GENE 22
My heart weeps for the few young people left in this wizened land. Not so long ago, they still had the right to read, write and act as wisely or as foolishly as their fore fathers beore them. How quickly it all changed! This new, self imposed bondage, that is leading a free thinking people to nestle cautiously on the soft bosom of a languihing limbo-land, began soon after the disruptive consequences of the ‘We’ll show them vote.’
The purpose had been to shock the nation silly, so that radical changes could flower in spring time parades, like thistle-down on hot air. A sure way to get yesterdays’ leftovers dished up again in a different sauce. The fiercely annoyed, who had aimed to upset the established apple-eaters as they strolled breezily through exclusive market places; the unthinking mono-toned pledged to tightening their country’s many stringed identity and the luckless careworn, who could bear no more, toguether, provoked a far greater pandemonium than their short sighted vision had imagined. Those who longed for a Little Mother of the People, a Big Brother or a Jack-in-the-Box Grandad, soon discovered what powerful shadows lurked behind these childish games.
Leaderless, fiery riots followed hard on the down trodden heels of the wide spread panic they had called into being. It was as if the obscure dens under the brightly decorated arena had suddenly bust wide open to let years of accumulated discontent and misundersandings spring out, all set to draw blood and enjoy terrorising, with their savage roars and brutal charges, the sleek matadors proudly prancing and grinning ‘sos cape’. Finally, with the help of expert mediators from neighbouring countries and strongly armed forces of order, the surviving leaders agreed to coalesce and create a new brand of state control that is now secretly envied by more than one anxious government (and you might be surprised to discover which), facing unpredictable violence, unprecedented, ecomic challenges and nature’s on going mercurial tantrums, in this the chaotic second decade of the twenty-first century.
They came knocking on the door of my little council house, these newly grown rebels, for they needed somewhere to meet and plan unheeded. At the time? I was plodding on quietly in a forgotten cul-de-sac that had been built like a modrn version of a Cathare fortress, against a steep, scooped out hill side overlooking the river: ‘Château H.L.M.’ as one of my sons baptised on his first visit. I had even become a protected member of this, neglected community.
The latter happened by accident or rather it was due to a foolish presumption on my part, beleiving I was still capable, at my age, of dashing after a passing bus: having twisted my knee, I was limping and cursing to the nearest bench when, God’s gift to silly, old biddies, strode out of the public transport, insisting on calling a cab to take me home. M. Dieusidon, the enthusiastic leader of the local choir: “such a success! So many would like to join us, that we just can’t accept them all! Such a long waiting list too§” he boasted ptoudly on the way to my house, and he wouldn’t let me go until his do-goody conscience had succeded i palming me off with some volunteers to help me cope with every day practicalities. I was suitably outraged at such an imposition and said so loud and clear, to no avail. However, this very same, strong resistance, proved to become an asset when the young people sent to set me right, turned out to be in great need them selves. Rapidly, the five o’clock tea time sessions were organised and with the authorities blessing into the bargain.
These muzzled younsters, (we still haven’t learnt any lessons from our passed mistakes, for those who were supposed to guide them, have been turned into wary warders), talked and talked, their stilted speech coming out in sudden gushes, gradually filling up the small, enclosed space like one of those intermittent fountains that fascinate curious travellers who have the time and patience to wait and see it happen.
I listened and nodded, hoping they would eventually find their own way, not only in this lopsided world, but also to a place that would hold some sense and meaning for them. They touched me to the quick with thei plain questions, shrugs of doubt and the first, hesitant steps they took to heave themselves out of the common pools of moonshine that have been drained of live symbols, to leave only foul smelling, dead letters and the clanging repetitions of rusty ideals.
“You’re a bit harsh, aren’t you?” ventured Jenny one of the students, “We’re not as pessimitic as you are.”
“Ok, you’re quite right to knock my prickly pride down a peg or two!” I agreed laughing and glad to see them more sanguine about their future than I was.
“To tell the truth,” added Angus her friend, “In spite of all your blustering, I don’t feel as if you’re either wholly with us or totally against them! It’s difficult to fathom out what you really beleive or even who you are!”
