The Exception: A Novel Part 26

Come on, you can tell me. I love you for it.

His expression is growing colder. And do you believe that I exchanged the pills as well?

She is taken aback. No. Of course not.

He sees through her. She hadnt foreseen this. The last thing she wants is to sour the air between them.

Only youve said so often that you truly hate them. And of course Id understand if you had done it.

But ?

The muscles around his mouth and eyes have tensed up. Its such a small change, but Anne-Lise cannot bear seeing it.

He puts his hands on her shoulders and speaks slowly. Anne-Lise, I did not do those things. Neither one nor the other.

No, I see. I believe you. Its just you know how you can be.

What if there is some truth in the idea about dissociated ident.i.ties? Anne-Lise and Henrik are brus.h.i.+ng their teeth together.

I agree that it looks as if it was an inside job. Its unbelievable, but who else could have done it? Everyone knows Malenes bag. No one could have thought it was my bag or that it was my tablets they were swapping.

Theres Camilla. Shes the only one who could have sent the e-mails and exchanged Malenes tablets.

But that doesnt fit at all. I didnt think she was like that. Anne-Lise drops the toothpaste tube. A line of white paste ends up on the tiled floor. She picks up the tube. But, it could be why she stayed at home for so long after receiving an e-mail herself. Everything had become too much for her. The story about her ex-partner could just be a cover-up. Oh, I dont know. It still doesnt make any sense. She just isnt like that!

Did Iben say anything about how you find out if someone has a split personality?

Well, sort of. Camilla could be hiding a bitter hatred toward Iben and Malene. That I would find easy to believe. They dont behave well toward her, but you dont notice it so much compared to the way they treat me. There would be times in her life that she cant or wont remember. But then, thats true of most people.

The top of the toothpaste tube wont screw back on properly. Anne-Lise stops trying and puts it down.

Dissociated personality is a very serious mental illness, and Iben says that the patient has usually had a terrible childhood, with abuse, physical or s.e.xual. Thats something they seem to have in common.

Okay. What was Camillas childhood like?

Anne-Lise takes her time before replying. I cant remember if she ever said anything about it. Shes not like Iben or Malene they wont stop telling us about that kind of thing.

I thought she talked a lot during your lunch breaks.

Oh, she does. She speaks about her choir and how much she enjoys singing. And going to Norway and Sweden on family camping trips. And how much they save at the Metro Hypermarket When Anne-Lise thinks about it, there hasnt been one single instance of Camilla saying anything more revealing about her past. Not a word about where or how she grew up. I have simply no idea.

Four women having lunch together every day and you dont know anything about her childhood? What next? Theres something very odd about that!

He cackles away at his silly joke, but Anne-Lise cant be bothered with it.

I cant recall Malene or Iben ever saying anything about having the kind of childhood that would cause them serious mental problems now. But judging by the way theyve been behaving, they must have had a terrible time. Anne-Lise sits down next to Henrik on the edge of the tub. But then, probably no worse than most people.

When they are finished in the bathroom, Henrik wanders off to his study to enter a few notes on his personal organizer. Anne-Lise looks out the bedroom window. Apart from a few trees close to the street lamps, the garden is almost invisible in the darkness.

When they are in bed together Henrik continues to speculate: If the others have got it into their heads that youre the one who sent the e-mails and interfered with the medicine, then its only a matter of time before they make Paul and the board believe it too. You dont have much time to find proof that Malene mixed up the tablets by mistake. Or that Camilla did it on purpose. If you dont, youll be out on your ear.

Anne-Lise knows Henrik is right.

Some nights, in the dark quiet of the bedroom, Henriks familiar smell wafts across from his side of the bed. Anne-Lise remembers it from way back, when she was at college and they lived together in her small student room. It isnt a strong scent, but it makes her feel comfortable and safe.

Henrik is thinking aloud. Now, her husband is in the plumbing business, isnt he? Maybe I should ask him to fix something for us and make him talk while hes working?

Henrik! Thats out of the question.

