The Exception (45 page)

Standing next to the heavy, wine-coloured armchair she inherited from her grandmother, she dials his number. He answers the phone.

‘Gunnar, I hope this isn’t a bad time?’

‘No. Not at all. It’s good to hear from you.’

But Iben doesn’t learn much about the meeting because Gunnar says that he’s in a hurry, he’s on his way out.

Iben feels suddenly deflated. But then she thinks it’s just as well to know that he’s not interested in her. No need for any more rows with Malene.

Gunnar explains that he has promised an old friend to go to a showing of the friend’s documentary about a development project in Uganda. The film-maker is going to give a brief talk about his work and afterwards the audience will join in a debate about both the film and the project. Would Iben like to come along?

The answer seems to stick in her throat. One of her hands is scratching at the back of the old armchair, her body tense. She feels a familiar shiver, almost like fear. She covers the mouthpiece and breathes a huge sigh. No criminal this time, but she looks around her all the same.

They agree to meet in half an hour at the Nørrebro Street
office of the development organisation Ibis. When Iben arrives, Gunnar is waiting for her. He looks happy to see her and introduces her to his friend.

The noise of the crowd milling around in the lecture theatre is quite different from the earnest atmosphere of the DCGI. The aid activists, and the audience in general, are colourfully dressed, talk in loud voices, laugh and call out greetings to people they last met on field projects abroad. Almost everyone is tanned.

A few older men wander about, working the crowd. Like Gunnar, these men seem to have many friends and acquaintances in the audience, the majority of whom are young, female and often strikingly attractive. Three women chatting near a window catch sight of Gunnar and wave. He looks delighted and waves back.

Iben keeps wondering how many of these people have slept with each other. In a hut in Zimbabwe, for instance, or in a shack in El Salvador. Or in someone’s flat, late one night after a party. It follows that some of them might have been with Gunnar. She can’t let go of that thought either. She regrets putting on a prim, cream-coloured blouse, which had seemed so perfect. Still, she can’t think what else she might have chosen to wear.

Gunnar introduces her to another ‘old friend’ even though she looks quite young. The woman leans into Gunnar as they talk. Iben can’t figure out why this girl’s turquoise dress is somehow provocative, given that it is high-necked and not at all figure-hugging.

Fortunately Iben hits it off with many of the people she meets. They still remember her from the media coverage six months ago – a Kenyan hostage crisis is especially likely to stick in the minds of Africa activists, of course.

Gunnar has reserved two good seats in the middle of the theatre. After a very brief lecture, the film starts up.

Iben and Gunnar are sitting side by side in the dark on the hard wooden seats. They do not touch. Iben leaves one hand resting on her thigh. It’s the hand closest to him, only a few
centimetres away. Her hand senses the warmth of his body, but neither of them moves. Even the air between them is still.

When the film ends, four people carrying glasses of water and writing pads sit down at a couple of tables at one end of the room. They are introduced as ‘the panel this evening’. Twice they refer questions to Gunnar, saying, ‘Gunnar, you know all about this issue.’ Gunnar’s answers are lucid and well-delivered. He doesn’t exploit the opportunity and avoids sounding overly academic. He comes across so well that Iben half-suspects that he had it in mind when he invited her here. It makes her happy to think her opinion might matter to him.

Afterwards, in the throng of people, Gunnar invites her to the nearby Café Sebastopol. Outside in the night air Iben and Gunnar walk, pushing their bicycles along as they chat about the film. Once inside the café Iben tries to be relaxed but also to maintain a slight distance. Strictly speaking, this isn’t a date, she tells herself, and she is definitely not trying to seduce her best friend’s would-be lover.

They talk a little about Gunnar’s meeting with Paul that morning. When Gunnar and Paul said goodbye, Paul put his left hand over their clasped hands and told him that he would keep Gunnar ‘informed whenever the situation opened up’. Iben and Gunnar have a good laugh about this.

They talk about literature too. Gunnar subscribes to
Granta
. It turns out that they’ve both read Botho Strauss. Gunnar smiles at a quote that Iben happens to recall: ‘The silent man, who was sitting at the cleared table in the feeble light of the projector, leaned on his forearms with his body suspended like a heavy, wet dress from between his shoulders.’

