Christian Jungersen - The Exception

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.

When Iben comes into work the next morning, Paul is standing at Malene’s desk. They are gossiping about some of their German colleagues. Paul looks relaxed and Iben thinks that he has no idea what happened yesterday.

As usual, Iben greets everyone in the Winter Garden. Then, for the first time, she walks into the library to greet Anne-Lise.

‘Hi.’

‘Hi, Iben.’

Iben tries to catch Anne-Lise’s expression. ‘How are things?’

‘Just fine. Really. Fine. What about you?’

‘Oh, fine.’

Anne-Lise hesitates for a moment. ‘You know, I’m actually feeling happy.’

Iben nods towards the papers on the desk. ‘What’s all that about?’

‘I have to sort out the keywords for this pile of new books.’

Iben yawns. ‘I guess I’d better get to work too.’

Anne-Lise says, ‘Yes.’ Then she uses one of Malene’s phrases: ‘We’d better be good.’

When Iben sits down at her desk, Paul has left. Malene leans across her desk as far as she can and whispers: ‘We need to talk.’

They go off together to the Small Meeting Room. Iben emphasises how it would have been so much better not to have been forced to disagree in front of the others. Malene apologises for this, and for her words on the phone. Because Paul is at the Centre they can’t spend too much time away from their desks, but they promise each other to have a longer talk later.

Iben needs to work on the Turkey issue. However, as things stand, it would probably be best to avoid Anne-Lise for a while. She sends an email to her instead, saying that she’s sure their planned discussion will generate all sorts of exciting ideas, but that she would like to postpone it for a couple of days.

Anne-Lise has enough understanding of what is going on and emails back a simple ‘Fine by me’.

Iben turns to Malene and suggests that they work on the delegates’ handouts for the conference about the ethnic cleansing of East European Germans between 1945 and 1950. Iben goes to sit next to Malene so that they can go over her draft together. Iben, who has brought her mug of coffee along, takes a sip and starts scanning Malene’s text.

The heading strikes her as being in poor taste: ‘Welcome to the International Conference on Ethnic Cleansing of Germans 1945–50’.

Reading on, the very first sentence also seems odd and inappropriate given the subject matter. The next sentence sounds so heavy you just want to run away. She turns to the next page. It’s no good either. Then she abandons the second page too. This is hopeless.

Iben tries to recall what she thought of Malene’s previous draft. As far as she can remember, it seemed all right. Why does it look so different now? What can she say?

She tries to find something positive before she starts to criticise it.

Iben looks up and sees her best friend watching her. Does Malene sense how Iben feels about their friendship today? Probably not. For the last few months Iben has felt uneasy about it but Malene appears not to have noticed. But then, why should she? It’s not as if Iben has actually said anything.

Luckily, Iben finds something on the last page of the conference papers that works. Now she can praise it with sincerity.

‘Malene, I really like this passage at the end. It’s so inviting. Friendly.’

‘I did try to write as if I were writing to a friend.’

They smile.

Iben is back at her own desk preparing to review a new book about Yugoslavia for the DCGI website, but once again she has trouble concentrating.

She creates a new file for notes to herself. Her comments might be part of the groundwork for another article in her series on the psychology of evil.

At least now she’s not wasting her time at work. Besides, it’s the only subject she can focus on.

Evil. Psychol III

Just about everyone must have heard a friend praising her great relationship with a lover only to say, soon after breaking up, that she knew from the start that it wouldn’t last. She will insist she ‘knew’, even when they had bought a flat or had a child together.