I smiled. They presented a heartening couple, as they stood bravely toguether, boldly colourful, against a background of misery and gloom. I admired their energy and determination to make a go of it here and now, when so many of their generation had either been thrown out of the country or scurried away to some other, precarious paradise. It was largely due to their efforts that the ‘Slamming Matches’ had come about. These not only helped us to let rip, under controlled conditions, but also forced us to work through the many prejudices we entertained, including those concerning each other.
On that day, Micky quickly took up Angus’ remark, making a song and dance of it, lodly accompanied by the cries and clapping comments of the rest of the group:
Doubting Moma
Big Moma two-shoes
hopped round her bed
with one foot in red
the other in blues
for she has no clue
on which to stay
so she spent the day
trying hard instead
to stand on her head
at the end of the queue!
As I was’nt quick enough to answer off the cuff, I delegated a willing champion, Sylvere, to do it for me:
The Little Big Home
No scorn
no lip
no honking horn
no sour pip no prim laws
no spitting talk
no crawling on all fours
no goose like walk
only an open door
and room for more
in a four-square place
witha human face.
It was all in good fun and I learnt a great deal, not least I discovered just how low I had sunk before their coming. The interfering choir master seemed to have inadvertently (or did the cunning old so and so know what he was about?) given a helping hand to heave me out of the bleak hole I had gradually slipped into, which, I must concede, was no mean achievement.
I was also very amused to learn what an awful reputation I had gained in the area since, to justify the frequent visits of different peaople, the youngsters complained to all and sundry, putting it about that, seeing I was a cantankerous, old baggage and an unsociable recluse to boot, they had decided to devote their obligatory, community service to the difficult task of revamping my ugly soul. AsM. Dieusidon had been on the receiving end of my ungrateful anger, he could well beleive it and encouraged his protégés to do their best or worse, depending on which side of God’s fence you happen to be. I do beleive we could have continued merrily on till death did us part, had it not been for some of the Gene 22 people, popularly known as the ‘Crummy Chroms’, wanting to jump on our ready made band-waggon.
It was a great shock to me when I realised I was ‘one of that odd lot; or rather, it happened the other way around for, I’d been told in a dream, some years before it was officially recognised, about ” cette part de mystère” as one carrier poetically described what soon became a real storm in the scientific test tubes.
Twenty two per cent of some people’s genomic history unaccouted for; it was a lot, too much in fact, to shrug away in a ‘we must know all’ society. Laboratory technicians had tweeked out all the useful titbits concerning European, Asian, Amerindian and other traceble origins of modern makind. Now, this unqualified, impertinentheritage that stubbornly refused to yield its provenance, like an alien arriving from the Antipodes without a reference, worried sick the world’s efficient classifiers. Had there been just one or two or even three, out of tune players in life’s Big Bazzar’s Performance, no one would have given the matter a second thought. They would have graciously allowed the odd human being to keep his or hers ‘Petit coin dans l’ombre’ unmolested.
The problem was that some bright spark, determined to be distinguished by the ever moving beams of scientific limelight, had run to ground quite a considerable number, scattered throughout the terrestial globe, of these sly bundles, hidden in mankind’s genetic haystack.
Luckily foe me, the fact rhat i hadn’t under gone any medical tests for ages and ages, and that nobody was bothered enough to notice, meant i got away with a great deal in this frantically busy world, where commercial research projects flourish like molehills on a once much loved childrens’ playground. Funds taken from social and cultural associations ‘recession’ olblige’, fell squarely and massively into private money bags, all in the good cause so many of us blindly contributed to, with well intentioned, marathon like dediction.
“The challenge presented by subjects with twenty two per cent of their genes unidentified, opens the way towards exiting and yet unexplored fields of discovery,” the newly appointed Professor explained when interviewed during a televised confrence.
“These carriers appear perfectly normal and lead very ordinairy lives, just like you and…” here the brilliant expert paused, unable to associate himself, even for a joking second, to what was rapidly being cast as a sinister anomaly, “…and everybody else.” he concluded with a thin smile.
