The Exception

by Christian Jungersen

  ‘Consider your colleagues’ states of mind, Anne-Lise. They feel a little like you would, if you were alone one evening, watching television and feeling peckish with a large bowl of crisps sitting in front of you. You’re determined not to eat them and stick to your resolve, but if the programme captures your attention, you forget and start reaching for the crisps. Before you realise it, they’re gone. You may not even be able to recall having eaten them.

  ‘That’s what you are to your colleagues: a temptation. At the outset they may well have decided to be pleasant towards you. Or maybe they never did. Either way, they still see you as a rival and, without planning to, there will be times when they can’t resist going after you. The reaction is so instinctive that, afterwards, they’ll hardly remember.’

  Yngve is very persuasive, but his arguments upset Anne-Lise. Still, something about the man makes her sit calmly and listen. Henrik has also been very quiet. She can hear Yngve’s receptionist rummaging about on the other side of the door, no doubt cleaning up whatever was spilled. Anne-Lise considers how she has always thought of Yngve as being lonely, even though she knows absolutely nothing about his private life. Does it have something to do with his intelligence, or was she responding intuitively to the faintly depressed tone that never quite leaves his voice?

  They agree that Anne-Lise shouldn’t accuse the others of having rigged the blood trap. Without proof, she would be fighting a losing battle and it would expose her even more to her colleagues’ anger.

  ‘Anne-Lise, can you think of something they’ve done that was clearly wrong? Or an argument you’re certain to win if there’s a confrontation?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I make wrong decisions all the time and I do stupid things. My head is bursting with how horrible it all is. I’m not my normal self.’

  ‘Of course, that’s understandable. But things will change. Look forward to that, even though it’s hard for you now.’

  The receptionist comes in to say the next patient is waiting. She speaks quickly as if she is scared of Yngve. He answers pleasantly enough and turns back to Anne-Lise.

  ‘Haven’t you witnessed anything they’ve done that goes against the Centre’s interests?’

  Anne-Lise reflects carefully. ‘One of the users, a man called Erik Prins, told me that Malene had given him false information about library searches, just to keep him away from me. That could be—’

  ‘Would you have put up with that in your previous job?’

  ‘Not for a moment.’

  ‘There you are! Be confident. It’s unacceptable now as well.’ He flattens his hands on the table top again. ‘This is a battle you can win, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you really believe that?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Excellent.’ He gets up and shakes their hands, first Henrik’s and then Anne-Lise’s. ‘I want to see you again. It’s my job to deal with any issue that’s seriously threatening your well-being, whether it be physical or psychological. You are not going to let your colleagues push you into unemployment. You will fight them.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I will.’

  ‘Very good. Now, let’s decide when you should come back and tell me how things have progressed. Maybe in about three weeks’ time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. Just ask for an appointment at reception.’

  When Anne-Lise and Henrik step outside, they’re both surprised that it is still bright. It feels as if it should be evening by now, but the incident at DCGI was only a few hours ago. They have several hours before they need to collect the children.

  Anne-Lise keeps her promise to Yngve, but afterwards her life at work doesn’t get any better. It has done her no good to confront Malene about Erik Prins. Malene simply shifts the blame and demands to know who the user is. Anne-Lise is more at fault than ever.

  The Winter Garden seems quieter now that the door is always open. They speak in low voices, or email each other, or wander off to talk in the kitchen or the meeting rooms. A few times Anne-Lise has surprised them using a made-up sign language and giggling a lot.

  During lunch Iben gives her little lectures, often based on the books she reads when she can’t sleep. These days she seems to be sticking to psychiatry textbooks. While Iben goes on about mental health problems, she watches Anne-Lise. It’s plain for all to see that Iben thinks Anne-Lise must be suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder.

  One evening after yet another hostile day of pointed remarks and hints that she’s somehow deranged, Anne-Lise is reading Little House in the Big Woods to her children. Ulrik and Clara are both in Ulrik’s room. Clara is lying on her back in the lower bunk, balancing her Barbie doll on her tummy. Sometimes her lips form soundless words; sometimes she mumbles. She seems not to be listening, but the next day she will remember everything that happened in the story.

