The Exception

by Christian Jungersen

  Iben objects, but only to keep the discussion going. Actually, she’s so fed up with her own arguments, which sound naïve and kind of Danish, that she almost looks forward to being contradicted. The professor obliges.

  ‘You know, with hindsight everyone notices the falsification of history in the lead up to genocide, the ideology and so on, and decides that this must have been what did it. But just examine the genocides you’re more familiar with and you’ll see that, when all’s said and done, the perpetrators are driven by egoism every time. Never mind the cover stories they use to persuade themselves or the world at large. Or their victims.’

  Later that day Iben feels nauseous and shaky. She’s definitely not well and takes two aspirins, even though she can’t identify any aches or pains.

  The Genocide News issue on Turkey has been badly delayed by the upsets of the last few days. She must try to concentrate. Even so, an hour before the end of the working day she can’t stand sitting there any longer. She must get home.

  This anxiety is no stranger to her – she recognises it from when she was nineteen and suffered a breakdown: her body seizing up, as if she has caught a dreadful illness, but nothing hurts.

  She is terrified of being referred to a psychiatric clinic and put back on medication again. Many of her former fellow patients are probably only able to exist with the help of mind-bending drugs. Ten years ago, Iben had to fight for her return to stability and real work and she isn’t certain she can do it again.

  Before leaving the office she looks out to make sure that there’s no dark-haired, square-jawed man waiting down there in the street. It’s pointless, though. You can’t see properly from up here. Perhaps Dragan Jelisic is there. Perhaps he isn’t.

  Iben announces that she needs to go home because she has a headache. She quickly checks the on-screen camera image. The landing is empty. The elevator is empty too. Nobody is waiting for her in the street.

  She cycles away. For a February day it’s not that cold. Then she realises that her balance is too poor to continue cycling. She locks up the bike just a few hundred metres from DCGI.

  Men, broad smiles on their faces, hold severed human heads in their hands. Archive images drift in front of her mind’s eye.

  We distort our memories when it serves our purposes. Our thoughts, too. Even our senses cannot be trusted; we reshape the messages they send to suit our needs.

  How much of what I’m thinking is nothing but the egoistic, post-hoc rationalisation that the professor was talking about?

  When I stood up for Anne-Lise, I believed I was good. Was I lying to myself? Was my choice to risk my job and my friendship with Malene based on nothing more than a notion of what would be to my own best advantage?

  Three million corpses scattered over the paddy-fields of Cambodia. All slaughtered by their own countrymen, believing they were right – but also because they felt that there might be something in it for them.

  Five skulls, sticking up from a water-filled ditch. Plants, winding their way up, around and between them.

  Sure, I might gain from losing my friend. I’d be free to date Gunnar. Also, I’d be free of the duty to help Malene, whose arthritis will only get worse with time.

  How could I believe that I was making a sacrifice in order to resist the bullying? But I did believe it. I truly thought it was hard to make the choice I made. I felt heroic. Truly good.

  ‘Hey! Watch where you’re going!’

  Iben walks with her head down, without looking where she is going. Now she has almost fallen over a small, white bulldog. Whining, it leaps sideways against a wall, obviously thinking that it’s about to be stepped on.

  Its owner tells her off, while he pulls at the dog’s long, red leash. ‘You’re not the only one on the pavement, you know!’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!’ She sighs.

  Meanwhile a thought has struck her. That’s it! Though I’ve seen myself as idealistic, I’ve lied to myself. That’s the evil act that has been gnawing at the back of my mind all day long. I couldn’t figure it out. But now that I know, my nausea will fade and disappear.

  The sense of unease and queasiness does not leave her, however. She straightens up and looks around. She hasn’t gone very far. No one resembles Jelisic. She scans the streets in both directions. Pedestrians are few and far between, but he could be in any one of the cars. The traffic seems unending.

  She cannot possibly defend herself against a man in a car.

