The Exception (11 page)

‘That’s the idea. Is there a problem?’

‘But think of the danger!’

‘Come on, I don’t think anything bad will happen.’

Iben interrupts. ‘It seems to me that we should regard this as a very serious matter.’

Paul’s face looks grave and he sits back down on the edge of his chair. ‘You must believe me, I am taking it seriously. Honestly. Very much so.’

He studies each face in turn. Anne-Lise enjoys the attention.

‘However, what that police officer said is surely true,’ Paul continues. ‘No experienced soldier would bother emailing his victims before murdering them. The sender’s aim is only to scare us. Maybe to distract us from our work here, which seems to me to be the real danger. We mustn’t let it happen.’

He stands up. ‘Anyway, you keep talking. I don’t expect you to do much more than that today. Later this week, we’ll get up to speed again.’

They stay seated around the table and discuss options for
protecting themselves and catching Zigic, aware that there is something faintly insulting about Paul’s manner. It was all very well of him to say, ‘I understand that there’s a lot for you to talk about,’ but then he made it obvious he personally hadn’t the slightest need to talk. Does he think that they need to sit about empathising all day just because they’re women?

They decide to try to concentrate on work.

Back in the library Anne-Lise phones Henrik. ‘They looked at me … properly!’ She can’t get over it. ‘And spoke to me as if I were really there. No barriers!’

Henrik is pleased. ‘Heartfelt thanks to whoever sent those emails.’

She twists the phone cord around her finger. ‘Shush.’

Everyone in the office knows that the one thing that can disturb Paul’s unruffled demeanour is the prospect of another meeting at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, since the outcome of such visits determines the DCGI’s ability to grow and its future existence. Although the Ministry for Science, Technology and Development pays its running costs, the Centre is an independent organisation and has to raise money for its projects, publications and conferences by applying for grants from private and state foundations. One way or another, a substantial proportion of its finances can be traced back to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

Paul carries a heavy responsibility. To avoid redundancies, each year he must convince the Foreign Affairs ministry that the Centre is effective enough to justify their approval for new project funding. As he has told his staff, that isn’t his only problem. The men from the Ministry might well decide that the DCGI is too effective. It could occur to them that it would be desirable, all things considered, to shift the DCGI maintenance grant to their Ministry. True, at first glance it might not seem to matter which arm of the government supports the Centre, but Paul knows better.

The working briefs of the DCGI and the Danish Institute for Human Rights are very similar. The DIHR is an independent organisation too, but its fixed costs are paid by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The day may come when some young, inexperienced civil service adviser sees the advantages of making the DCGI part of the DIHR, with its hundred or so staff members. The upshot for Paul would be the loss of his special claim to give television interviews. And according to Paul, the DCGI’s duty to inform the public about genocide issues would be undermined.

Yet, as far as anyone knows, today’s meeting at the Ministry is not particularly important. Apparently Paul is out just to make a good impression.

Anne-Lise spends the rest of the morning unpacking parcels of printed matter from abroad and recording their contents.

By lunchtime Paul still isn’t back. The women have their usual lunch in the small meeting room, except the bread is stale because no one could face breaking the police cordon to buy fresh rolls.

Camilla hardly eats a thing. She looks defeated, her arms hanging limply by her sides. ‘But what if it isn’t Zigic? It could be one of so many people, couldn’t it?’

Iben replies energetically, quickly swallowing the last bite: ‘You’re right. The other day I tried to arrive at a figure for how many men known to have participated actively in genocides are still alive. Fifteen million, at least! More than five times the number of men alive in Denmark today. If you count people who’ve backed a killer at some point, the number is much, much larger – maybe several hundred million. That’s like the entire population of Europe. Or the US, for that matter. So, Zigic or no Zigic, there’s no telling who else might have been provoked by what’s on our website.’

Malene gives her a puzzled look.

Iben answers her question before she’s even asked it. ‘I calculated a ballpark figure like this: one million in Rwanda, and about the same number in Sudan and Cambodia. At least five
million in China, and three million in Russia. Then pool all the rest.’

