“He’s good,” Fjeldberg kept stressing. “Very good. Plenty of publications, a visionary. But not terribly well liked.”
“Why not?”
“He’s rather eccentric,” Fjeldberg said, bluntly. “But then again, who isn’t around here?”
“Can you be more specific?” Søren pressed him. Fjeldberg thought about it.
“Erik Tybjerg has been associated with this museum since he was fourteen years old. I first heard about him through a friend who worked with his foster father, and I contacted him at the beginning of the 1980s. Tybjerg has a photographic memory and he knows everything there is to know about birds. I tasked him with reviewing the collection, and he organized and arranged the whole thing and has been maintaining it ever since. He knows every bone fragment and every feather in every drawer. He graduated as a biologist, but though he has been a fixture in this place for the last twenty-five years, I don’t really know him. We’ve worked together on several occasions, most recently in connection with a feather exhibition currently on public display upstairs. You must have experienced this yourself: some people you just can’t get close to. Dr. Tybjerg is one such person. He always talks about his subject in an odd, rather chanting manner, and he works nonstop. My wife will tell you I work far too much, you have to in this business. The competition is very stiff. But I’m a slacker compared to Dr. Tybjerg. He’s always here. In the Vertebrate Collection, in the corridor outside the collection, in his basement office, or in the cafeteria. Always. Last year, I even ran into him on Christmas Eve.” Fjeldberg looked at Søren and added. “I had left my wife’s Christmas present behind in my office, and I stopped by around 3 p.m. to pick it up. All the lights were off, and I could have sworn I was alone. Suddenly I heard footsteps. I turned around, thinking it must be the security guard, but it was Tybjerg. He was carrying a bag of shopping and seemed to be in a good mood. We wished each other a Merry Christmas and as he was about to leave, I casually said, ‘Aren’t you going home for Christmas?’ He muttered something, but when I asked him to repeat it, he gave a different answer. He said he was an atheist. Like I said, he didn’t seem sad at all, or I would have invited him to spend Christmas with us—I mean, if he had no family to go to. But he seemed fine. Scientific work clearly is his whole life.”
Søren looked at Fjeldberg. They were back at the main entrance, where he had been met less than an hour ago.
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Søren said. “Dr. Tybjerg’s relatively young, he’s talented, he publishes prolifically, he’s dedicated and hard working, but according to your administrator with whom I spoke yesterday, he has never been offered tenure. Why on earth not?”
Professor Fjeldberg sighed, and Søren’s seismograph reacted.
“Personally, I’m not surprised—it’s a rare thing. We have to be selective, and there are many high-quality candidates out there.” Fjeldberg looked straight at Søren. “What does puzzle me is how Tybjerg manages to work here as though he had tenure. He must have found a way, I can see that, but where does he find the money to fund his research? Of course, he has worked with Helland on several of his projects, but that . . . that’ll come to an end now. I imagine he will be forced to apply for jobs abroad, and I think that would be a good thing. This is a very small pond, if you catch my drift. Dr. Tybjerg is hugely overqualified, scientifically speaking, but his social skills are poor. The University of Copenhagen is completely the wrong place for someone like him. Too many sharp elbows, too much professional jealousy, and meager prospects for an oddball like Tybjerg who can’t teach, nor should he; he should be allowed to get on with his specialized research. That would be the ideal solution: Enough money to invest in scientists with social and educational skills and also in experts who research exclusively within a narrow field. But we don’t have the money, it’s as simple as that. So we only hire people with sound subject knowledge and teaching qualifications, i.e., people who can get along with others and teach them something.”
“And Dr. Tybjerg isn’t one of those?”
“No,” Fjeldberg asserted with a forceful smile. “He isn’t.”
“Do you know Anna Bella Nor from Helland’s department?”
“Yes. Well, that’s to say, I know she’s his postgraduate student.”
Søren nodded. “And Tybjerg’s. According to Anna Bella, he’s her external supervisor, so he must have some teaching skills?”