Okay, okay. Were brainstorming, arent we? What about finding out who their friends are and getting them to talk?

Neither Henrik nor Anne-Lise can figure out a way to do this. The only hope is that Anne-Lise can persuade Camilla to open up about herself during work.

Anne-Lise is doubtful. She doesnt speak openly with anyone, and tomorrow theyll be furious with me.

They will. But remember, theyll be frightened of you as well. If they really believe you have a split personality and that youre a psychotic basket case, theyll be at a loss about how to handle you. In situations like that, people cope by sticking to routine. Youll see. I suspect that a stranger entering the office tomorrow wouldnt notice a thing out of the ordinary.

I hope youre right.

But Anne-Lise still thinks that the so-called plan is absurd. Does Henrik truly believe that with such a terrible atmosphere at the DCIG, she can say, out of the blue, Listen, Camilla, weve never had a proper heart-to-heart, have we? Why not start today? Tell me a bit more about yourself.

chapter 28.

the following morning Malene phones the office to say that she is still ill and wont be coming in to work this is something Anne-Lise has not foreseen.

Paul is out of the office again as well. Hes at a conference in Odense and will be there all day. Anne-Lise is alone with Iben and Camilla, who behave exactly as Henrik predicted. They may well be on edge, but they arent letting it show. n.o.body can prove anything. Anne-Lise thinks that the Winter Garden is a little quieter than usual, but Malene is away, of course.

Like the other two, Anne-Lise throws herself into her work. Her next task is to extract the best database keywords for a collection of eyewitness accounts from the 1971 genocide in what was then East Pakistan. The killing started up suddenly and unexpectedly in the aftermath of Pakistans 1970 parliamentary election, which was won by the oppressed Bengali majority. The ruling minority, drawn from the Punjabi and Pathan tribes, rejected the election result and took over after a military coup. The Bengali population protested by staging a nonviolent general strike, but the army crushed it. Its orders were to kill, loot, and rape. Punjabis and Pashtuns traditionally believed Bengalis to be an inferior race.

The Pakistani soldiers drove about forty million of their countrymen into exile, flattened several provincial towns every day, raped some 250,000 women of all ages, and killed, in total, about three million people.

Anne-Lise has read piles of witness reports from those nine terrible months. At the moment she is reading about a twenty-five-year-old Bengali woman, married to an officer and the mother of three children. The soldiers took her husband away despite her pleas. She threw herself on the ground in front of their house, begging for his freedom. They brought him back to her later, disfigured by torture and close to death. Another group of soldiers broke into the family house the following morning and raped the woman in front of her husband and children. They tied the husband down and beat the children when they cried. In the afternoon, the soldiers took her to a cellar, where they locked her in and raped her night after night until she lost consciousness. Three months later she returned home. She was pregnant.

Bengali families often rejected s.e.xually abused women on their return because they regarded them as a dishonor to their relatives. This woman was fortunate; although her husband refused to take her back, her neighbors showed her some compa.s.sion. When they pressured the husband to accept her back as his wife, he hanged himself.

After reading this account, Anne-Lise goes through it again to find the best descriptive words for the library database, but she grinds to a halt after a few paragraphs. She tries to start from the beginning, but its no use. I need a break, she thinks after the fourth attempt.

As Anne-Lise steps into the brightly lit Winter Garden, Camilla is on the phone, saying that she must cancel her rehearsal session with the choir tonight because she has to attend a parent-teacher meeting at her daughters school. The fluorescent light above the shelf of Dutch publications is on the blink. Camilla puts the receiver down and now Anne-Lise can talk to both of them.

Im off to the kitchen to make myself a mug of tea. Does anybody else want one?

To her surprise Iben says that she wouldnt mind some tea, thank you. And her face seems more relaxed than usual; she even looks friendly. But then, Malene is away. Anne-Lise still has serious doubts about her desperate plan of getting to know Camilla better. Anne-Lises chances here would be so much easier if Iben has resolved that they should all get along, in spite of her accusations yesterday.

Anne-Lise pours water into the electric kettle and waits for it to boil.

