The Exception (51 page)

When Iben comes into work the next morning, Paul is standing at Malene’s desk. They are gossiping about some of their German colleagues. Paul looks relaxed and Iben thinks that he has no idea what happened yesterday.

As usual, Iben greets everyone in the Winter Garden. Then, for the first time, she walks into the library to greet Anne-Lise.

‘Hi.’

‘Hi, Iben.’

Iben tries to catch Anne-Lise’s expression. ‘How are things?’

‘Just fine. Really. Fine. What about you?’

‘Oh, fine.’

Anne-Lise hesitates for a moment. ‘You know, I’m actually feeling happy.’

Iben nods towards the papers on the desk. ‘What’s all that about?’

‘I have to sort out the keywords for this pile of new books.’

Iben yawns. ‘I guess I’d better get to work too.’

Anne-Lise says, ‘Yes.’ Then she uses one of Malene’s phrases: ‘We’d better be good.’

When Iben sits down at her desk, Paul has left. Malene leans across her desk as far as she can and whispers: ‘We need to talk.’

They go off together to the Small Meeting Room. Iben emphasises how it would have been so much better not to have been forced to disagree in front of the others. Malene apologises for this, and for her words on the phone. Because Paul is at the
Centre they can’t spend too much time away from their desks, but they promise each other to have a longer talk later.

Iben needs to work on the Turkey issue. However, as things stand, it would probably be best to avoid Anne-Lise for a while. She sends an email to her instead, saying that she’s sure their planned discussion will generate all sorts of exciting ideas, but that she would like to postpone it for a couple of days.

Anne-Lise has enough understanding of what is going on and emails back a simple ‘Fine by me’.

Iben turns to Malene and suggests that they work on the delegates’ handouts for the conference about the ethnic cleansing of East European Germans between 1945 and 1950. Iben goes to sit next to Malene so that they can go over her draft together. Iben, who has brought her mug of coffee along, takes a sip and starts scanning Malene’s text.

The heading strikes her as being in poor taste: ‘Welcome to the International Conference on Ethnic Cleansing of Germans 1945–50’.

Reading on, the very first sentence also seems odd and inappropriate given the subject matter. The next sentence sounds so heavy you just want to run away. She turns to the next page. It’s no good either. Then she abandons the second page too. This is hopeless.

Iben tries to recall what she thought of Malene’s previous draft. As far as she can remember, it seemed all right. Why does it look so different now? What can she say?

She tries to find something positive before she starts to criticise it.

Iben looks up and sees her best friend watching her. Does Malene sense how Iben feels about their friendship today? Probably not. For the last few months Iben has felt uneasy about it but Malene appears not to have noticed. But then, why should she? It’s not as if Iben has actually said anything.

Luckily, Iben finds something on the last page of the conference papers that works. Now she can praise it with sincerity.

‘Malene, I really like this passage at the end. It’s so inviting. Friendly.’

‘I did try to write as if I were writing to a friend.’

They smile.

Iben is back at her own desk preparing to review a new book about Yugoslavia for the DCGI website, but once again she has trouble concentrating.

She creates a new file for notes to herself. Her comments might be part of the groundwork for another article in her series on the psychology of evil.

At least now she’s not wasting her time at work. Besides, it’s the only subject she can focus on.

Evil. Psychol III

Just about everyone must have heard a friend praising her great relationship with a lover only to say, soon after breaking up, that she knew from the start that it wouldn’t last. She will insist she ‘knew’, even when they had bought a flat or had a child together.

The interesting point is the friend’s claim to have known all along while acting as if she did not. This might be something to bear in mind when trying to understand people who have committed terrible acts that they, at other times in their life, have claimed they could never possibly commit. It could be that we should stop trying to see every human being as a consistent whole. A better image of the human psyche might be a bunch of grapes: each ‘grape’ is a set of characteristics, worldviews and moral codes. Subconsciously, we pick one grape or another at different times.

Without being an actual clinical case of split personality, individuals are simultaneously able to hold contradictory beliefs, each one developed and honed by years of experience. This,
despite the person being aware of only one state of mind at the time.

