The Exception (2 page)

‘I guess we just go to boring parties.’

Malene is already on her way back to the bedroom to find something less flashy.

Iben calls out after her: ‘And you can bet tonight will be really quiet. At … Sophie’s!’ She pauses. Just long enough to suggest that saying ‘Sophie’ says it all.

In a loud, silly voice, Malene responds: ‘Oh yes … at Sophie’s.’

They both laugh.

Iben sips her drink while she looks over the bookshelves as she has done so many times before. When she arrives somewhere new she always likes to check out the books as soon as she can.
At parties she discreetly scans the titles and authors’ names, filtering out the music and distant chatter.

She pulls out a heavy volume, a collection of anthropological articles. Clutching it in her arms, she sways in time to one of the slower tracks. Her drink is strong enough to create a blissfully ticklish sensation.

She holds her cold glass, presses it against her chest and gently waltzes with the book while she reads about the initiation ritual to adulthood for Xingu Indian girls. They are made to stay in windowless huts, sometimes for as long as three years, and emerge into the sunlight plump and pale, with volumes of long, brittle hair. Only then does the tribe accept them as true women.

Also on the bookshelf is the tape that Malene’s partner, Rasmus, recorded of the television programmes on which Iben appeared when she returned from Kenya. It sits there on the shelf in front of her.

Nibbling on a cracker, she puts the tape into the machine and presses Play without bothering to turn the music down. As the images emerge on the screen, she takes a seat.

Now and then she laughs as she observes the small puppet-Iben, sitting there in front of the cameras of
TV
₂
News
and
TV Report
, pretending to be so wise and serious – as she explains how the Danish Centre for Genocide Information, where she works as an information officer, lent her to an aid organisation based in Kenya. There is a short sequence filmed in a Nairobi slum before the camera records the arrival of the freed hostages at the American embassy for their first press conference. She studies these images. Every time she sees them, they seem just as fresh and unfamiliar.

Malene comes back, trailing a faint scent of perfume and wearing a flimsy, chocolate-coloured dress. Dresses suit her. It’s easy to understand what men see in her. With her thick chestnut hair and lightly tanned skin, she looks positively appetising, like a great smooth, glowing sweet.

Malene realises at once which tape Iben is watching and gives
her friend a little hug before sitting down next to her on the sofa.

Iben turns down the music. Roberto, still in Nairobi, is addressing a journalist: ‘In captivity it was Iben who kept telling us that we must talk to each other about what was happening, repeating the words over and over until they were devoid of meaning, or as near as we possibly …’

He smiles, but looks worn. They were all examined by doctors and psychologists, but Roberto took longer than anyone else before he was ready to go home.

‘Iben explained that there were a lot of studies demonstrating how beneficial this could be in preventing post-traumatic stress …’

TV Report
cuts to Iben speaking in a Copenhagen studio. ‘If you want to prevent post-traumatic stress disorder, it’s crucial to start debriefing as soon as possible. We had no idea how long we were going to be held. It could have been months, which was why it was a good idea to start trying to structure our responses to what we were experiencing during captivity …’

Safe in Malene’s flat, Iben groans and reaches for her drink. ‘I come across as … totally unbearable.’

‘You’re not the tiniest bit unbearable. The point is, you knew about this and most people don’t.’

‘But it’s just the kind of stuff that journalists are always after. I sound like such a psychology nerd … as if I had no feelings.’

Malene puts down her drink, smiles and touches Iben’s hand. ‘Couldn’t it be that they were simply fascinated by the way you managed to stay in control inside that little cow-dung hideout? You were heroic. No one knows what goes on inside the mind of a hero and you certainly weren’t used to being one.’

Iben can’t think of anything to say. They laugh.

Iben nods at Malene’s dress. ‘You know that you can’t turn up to Sophie’s in that?’

‘Of course I do.’

The next recordings are Iben’s appearances on
Good Morning, Denmark
and on
Deadline
. On screen she looks like somebody
quite different from the old stay-at-home Iben. Normally her shoulder-length blonde hair is thick but without the sheen that the sun brings out in most blondes. The African light, however, has been strong enough to bleach her hair. Since then, she has had her hairdresser add highlights to maintain her sun-drenched appearance.

