Christian Jungersen - The Exception

‘No. Not Camilla.’ Anne-Lise moves out from under the hedge. She knows that she doesn’t have the stamina to continue the lies for much longer.

The woman repeats herself. ‘I live nearby. And we do need a choir here.’

Anne-Lise has no idea what she means. ‘Yes, we do.’

‘Perhaps you live in the Holte area?’

‘No. No, I don’t.’

The woman wipes her mouth, as if something were stuck there. ‘I was Camilla’s friend once.’

‘Yes?’

‘I was. I stopped seeing her when she started that relationship with him … you know, that ghastly man.’

‘Yes, I know. What was his name again?’

‘Dragan.’

‘That’s it. Dragan.’

This woman won’t stop talking. ‘Odd name. But he was a refugee. From Serbia, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Serbia.’ Anne-Lise forces herself to look at the woman. ‘It was Dragan …? Dragan …?’

‘Dragan Jelisic, wasn’t it?’

‘That’s it. Yes, Dragan Jelisic. Yes, yes. I thought he was really hard to get on with.’

Anne-Lise excuses herself abruptly and hurries home.

The next best thing to being able to speak to Henrik would be to talk to no one for the rest of the day. She walks up the driveway, unlocks the door and goes to lie down on the black sofa, with little hope of the migraine going away soon.

She thinks about Camilla and what it might mean that she once went out with a Serbian refugee and has kept it secret. But the pain in her head makes it impossible to think.

Only the revenge fantasies about Malene and Iben are alive in her mind, as if the images lead a life of their own. A young man in a red tracksuit hauls Malene’s body into the undergrowth. The cracking sounds as branches break when her body is pushed down onto the woodland floor. Iben’s pale neck, the echoing acoustics of the stairway, the veins that become visible in her neck and under the thin skin beneath her eyes. And in the shadow of the trees, the terror in Malene’s eyes when she understands that she is being punished for having ruined another human being’s life.

Anne-Lise is determined to think about something that makes her feel like a good person, one who is normal and healthy.

The blood is flowing from Malene’s body and soaks into the ground.

She can’t tell how much time has passed when she discovers that her head has cleared a little. She is still lying on the sofa, but now she feels able to phone Henrik to ask if he could pick up the children today.

Without moving the rest of her body, Anne-Lise reaches out and takes the phone off the hook.

She can hear voices. Has Henrik come home while she was resting? Since her car isn’t parked outside he wouldn’t know that she is home already.

It is Henrik. At first she can’t grasp what he’s talking about. The other voice belongs to Nils, Henrik’s brother. She wants to say something, but has an awkward moment trying to turn the phone around.

‘… as if I haven’t told her that a hundred times already. To tell you the truth, it’s all been very tough going.’

Nils sounds sympathetic. ‘Henrik, I believe you.’

A pause, but Anne-Lise is so baffled that she can’t think of anything to say. What are they talking about?

‘But have you thought of speaking to her doctor?’ Nils adds.

‘We saw him together. And we agreed afterwards to do what he advised. It went well. But she’s refusing to see him again.’

Nils sounds more serious than Anne-Lise had ever thought possible.

‘Henrik, you can always phone me. Remember that. And you can always drop by to talk to us, any time. Stay the night if you like.’

Henrik’s voice is dull. ‘Well. Thanks. But there are the children.’

Everything filters slowly through her headache.

She screams.

She runs.

She cannot endure the sitting room now, but doesn’t know where she wants to be. She’s in the hall, but can’t stand it there either.

Henrik’s footsteps are on the floor upstairs.

Anne-Lise runs around as a rush of thoughts overwhelms her.

Why should I have believed that they could bear to live with me? I’m bursting with evil thoughts. All the time! How I’ve kidded myself! They’ll have to move out. No, I’ll have to move. They can have the house. I’ll go away.

Henrik catches up with her in the kitchen. She has collapsed. He shouts: ‘I didn’t say anything bad about you! I didn’t!’

But now the rapist in the red tracksuit leaps out from between the tall rushes. He strikes me. He gets out his small black razor. He holds it against my neck and forces me into the bushes.

Henrik shouts: ‘Anne-Lise, don’t! Don’t.’

I must hit my face as hard as I can. I deserve to be punished because I’m a horrible wife. I’m a bad, bad mother.

The rapist’s spotty face is grinning at me. I can see his small pointy teeth.

Henrik is holding my hand in his. I can hit myself with the other hand. He tries to grab it too, loses his balance and falls over me. His belly on my head. His elbow between my legs.

He shouts: ‘Anne-Lise, stop it! Stop!’

He holds me around the chest. He has clamped my arms so I can’t move them. He presses his cheek to mine. His mouth is close to my ear.

‘Hit Malene! She’s the one you should hit, not yourself. And Iben! Not yourself. Them!’

Something glitters on the wall at the other end of the hut when it catches the feeble light of the oil lamp. It is the shell of a dead beetle. At first, Iben thought the creature was alive, but time has passed since then.

For thirty-five hours or thereabouts she has been looking at the shiny black shell of the beetle. She has touched it and then tried to scrape it free from the wall’s cement-like mixture of mud and cow shit.

Iben is the only one of the prisoners who hasn’t thrown up. She is only suffering from the diarrhoea and the fever. Under normal circumstances they would never have touched the water in the hut, which is kept in calabashes and old plastic bottles.

One of the hostage-takers is called Omoro. He has come along to crouch by her several times, asked her if she is very ill, and prayed for her to get better soon.

Through the fever-haze she has heard him argue again and again that it was essential to capture them. His tribe must chase the SEC out of the slums of Kibera.

No one contradicts him but still he repeats himself. ‘Look, we are not criminals. That is not what we are!’ He sounds unhappy.

Iben can’t make out his features in the darkness.

Omoro is the man with the machine gun who sat next to the driver in the SEC’s large, white car. Now that he is walking about she notes that he is tall and well built. The lower part of one of his ears is missing.

The fever makes it hard for Iben to think of a reply to his insistent questioning.

‘Please, can you not see that we are right to do this?’

She watches the lamplight flicker across the blade of the knife that rests across his thighs. An awful stench fills the enclosed darkness of the hut. The hostage-takers won’t let their prisoners out except when they ‘have to go’ in the muddy trench just outside the door and, with the sickness, all four hostages are having to go several times an hour. Roberto doesn’t always get there in time. Once he didn’t even get up off the mud floor — he was too weak — but tried to clean up after himself with a handful of straw. There are more flies and insects crawling about in his corner than anywhere else.

They all shiver, because the night is cold and they are wearing only their T-shirts and shorts. Soon the sun will rise and its furious heat will make the air in the hut even denser.