Iben adds an NB: ‘Is this too early to insert references to research into DID? Do I have any other examples to base this argument on? There must be something – but where?’

This interpretation of how people function could explain, for instance, why many Serbian schoolteachers in Bosnia were able to take an active part in the killing of their pupils and their pupils’ parents. Parents who survived in most cases declared themselves unable to grasp how the teacher could bring himself to do what he had done. He had always seemed to be very caring towards the pupils. The only explanation seemed to be that he had been lying to them for years.

But he didn’t lie. When the war started, he selected another grape from his bunch. And when the war ended, he reverted. This movement might explain why so many war criminals are without remorse. They resume their pre-war life, and everything concerning their actions in the war is hazy. They feel as if it was someone else who went wild, killing innocent children and adults.

Another NB: ‘Do I lack a good lead-in here? Maybe the next bit should be a different article? Or “The Psychology of Evil IV”? It’s at this point that the perspectives open out.’

In
God, Gulliver and Genocide
, the author Claude Rawson (Professor of English at Yale) has analysed Hitler’s pre-war speeches. They are very vague on the subject of what should be done about the Jews. Should they be deported to Madagascar, or some other course of action? Superficially, the Germans were unsure what it was that Hitler wanted – and yet, at the same time, they knew. Hitler was able to blur the
appalling implications of his policy, while making its advantages crystal clear to non-Jewish German citizens.

Similar patterns can be observed in the Rwandan radio broadcasts and the propaganda aimed at German soldiers. No one utters the words ‘kill’ or ‘murder’ outright. But everyone knows what is really going on and the underlying message is clear beneath all the vague and circuitous language that dehumanises the victims. Expressions such as ‘exterminating the vermin’ or ‘cleaning up a village’ allow propagandists to consign the very real suffering of the victims to a partly unconscious ‘mind grape’.

An important avenue for future research might be to examine if this obscurity of language in the run-up to genocide is something more than linguistic? Usage might reflect the dynamics of a central psychological mechanism that is essential to the catastrophic final result. Could it be that genocide simply would not happen without a critical mass of indistinct expressions to support a convenient distribution of mental processes into appropriate grapes? That is, the process culminating in genocide depends on the coordination of several perceptions at the same time – parallel thinking along multiple lines, rather than the single-mindedness we usually believe to be the rule in making life decisions.

Such research could also tell us about the way people think and arrive at their decisions more generally – not just in the realm of genocide.

Iben leans back in her chair. She feels much better now. There is no telling if this piece will ever be published in the magazine, but at least it’s safely stored away in the computer.

Malene is staring at her screen and Paul is wandering about their office again. It seems he has decided he should show his face more often and chat to his staff. He wants to be inspiring and supportive, but he does have a tendency to pick the wrong moments.

During lunch he asks Iben what she has been reading recently. Of course, he means articles relevant to her work at DCGI, but she can’t resist mentioning the clinical texts about DID again and tells him about the embryonic article she has just written. After a while she stops, suddenly feeling self-conscious about talking for too long.

But Paul is appreciative. ‘Fantastic! I mean it, Iben! That’s just the kind of discussion we should be having. It’s wonderful for you to explore entirely new lines of thought.’

He follows up his comments with a series of criticisms, but constructive ones. His aim is to clarify the bunch-of-grapes hypothesis. How well does it fit actual facts? What are the possible applications?

When the break is over, he asks Iben to join him in his office. This makes Iben nervous. Paul sits down and gestures for her to sit opposite him. As he leans back on his chair she notes that he is growing a small pot belly. The door to the Winter Garden is open behind her. It can’t be anything serious or he would have closed the door, she tells herself.

‘Look, I hate to say it, but I believe that Robert Jay Lifton has already written something similar to what you’re proposing in his book
The Nazi Doctors.
’

Iben smiles happily. Clearly all Paul wanted was to carry on talking.

