The Exception

by Christian Jungersen

  Iben leans forward, pleased that Malene seems to have forgotten about the slight awkwardness at Sophie’s party.

  ‘I’ve rewritten the whole thing four times, but it’s just … How do I avoid writing stuff like: “The only country in the world” and so on?’

  ‘Why not add something about the restrictive asylum policy towards foreign Jews during the 1930s?’

  ‘I thought of that, but it doesn’t fit in with the main theme of the exhibition. Besides, what I wrote sounded crap as well.’ Malene starts writing again.

  Iben gives up and returns to her own screen. She can’t quite put Malene out of her mind, even though she knows that there’s no real conflict between them and Malene is probably just having a bad morning.

  They are both working on an exhibition based on an idea that Malene had while Iben was away in Africa. Malene thought that many people might share her own sense of weariness at all the evil deeds in the genocidal world out there, and want to know more about the heart-warming exceptions. She thought up a theme for a poster exhibition that would celebrate the small minority of good and brave people in Nazi-controlled regions – people who saved lives during the Holocaust. She talked to Paul and he liked the idea. The Copenhagen City Library agreed to allocate space and time, and afterwards, the exhibition would be made available to schools and any other interested institution.

  Something occurs to Iben. ‘Maybe it would work better if you described the civil servants behind the thirties asylum policy? It would fit in with your approach of looking at the individuals behind the rescue stories.’

  Malene takes her time to reply and Iben doesn’t want to sound bossy.

  ‘Look, it’s just a thought.’

  Iben’s job is to research the background for Malene’s posters. She is revising her notes on the story about the Polish shepherd Antoni Gawrylkiewicz. He risked his life by digging underground shelters, where he housed sixteen Jewish survivors of the ghetto massacre in Radyn. The Jews had managed to escape by hiding in an attic. When the Germans were searching the house, a Jewish father had to strangle his youngest child, a little boy, because he started to cry.

  As so often at work, Iben feels hopelessly spoilt. How could anyone possibly think that what she had experienced in Nairobi was of any consequence? She had been kept prisoner for four days. When she came back home, she was offered all the counselling she needed, paid for by the aid organisation she worked for. Antoni Gawrylkiewicz had never got any kind of support or care.

  True, her supposedly therapeutic talks hadn’t been particularly helpful. The therapist had asked about the depression and panic attacks that had hit Iben after the death of her father nine years ago. At that time, talking to friends and to a psychologist had actually helped, but after Nairobi, with the new therapist, it seemed to her that nothing at all came up that she didn’t already know.

  Those who challenged the system during the war were left terrifyingly alone with their fears. Iben had found another item about a man, a passer-by, who was suddenly shot dead in the street by an SS officer. The man’s crime was to hand a jug of water to the prisoners in a Jewish transport.

  Regardless of the terror, Antoni Gawrylkiewicz, and others like him, had fed and housed Jewish strangers for years. Night after night they must have fallen asleep knowing that the family might be woken up at any time by hammering on the door and be deported to a concentration camp, together with their secret house guests.

  No one dared tell anyone else about the deadly risks they were taking. For two years Antoni Gawrylkiewicz cooked for sixteen Jews and, to make sure there were no signs of their existence, carried away their excrement from the earth shelters where they lived. Many of the units in the Polish resistance movement were as driven by anti-Semitic hatred as the Nazis, and one local unit suspected Gawrylkiewicz of hiding someone. He was tortured, but revealed nothing.

  After the liberation the Jews he had saved were at last free to return to their homes. Even though resistance fighters kept up their murderous attacks against Jews, at the end of the war there were many survivors because of him.

  And as it is said in several religious creeds, including Judaism: ‘He who saves one life, saves the entire world.’

  Iben misses the laughter she usually shares with Malene. Ostensibly there is no problem. They talk, as ever, about work-related topics. They haven’t really fallen out with each other. If anyone has the right to be cross, Iben feels it should be her. Malene, always so sure of being attractive to men, is making a big fuss over nothing.

