and the differences among them.’

By now the nausea from this morning has returned. She stares at the broken spring that dangles from her desk lamp, its sharp little tip and the reflections of the overhead light on the broken metal.

Her thoughts must have been drifting for quite a while, when she hears Malene and Camilla chatting about Malene’s swimming sessions.

‘Of course it isn’t just about keeping your body fit. It does something for your mind and your mood as well.’

Iben reads on: ‘Cognitive dissonance makes us like those whom we have helped and dislike those we have hurt.’

She hears Malene’s voice again: ‘If you don’t stay in good shape by doing something active, like you do with your choir, it’s easy to end up just like her in there.’ Malene nods her head in the direction of the library.

Iben needs to be alone. Just for a few minutes. She quickly bends down to put her shoe back on. Despite her painful foot and upset stomach, she walks towards the toilet. She keeps her face turned away to hide her expression.

It feels good to hear the small click of the lock. She settles down on the lid, in the tall, narrow stall with its melon-yellow walls and odour of toilet-cleaner. She lifts her sore foot and puts her hand gently but firmly around the taut skin of her swollen ankle.

The last words of her article are still with her: ‘The more appallingly brutal the acts a perpetrator commits, the more strongly he comes to believe that they are only right and proper.’

She asks herself if that is what they’ve done to Anne-Lise. Is what she says in her diary true?

The throbbing pain has spread. It lurks behind Iben’s eyes, in the back of her neck, in the roof of her mouth, in her arms. It melds with images and words of so many genocides that she has pondered over. She can’t help returning to the one question that researchers inevitably ask themselves: If I had been born in Germany before the Second World War, would I have supported the Holocaust? Then she remembers Anne-Lise, who might well find her out if she doesn’t get back to work soon.

She finds Anne-Lise at Malene’s desk, apparently angry about something. Over the last few weeks, ever since Rasmus died, they have all been kind to Malene – Anne-Lise too. Now that seems to have changed.

Anne-Lise is speaking too fast and her voice has a metallic ring to it. ‘You were talking about me a moment ago. I heard you say that unless people pull themselves together, they’d end up like me.’ She sounds as if she’s about to have a breakdown.

‘Running after two small children keeps you fit. Camilla, you know that, don’t you?’

Malene is quite calm. ‘Anne-Lise, I didn’t say that about you.’

‘I heard you. You said “or you’ll end up like her in there”. And you meant me.’

‘Anne-Lise, you misheard me. I never said that.’

Looking at Anne-Lise, Iben is about to chime in, ‘Malene never said that. I’m positive she didn’t.’ But the words won’t
come. Malene, who is so used to Iben backing her up, gives her friend a bemused look: what’s wrong?

There’s a short pause. Iben stays silent.

Malene starts her usual little act that never fails to drive Anne-Lise crazy. ‘If you are hearing people talking about you, then maybe you should see your doctor.’

As expected, Camilla joins in. ‘A doctor might help you, Anne-Lise. Well, anyway, it’s always worth a try.’

Malene looks at Iben. Iben feels more and more sick.

Anne-Lise is shouting now. ‘But you said it! You said it!’

‘Anne-Lise, hearing voices is a serious matter. You must look after yourself.’

‘I’m not hearing voices! You said that!’

‘What’s your doctor like? You’ll need a good one.’

‘I know there are a lot of helpful sites on the Internet.’

Camilla stares at Iben.

Anne-Lise looks withdrawn. Maybe this is what it takes to make her crawl back into the library and hide.

Malene still won’t let go. ‘We haven’t even mentioned you in here today. Have we, Iben?’

Iben can’t speak.

Malene repeats, more loudly and clearly: ‘Have we, Iben?’

A quarter of a second passes.

It is like a test. An evaluation of a human being’s most important qualities.

Half a second.

It strikes Iben that her situation only confirms what she wrote in her first article about the psychology of evil. Christopher Browning’s study showed that what drove ordinary Germans to kill Jews was not the threat of punishment, but peer pressure. The men felt they must not let down the comrades with whom they had endured such dreadful hardships.

Three-quarters of a second.

The pressure on Iben has other similarities to the forces that drive people to kill, and kill again. One brief moment can have
incalculable consequences and determine which side a person takes for the rest of the war.

One full second.

No more time to think.

Malene is having such a difficult time these days. Nothing should be allowed to add to her distress. If I humiliate her in front of the others, Iben thinks, our friendship may not survive. She’ll lose every last ounce of trust in me. She might tell Gunnar. That too could change my life. If only Malene and I could have talked about this alone.

I’m taking far too long. They’re all staring at me. How strange it is. I believe that no group has the right to destroy one individual. It’s an article of faith for us here at DCGI. And now, I must choose: either my ideology or my best friend. An inner voice tells me to agree with Malene. My human instinct, like the instincts of millions of Germans, Russians, Chinese, Cambodians, demands that other people should be eliminated.