She had also wanted to hang on to her tan, which, in the interviews, was almost as good as Malene’s. And she felt that the usual rings under her eyes were too visible for someone not yet thirty, so she had followed Malene’s lead. She went off to a tanning salon, but it didn’t take her long to realise that frying inside a noisy machine was not for her. Now her skin is so pale and transparent that the half-moon shadows under each eye look violet.

At the time, her story suited the news media down to the ground. Whatever Iben said was edited until it fitted in with the narrative they were after: an idealistic young Danish woman, confronting the big, bad world outside and proving herself a heroine. She was the only one who had managed to escape from the hostage-takers. Afterwards she had left her safe hiding place to run back to the captives in an attempt to make the brutal policemen change sides in the middle of a brawl.

The papers loved quoting the other hostages when they described Iben as ‘the strongest member of the group’. A tabloid phoned one of them and didn’t leave him alone until he admitted that ‘without Iben the outcome might well have been less fortunate’. The media chased the story for a week and then totally lost interest. The group’s captivity had lasted just four days, which meant that Iben didn’t rank among seriously famous hostages. By now, the journalists have forgotten her.

Iben realises that Malene is trying to sneak a look at her face to find out if ‘something’s the matter’.

‘Malene, I’m fine. Why don’t you go and change?’

‘Are you positive?’

‘Yes. Sure.’

The furnishings in the flat are in a state of flux. The backs of a couple of basic IKEA folding chairs are still covered by Indian rugs from a Fair Trade shop. The rugs, like the cheap Polynesian figurines, are reminders of the time when Malene studied international development at university. Three years have passed since Malene received her degree. Soon afterwards her student job at the Danish Centre for Genocide Information was turned into a proper, well-paid post. Rasmus, who has a dead-end university degree in Film Studies, makes a good living, too, as a computer-hardware salesman. Now their furniture includes pieces by top designers, such as their Italian sofa and a couple of armchairs.

The telephone rings. Iben answers and recognises the deep male voice with the Jutland accent. She has listened to Gunnar Hartvig Nielsen so many times on the current-affairs programme
Orientation
.

Iben calls Malene, who is presently sporting jeans and a fashionable, colourful silk shirt. It looks like her last bid in the dressing-up stakes, because she has put on some make-up.

Iben hears Malene turn down Gunnar’s suggestion that they should meet for dinner and invite him to join them at Sophie’s instead.

When Malene hangs up, Iben wonders aloud: ‘Could he really be bothered to come to Sophie’s?’

‘Why not?’

‘But what’s he going to do there?’

‘Meet people, talk to me. Have a good time. Like we are.’

‘Yeah … of course.’

Iben switches off the television. Malene wants to finish her make-up.

Iben had heard Gunnar Nielsen’s name for the first time when she was still a student. Everyone in her dorm shared a daily copy of
Information
, which published Gunnar’s stream of articles on international politics. They scrutinised every word and particularly admired his reports from Africa.

Like Malene, Gunnar had grown up in rural Denmark. At nineteen, he went to Tanzania to work on a development project rather than going to university. He taught himself Swahili and stayed on in Africa, travelling around for nearly four years. His first book about Africa was called
The Rhythms of Survival
. It became not only required reading for young backpackers, but also was taken seriously by people concerned with international issues.

By the time he was twenty-five Gunnar had been a well-established journalist. He had gone back to Africa several times. At one point, he had tried to combine university studies with his
Information
assignments to cover summit meetings and conferences, but the dull world of university life couldn’t compete with the excitement of being at the centre of things, so he had dropped out of the course after little more than a year.

Iben and Malene were still at university when Gunnar’s newspaper pieces suddenly stopped. His fame as a star left-wing writer quickly faded.