  Camilla’s gentle voice floats across the room from her desk. ‘Paul called to say he won’t be in this afternoon. He’ll be in tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Thanks, Camilla.’

  Camilla is at least ten years older than Iben and Malene. She has little in common with the two younger women, but Iben likes her. Camilla is generous and brilliant at her job, always happy to share a joke.

  Iben wants to stretch her legs. She goes to the kitchen, fills the Thermos with coffee, and returns with an idea. ‘I thought, maybe the exhibition could be called something like “Everyone Can Make a Difference”. It would refer to what the exhibition aims to do, which is to make people want to create a better future, not just dwell on the past. The name would highlight that.’

  Camilla is quick off the mark. ‘That’s a fantastic idea.’

  After a moment, Malene responds. ‘Aha … Right …’ She looks up from her writing, which is obviously still frustrating her. Clutching the knuckles of one hand with the other hand, Malene swivels on her chair to look first at Camilla, then Iben. ‘I’ll add it to my list. We’d better run our ideas past Paul soon.’

  Paul has a terrific talent for formulating concise and arresting sound-bites that always go down well with the media. He once said in a television interview that the DCGI should survive because ‘The purpose of the Danish Centre for Genocide Information is to develop a vaccine against what, in the past, has been the worst form of political disease. Our goal is to encourage resistance in the communities of the future.’

  Paul is in his thirties, lean and fair. His hair is very short and he almost always wears a black sweater. Sometimes he dresses up by adding a black jacket. He plays the role of politically engaged, media-savvy intellectual to perfection. During a typical workday Paul spends more time networking over a lengthy lunch than he spends in his office. His top priority is to increase the public’s awareness of genocide, and he goes about it by making sure he’s part of the current-affairs coverage. He has excellent relationships with a whole string of editors and journalists, which helps him secure amazing amounts of free publicity.

  Iben once told some of her friends that Paul, despite coming across as a black-suited embodiment of sobriety, drives an Alfa Romeo and keeps his mobile phone on when he’s out jogging in Hare Woods, the best nature trail in the city.

  Her friends instantly labelled him a fraud. But Iben disagrees with them. It is Paul’s job to fit in and he conforms one hundred per cent because he cares passionately about the cause. Without Paul, the new right-wing government would have put the Centre under tighter control immediately after the election. They might even have closed it down, like so many of the other social-democratic projects. But it didn’t happen, probably because Paul spent several days in town, lunching with the right people in the right places at the right time.

  Iben already has a vision of him promoting their exhibition in some news feature, and imagines the kind of sales pitch he would give based on the slogan: ‘Everyone Can Make a Difference’.

  ‘It is increasingly common to hear people say that it is pointless for individuals to act. DCGI’s new exhibition sends a crucial message: personal responsibility still matters. What you decide to do can make a huge difference.’

  Malene has worked for DCGI the longest. As a student trainee she was exceptionally capable and, after graduating, she was offered the post of project manager. One of her chief responsibilities is to look after the academ
ics and civil servants who contact the Centre.

  Two years ago, when the information officer’s post became vacant, Malene recommended Iben but didn’t tell the selection committee that she was her best friend. She had met Iben at college, she told them, and worked with her in a few student societies. In Malene’s view, Iben was unusually bright, efficient and easy to work with.

  Once Iben was shortlisted, Malene briefed her carefully, giving her insider advice about the right things to say. In the end, Iben landed the job ahead of 285 other applicants. She and Malene took care not to show how well they knew each other, and tried to make out that their close friendship had developed in record time once they started working together.

  After a few weeks Paul stopped at their desks, chatted for a while and then paused, smiling as he looked at them. ‘You two have learned to get on quickly. Good!’ He tapped on Iben’s new computer. ‘It’s a match I’m proud of. It bodes well!’

  Iben’s job at the Centre had been her reward for standing by Malene over the years.

