‘I’ll do it. I promise.’
Should I really spend money on another answering machine? she thinks. She knows she can’t bring herself simply to erase Rasmus’s voice. Some nights she plays his recorded greeting repeatedly. She might drink a bottle of white wine, sliding slowly into oblivion as she presses the button over and over again.
Her mother cuts into her thoughts. ‘It matters to people who call you.’
Sooner or later there might be a power cut, Malene thinks. Or someone might fiddle around with the cables, and then I’d lose his message anyway. I should definitely buy a new machine.
Her mother says that she bumped into a few old friends in Kolding. They’d heard about Rasmus and expressed their sympathy for Malene.
‘You must let us know if there is anything that Dad or I can do for you. Anything at all. We worry about you so much.’
Malene doesn’t reply.
‘Are you writing to Rasmus?’
‘Umm.’
‘That’s good. I mean, it’s good for you to write down what you feel. I’m sure there are so many things you’d like to tell him.’
‘Umm.’
*
Afterwards Malene walks around turning on lights. Someone who didn’t know about her arthritis might miss the small signs of her illness scattered around her flat: a plain metal-framed adjustable chair set among the wooden dining chairs; special knives and other equipment in the kitchen; small toy-like objects for exercising her fingers.
She sits down and continues her letter.
I admit that Iben is right about some things. We have been too rough on Anne-Lise. We shouldn’t lower our own standards. Yet it was Anne-Lise who started it all. She was the one who persuaded Paul to give her some of my most exciting responsibilities. She was the one who manoeuvred it so that I would be the first in line to be fired if we merge with Human Rights. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been here the longest and that I’m suffering from this vile, diabolical illness, which could make it difficult for me to get another job. And that I lost you three weeks ago.
Rasmus, can’t you understand how awful all of this is making me feel? Bitter enough to do things I’d never have thought I was capable of doing?
Even so, I’ve always behaved professionally towards Anne-Lise. I wasn’t friendly, but I was always polite. Iben made me join in with some of her antics — she thought up some really crazy things. I know I shouldn’t have played along, and I regret it now. Still, to think that Iben told me off, in that smug way of hers, for what she had coaxed me to do in the first place.
Malene hits the wrong keys several times. ‘I’m too angry to write now. I can’t …’ She gets up, grabs her tea and drinks half of it before sitting down again.
Of course, I’m not so stupid I can’t work out why this is happening right now. Iben needs to think up a reason for getting rid of me and she probably believes every word she says. That’s what self-righteousness will do for you.
Oh, Rasmus, I’m so dreadfully disappointed in her. I can’t imagine ever trusting her again.
Malene looks around the room. The remains of her supper are on the coffee table. She sits on the sofa to eat because she never did buy a new dining table.
Now you’re gone Iben says that she thinks our relationship wasn’t as good as I remember it, but what does she know? What does anyone know? Except you and me!
42
It is a special day for DCGI.
A genocide researcher has just completed her PhD thesis and today she will take her oral examination at the Historical Institute of the University of Copenhagen. Anita studied the mass killings during Stalin’s Great Terror, a period during which, according to some estimates at least, 4.5 million Soviet citizens died.
Ole, who chairs the DCGI board, was her adviser. At one time Anita spent practically every day in the Large Meeting Room going through the extensive but rather chaotic collection of Soviet documents. Everybody in the Centre liked her. A trained nurse and the mother of three children, she started to study history at the age of thirty-three. Now, after ten years and a divorce, she is up for a doctorate.
Ole, Frederik and several other board members are going to attend the formal public examination. It is an academic occasion, but also a reason to celebrate with the doctoral candidate at the reception afterwards. The Centre has closed for the morning so that Paul and his staff can go as well.
Malene is rushing along the inscrutable network of wide concrete corridors at the university’s Amager campus. She takes a wrong turn, tries another one and gets it wrong again. She knows that even former students can’t always find their way about this place. Iben once likened it to a web spun by a schizophrenic spider.
Two male students are sitting with their papers spread out on top of one of the fixed concrete seats. They turn to look at Malene, who is wearing a tightly fitted dark-green jacket that looks good with her light-coloured hair. She designed her new knee-high boots herself, drawing them in detail for the orthopaedic shoemaker.
She thinks about when would be the right time to call Gunnar. It would be good to get together again. She phoned him once, but he wasn’t in and she didn’t leave a message. She knows that his magazine has sent him to Afghanistan, but he should be back by now. Maybe his trip was extended.
At last she sees a group of well-dressed historians at the far end of another corridor. Frederik’s blond head is sticking up above the crowd. She goes to greet them.
Ole is there too, in the centre of the group. Where is Paul? Have he and Frederik met since the board found out about Paul’s anti-Frederik machinations?
Malene says hello to everyone. She and Frederik chat in their usual, mildly flirtatious, way while people begin to drift into the lecture theatre. She looks around for Iben and the rest of the DCGI crew. They’re probably already seated.
On her way in Malene sees several other familiar faces. Many have no special links either to Anita or to the Soviet purges, as far as Malene knows. Maybe they’ve come to get into Ole’s good books, or Tatiana’s? Still no Paul. It depresses her. As things stand now, he, of all people, should try to humour the chairman.
Then she spots Iben sitting between Anne-Lise and Camilla. So, how far away should I sit from Iben? Malene asks herself. It would look too obvious to go to the opposite end of the room.
Quickly she squeezes between some tables so that she can approach them from the other side and sit next to Camilla, rather than Anne-Lise.
She can hear them talking. Their voices carry. Iben, especially, is speaking a little too loudly.
‘Do Dragan and Zigic know each other?’
Camilla turns her head nervously from side to side. She seems as if she would like nothing better than to be somewhere else.
‘But Iben, Dragan hates Zigic!’
‘Camilla, that’s not the point. I asked if they know each other.’
‘Dragan hates him!’
‘But, have they met?’
‘No, never. They haven’t!’ Camilla shakes her head. Something about her body language shows that she’s lying.
Malene looks around quickly. How many others are listening in? Most likely, quite a few.
Iben charges forth. ‘We looked up Dragan Jelisic in our database. His name is mentioned in a book called Days of Blood and Singing. When I was at the Centre this morning, I tried to find it, but it’s not in the library any more, although the record shows that it hasn’t been checked out.’
Malene sits down and asks what’s going on, but they are all too absorbed in their conversations with Camilla to answer her. She asks again and Anne-Lise explains, leaning back behind the other two.