  She cannot possibly go home now.

  Jelisic could find her there, no trouble at all – there is no steel-lined door, no CCTV camera. If she did go home, she wouldn’t be able to relax.

  Crowded streets are her best hiding place. She walks quickly now, taking long, decisive strides. It helps against her tremor, which grows fainter the faster she walks.

  No Jelisic at the Vibenhus roundabout or in Tagens Road or Nørrebro Street.

  She practically flies along, one street after another, running to get away from Jelisic and from the evil she senses in everyone she overtakes. She knows that at one time in their life, each person she passes has done evil things towards another person, but they no longer think about it. They all pretend they’re so innocent.

  If they thought it would benefit them, they would knife the next man in the back, each and every one of them. Only lack of opportunity determines if they become genocidal killers or not. If their community leaders pressed the right buttons, these people would be off on the hunt straight away.

  When she gets to Nørrebro, there are more people about and it is harder to keep her distance.

  Iben can smell the evil inside a young man cutting in just ahead of her. He is wearing a long coat and carries a briefcase, but she has a vision of him inside a Russian army helicopter throwing out mined toys to kill children in Afghanistan. Ruthlessness oozes from his pores and the smell prickles inside Iben’s nostrils, like the drinks of freshly opened lemonade she remembers from childhood.

  She veers to pass him, steps into the cycle path and hears the bells as two cyclists come up from behind. She leaps back onto the pavement.

  She lands near a young woman walking her old bike with a child-seat on the back. She is the type of person who, as a trained nurse, helped eliminate invalids in gas chambers well before the Second World War. Her brand of evil stinks like the raw meat left in a plastic bag that you forgot to throw out before going away on a holiday.

  I’m like a rat, Iben tells herself. My sense of smell is a rat’s. A lab rat’s.

  When they tickle one tiny bit of my brain with an electric current I’ll run one way and when they try another bit, I’ll run in the opposite direction. Like everyone would. Social psychologists can predict what I’ll do next. And when a researcher puts me in a cage with another rat, we will tear and bite each other until one of us dies.

  That’s what we do, never mind what intellectual ideas we use for display. Razor-toothed rats without free will.

  A little boy is strapped into the bicycle child-seat. He is asleep and his head in its little helmet is drooping. His romper suit is open at the neck and the smell of evil rises from him like the reek of burning grass.

  I am sick, she thinks. It’s obvious. It isn’t normal to smell people like this. Or to think in this way. The next moment she is sweating copiously under her thin jacket. Her whole body becomes damp and cold.

  She knows why. And she knows that she doesn’t want to think of what is to come. Her nausea grows, until at last she throws up. Leaning against a board advertising a kebab place, her stomach contents pump out of her and into the gutter.

  Didn’t I have one of these attacks in the office one night? The others had left. I remember how furious I was with myself then. And with Malene. What was I doing there? It was something that eased the pressure. Some people smash china or cut themselves. What did I do?

  What was I doing? I know I was writing. When I freak out, I write or I read.

  She weeps.

  I�
��m sick in the head. I don’t want to be sick. It’s hateful. I want to be able to work at DCGI. And to live with Gunnar.

  I want a life.

  I won’t have one much longer. The others will realise soon enough that I’m the one who’s abnormal. I’m the only one in the office who has been in a psychiatric ward. The only one who Frederik called ‘Batgirl’, because he – like the rest of them – can tell that I’m different. I’m the only one who’d willingly walk around for four months with a knife tied to my leg.

  She wipes her mouth with the back of her glove and cleans off the vomit. She is still leaning against the board. She remembers that after the evening in the office she had a headache cycling home.

  I was sick then. Like now. When I rode along St Kjeld Street I kept telling myself: ‘I’m not like that. I didn’t do that.’ Nevertheless I recalled what it was that I had done. But by the time I had turned into Jagt Street it had become very distant, like hearing about it late one night at a party. Once I reached Tagens Road and home, I had even stopped saying, ‘I didn’t do that.’