  One night six years earlier, Malene had been woken by a stabbing pain. Three of her fingers were red and inflamed. It had grown worse, and by four in the morning the fingers were grotesquely swollen and immobile. She had walked along the corridor and knocked with her other hand on Iben’s door. Iben had phoned the doctor on call. The diagnosis was a sudden onset of rheumatoid arthritis and Malene had been kept in hospital for several days.

  She had recovered, but was told that she must have frequent check-ups, and that the illness had no effective cure. It would come and go for the rest of her life. It could target any of her joints, for variable lengths of time, but especially those in her hands, feet, knees, elbows and shoulders. The affected joints would become stiff and very sore.

  Afterwards a kind of pattern developed. For a few days every second month or so, Malene was incapable of doing things like using her computer keyboard or grasping the handlebars of her bicycle. Taking painkillers helped, but her hands were so weak that Iben had to help her carry shopping bags and so on.

  The booklets from the hospital hadn’t mentioned a decrease in appetite, but Malene lost weight quickly. Over the following six months the pretty but rather plump Jutland girl with radical attitudes was transformed into a socialist Barbie.

  While her friend’s pain came and went, Iben felt like Malene’s squire, always ready to help and support her. Only Iben was allowed to know when Malene wasn’t capable of twisting the lids off jars, of buttoning her shirts, or of unlocking doors by herself.

  Just before lunchtime, Malene phones Frederik Thorsteinsson, the suave and sophisticated head of the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s Centre for Democracy as well as the deputy chairman of the DCGI board. Today is his birthday.

  Malene knows Frederik best and is on easier terms with him than Paul. She’s bantering with Frederik when Iben calls out, loudly enough for him to hear her: ‘Happy birthday, Frederik!’ She gestures for the others to come and sing ‘Happy Birthday!’ into the receiver. Camilla joins in at once, but then Malene waves them away and carries on talking.

  After lunch, the afternoon is busy. Iben writes a review of a new book called Systematic Torture as a Method of Oppression: Chile 1973–76, finds a translator for an article in Latvian about the classification in international law of six and a half million murdered Soviet kulaks (are they a social class or an ethnic group?), and goes on to test new software designed to help export texts to the DCGI website. She has also created the invitations to a talk, ‘The Significance of Gender During the Bosnian Genocide’. As the day wears on, Iben begins to feel a little moody and wants to be left alone.

  Just before going home, however, Camilla discovers a new episode of the popular radio show Chris and the Chocolate Factory on the Internet and turns the volume up so that everyone can listen. Anne-Lise comes out of the library and they all gather around Camilla’s desk. Together they pick a few more skits, laughing as they hear Chris do his funny telephone voice. As usual, he is spinning out new reasons for skipping work.

  ‘Right, boss … but you see there’s this other thing that stops me from coming in today. It couldn’t be more unfortunate, almost … but, listen, what else could I do? Eh, boss? … The thing is, I’ve got stuck in my hammock. I can’t fight it. I’d like nothing better than to get out of it, but what can I do?’

  Malene, who has always been brilliant at voices, joins in, improvising Chris’s words. From time to time she entertains everyone with parodies of the Centre’s clients, members of the board, or Paul at his most self-satisfied. It’s one of her best impersonations. Smiling, she knocks on Camilla’s computer with her knuckles and then announces: ‘You two learned to get on quickly. Am I right or am I right? It’s a match I’m really proud of.’ She snaps her fingers and shakes her head lightly. ‘It bodes well!’

  It’s very amusing. Even Iben cracks up laughing.

  3

  By seven o’clock that evening Iben is the only one left in the office. At eight o’clock she drags two large supermarket bags into her flat. She has stocked up on her staples: rice, honey, toilet paper, three packets of organic crisp-bread that was on special offer, yoghurt and vegetables. For supper she chops a handful of greens, adds seasoning and olive oil, puts in today’s special – a frozen block of cod – and shoves the batch into the microwave.