Iben turns to Camilla. ‘Something happens, changes, inside most men in wartime. Did you read the three reports on genocide in Bosnia by Stjernfelt that appeared in
The Week
, a few years ago?’

‘No. I didn’t.’

‘Basically, it was the same story over and over again. A woman meets a nice man, her family likes him, and she feels safe with him. She has no inkling about the dark side to his character; neither has he. Probably. Anyway, no one would have guessed what he was capable of. Then the war begins.’

Anne-Lise had often thought that Iben, rather than Malene, should be the one who did lecture tours. Iben always became so absorbed in what she was saying.

‘Then, one morning, his wife gets out of bed only to find him gone. Maybe there’s a note telling her that he has gone to join some obscure military unit or other. If she’s lucky, he will return to her and the children. It could take a few years, or just a few months. By then she will have heard that he has been shooting at civilians or herding people in front of execution squads or torturing prisoners. He might well have raped women and then killed them, or robbed houses and burnt them down. But there he is, back home, ready to pick up his normal life where he left off.’

‘Then what happens?’

‘I’ve written about it many times. For instance, in the Zigic article. Some men simply shrug the whole experience off. “That was during the war,” they’ll say and settle into peacetime life as if rape and murder couldn’t be farther from their minds. Others never let go of the past. They’ve changed.’

‘Are you saying that all men have a kind of war button? Like, you press it and they start murdering?’

‘Put that way – yes, I do. Not all, but most men. It’s a fact. If
you don’t believe me, just check out our library. Isn’t that so, Malene?’

‘Yes, it is.’

Camilla is silent, but looks distressed at the turn their conversation is taking.

Iben is still fired up. She takes a slice of chorizo from one of the boxes and squeezes the plastic lid back on.

‘I’ll tell you a story. When I was little, we had this dog, an Alsatian called Max. All the children in the street liked playing with Max and at times it can’t have been much fun for him. We’d pull his tail or poke him in the eye by mistake, or stick our fingers into his mouth, but he put up with it. Max had been with us for years when we took him for a long walk one day. We let him off the lead because we knew he always came when we called.’ She hesitates.

‘Anyway, that day we set out to walk in a nearby stretch of woodland. Suddenly Max was off. Calling him had no effect. When my father finally found him it was in the much larger adjacent wood. Max had killed a young deer and was wild with excitement. There was blood all over his head. He had never seen a deer before in his life, but he knew what to do. He had run the animal down and leapt straight for its throat.’

Camilla listens, her mouth hanging open.

‘We spoke to the vet about what had happened and he said that Max was dangerous now that he had experienced bloodlust. Hunting and killing had changed him. In a way, he had become another dog. We realised that we were more to blame than he was, but there was nothing else we could do. My mum and dad had to ask the vet to put Max down. All the kids in the street cried.’

Iben and Malene exchange a quick glance. Anne-Lise realises that Malene has heard all this before. After the break she and Iben will go into the kitchen or the copier room to talk privately.

Camilla has pushed her plate away. She looks at Iben. ‘So what you’re saying is that men are like the dog in your story?’

Malene leans forward over the table. ‘Iben thinks that we’re all a little like animals, don’t you, Iben?’

‘In some ways, yes, I think we are. We should have known better and not let Max run free in the woods. It was instinct – he couldn’t help himself.’

There is something about all this that appears to make Camilla more excited than Anne-Lise has ever seen her before. She has dropped the charming voice she uses on the telephone. ‘So you think Mirko Zigic is one of these men. We’re to feel sorry for him, because he’s got this instinct for … say, hanging people upside down from branches?’

‘He’s a frightening man, regardless of his motivation. Just like Max became a frightening dog, particularly around children.’

Anne-Lise enters the exchange for the first time. ‘If there’s something in men that makes them all potential murderers, then is it present in women too?’

Iben replies: ‘It might be … but you never read about all-female militias rampaging through the countryside, killing and looting and burning everything to the ground.’

Camilla grasps a fork in her hands as if she’s trying to bend it. ‘In a way it sounds to me as if you are defending the man who has threatened to kill you. Or all of us.’