“So,” enquired one of the hand-picked journalists, a rare species nowadays, since few have survived whispering blogs and wily censures, “in which direction are you looking? What do you think lurks behind this mystery some of your collaborators and many politicians believe to be a serious dfect?”
“And a potentially dangerous one to boot!” chipped in another, who dealt in the sensationally only.
This very same question, which just goes to show that big guns and nippy, battering cudgels do have a lot in common, had been playing havoc with the researcher’s little, grey cells during many a sleepless, long night. He now looked down on his captive audience like a father who has learnt how to zigzag through a grown ups’ minefield.
“This is the most vitally important ‘raison d’être’ of our team’s continuing trials,” he hammered on each syllable so that the noise would make up for the lack of information. Some thinge never change!
“Are you implying, professor, that you still don’t have the faintest idea if there is any real purpose behind this difference?” a questioner risqued reviving the ancient art of trying to get to the truth. “What is the point of it all? These people do not seem to have any particular use!”
For, of course, that is the be all and end all of all activity today. There are shrines to speed, usefulness and efficiency not only in every board room but also in each and every clasroom, hospital and any other sphere of life you care to think of, be it picking blackberries, catching theives or laudering overalls.
The new darling of the alembic manupilators, laughed goodnaturedly, to show he was not above joining in a bit of harmless fun:
“We will!” he declared, becoming serious again, “and that’s a promise!” he added, pointing a ‘just you wait and see’ finger, “well, Ladies and Gentlmen, duty calls!”
As he swept out of the room with a curt wave, some thought they’d heard a hoary, old free-lancer murmur:
“They have replaced yesterda’s cheap horoscopes with the new, occult ppractice of gene readings! I fa coumo se fioulabos a la luno!” and he wasn’t far wrong, for, in private, the technicians did feel as if hey were whistling like hungry wolves to an out of reach moon. They were so bothered, troubled and bewildered that, the ruling powers decided to keep all the detected subjects on multiple files, criminal or otherwise and granted, no questions asked, any expenses remotely concerned with that sphere of research.
*
The arrow head of the local Gene 22 group was the father of one of the students. I was both impressed and not a little annoyed with their forceful methods; but there again,they needed to be bold and enterprising in order to get their project on the road. Very quickly, they completly took over our fumbling discussions, arguing that they, at least, had a definite aim and a plan of action.They didn’t just meet for the fun of it or the pleasure of being toguether, they had a mission to accomplish.
Although I’d opened my door and welcomed them gladly when they landed on my doorstep, they got not much futher than making free use of my small living room, since I didn’t reveal how closely linked we were. I wasn’t sure why: partly good, old, natural self-preservation; but I suppose it was also due to my being so fiercely independent, always prompt to question and distrust, especially now, any bunch of followers dedicated to one, single-minded purpose, however attractive it might seem. I was a citizen of no particular country,; had lived in several, very different houses; tackled numerous jobs and felt shut in by anything ending in an ‘ism’. I belonged nowhere and to no one. Only once had I come close to feeling at home amongst similar thinking companions, but even then, a vital part of me remained outside, too fearful, I presume, to consent to complete immersion. And so there is always a fair bit of me sticking out of any situation I happen to be involved in, lije a square clot in a round flower bed.
Over the weeks that followed the first visit, the new group increased, causing me much worry despite my priviledged status, for there were now thirteen would-be-adventurers, ready to abandon everything and set off on on a wild goose chase as some called the proposed expedition.The latest theoty put forward by M. Christophe Bombard, one of the three leaders, not only caught the attention and imagination of the people concerned, but also, rumour had it, was being seriously considered as a working hypothesis by various laboratories.
After much searching and poring over those ancient documents still availiable, the specialist became convinced that the fact of the twenty two per-cent unclassified genes implied the existence of an unknown, yet to be discovered continent:
“It’s the obvious, the only logical deduction we can reasonably make!” he argued, ” our ancestors lived outside the recognised limits of this carefully mille-metered earth.”
Thus began the quest for what the group named ‘a tremendous land….where second-to-none beings’ would not only offer asylum but more importantly reveal to this gone-astray-race, their true roots. They named the lost land: Nomedia and each man, woman and child was ready to stake his or her life :
“In cérca d’une tèrre que se trapa pas su la mapa dèls omès.”