Gunnar has read several of her articles in
Genocide News
and they talk for a while about the high-ranking Nazis who simulated mental illness in the run-up to the Nuremberg trials. Gunnar tells a story about Karl Dönitz, first commander of the German submarine fleet, later commander-in-chief of the entire navy and Hitler’s successor for the final period of the war. Dönitz used
to wander around in prison with his head hung low, making a kind of engine noise. When asked what he was doing, he answered that he was a submarine. It didn’t wash, of course. No one was taken in by his performance as a lunatic. They both laugh at the image of the commander rumbling around in the prison yard. Gunnar’s hand rests on the table very close to Iben’s.

At her front door, Iben fumbles with her bicycle keys. When she tries to shift the bicycle sideways, a pedal hits the knife fastened to her leg. For the first time, it strikes her that she has forgotten about her fear of being ambushed by a professional killer.

Hurriedly she looks up and down the dark road. Far away a broad-shouldered man is standing, looking in her direction.

As she runs up the stairs, thoughts of Gunnar still absorb her. Malene can’t simply keep him for herself. She can’t have him on stand-by, just in case Rasmus packs his bags one day. He’s too old for Malene, she said so herself. But it would be catastrophic for Iben to have to work so closely with Malene if they were no longer great friends.

She can’t fall asleep right away. So she switches on the television in her bedroom and piles up cushions to lean against in bed. Then she goes to the kitchen for marshmallows and a few spoonfuls of ice cream.

Just as she is coming back to the bedroom the phone rings. She runs to the sitting room and notices that she has several messages on the machine.

Malene is on the phone. ‘Where have you been? I’ve been calling you all evening!’ She is obviously very upset.

Out of habit, Iben thinks it must be Malene’s arthritis, only Malene doesn’t sound as subdued as she usually does during an attack. Then it hits her. Iben has an eerie feeling that she knows what Malene is about to say.

‘Rasmus has left!’ Malene is screaming.

‘What?’

‘Moved out! He’s moved out!’

‘Oh no … but where to? Why …?’

Somehow Iben had known. It all fits too well. Of all evenings, it had to be this one.

Without thinking Iben hurls her bowl of ice cream at the nearest bookshelf. Fragments of the bowl have shattered across the floor and some of the ice cream has splashed onto the screen of the television.

Malene is talking. She says that Rasmus told her earlier this evening that for the last six weeks he has been having an affair. Someone who works as a bartender in Bopa.

‘So I threw him out!’

‘You threw him out?’

‘I didn’t want him in my flat for a second longer!’

Iben knows she has to support her friend, reassure her that she has done the right thing, comfort her by telling her how good it is to have the self-assurance to act on your feelings. But somehow she can’t make herself begin.

‘And you weren’t in, Iben.’

‘No …’

Iben doesn’t explain. She holds the receiver to her ear and, with the telephone cord trailing like the lead of a tethered animal, edges over to the bookshelf where some marshmallows lie among the melting remains of the ice cream. She puts one in her mouth. Then she grabs two more and puts them in her mouth as well.

Malene keeps talking. ‘So I got rid of him. But I don’t want to be here – I can’t bear even to look at the flat.’ There is a short pause. ‘Iben, can I stay with you?’

‘Malene, why don’t you come here?’ Iben asks, as if she hadn’t heard Malene’s question.

When the call is finished, Iben goes to the kitchen, puts the kettle on and finds Malene’s favourite tea. She takes some cleaning fluid out of the cupboard so she can wipe the ice cream off her books and sweep up the bits of broken bowl. And she’d better change back into her work clothes as well.

But she doesn’t. On the way back to the bedroom, she collapses
on the sofa and weeps, the side of her face pressed against the unyielding arm.

The intercom buzzes. Iben jumps up and runs to release the downstairs lock.

Next she must change her clothes and wipe off her smeared make-up. She runs into the bedroom and pulls her blouse off. No time to change her trousers. The bathroom next. She puts cleansing cream on her face.

When Malene comes in, Iben’s face is still covered with cream. ‘Malene! I’m in here!’