  Her ability to think is gone. She wants to lie down, but can’t do that on the pavement. The next-best thing would be to sit on a bench for a while or maybe go into a shop to rest, but that’s out of the question too. She feels safer from Jelisic while she’s on the move. Now she has to hurry, or he’ll find her.

  I had such a sense of writing the truth. It felt so right: ‘You, Malene Jensen, have sworn to your secret evil …’And then: ‘You, Iben Højgaard, are for your actions recognised as self-righteous among the humans.’

  She strides along, her muscles seeming stronger now that she has thrown up.

  Outside Nørrebro Station she stops. Now where should she go? She’d like to go to Gunnar’s flat. He knows about danger. He’ll know what she should do to protect herself from Jelisic. But he mustn’t see her this way. At least she has the presence of mind to see that.

  The other thing she’d like to do is go to Malene’s and tell her how sorry she is. It’s a good thought, even though she can’t imagine that Malene will ever forgive her.

  It has become dark. Lights in shops and cars make a shifting pattern around her. She needs to tire out her brain, dampen down her emotions. Other people might take tranquillisers or splash cold water on their faces, but she gets the same kind of effect from working intensely. She must concentrate now to distract herself from all these emotions.

  She will formulate an entire article in her head, leaving no room for any other thought. Later, all she’ll have to do is write it down.

  The Psychology of Evil XXII

  Here, the previous articles in Genocide News are followed up with an account of processes, uncovered by social psychologists, that allow perpetrators to reach the stage where they are capable of carrying out one murder after another.

  By Iben Højgaard

  The social psychologist Albert Bandura recruited a group of students to help him with ‘an experimental study of learning’ that also involved a group of students from another university …

  She thinks about Omoro in that hut in Kenya.

  I’ll never have a chance to ask him to forgive me. He died because I hesitated. And I hesitated because I saw an advantage for myself in holding back. He is dead now.

  She tries once more:

  The Psychology of Evil XXII

  Here, the previous articles in Genocide News are followed up with an account of processes, uncovered by social psychologists … Two young women step out from a clothes boutique. Their aura of evil smells of pickled gherkins and rotten fish.

  Iben’s concentration is going. She leans against a wall and tries to take up the thread.

  The social psychologist Albert Bandura recruited …

  His ‘helpers’ were to assist him in an experiment by administering electric shocks to members of the other group when they didn’t do well enough in tests. Just as they were ready to start, the helper group ‘accidentally’ overheard a senior assistant speak about the ‘pupils’.

  I know why everybody praised me, she thinks: because I ran back to the policemen from Nairobi and tried to make them help the hostages. The press, as well as my friends, kept going on about how I put my life on the line to save the others. It’s because they need to hear such things – to be reassured that goodness exists. They dream of it. They watch it on television. But it’s all a lie! Those few seconds only proved that I couldn’t conceive of the possibility that the police would beat up or kill a white woman. I believed I was in no danger. My whiteness made me invulnerable, or so I thought.

  She recognises the front door to Malene’s stairs. She must ask her forgiveness. Forgiveness would be such a relief. Or maybe it wouldn’t?

  Malene doesn’t reply to the entry phone, so Iben uses her key to get in and goes upstairs to knock on Malene’s door.

  Nobody answers. She could let herself in, but she doesn’t. She knocks again.

  On her way downstairs she can’t see the large stained-glass patterns, because it’s too dark outside. A pane of clear glass has been fitted in Rasmus’s window.

  She must pull herself together. Think of nothing but her article.

  The Psychology of Evil XXII

  Here, the previous articles in Genocide News are followed up …

  The social psychologist Albert Bandura recruited a group of students to help him with ‘an experimental study of learning’ … We are rats, all of us.