Four years ago when she was a student trainee at the DCGI, Malene had found out what had happened. She had managed to get hold of him for an interview about the horrific, but at the time unrecognised, genocide in the Sudan. Gunnar had taken a job as the editor of
Development
, a magazine published by Danida, the Danish state organisation for international development. He had told her that, after his divorce, he needed a steady income to pay child support and to rent a new flat with enough space for his children’s visits. His articles were as good as ever, but went almost unnoticed by people outside the circle of Danida initiates.

Iben, who was studying comparative literature at the time, felt envious of her friend, who always met such exciting men through her work, and was good-looking enough to attract many of them. Her envy deepened when Gunnar invited Malene out to dinner.

More meals followed. Malene and Gunnar explored restaurants in every corner of the city, but did nothing else. Gunnar’s
strongly built body, his ‘disillusioned socialist’ attitude and, above all, the fact that he was in his mid-forties, meant that Malene thought the chemistry between them wasn’t right, much as she loved dining out with him. Now and then she would tell Iben about how weary she felt when she saw the pleading in his large eyes.

Once Iben spoke out. ‘It isn’t fair to keep going out with Gunnar and letting him pay for one meal after another. He’s in love with you and you don’t even want to sleep with him.’

‘Oh, come on. We always have such a good time together. And he’s said that he isn’t expecting anything more – you know, like love or sex.’

‘But he’s got to pay for you all the same?’

‘No, it’s not like that. It’s simple: he enjoys eating in restaurants and so do I, but I’m broke. If he couldn’t afford it and I could, I’d pay for him.’

When Malene met the younger, cooler Rasmus and became his girlfriend, he too tried to stop her evenings out with Gunnar. Iben overheard Malene say, ‘Rasmus, there’s nothing sexual between Gunnar and me. We’re just good friends.’ Still, Rasmus had insisted that she should pay her share.

Before leaving, Iben and Malene wolf down some leftovers and empty their Mojito glasses. In the hall, Malene quickly changes to another pair of her expensive orthopaedic shoes, which she has to wear because of her arthritis.

Iben and Malene hang up their coats in the narrow passage of Sophie’s flat. The air is heavy with the smell of fried food, wine and people.

Sophie comes over to meet them. After the hugs and cries of ‘So good to see you’, she notices Malene’s clothes and make-up. ‘But Malene, it’s not that kind of party …’ Some of her other guests are drifting out through the sitting-room door and bump into her. Distractedly she finishes the sentence: ‘… it’s just, you
know, the same old crowd coming round for a drink. You know I’m off tomorrow, don’t you?’

When she phoned up about the party, Sophie, who had lived in the same student housing as Iben and Malene, explained that she was leaving Denmark to join her boyfriend, a biologist working in Canada on a two-year project.

Someone in the sitting room calls out: ‘Hey, look, there’s Iben. The heroine has arrived!’

‘Went back to protect the others, instead of just looking after number one,’ another old college friend adds.

Iben smiles. God only knows how many times she’s explained it all before. ‘I had no idea what I was doing. Everything was so confusing. I just didn’t think about the outcome.’

‘But that’s precisely what makes what you did heroic, Iben. You had the right instincts. Or whatever it is that kicks in when you’ve got to make a split-second decision.’

Sophie gives Iben another little hug and looks her in the eye. ‘Most people would have run for it.’

The sitting room is packed with familiar faces. Five years ago they were all students together, in their early twenties. Iben remembers how they would laze around on the grass in Fælled Park when there was a concert on. Almost all of them have finished with education by now. Some have jobs, but many more live on benefits, full or part-time. Despite failing in the job market they still feel less poor now, because the unemployment payments are quite an improvement on student grants. Individual lives are being pushed in utterly unforeseen directions along career paths, sometimes along straight routes and sometimes up blind alleys. Some of them already have children.

They are everywhere, standing or sitting, drinking beer or red wine, chatting in the low light from a few dim lamps. Three young mothers drift around with babies in their arms. Iben and Malene exchange glances. Obviously, dancing isn’t an option.

There are more questions about Nairobi, but Iben only smiles. ‘I’ve been asked about all that so often I can’t even bring myself
to discuss it any longer. Some other time. Look, what about you?’