Obviously, Camilla is worried about her figure. Her colleagues try not to comment on the rather odd things she has for lunch. Currently, shes eating almost nothing but cuc.u.mbers. During the past year Camilla has tried three contradictory diets, all of which have failed to produce a result. At Lyngby, two of Anne-Lises colleagues also ate erratically, but they would joke about their fad diets. Camillas problem is that she takes her weight issues far too seriously, even though she is nowhere near as large as Anne-Lises former colleagues. Camilla is small and on the plump side, but no more than one might expect of a forty-year-old woman with children. Couldnt Camillas obsessive relations.h.i.+p with her body fit with the kind of upbringing that might also cause DID?

Despite being about the same age as Camilla, Anne-Lise feels she looks younger than her colleague. One reason is Camillas hairdo, an outdated perm that has dried out her ash-blond hair. The overall effect is dull and matronly.

Anne-Lise recalls the dramatic story of Camillas friend who died from uterine cancer, and the way Camilla stepped into her friends life to live with her husband and care for her daughter. Apart from that, all Anne-Lise has to go on is her observations of Camillas behavior.

The day after Iben and Malene received the e-mails, Iben had been speaking about what made people commit war crimes. She had argued that, in one sense at least, they too were victims of forces they could not control. Anne-Lise had never seen Camilla so upset. Was that significant? And if so, what did it mean? Why couldnt she discuss forgiveness for such crimes? Then there was her strong reaction to receiving one of the e-mailed threats herself. All she had wanted was to lie down and be alone. Was that a typical reaction, or was it a sign of a disturbed person?

The water is about to boil when Iben turns up in the kitchen and leans against the fridge. Im aware, Iben begins hesitantly, that my tirade on the phone yesterday was unreasonable.

It sounds closer to an apology than anything Anne-Lise has ever dared hope for.

I had no good grounds for being so convinced that you were the one whod exchanged the pills, Iben continues, looking away timidly.

Anne-Lise realizes that she should try to be receptive to Ibens attempts at conversation or sh.e.l.l never be able to persuade Camilla to give away her secrets. She must control her anger. You were very upset, naturally. You werent yourself. I understand it must have been terrible for you.

It really was.

Anne-Lise thanks Iben once more for her suggestion about phoning Tatiana. The call went very well so well, in fact, that she almost got the impression that Tatiana had been expecting it.

It was so good of you. Lets see if Tatiana will use our library more after this.

Anne-Lise has an impulse to phone Henrik, but discreet conversations are impossible now that the door is open all the time. It wouldnt look right if she were to shut it again, even for a short while.

Over lunch they discuss the changes in the lives of university students in East Pakistan after 1971. The Indian army had intervened in support of the Bengalis to stop the genocide and establish East Pakistan as the independent state of Bangladesh. Part of the contempt felt by the Pashtuns and Punjabis for the Bengalis was related to the fact that they were not a warrior race; indeed, they were regarded as unfit for military service. However, the genocide wrought many changes and the effects were perhaps especially marked in the universities.

One of the top priorities of the Pakistani soldiery had been to kill off university staff, students, and other intellectuals to stop them from becoming leaders. In 1971 the universities became slaughterhouses and, after the secession, the students were so used to carrying arms that conflicts between opposing student factions were frequently settled with shoot-outs. This made universities among the most dangerous places to be in Bangladesh. The extreme violence of the students undermined the whole academic system.

Anne-Lise cannot concentrate. She thinks about the change in Ibens behavior. The peaceful morning has been like a breath of fresh air. She watches Camilla pause before covering her fourth slice of crisp-bread with fat-free cottage cheese and slices of cuc.u.mber. The three of them seem quite at ease with each other. Perhaps she can persuade Camilla to reveal something that would show her emotional volatility and prove that she is the one who should be under suspicion.

As Anne-Lise tries to muster the courage to ask Camilla a question, Iben interrupts: Isnt it amazing how little we know about each other, even though we work so closely together?

It is.