“à la recherche d’une terre introuvable sur la carte déssinée par les hommes.”
“in search for a land imperceptible on a map drawn by mankind.”
I was fairly sceptic but interested to discover what varied ideas and visions each member of the expedition nurtured concerned the character of this legendary destination. What did they expect? Was it the kind of place to make your heart swing, your toes start to tap,and your arms to wave in rhythm to a brand new melody? Did they imagine it wreathed in violet smiles or jutting out like a rude question mark?
One young man brought a poem he’d found on a second hand book stall(for, yes, strangely enough, they still exist) He movingly shared a few lines with us:
“Parler d’un lieu à soi..
…d’un étrange paysage en constant mouvement…
parler d’un lieu qui n’existe pas sur la carte
lieu absent nulle part indiqué
comme un feu qui s’éteint
dans la nuit.”
(Joan-Pou-Creissac)
On another occasion, an unexpected contribution was made by professor Gérard Malivois, a university lecturer, when he claimed to have dug out a document in the attic of his great uncle, who had been a captain in the merchant navy. Here’s the passage that put the backbiting cat among the cooing pigeons:
“In Nomedia, people are selected before they are born, according to their genotypes. Nomedians invented biology before religion ( actually, they could not see the point in religion and discarded it right away) and they just know that every human character is linked to a specific gene.
Whenever a Nomedian comes of age ( that is when he/she chooses to) he/she goes toa civil lab facility where the chosen genes are allowed to express themselves in public. As a consequence, Nomedians are not supposed to go against their chosen natures and therefore they can’t afford failures in theit field of experience. This is why professional mistakes are punished by instant death. Nomedia is a placefor competent people only.”
We all stered at him disbelieving, mouths wide open, not because this solem declaration was sensational or violent (we had heard that kind of twisted twaddle so many times before), on the contrary, the awkward silence troubled by nervy coughs and much clearing of irritated throats, was due to the deadening effect it had on every one present. We had expected news, good news, inside information that would boost anxious herats and act like a hope giving bulletin or a startling tonic. Instead, all we got was a cold dollop taken out of lats night’s factory made, defrosted packet. A few looked round the room at no one in particilar, trying to decide if it wasn’t some sort of clever ‘mot pour rire’, or worse still, a wilfull attempt to sabotage the whole project.
“But…but…well, that’s a thundering anti-climax if I ever heard one! Where’s the attraction in that! What’s the point in going if that’s all there is to it!” cried M. Bringuiboul a chemist, looking very disappointed.
“That’s just what’s beginning to happen here!” took up Juanita, a mother, “It’s all we’re trying to get our children away from!”
“I can’t understand it,” grumbled Brenda a nurse, “he’s always been dead against that sort of rubbish..or so he said!”
They avoided looking at the dream breaker, and talked as if he was no longer with them.
“A skiff in peril needs to lash on to something bigger than itself, if it wants to keep afloat.” commented Abdul-Din-Zigami, a pilot.
“What does it mean?” the professor managed to get a word in.
“It just goes to prove what funny solutions we can come up with when fear’s the problem.”
“Has he made it all up?” asked Jim Sullivan, a businessman familiar with strageic moves.
“No!” Djilan, one of the young ones replied, ” I fink ‘e’s sniffed somefink that’s gone to ‘is ‘ead!”
I nodded in assent. A whiff carried by a passing breeze, that suddenly provoked a feeling of homesickness.
As their plans took shape and started to materialise in the form of a very unusual, very technically sophisticated craft, my own search had also led me to a crossroad.I felt more and more hounded, nd pushed further along an invisible path that wound its serpentine ribbon between the devil and the deep blue sea.
I had read a lot about the different ways on how to get into the lost land. Each one of us had to follow a particilar journey corresponding to his or her needs. The adventurous groupwould take the high road full of toil, trouble and excitement and I would plunge alone into the dark, unknown of the lowland path.
For some of us no ships, no maps, no fabulous machines would be necessary, being already knee deep in everyman’s helpful dreams and goading nightmares.
Sue Cayre
01/04/2007
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