Christian Jungersen - The Exception

Despite all this, Paul said no.

Malene keeps coming back to Paul’s refusal. ‘All he had to do was check out what I had prepared for him. If the Swedes get there first, we’ll be totally sidelined when it comes to research support. I don’t understand him.’

Iben can’t think of anything new to say. They have been over this several times already.

Malene takes a drink from the large coffee she bought at the station and then starts up again. Her warm coffee breath envelops Iben.

‘I can’t help wondering if he is planning to take up another post, and wants to take my idea with him.’

Iben doesn’t think so. Malene can probably read it on her face.

‘Then what? Do you think he has other work in mind for me, something I haven’t even heard about yet?’

The train has passed through a forest and the sunlight hits Iben’s eyes.

‘It couldn’t be something to do with cutting back on our activities, could it? Like working less closely with the researchers?’

That would be idiotic and Iben says so. They both look out at the houses slipping past.

‘Malene, there’s one more possible reason for his decision,’ Iben says. ‘I’ve been thinking it over for a while.’

‘What is it?’

‘Look, it’s only based on a hunch. Nothing solid.’

‘Go on.’

‘The way I remember it, when I arrived at the Centre, you always had Paul’s backing for your ideas, not just for this kind of project. Right?’

Malene nods.

‘And Paul wasn’t all that alert to what the library might need.’

‘True.’

‘It seems to me that, between then and now, something has changed — something that no one has wanted to talk about so far.’

Malene has pushed her coffee away, and her eyes are fixed on Iben.

‘What occurs to me is that Paul is very anxious about running such a small outfit. He’s aware of the risk that someone higher up might look at the DCGI and decide it’s time to merge it with another organisation, inevitably a bigger one. We’d be absorbed, sooner or later. Until recently, Paul believed that the Centre had to grow or die, which is why he used to encourage you to work like crazy on whatever research initiatives you came up with, so that we could secure new areas of expertise and therefore more support from grants.’

‘Yes, that’s exactly how it used to be. And now it’s like—’

‘What if Paul has picked up on a hint that we’re going to be cut off from the Ministry for Science, Technology and Development? I don’t know anything, of course. But what if? In that case we’d almost certainly be transferred to the Foreign Affairs Ministry. And then, in one of their rationalisation rounds, Human Rights would swallow us up. That’s a no-brainer.

‘If Paul has heard rumours like that, it would explain why he’s always so nervous before going to meetings at the Ministry. And, being Paul, he’ll already have thought through the next twenty moves in the game and planned ways of winning it.

‘Say that he has noticed that state research libraries are small units scattered among the different ministries. Now there’s a possible plank to cling to, because the more vigorously our library expands, the greater Paul’s chance of presenting DCGI as “a major library with additional research facilities”. That in turn would give him scope to manoeuvre DCGI into the arms of another ministry, like Culture, or Justice, or Asylum Seekers, Immigrants and Integration — whatever takes his fancy. He’d be safe in his director’s post then, and nobody would be breathing down his neck, because the system accepts that research libraries are independent units, however small.’

Iben can see that none of this has occurred to Malene. At least there are some advantages to lying awake and alone at night, Iben thinks.

‘Look, Malene, if this is his rescue plan, then your initiatives could ruin it. He’d prefer to become part of almost any ministry as long as it isn’t Foreign Affairs. If avoiding that means scaling down everything you’ve proposed in support of research, so be it.’

‘But he was so keen on the Centre being associated with this conference and the one about the Germans in 1945. What do you make of that?’

In the aisle next to them an elderly lady fusses about with her little wheeled suitcase. Malene seems not to notice her at all.

Iben speaks quickly now. ‘Paul is walking a tightrope. Some years from now, he and Frederik will be competing for the same top post. They both already know it. Before then, Paul has to demostrate that he is more capable of building a stronger, better organisation than Frederik. But in the current situation he feels that all research initiatives must be one-offs, like conferences and so on. That would mean that from now on, your function in the day-to-day work of the Centre would be to support Anne-Lise.’

Malene sits back heavily in her seat, staring into middle distance.

‘I haven’t heard anybody say this and I don’t know anything for sure,’ Iben says, ‘but I can’t help speculating.’

Iben cannot recall having seen such bright sunshine in November. The delegates have gathered in the restaurant and on the outside terrace, enjoying the views over the sculpture park on the slope down to the sea. Iben recognises quite a few people. Malene, who has managed research assistance practically single-handedly for three years, is very well informed about who everyone is. Quite a few people comment on the email threats or on articles in the DCGI on-line magazine. Others, who haven’t met Iben since her return from Africa, tell her how happy they were to learn that the hostage episode had ended in such a satisfactory way. ‘It’s great that you all got out alive,’ they say, even though it was four months ago.

New delegates are arriving all the time. Malene notices that one of the speakers from Bosnia looks lost and goes off to explain the conference set-up to him. Paul is outside in the park with Morten Kjærum, Executive Director of the Institute of Human Rights, and Birte Weiss, who used to be the Minister for Research and Information Technology. Anne-Lise stands by his side and appears to be trying to follow their conversation. This is the first time Paul has invited the Centre’s librarian to a conference.

At ten o’clock, Morten Kjærum welcomes the delegates in the great hall downstairs and is followed by the first speaker, a young city mayor from Bosnia.

His body is as taut and powerful as a soldier’s, even under the layer of fat that the southern European diet has deposited ever since the Dayton Peace Treaty. From where Iben and Malene are sitting, he looks almost boyish. Like the other delegates from the former Yugoslavia, but unlike their Danish hosts, he is wearing a dark suit, white shirt and wide tie. The style of his dark hair reminds Iben of Russians in old spy films.

The talk deals with the Serb ethnic cleansing in his own locality, but despite this the presentation is unemotional and plainly instructive.

He reads out statistics from the overhead projector:

184 people were killed.

416 houses were burnt to the ground.

1,783 persons were expelled.

73 persons were exposed to rape or torture or both.

He sticks to basics for the rest of his talk too. Most of those present know the facts already and no one takes any notes. At the end, many people wonder why in the world he was invited.

Someone asks a question: ‘How come you survived?’

He replies carefully, in a tone that remains factual and unengaged: ‘Some of us had feared what would happen before it did. We had gathered together. They told us to hand over our weapons, but we bought new rifles from Serb soldiers. Then the top Serbs ordered that all the men should go to the school in the town. We ran off into the forest. They shot the men in the school later that day. We lived in the forest for several months.’