‘All I’m saying is that these men are victims of war as well. War reveals something inside them that normally would have gone undiscovered. When the war ends, they’re probably just as shaken as the survivors. In shock, if you like, wondering “What happened? What did I do?”’

Camilla quickly looks round the group. ‘Well, it doesn’t make sense to me to compare the suffering of the executioner with the suffering of the people he has killed.’

Malene sighs demonstratively. ‘Here we go. Back to the familiar old debate: “How much of human behaviour is due to instinct and how much to free will?”’

Iben snaps at Malene: ‘Old debate it might be, but I can’t recall us ever talking about it.’

Malene seems confused.

‘From a purely ethical point of view it’s important to hang on to what the victims have a right to demand … Oh, forget it; I don’t know where this is going.’

All three have a new edginess to their voices. Is it fear of Mirko Zigic that has caused this tension? Whatever it is, they are different. Wilder.

Anne-Lise feels like retreating to the library. She senses that in a moment one of them could lose control and every chance of reconciliation between them would be lost.

Camilla puts the fork down. ‘What I’m hearing, Iben, is that you feel that everyone is a victim – rapists, the lot.’

‘I suppose I do.’

‘And a man who rapes in peacetime – what about him? His basic instincts are getting the better of him too, right?’

‘All I’m saying is that I’ve been surprised by how many men seem to have this built-in tendency – something that’s normally suppressed.’

‘And that means that we should pity them, does it? – be supportive and offer them therapy sessions because they’ve nobody to talk to about the women they’ve raped?’ Camilla’s usually gentle voice is tinged with anger. ‘We’re talking about men who might kill us!’

‘Let’s not talk about them then.’

Malene speaks quietly. ‘Iben wants to understand every point of view, regardless of whose it is.’

Silence.

‘Iben thinks that Zigic has gone underground some place, maybe here in Copenhagen, and is agonising away. You know, like … “I’ve raped my friends’ wives and daughters. I’ve painted the Serbian eagle on the walls of their houses using body-parts dipped in their blood as my brush – but hey! Does that make me a bad human being?”’

Malene starts to laugh at her own irony, but nobody is smiling. ‘He would be utterly … disoriented.’

‘Yes, of course.’

Malene glances at Iben sympathetically, then she looks at Camilla. ‘If we think he is in any way “normal”, then imagine what it must be like to live with all that and have no one to talk to about it.’

Anne-Lise suddenly senses that something is being aimed at her. She wants to get up and leave, but being included by them is what she has always wanted.

Camilla interrupts Malene. ‘No way would I let him talk to me, that’s for sure! I’m prepared to try to understand lots of people and make allowances, but that kind of thing – no, that’s where I draw the line.’

Iben is more direct. ‘I wonder, is his loneliness getting a hold of him? Maybe he’s simply writing these emails because he’s so isolated? Maybe we could make use of that?’

Anne-Lise pushes back her chair. As she stands up, Malene’s words reach her. Softly.

‘Perhaps it’s only people like us who have this need to talk. Someone like him might not feel the same way.’

Malene’s eyes rest calmly, almost amiably, on Anne-Lise.

Anne-Lise turns to go but remembers that she should do her part in clearing the table. She reaches for one of the dishes and watches Malene smile blandly.

‘But then, we’re clearly different from some people. Speaking for myself I could never bear to work the way you do, Anne-Lise. You know, alone all day long, year in and year out.’

Malene, Iben and Camilla sit together in silence. They’re waiting, their hands lying on the table. How will Anne-Lise reply?

Holding the small dish with cheese and liver paté, Anne-Lise stops, her eyes glued to the table top. She mumbles an answer, so low that it is hard to grasp what she is saying: ‘I feel the same way as you do. I’d like to have someone to talk to.’

The responses come in a rush. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You have us to talk to, any time you like.’

‘We’re here for you.’

She can’t see how she can answer them, how she can be friendly and honest at the same time. She cannot allow the smallest crack in the wall of lies she has built to protect herself, or the truth will come flooding in – the real truth full of anger and tears and howls of hatred. She can no longer imagine a constructive way of being truthful.