  Ulrik is in the upper bunk. He has pushed the duvet away and rests his head on the edge of the bed.

  Clara’s mumbling is getting louder.

  Ulrik leans forward. ‘Shut up! Stop making that noise!’

  Clara carries on playing with her doll but lowers her voice.

  The bedroom air is warm and smells slightly of toothpaste. Anne-Lise can pick up sounds from Henrik’s study. He is trying to do something new with his two computers.

  Clara’s mumbling is growing louder again.

  Ulrik shouts at her more crossly than before. ‘Shut up! Shut up!’

  Anne-Lise reads on about Laura’s father, who is walking in the forest and sees a doe with its fawn. Clara’s voice fades and becomes inaudible again. Without warning, tears well up in Anne-Lise’s eyes. The fawn doesn’t run away. It stands quite still, looking wide-eyed at Laura’s father. The tears are running quietly down Anne-Lise’s cheeks. They keep coming even though there is nothing sad about the story.

  After a while, Ulrik notices. ‘Mummy? What’s the matter?’

  Laura’s father promises that he won’t go hunting until the baby animals have grown up. Now Anne-Lise has to look up at her son. She smiles. She has no idea what is happening to her. ‘I must have caught a cold.’

  Clara puts away her doll. ‘Are you crying?’

  ‘No, no. It’s just a cold.’

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘No. Not a bit.’

  ‘Why are you crying then?’

  Ulrik shouts at his sister, ‘Mummy’s not crying! She’s got a cold.’

  Anne-Lise realises that she is on the verge of falling apart. Her children must not witness this. She has to get away.

  Panic grips her. ‘There. That’s it for tonight.’

  ‘No-oo!’

  Anne-Lise fights to suppress her sobbing. ‘Yes, it’s time to go to sleep. No more reading tonight.’

  ‘No-oo. Please. Read some more. Just a little.’

  ‘HENRIK! HENRIK! Please come here!’

  She runs out. Henrik comes towards her. Her sobbing is out of control.

  ‘Go to the children. Read them a story.’

  She stumbles into their bedroom, shuts the door, and throws herself on their bed, covering her head with a pillow to muffle the sounds she is making.

  Once the children are asleep, Henrik returns to Anne-Lise, walks quietly over to the bed and sits down close to her. She doesn’t open her eyes, but senses his body weighing down the mattress next to her head. She is glad that he is there and blindly reaches out her hand to him. He takes it and strokes her temple with his other hand. They do not speak.

  Crying has left Anne-Lise feeling hot and completely empty. The sensation of her body dissolving washes over her. She feels as if she is seeping away, through the mattress, draining down through the boards and beams of the house, through the spaces of brick and cement.

  Henrik is asking her to please tell him what’s the matter. She mutters in response, pressing her nose in between his thigh and the mattress. It’s good to feel the warmth of him; her hand comes to rest between his legs. He asks her again. S
he doesn’t answer, only begins to move her hand.

  ‘Anne-Lise, is this a good idea?’

  She looks up at him.

  He gets up, closes the door and dims the light. One of the good things about their solidly built old house is that sounds do not travel. Once the door is closed, there is no need to worry about the children.

  His chest is against hers. Every pore in her skin is wide open. She’s sweating.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Henrik asks. She’s never been like this before. ‘I love it,’ he says, and ‘I didn’t think you felt this way.’

  And then they are both silent.

  A pillow falls to the floor with a faint thump, then the duvet follows, absorbing its own sound as it falls.

  This is how I want to die, she thinks. To disappear like this, happy, because in reality, I’m already gone.

  Every time he thrusts into her, words form silently inside her. Kill me, she thinks. She must not say it aloud. He would stop at once.

  Now she’s nearly reduced to nothingness. Softly, she dreams on.

  Kill me! Kill me! Kill me!

  Anne-Lise has never experienced anything like this. Not with anyone. She registers his smell.

