Sergeant Wulf looked like an animal that lacked the guts for the kill. ‘A Dane!’ Tanne repeated, her thoughts scurrying through a moral and patriotic maze. ‘A fellow Dane?’ ‘Tanne, quiet.’ She had never seen her father so angry. But she was past caring. ‘Why?’ Constable Juncker said simply, ‘Denmark needs to be healed.’ Tanne was speechless. On hearing this idiotic remark, the fragments of thought which had been swirling around in her head for months cohered and became clear. Herr Hitler was not only mad and bad, but capable of infecting the whole world with his madness and badness. She opened her mouth to object, then caught her mother’s eye. Don’t. She heard Aage’s voice replaying in her head their old university rhetoric. Democracy. Freedom. New dawn. What would Aage be making of the war? Tanne knew the answer. Aage would declare he was sickened to his guts and the country, supine and spineless, was damned. (Once upon a time, she had been a little in love with Aage until she realized that his passionate demagoguery disguised a bully.) When the men first burst in on their dinner, Tanne reckoned that Constable Juncker might be stupid, an impression she held until she encountered his cunning, calculating gaze and revised her opinion.
What do You think about I Can't Begin To Tell You?