  Regardless of what has been written in the magazine previously. We’re simply

  Regardless of what has been written in the magazine previously we may

  Regardless, it must be admitted that I’m sick now. So dreadfully sick I cannot think any more.

  Iben, concentrate!

  The Psychology of Evil XXII

  Here, the previous articles …

  The many lies presented in our magazine are … The truth is … We are also in each other’s heads. Murder each other, when no one is looking. The self-righteous theories previously described in Genocide News are …

  Iben cannot walk now. She sits down on a litter bin at a bus stop. She’ll have to throw up again soon. It’s all these people that do it – their smells: fried food, piss, chlorine; decay. She’s disappearing. It’s so hard to stay in control. Only work to hold onto, and logical thought.

  The Psychology of Evil XXII

  Here, the previous articles in Genocide News will carry on, sickly as ever, and … unable to think any more. The reason is that we’re all rats and ready to bite each other’s heads off.

  I will stay sitting here despite the human rats that smell … on top of a litter bin at a bus stop … and on behalf of the Danish Centre for Genocide Information … evil under my nails, making them smell badly, and inside … the early wrinkles in my face. In my cells, in my DNA. In me.

  I give up.

  Two people in love are waiting for the bus. They don’t look my way. They wear the same kind of long coat in a colour like butterscotch and aren’t interested in the slightest in a confused woman sitting on a litter bin.

  Now a teenage girl comes along to wait. She has painted names of bands and singers all over her rucksack, just as I did in my teens. She is about the same age as a lot of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge soldiery. I know what she could do to that couple.

  What about the lovers? They look so innocent. ‘Waiting for the bus’, that’s all.

  But close-up you see the fat is oozing out of their pores – long, whitish-yellow worms. Those two, their bad smell won’t go away, even though they probably wash every day. It should not have been like this. Never.

  I shouldn’t have fallen ill again. I should’ve been with Gunnar, in his kitchen, pottering about with the bread and little dishes for a delicious Sunday lunch. He would come and stand close behind me and hold me tight while he kisses my neck. And his two daughters, who are mine too, would be running about, in and out of the kitchen.

  I know this scene so well. That’s how it should have been.
And we would have been so happy. We wouldn’t have killed anyone then, not he nor I. Neither of us would have suffered from paranoia or been sick in the head.

  Now I know it will never happen. I’ve become too weird for him. It shouldn’t – should not– have been like this.

  A tall man with long, blond hair is approaching me. He speaks to me. Does he say that he wants to drop something into the bin? I get up, but he keeps saying things.

  I have to speak to him. ‘Are you trying to use the litter bin? Is that it, the bin? I’ve moved off it now.’ Then it dawns on me that the man is speaking English, with a drawling accent. What’s that he’s saying?

  ‘Now tell me. What’s your plan?’

  I don’t understand what he wants, but decide I’d better change to English too and repeat the bit about the litter bin.

  He looks annoyed. ‘What’s wrong with you, Malene? I don’t care about that bin. What’s your plan?’

  ‘What? My name isn’t Malene.’

  I look properly at him. He could have been an ageing rock star, once cool, but now on his way out. His skin is in poor shape and he has gone flabby, like men do when they’re past their prime. I want him to go away and leave me in peace.

  ‘My name isn’t Malene.’

  He stares straight into my eyes.

  ‘I know who you are, Malene. I’ve waited for you when you come out of the Centre. And when you leave your house.’

  I shake my head. ‘You’ve got it all wrong, I’m not …’

  It is only then that Iben realises who the man is.

  49

  Like when you’re off, flying across the handlebars on your bike. Then, in the fraction of a second before you crash to the ground, all your muscles go tense and your mind suddenly focuses one hundred per cent.

  How can she escape? She glances about her. Some five metres away from Iben and Mirko Zigic, a strong-looking man stands with his hands in the pockets of his pilot’s jacket. When his eyes catch Iben’s and he realises she has seen him, the corners of his mouth twitch slightly – something that is not quite a smile.