Malene joins her in the bathroom. She seems emotionally drained, but gives Iben a hug. ‘Iben, I’m so glad to see you … you’re a true friend.’

By the time they sit together on the sofa with their tea, Iben has pulled herself together. She has reminded herself that she isn’t the one who has just lost the man she has loved for the last three years. She needs to be there for Malene.

She remembers her one and only experience of breaking up after a long affair. The man was one of her literature teachers at university and almost eleven years older. They spent amazing amounts of time together, especially considering that he was not only regarded as a hardworking academic, but also had a live-in partner.

He told Iben practically from the start that he wanted to get out of his relationship, but then the day came when he told her that his partner was pregnant. He didn’t seem to feel that this needed to affect what he and Iben had together, but she had put an end to it there and then. It took her more than a year to get over it.

Malene doesn’t touch her tea, but talks on in a loud, trembling voice. ‘And I said to him it was pointless. Shit, she’s only twenty-one. What good is that for him? Hanging out with a twenty-one-year-old barmaid. But he said they get along so well.’ She stares up at the ceiling, tears streaming across her temples. ‘So well – because she has done film studies for six months. Oh yes. They
can discuss movies. Fucking movies! Must be great to have something to talk about after screwing.’

‘Oh, Malene!’

‘And I asked him if she was healthy. He wouldn’t say and insisted, but insisted, that health had nothing to do with anything. Then I said, “But you can’t know for sure, can you? There might be something wrong with her. Like, maybe she’s got AIDS. Or MS. Or the Big C. Anything. You can’t be sure. You didn’t recognise that I was ill, not when you met me. Not when you first said you loved me.”’

Malene leans against Iben, who holds her close and tries to say all the right things even though she knows it won’t make a difference. Malene’s mascara has run and some of it has rubbed off on her white blouse. She blows her nose now and then, but has given up drying her tears. Her voice has become hoarse and she keeps repeating herself.

‘We were having such a good evening too. We ate, he seemed happy, and we were relaxing together. And then he just suddenly came out with it. There was something “he had to tell me, it was only right”. And then it all snowballed from there. What did he imagine? I mean, what did he think would happen when he told me something like that?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did he think that I’d listen to his story and that would be that? Did he think we would just continue as before?’

Iben thinks back to the moment when she turned to her teacher and told him it was all over between them. They were sitting on a stony beach at the far end of Amager Island. The beach was one of their special places, somewhere no one they knew would ever come. He protested, but it was as if a repair man had told him to buy a new fridge. ‘Iben, are you sure? There’s nothing I can say to change your mind? Well, OK. I guess that’s it.’ He had listened to Iben, agreed, and then gone home.

Iben stopped going to his classes. It was tricky to find enough
courses to fill the days when he was not in the department. He never contacted her again, but she couldn’t avoid hearing on the student grapevine that he had married and had a little boy.

Iben looks around. Her sitting room strikes her again as ugly, almost repulsive. She hates her old furniture and unframed posters. Hates the cold overhead light.

Later, when Malene is crying a little less, Iben gets up and goes to the kitchen. She makes a fresh pot of tea and puts four frozen rolls into the microwave. While they thaw, she slices cheese for the two of them.

From now on Iben will look after Malene when she has her arthritis attacks. There is no one else, unless a smart, new admirer carries Malene off. And if the illness worsens and the admirers vanish, Iben will be on duty for a long time ahead.

Still fragile, Malene has kicked off her shoes and put her stockinged feet up, warming her toes under Iben’s thigh. She can’t stop tormenting herself.

‘I wonder what he’s doing now? They must be so pleased. I bet they’ve been fucking ever since he turned up at her door.’

‘Malene, don’t you think—’

‘I bet he’s in her arms now. They’re naked. And I bet she’s happy too because he’s taken the plunge.’

Very late that night, Iben finally brings a cloth, a bucket of water and a roll of paper towels to the bookshelf. She starts cleaning up the ice cream.

Malene sits up. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Something made me fling my ice cream at the bookcase when you phoned this evening.’

They exchange faint, miserable smiles.

‘Iben! That’s not like you at all.’