Christian Jungersen - The Exception

‘No, no. Not at all.’ Malene means it. If she had learned about Camilla’s indirect connection to Mirko Zigic a month ago, she might have been much angrier. But now she is much more concerned about how she’ll manage her life without Rasmus, as well as preoccupied with Gunnar and her crumbling friendship with Iben and the possibility of losing her job. There’s no room to be terrified of some Serbian mass murderer who might — might — have sent them scary emails. She knows it’s different for Iben.

When Malene arrives at the Centre, Iben is going full steam.

She spent last night phoning people again. First she called Camilla to pump her for more details and persuade her to call Paul and tell him everything about her Yugoslavian contact. Then she called journalists and genocide experts all over the world. Listening to the women talk, Malene learns that Anne-Lise has also been finding out more about Jelisic.

I should have checked in on Iben last night, Malene tells herself. Instead Anne-Lise must have called her to commiserate.

They seem to have already discussed the likelihood of Zigic still having ties to Camilla’s ex-lover and analysed various options for finding out more about Jelisic. Clearly they have been sharing their fears with each other.

It isn’t long before Malene wants to go back to bed. When Rasmus died, Paul told her she could leave the office whenever she needed to. Only she doesn’t want to be alone. It would be great to phone Gunnar for sympathy, but that’s impossible now, after having just spent the night together.

She takes her mug of coffee and sits down opposite Iben. ‘How’s it going?’ they ask each other. Iben briefs Malene on her Jelisic research and talks about how scared she is of him.

Is this her oldest, dearest friend? She cannot believe how much things have changed between them and that she’s losing her just when she needs her most. Still, she must face up to the fact that Iben has changed, possibly for good. How can Iben be so cold and calculating, especially after Rasmus’s death? But it seems Malene has become an obstacle in Iben’s pursuit of both Gunnar and a new career in DIHR. Why bother being sentimental over the past? — regardless of the Iben-shaped void in Malene’s life?

She listens as Iben calls the Belgrade office of the International War Crimes Tribunal and is passed from contact to contact without learning anything new. Malene looks at the familiar details: the broken spring on Iben’s lamp, the plastic troll on her own desk. Then she turns to the board with all its cheery photos of Iben and Malene posing with Tatiana in Prague, sitting next to Frederik and Paul at a dinner table in Odense, and standing around with academics at a conference in Oslo.

She is worn out. Malene gets up and goes to the kitchen. She refills her mug and returns. She prints some information and goes to get it from the central printer next to the library. On the way, she pops in to browse through the large collection of East European documents. She looks for a couple of articles in the magazine boxes behind Camilla’s desk. She’d do anything not to be sitting opposite Iben, looking at her pale face.

Later, while Malene is hanging out in the kitchen eating biscuits from an old plastic bag, Camilla comes bursting in, obviously not expecting to find anyone. She is visibly upset. Seeing Malene, she quickly tries to change her expression, but it’s too late. Malene asks her what’s happened.

Camilla paces up and down in the small space. ‘They won’t stop!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Now they’re asking me about Dragan’s friends. “Are any of them blond?”’

‘Really?’

‘They started on the phone last night and they haven’t stopped all morning. I gave them a blow-by-blow account of every person I ever met with Dragan.’

Malene looks incredulous.

‘It’s Iben, really,’ Camilla explains. ‘She is convinced that Zigic is in Denmark and that I’ve met him without knowing it. She thinks he’s here under a false name and she’s doing everything she can to find out. But I had to tell her that none of the men I’d met with Dragan looked anything like the pictures of Zigic! But still she picks and picks and picks on me. She says that I must’ve met lots of former Serbian militiamen when I went out with Dragan.’

Malene wants to soothe her and tries to take Camilla’s hand, but Camilla brushes her away. She rubs her hands on her blouse and keeps walking around.

‘She thinks I’m lying, all the time. She now thinks it was me who was there … on the staircase, with Rasmus!’

Her voice becomes whiny. ‘Malene, you don’t think so, do you? Only Iben would dream up something like that — right?’

‘No, of course I don’t. Not at all.’ Malene puts the biscuits on a plate and offers one to Camilla. ‘I do understand how you’re feeling. It’s totally crazy.’

Camilla stops and shakes her head, staring down at the plate. ‘No, I mustn’t. But thanks.’

‘It would do Iben good to sleep more than four hours a night, don’t you think, Camilla? And not spend most of it reading books full of descriptions of psychiatric diseases or the murders of millions of people? It could help her, couldn’t it?’

This is the first time anyone in the office has heard Malene criticise Iben. They both realise that, starting today, all the old alliances are null and void. Unless Malene wants to become a lone wolf in the office, she’ll need to find a new ally: Camilla. She knows that they’re too different to become close friends, but that doesn’t matter. After all, Anne-Lise will never become truly close to Iben.

Malene tries again to comfort Camilla. She tells her how she feels about the way Iben has behaved these last few days. But there are things about Iben that Malene won’t give away. Right after her father’s death, Iben would apparently wander the streets in a state of deep depression. She acquired a profound aversion to people, and this antipathy caused such an overpowering reaction that on two occasions Iben had to spend the night in a psychiatric ward.

Now Iben is seen as a very competent person. Few would guess the hidden flaws that Malene knows so well. Or do the others sense something? Could this be the reason why everyone was so amazed by the heroic stories of Iben in Kenya?

When Malene returns to the Winter Garden, Iben still hasn’t unearthed any more information about Jelisic. Nothing, that is, apart from the familiar Omarska stories that have already been circulated in the press and reported to the War Crimes Tribunal. Like the ones about how Jelisic and two other volunteer camp guards killed a couple of prisoners by forcing them to drink engine oil, and made fathers bite off the balls of their own sons. Horrors of that kind.

Iben has no evidence as to where he is and what he is doing. Camilla insisted this morning that, unlike Zigic, Dragan is not a member of the Yugo mafia and says he is not in contact with Zigic any longer. But Iben can’t hide the fact that she doesn’t trust Camilla one inch.

Anne-Lise keeps coming in to tell Iben about her latest phone calls. She’s good at pretending that she’s as scared as Iben. And when they walk from one computer to the other, Anne-Lise follows Iben like a lapdog — an anxious one who glances nervously from time to time at Malene.

Malene tries to concentrate on reading an article about the expulsion of 3.5 million inhabitants from the German regions of Czechoslovakia. The plan is to publish an edited volume of the delegates’ papers about the fates of the 15 million ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe in time for the conference. When the Germans occupied Czechoslovakia they behaved with more restraint than anywhere else, except Denmark, but many of the regional Germans supported the occupation. So, during the war, the future Czech president said he would demand ‘a radical and definitive solution’ to the German problem — he envisaged a ‘one hundred per cent effective extermination of Germans’. During the first post-war year, some 270,000 Germans were killed and more than 3 million expelled.