  Something has given way inside the mattress. The springs groan like a giant struggling for breath. Anne-Lise finally slips away while her mind whispers on inaudibly.

  Kill me! Kill me! Kill me!

  27

  All day long Anne-Lise imagines that everything will change now.

  True, she knows that she pays far too much attention to what Malene and Iben do, even to the expressions on their faces. All the interpretation and forecasting exhausts her. Still, today something radically new has happened.

  In the morning Iben had phoned from the City Hospital’s rheumatology clinic. She was there with Malene, who was ill. Iben had said that Tatiana planned to write an important article and suggested that Anne-Lise should call Tatiana and offer to help.

  None of her new colleagues had ever done anything like this. Anne-Lise phoned Henrik straight away.

  ‘There, you see. Maybe we’ll collaborate from now on.’

  He said ‘Yes’, and was so nice to her. She knows well that he doesn’t take any of her ‘fantasies’, as he calls them, seriously.

  A small part of her is aware that real change isn’t very likely. It makes her more vulnerable. Every time they turn on the kindness she can’t help thinking that all the tension might be due to her own misunderstanding, or pile-up of misunderstandings.

  The day at DCGI is over and Anne-Lise is about to pick Clara up from her nursery class. As she walks into the small, yellow-brick school, she meets other parents and children she knows. A good day at the office means that she is not her usual worn-out self and a cheerful tune she heard on the car radio is playing in her head. This afternoon she almost feels as she used to feel before DCGI.

  She walks through the first, then the second set of doors to the main room. It’s quiet in there. After saying hello to a father who is leaving with his two children, she spots Clara at a table, cutting shapes from shiny pieces of coloured paper. Anne-Lise sits down and helps her stick the shapes onto a plain white sheet.

  Almost at once a teacher comes along to tell her that Clara has been involved in fights twice that day. The second time she fought with a boy and hit him on the head with a branch. The teachers had to bandage the wound.

  Anne-Lise’s mobile phone rings. It’s Paul. She interrupts the teacher. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s my boss. Do you mind if I take the call?’

  Paul sounds as if it’s urgent. ‘Hello, Anne-Lise. All right for us to talk?’

  ‘Yes, fine.’

  ‘That’s good. Listen, I’ve just had a call from Iben. She’s in the hospital.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘She has taken Malene to the rheumatology clinic. They’ve been there all day.’

  ‘I know. Iben called me earlier.’

  ‘And she told me, and I’m afraid they are in complete agreement …’

  Anne-Lise realises that he’s about to say something bad. Paul is being unusually hesitant. Anne-Lise withdraws into a corner and turns her back to the room.

  ‘They believe someone has tampered with Malene’s tablets and exchanged her medicine for something that has no effect on – on her arthritis. And that’s why it has flared up so badly.’

  ‘That’s terrible.’

  ‘And it was extremely painful.’

  ‘Yes, I see. Of course. Such a …’ Anne-Lise stops. She grasps what Paul is actually trying to say. ‘They think that “someone” removed her proper medicine?’

  ‘That’s what they believe. I’m really not sure how to say this but … they don’t want to confront you themselves.’

  Paul takes a quick breath and speaks again. ‘They say you are the only one who could have exchanged the tablets.’

  Anne-Lise suddenly deflates. She stares straight ahead at a world in coloured crayons, where smoke whirls from the chimneys of square houses and people have matchstick legs and big, round eyes. She sees the drawing pins sticking each drawing to the bulletin board. She sinks down to sit on a child’s chair; its back is barely knee-height.

  She can’t think of anything to say. Paul is kind enough not to continue.

  Turning to look at Clara, she takes in the scene: the teacher, the other children and their parents. The teacher tries to look as if she isn’t listening.

  Anne-Lise whispers: ‘But Paul, it can’t be … Paul, you must see this is crazy! I could never do something like that!’

  ‘I agree, naturally. I don’t believe that you did.’

  Anne-Lise perches on the tiny chair, hunched over. ‘I didn’t! We’ve worked together for a year, Paul. You must know me by now.’