‘In it Lifton introduces a concept he calls “doubling” to describe what happened in the minds of doctors who would spend their days doing experiments involving the torture and mutilation of living human beings, and then go home after work and behave normally, playing with their children and so on.’

Iben is familiar with this. ‘But, Paul, Lifton’s theory of doubling is different. It states that under pressure of the special conditions in concentration camps, the doctors developed just one separate personality. And this “other” was independent of their normal selves, which made them perfectly capable of immersing people in boiling water …’

Her voice grows louder than it probably should in a conversation with her boss. ‘What I’ve tried to figure out is if the situation is more complex than just the splitting of a personality. You see, my “grapes” are not mental strategies created under pressure. They already exist inside all of us.’

Paul doesn’t reply. He puts his hands behind his head and then removes them again. Iben is afraid that she has said something wrong.

At last he speaks: ‘I’m not sure I agree with you, but that’s not the point. I want you to know that, should we come under Morten Kjærum and shuffle across the road, I’ll make it my business to fight to keep you. We mustn’t lose you. Taking into account that you’re an information officer and not a paid researcher, I must say that you’re exceptionally talented. And we need talent. I will emphasise that point to everyone.’

Iben feels both relieved and proud. At the same time, she’s very aware of the open door; the others are undoubtedly listening.

‘Thank you … thank you very much. It’s kind of you to say that.’

The whole morning Paul has tried to create a good feeling by praising each of them in turn, but his declaration to Iben proves that she is now at the top of his list.

She walks back to her desk. Her foot hurts less now and it’s easier to move without a limp. Camilla, who is right outside Paul’s door, must have heard everything he said. She doesn’t let on, though. Iben tries to catch her eye. Camilla is gazing intently at her computer screen.

If there is a merger, Malene, as project manager, would almost certainly be the first in line to be laid off, even though she has been in her post the longest time. The look on Malene’s face now reminds Iben of Cathy’s, back in that filthy hut, when she realised that Iben had become friendlier with Omoro than the rest of them. But unlike Cathy, Malene doesn’t say anything conciliatory.

Instead, she mimes: ‘Are you coming?’

They go to talk in the small storage room where, only two and half months ago, they and Rasmus had played around, hunting for Anne-Lise’s password.

Malene sits down on the old chair and looks at Iben. ‘Did you truly believe that we were talking about Anne-Lise?’

‘Yes, but … you were.’

‘Of course we weren’t.’

‘But …’

Malene interrupts her. ‘Anne-Lise is hallucinating. And you didn’t seem all there yourself. Like you hadn’t slept all night. Are you positive about what you did and didn’t hear?’

Someone walks past in the corridor. Anne-Lise? Iben and Malene are silent until the sound of footsteps has disappeared.

‘You aren’t sure, are you? I can see it in your face.’

‘Yes, I am sure.’

‘I can’t stand the way we always have to put up with Anne-Lise’s paranoia. We’ve been reasonable. Unlike her, we’ve acted professionally and done our best to make this place work properly. We tried to help her, even though she shouted at us and Paul refused to give her sick leave.’

While Malene speaks she presses the tips of her fingers against the wrist of her other hand. The last time Iben saw her do this was once when they were in Malene’s flat. Malene was lying on the sofa, propped up by a lot of cushions. She had just said, ‘When I’m resting like this, I can hear my bones crumbling, all on their own.’

‘I simply don’t understand why you’re encouraging her by saying that we were talking about her, when we weren’t.’

‘But you were talking about her.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it any more. It’s not too hard to work out what you’re up to.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You don’t want to admit it, do you?’

‘Well, you’ll have to tell me what you mean first …’

‘All this with Paul and jobs and co-operating with Anne-Lise.’

‘What are you saying? Malene, you mustn’t think …’

‘You know, what that email said about you is absolutely true. I’ve always thought so. You are self-righteous.’

They are back at their desks. Iben isn’t sure that they are friends any longer. She watches as Malene types away on her ergonomic keyboard. How can she concentrate? How is she able to write? Surely, like Iben, she must want to go home? But Malene is a survivor too.