Part 41 (2/2)

The chairman welcomes everyone and introduces Anita. In a long blue dress, she looks radiant and very much in charge. She says that she is delighted to see so many friends and colleagues with whom she has worked over the last four years, and adds an apology to those who have had to stand at the back. As Anita starts explaining her thesis, Malene figures out what has happened.

Yesterday evening, Iben found out that the supposed sender of the e-mails wasnt under arrest after all. And until yesterday, Malene would have been the first person she phoned with the news. Not anymore. It could be that she contacted Paul as well as Camilla. But either way, she obviously phoned Anne-Lise.

A while ago, Anne-Lise said she had heard that Camilla had a former lover who was a Serbian refugee. Camilla denied it at the time, and they agreed that Anne-Lise had made it up. Now Iben has clearly changed her mind.

Iben and Anne-Lise must have Googled Dragans name and checked it out in the DCIG database. Anne-Lise must have been so pleased to be working together with Iben on this.

Asking Camilla to explain herself is out of the question while Anita is lecturing, but Malene cant concentrate on what shes saying. She leans forward a little to observe Camilla, who is sitting very still, almost paralyzed. Malenes eyes meet Anne-Lises. She too keeps glancing at Camilla.

Iben has put her cell phone in front of her on the table. It blinks but doesnt ring. Iben gets up and tries to leave discreetly, but shes carrying her computer bag and has to push past a whole row of people. The sc.r.a.ping of chairs makes quite a racket. She waves her cell phone apologetically at Anita, who seems unfazed and carries on talking.

The Center isnt putting on a good show today. The chief is playing truant, the staff cant keep their mouths shut, and the information officer gets up and leaves in the middle of Anitas presentation.

Why is the call so important? Something to do with Dragan Jelisic? Even so, couldnt it wait? Ever since Iben came back from Kenya she has been quite paranoid, on and off. By now shes probably imagining all kinds of horrors about Camillas ex-lover.

There is an interval after the first speaker finishes debating Anitas thesis with her. Crowds of people slowly drift out of the hall, and at the door Malene finds herself standing next to a couple of university lecturers with whom she worked on a project investigating Danish immigration policy during the 1930s. She feels its only polite to talk to them. Once she reaches the corridor, Iben and the others are already out of sight. She pops her head around the door to the reception area, where wine, cheese, and a.s.sorted tapas are waiting to be served. The others arent in there either. Mikala, another historian, says that shes helping Anita by setting out the party food.

They chat for a while and suddenly Ole and Frederik turn up. Ole has a c.o.ke in his hand. He turns to Malene, who notices theres a minuscule crumb of chocolate stuck in his beard.

Wheres Paul?

Ive no idea.

Hes avoiding me. I couldnt get hold of him on his cell phone either.

Thats odd. He usually keeps his cell phone on all the time.

Malene doesnt care for the way Ole and Frederik seem to be in cahoots.

Maybe his battery has run down.

Ole and Frederik exchange a strange glance.

Oh, I hope he hasnt had an accident, she adds.

Frederik smiles at her. No, thats not it.

What do you mean?

Frederik makes a face and Malene senses that she mustnt ask him any more. She can usually make him tell her everything. Maybe its Oles presence thats stopping him.

The talking outside the room has grown to a roar.

Malene manages to slip through the crowd and follows the corridor to the end. No luck. She returns through the crowd and goes to the opposite end. No one here either. Then she turns a corner and hears voices from behind the closed door of a seminar room.

Iben is shouting. How do you explain this?

Malene opens the door just as Iben starts to read from the screen of her laptop: It is a well-known fact that the lifelong trauma affecting people who have survived severe torture will include vivid, intensely painful flashbacks in which they reexperience all their past suffering. Such recall phenomena are triggered every time they see something that reminds them of the torture. The militiamen entering the Omarska camps manipulated the flashback phenomenon with endless inventiveness. Mirko Zigic, now wanted by the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, and one of his soldiers, Dragan Jelisic !

Iben stops dramatically and stares at Camilla, who cant seem to stop crying. She continues to read: And one of his soldiers, Dragan Jelisic, thought up the trick of placing bottles of Coca-Cola within sight of prisoners being tortured. For decades to come, survivors of their torture will relive the full terror of the destructive pain they were once subjected to every time they see a bottle of c.o.ke. And where in the world can they hide from the occasional sight of a bottle of Coca-Cola?

Anne-Lise, who has been perched on the edge of a table, gets up. This man was your lover!

Camilla somehow looks like a scolded schoolgirl. But I didnt know it back then. She looks up at them. It was dreadful when I found out. Thats why I went for the job in the Center. You know me. I think things like that are terrible, and you must know me better than that!

How long were you and Dragan together? Iben asks.

Four months.

Camilla is weeping even louder now, her head in her hands. Iben makes a move to put her arms around her, but Camilla angrily waves her away.

Now they can only stand and look. Theyre at a loss. No one has switched on the lights despite the gray day. The dull daylight turns the walls the color of damp cardboard and makes the tabletops look like pools of stagnant water. Iben and Anne-Lise are drained of color too.

Iben puts down her computer on a table and Malene walks over to it. Iben was reading from an e-mailed selection of scanned book pages from Days of Blood and Singing, and the source is someone working for the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. The e-mail arrived during Anitas lecture.

Camilla wraps her arms around herself. Her eyes have a distant look and she speaks in a soft, low voice: He wasnt at all like the way they describe him in that book. I was with him before I got together with Finn. Dragan cared about me even though Im so fat. He didnt mind my body.

Malene looks from the computer screen to Camillas body, which doesnt appear to be overweight at all.

Anne-Lise takes up the questioning. Where did you meet?

At a party. He was such a little guy, almost weedy. He looked like hed never hurt a flea. I felt sorry for him. He was a refugee, chased out of his own country. He said that his three sisters had been raped by Bosnians. They killed the girls afterward. He told me all that, and he seemed so unhappy that I I dont know. Anyway, we met afterward and then again.

Camilla wipes her face on her sleeve. And he says everything about him in that book isnt true.

Iben is still clearly agitated, but her voice is quieter. Did it ever occur to you that a man like Jelisic, who has killed hundreds of human beings, might lie to you?

Camilla doesnt answer. They are all silent.

After a while Camilla speaks again. He admitted that he had done bad things. Countless people did, thats true. But he wasnt at all like that when I met him. And he didnt want to talk about it. He was so torn up inside.

Do you still see him? Iben asks.

No, I dont of course I dont.

Have you seen him since you read this book?

No.

But you did ask him if what the book said was true isnt that what youve just said?

Its strange to see Camilla like this. She always seemed so sensible. Now its as if she were someone else. Her crying and transparent lies remind Malene of what Grith had told them about women with DID, especially the part about them being subjected to abuse as children. Often one of their ident.i.ties tends to be a distressed child.

Iben takes a deep breath. Are our views of this man really so far apart? When you believed he had sent you that hate e-mail, you seemed terrified. More frightened than we were and you still are. Why?

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