  Clara comes along. Her fingers are still stuck in the handles of her blunt child’s scissors. Anne-Lise persuades her to go back to the table with the shiny paper. Then she remembers Iben’s chatter about how a person can have several different personalities and not be aware of them. Paul will have heard it too, of course.

  Is that why Iben has been harping on about these theories? Is it part of a plan to force Paul into sacking her?

  Behind her a child is screaming. Anne-Lise gets up. The movement is too quick and she feels faint. She bends over to get some blood back to her head. Paul is still speaking, but she can’t catch what he’s saying. She hurries out of the room to the adult toilet to finish their talk.

  When she returns, the teacher is waiting for her. She insists on going over Clara’s fight. Anne-Lise still feels unsteady.

  The teacher’s tone of voice has acquired a sharp edge. ‘We had to tell Aleksander to sit still for a quarter of an hour, to make sure he didn’t have concussion. Luckily, the bandage did the trick. He was able to play for the rest of the day, but Liselotte was quite worried when she came and noticed the swelling on his head.’

  The teacher drones on and on. Anne-Lise leans against a wall. This will take some time.

  ‘And I feel I should let you know that Clara has been in a lot of fights recently.’

  Anne-Lise feels like shouting at her: ‘It’s all my fault! Blame me! Everything is falling to pieces around me. It’s because I can’t remember anything. And I cry all the time and my colleagues think I’m impossible.’ But she manages to keep her composure. They probably think she seems rather distant anyway.

  When the subject of fighting has been exhausted, Anne-Lise asks if Clara can stay a little longer. She has to make another phone call and it will be much easier if she doesn’t have Clara with her.

  ‘Clara, darling, I have to make a phone call. You go on playing for a while and then I’ll come and get you. All right?’

  Clara doesn’t reply, but tears herself away and runs off with the others.

  Back in the toilet, Anne-Lise realises that it is far from private. Anyone can hear what she’s saying, especially if voices are raised. She decides to sit in the car instead.

  When she
gets into the car, parents are still coming and going. She decides to drive a few blocks away.

  Anne-Lise parks in a little side road leading into the Vaserne nature reserve. Certainly no one from the nursery school will come this way. She turns off the engine and sits back to collect her thoughts. The trees outside are bare – winter is approaching. Steeling herself, she dials Iben’s home number.

  Paul was right. Iben is convinced that Anne-Lise is the one who sent the anonymous emails and exchanged Malene’s medicine. Anne-Lise tries to defend herself, but nothing she says can persuade Iben. It doesn’t take long before Anne-Lise’s voice has risen to a shout, as she desperately swears that she didn’t do any of it. She swears by everything she believes in – her husband, her health, even her children. This last oath brings stinging regret – she should never, never have sworn by her children, especially to someone as hostile as Iben.

  Of course she knows that she hasn’t touched the pills. But if there is any truth in the theories about dissociated personalities, then Iben might herself be capable of absolutely anything.

  Anne-Lise and Henrik’s peaceful time together begins after ten thirty. The house is quiet and the television is turned off. Henrik sits on their black sofa, going through various papers he has brought home from work.

  Some evenings, Anne-Lise reads Information. She has persuaded Henrik that they should subscribe, hoping it might help her to join in the DCGI chatter. At other times, she lies on the sofa with a throw over her legs and her head resting on Henrik’s thigh. This is when she is able to clear her head and recharge her batteries to help her face the next day. It is the quiet evenings with Henrik that have given her the strength to endure the year at DCGI.

  She is resting on the sofa now, sensing the warmth of his leg against her cheek. Now and then his large hand strokes the back of her head and, when he turns a page, his sleeve sometimes touches her cheek.

  They have talked about Malene’s medication and agree that Malene and Iben are likely to have cooled down by the following day. It could be Malene herself, after all, who mistook one batch of pills for another. Even if Malene and Iben won’t buy that theory, it’s obvious that someone else could have done it, and not just Anne-Lise.