So much would be sacrificed if I were to break with Malene. And how can I be certain that Anne-Lise deserves that kind of sacrifice from me? I don’t want to turn my life upside down.

The Winter Garden is quiet apart from the slight humming of the computers. Iben looks directly at Anne-Lise. She can’t remember when she last did that.

‘We were talking about you, Anne-Lise.’ Iben blinks. The light is so bright. She starts again. ‘You weren’t imagining it. Not at all.’

Malene slaps the palms of her hands on the desktop. ‘WHAT?’

Iben repeats it and now her voice is firmer. ‘We were talking about you, Anne-Lise. What you heard was exactly what we said.’

Iben can see Malene losing her confidence.

‘Iben, you don’t mean what you’re saying. Did you really hear what we were talking about? What are you … you’re not saying that …?’

Iben’s eyes fill with tears. It’s hard to see Malene. Instead she
turns to Anne-Lise, whom she can’t see properly either.

‘Anne-Lise, listen. You’re not psychotic! You’re right! Everything you heard was said. We talked about you. We’ve talked about you before now too.’

Iben can hear that Anne-Lise has also begun to cry.

‘Are you siding with her?!’ Malene is screaming.

‘No! No! I’m not on anybody’s side. I’m just telling her the truth. We talked about Anne-Lise. We did.’

‘You’re her friend now!’

‘No. I’m only saying …’

Malene sounds as if she’s hardly able to breathe. ‘I can’t bear it … You’re just …’

Anne-Lise is still standing at Iben’s side when Malene runs out of the office, slamming the door behind her.

Iben rushes out of the door after Malene, as fast as she can manage on her sore foot.

Malene is not on the stairs and not on the pavement outside. Iben calls her mobile. No response. Apart from the endless rows of parked cars, the road is completely empty. The morning air is cold and Iben hugs herself as she leans against the red-brick wall and tries to collect her thoughts.

Then she phones the Centre. Anne-Lise takes the call and sounds quite different. Iben realises that Anne-Lise is dying to talk about what’s just happened but Iben avoids the issue. All she says is that she has a headache and is going home. She will be away for the rest of the day.

She takes a taxi and calls Malene’s home number. After about ten attempts Malene finally answers.

‘Iben, so you’re backing her up now?’

‘No. Malene, I’m your friend, always! But you’re not yourself.’

Malene interrupts with denials but Iben continues. ‘Look, Malene, it’s obvious why, with everything that’s happened. But I’m worried about you.’

Malene is shouting. ‘I hate to think what you’re like when you really fucking care!’ She slams the receiver down and doesn’t answer the phone again.

When Iben wakes up, her bedroom is dark. The clock-radio shows that it’s nine o’clock at night. Nine hours have passed since she lay down on top of the bed.

She limps along to the kitchen and makes herself a portion of oats, raisins and skimmed milk, and thinks about Malene. Everything has gone wrong. Iben’s foot is painful and she feels
emotionally drained. She sits down at her desk, placing her bad foot gingerly on one of the old chairs. The laptop is turned on and Anne-Lise’s CD is still in the drive. She checks through more files while she eats.

There are collections of photos from summer days in the garden and from a family holiday two years ago in Rhodes. The children are splashing in the sea and Henrik, whose body looks exceptionally pale and thin, is grinning at the photographer.

Iben knows what she’s after and why, but doesn’t care. Dozens of experiments in social psychology have proven that, after making a complex choice, people often set out to look for reasons to confirm that they were right. The deciding factors may have been marginal, or even random, but in the experiments, subjects would construct arguments and find information to support their eventual decision. By then they would have shut off other considerations and convinced themselves that their choices were significantly different. Put simply: justification after the fact makes life easier.

Iben has eaten her cereal by the time she gets to older photos of the family, who are visibly happy. Iben feels proud of the stand she took today – her refusal to help destroy this smiling woman. She is well aware that the choices people had to make during the Holocaust were utterly unlike her own. Even so, she thinks that perhaps she might have been part of the small, select group of heroes who refused to obey. In her mind she pictures the survivors in their rooms. She sees a woman at a desk looking at photos of a victim she has saved, her bad right foot resting on a chair.

Iben scrolls through other entries about the daily misery Anne-Lise endured at the Centre. In bed later that night, Iben thinks about what she has read. How can it be, she asks herself, that I couldn’t see the consequences of what we were doing until I saw them in writing? Somehow, I must have known all along. Malene must have known too.

She thinks about how, in reality, she and Malene were able to
hold three utterly contradictory beliefs simultaneously. First, they felt their actions were OK because they weren’t hurting Anne-Lise – she was too thick-skinned to notice. Second, their actions were OK because Anne-Lise deserved to suffer for destroying the good working environment at DCGI. Third, they knew that their treatment of Anne-Lise was fundamentally wrong, although they never dared put it into words, or even acknowledge the thought. Somehow they sensed that they shouldn’t tell anyone outside the office what they were doing.