Iben has always been pale, but recently shes had dark rings beneath her eyes from lack of sleep. She looks at Anne-Lise and smiles.

So I was thinking, Anne-Lise, now that were just sitting here: why dont you tell us a bit more about yourself.

chapter 29.

its raining hard when Anne-Lise parks in a dark street, well away from the post office building. She walks quickly. Under the golf umbrella, which she always keeps in the trunk of the car, not even her shoes get wet. When she has pa.s.sed the entrance to the Tivoli Concert Hall, she turns left at the Central Station.

Anne-Lise is scared. She has never done anything like this before and it goes against her nature, but her back is against the wall. If she is fired, she may never work again.

She has to find out more about Camilla.

The edifice in front of her is not so much a single building as a ma.s.s of concrete blocks all joined together: Copenhagens Central Post Office.

Outside one of its doors waits a group of women, mostly in their fifties. Anne-Lise introduces herself: Im Brigitte.

They seem pleased that she is joining them this evening. One of the women unlocks the door with a magnetized ID card and leads the way down a steep metal staircase.

A woman in a long black dress explains where they are going: The room we use is actually next to the reception area, but in the evenings so many of the alarms on the doors have been set that we have to go via the bas.e.m.e.nt.

They negotiate a maze of corridors lined with doors, almost all of them closed. The walls have a fresh coat of white paint, and a great many doors are closed. They walk up another metal staircase and into a large plain room that looks like some kind of conference hall. Three of its walls are painted white and the fourth is made of gla.s.s. Behind the gla.s.s you can see the reception area. The whole place seems designed with s.p.a.ce in mind: there is plenty of standing room and just a few pieces of colorful designer furniture. Near the door, about twenty women of all ages are talking and laughing. The air smells of damp coats.

A handful of mature-looking men have settled down with their cans of beer in a group of scarlet egg-shaped chairs. There is an electric keyboard by the gla.s.s wall, and a young woman seems to be testing it. She must be the conductor. Anne-Lise feels almost queasy watching her, because she looks like Malene, only not as pretty.

Anne-Lise checked the home page of the Copenhagen Postal Choir and one of the things she found out was that the conductor recently completed a university degree in music. Before last year Anne-Lise used to enjoy being in the company of artistic young women, but now they just annoy her.

The conductor welcomes her. Its great to see a new face. How did you find out about us?

I found you on the Internet.

Oh, good, our Web site must be doing its job. She turns to the rest of the group and speaks to them in the beautifully controlled voice of a singer, not unlike Camillas. Listen, everybody. This is Brigitte; shes going to sing with us tonight. Try not to scare her away! Hopefully sh.e.l.l come back next Wednesday.

The women laugh and begin to introduce themselves. Talking across each other, they tell Anne-Lise about the choir, its performances in churches and elsewhere, and the various excursions they go on.

We sing every year at the Summer Festival here in Copenhagen.

But the main thing is, we always have such a good time together. Great parties, dont you think, ladies?

Several exclaim at the same time.

The home page had informed Anne-Lise that although most of the singers worked within the post office, the choir has been open to outsiders for a long time.

Have you sung in a choir before? one woman asks.

Youll get the hang of it quickly, dont worry.

The conductor addresses Anne-Lise. Brigitte, do you know what part you sing?

Im not sure.

You sound like an alto. Why dont you join the altos for now.

A woman in her early sixties with very black hair holds up her case of sheet music. Brigitte, my name is Tess. Come and stand next to me. You can sing from my music until you have your own set.

So far, so good. The knot in Anne-Lises stomach is loosening. When people around you are as kind as this, it is impossible to stay scared for long. She had been so worried that someone would recognize her and instantly see she was lying. Or, almost as bad, that shed have one of her sudden fits of weeping.

The conductor claps her hands. The men drag themselves away from their chairs at the far end of the room and join the women.

Suddenly Camillas name is mentioned. Camilla Batz called me from work this afternoon. She cant come tonight its the parent-teacher evening at her daughters school. The woman has mahogany-colored hair that is pulled back in a knot, and shes wearing a navy scarf.