  So far, she hasn’t done much to her flat. The walls are still white, as they were when she first moved in. Her few pieces of furniture are either inherited or bought secondhand.

  While the microwave hums she checks her answering machine. No messages. Once the oven has beeped, she opens her email. There’s only one new entry:

  YOU, IBEN HØJGAARD, ARE FOR YOUR

  ACTIONS RECOGNISED AS

  ‘SELF-RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE HUMANS’

  IT IS THEREFORE MY PRIVILEGE AND MY JOY

  TO BRING YOU TO DEATH

  NOW.

  What’s this? She leans forward, reads it all again. Without formulating the thought, she instinctively knows that she mustn’t touch anything.

  This is a death threat. No question. Stay calm and think. There have been stories going around about journalists receiving threatening messages from neo-Nazi teenagers. Now it’s her turn. Maybe.

  The sender’s address is ‘revenge_is_near@imhidden.com’. The English is reasonable and the spelling is correct, which exempts just about all the young local neo-Nazis. The expression ‘self-righteous among the humans’ is an attempt to play on the phrase ‘righteous among the nations’, part of the citation for the highest honour awarded to foreign nationals at Israel’s national Holocaust memorial. A foreigner who knows something about the history of genocide might have written that.

  Her first reaction is pure sorrow, nothing more. She can feel her face dissolving and her whole body seems to crumple.

  That terrible African heat bears down on her again. It could be one of Omoro’s friends, or family, she thinks. Or a Luo tribesman. She feels dizzy; it’s the heat and the smells. She sees the prison hut, the flies, the militia, the tall trees and his blood. The Luos have found out what happened. They know who she is and have come here from Nairobi. She’ll have to accept being killed if that is what they have decided.

  She looks around. The bedroom door is open. She hasn’t been in there since she came home. And she closed the door this morning.

  Standing motionless, she scans the room. Nothing unusual about the stack of books or the cupboard or the bookshelves. What about her desk? The pile of papers looks tidier than she left it. Someone has been through her papers.

  No sounds, except her own breathing and faint noises from the television set in the flat below. Her nostrils feel dry, like when the hot dust blows in the wind. The air smells of the angry, sweating men, alert to danger.

  She cannot tell why, but she is convinced that someone is hiding in her flat.

  Don’t switch off the computer. Don’t run to grab a coat from the hall.

  Instead she walks
calmly to the kitchen. She tries to convey that she is relaxed, on her way to do something completely ordinary. Takes her supper out of the microwave oven, which is on top of the fridge, next to the door leading to the kitchen stairs.

  Breathe slowly, deeply.

  She picks up her mobile from the kitchen table, moves to the stair door and opens it gingerly. No one is waiting for her on the landing. She shifts gears and flies down the narrow stairs, her feet barely touching the steps. It’s important to outrun the man in her flat, but also to be quiet enough to delay him discovering that she’s gone.

  She doesn’t close the door, doesn’t even give it a push.

  She’s underdressed for the crisp October evening.

  The door to the yard. She stops, just a few steps away.

  It isn’t likely to be one of Omoro’s friends. Something made her jump to conclusions. She must be sensible, ask herself who else it could be. There are plenty of suspects to choose from, she knows that. Not that it helps. Iben has always tried to forget the obvious fact that all surviving war criminals, the very ones she keeps writing about for the DCGI website, can access the site too. They can Google their own names from anywhere in the world and, in seconds, her articles – in English as well as in Danish – will flash up on their screens. The writer sits in a modest Copenhagen office with no special security features while her contact details – home address, phone number, email address – are easily displayed.

  But would an experienced mass murderer take the trouble to travel to Denmark? Of course he might. The air fare wouldn’t be much for a professional soldier. And wouldn’t an experienced soldier position himself right there, on the other side of the door to the yard? He’d have a direct escape route into the street, making it easier to cover his tracks. Maybe he intended to make her dash downstairs and open that door.