He expects her to clam up; instead, she sighs.
“My area of expertise is genetic engineering, not forecasting. Trust me, we already know more than enough to address questions whose answers are not at all categorical or definitive. In the matter of research, everything is progress. Every mistake, every impasse, every recorded failure contributes to the evolution of knowledge. At the risk of sounding cynical, I would add that so too does every catastrophe, and in a sense it’s all growing increasingly removed from the Darwinian definition of adaptation.”
Jeroen takes a moment to reflect. He has the feeling that Sun Hee has just distilled for him a part of the secret she never shares with anyone.
“So selection is becoming less and less natural, is that it?”
“By forcing ourselves to control it, we’ve entered the era of a synthetic evolution, which we must adjust to at a rate that is constantly accelerating. If, paradoxically, this is a consequence of evolution, it demands that we adapt more rapidly than any species has ever had to do. In terms of cost—and I’m not talking about money so much as research time—it’s becoming less expensive to modify the human population to adapt to the conditions it imposes than to maintain a viable ecosystem for us to live in today. But we’re not ready for that investment. Our reasoning is not only short-term, it’s illogical.”
Jeroen is staggered. “You’re talking about genetically modifying human beings?”
“Does that shock you?”
“You might say that, yes.”
“And yet we’ve been doing just that for a long time, if only with pesticides, antibiotics, polluting agents, vaccines, and many other deliberately harmful vectors.”
“And GMOs.”
“That’s a chapter in the dissertation my thesis director doesn’t see coming.”
Jeroen strokes his chin. “Didn’t you say that you wouldn’t talk about it?”
“I only said I wouldn’t answer questions concerning my motivations.” There is more than a hint of mischief in Sun Hee’s smile. “My work raises ethical issues that are impossible to resolve within an ethical framework. And this is the fundamental dilemma that genetic engineering presents. Knowledge cannot be unknown, and it’s unrealistic to think that we can limit it to rational use, because it generates its own reasons.”
“Okay . . . and what do you do work on, exactly?”
“Chimeras.”
* * *
Described in a few simple terms, Sun Hee’s chimeras turn out to be rather unexciting and much less fantastical than those envisioned by Jeroen. To his travel companion’s surprise, he doesn’t seem to take offense. Nothing truly shocks him anymore, he who has over the past year calmly watched his world expand beyond the confines of rationality. Sun Hee plays the sorcerer’s apprentice, mixing genes to create improbable organisms. And so? Jeroen’s world tipped over into improbability on the day a certified letter informed him that he was the sole inheritor of an abandoned house in the middle of Uccle. He, a drifting, penniless student who was living in a tiny basement room between the Gare du Midi and the Parvis de Saint-Gilles, found himself the owner of a crooked little farmhouse that had been in use through the middle of the twentieth century, and a small, enclosed plot of scrubland. A reversal of fortune, in a sense, fortune with its inevitable hidden face, and the madness that lurks in its crevices, waiting for the moment to come forth and thrive.
Sun Hee has not fully revealed her secret, but she’s given Jeroen enough material to imagine what it might be. He can trust her with his. He feels the need to tell her before their paths diverge. Not knowing how to begin, he asks: “You want to hear about something even more demented than your genetic chimeras?”
She studies him carefully. “You’ll have to be brief. I get off at Gare Centrale.”
“Me too.” Reading the suspicion on her face, he quickly adds, “And I have no intention of following you out of the station to finish my story.”
She relaxes. “Well then, I’m listening.”
Jeroen takes a long breath and begins: “I live in a house that’s bigger than the space it occupies. I have no idea how many rooms it contains or how they’re laid out. It seems to me that that they’re constantly being rearranged—”
“You’re right, that is demented.” She grins skeptically, a little peeved.
“Not all that much.”
“In books, perhaps, Jeroen, but not in real life.”
Jeroen knows he should quit now. He just doesn’t want to. “I stopped placing boundaries on reality after I moved into this house. Knowing that what I’m telling you can be explained away by psychiatry doesn’t keep me from experiencing it as completely tangible.”
Sun Hee raises her eyebrows. “But that doesn’t make it real.”
“If you didn’t modify the genes of different organisms, would your chimeras even have a chance to exist?”
She contemplates the question for a long moment before responding: “Infinitesimal. What are you getting at?”
“You construct a reality that wouldn’t exist without your manipulation. Perhaps my brain is doing the same thing. I live in a house that seems infinite, I talk with ghosts, and my only true friend is a five-hundred-year-old fictional character.”
For the first time, Jeroen has told someone everything. He expects nothing to come of it. So he turns toward the window to put an end to the conversation, but meets Sun Hee’s reflection once again. She must have turned her head at the same moment. He makes a face, shrugs his shoulders. She imitates him. They smile halfheartedly.
The train slows down and clatters over the switches. Sun Hee stands to take her small suitcase down from the overhead compartment, stuffs her tablet inside, throws on a cardigan. The journey is over; the spell has been broken. All that’s left is to exchange a polite goodbye.
Sun Hee surprises Jeroen: “What is your friend’s name?”
“Till Ulenspiegel.”
“I don’t know of him, but I’m going to do some research.”
“Research?” Jeroen is bewildered, but since she nods her head, he adds: “In French, his name is Till l’Espiègle—the merry trickster. You really take me seriously?”
The train comes to a stop.
“I take your analogies seriously.”
She starts moving down the aisle. Jeroen grabs his bag and follows her.
“My analogies?”
She turns around and looks at him strangely. “Your house is just as immeasurable as my field of research. Chimeras or ghosts, the reality we construct depends on how we change the one we live in. Now I just have to find my trickster, Jeroen. For that and for your company, I thank you.”
She turns back around, leaving Jeroen to his astonishment, and slips into the stream of passengers exiting the train car. He lets two people move past him, then steps down onto the platform, scans the crowd from right to left, finds her in front of him. She had stepped aside to wait.
“I’m taking the metro, line 5,” she says. “I guess you have to take the tram.”
“The 92.”
“Not the same exit.”
“No.”
They’re equally embarrassed.
“I . . .” he begins.
She stops him, shaking her head. “I’m happy to have met you. I thank you again, Jeroen, and I hope you find your way.” She nods at the escalator a few meters to her right. “Mine leaves you here.”
He does his best to smile knowingly. “May the force be with you, Sun Hee. Light or dark, no matter, since you make your own midi-chlorians.”
She acknowledges the joke with a smile, rises up on her tiptoes, and quickly kisses him on the cheek before hurrying toward the escalator. He watches her for a moment, hoping she might turn around, then gives up and walks toward the staircase nearest his exit, the scent of cinnamon on his skin. Beneath the cinnamon, he also detects clove, nutmeg, and a hint of pepper. Jeroen imagines he’ll remember this each time he seasons certain dishes.
As he reaches the staircase,
he feels an emptiness in his chest, a pang of regret foretelling many more that will accompany those same dishes. An urgency. He reaches for the handrail, trembling, and grips it firmly to brace himself against the irrational feelings that rush over him; he laughs at himself, takes a deep breath, and leaps with all his strength up the stairs, four at a time, struggling not to bump into anyone, excusing himself when necessary. He is too young to be haunted by regrets.
* * *
Jeroen doesn’t like the Gare de Bruxelles-Centrale, which, for him, prefigures the architectural horrors of bruxellisation, but he knows its history—from its original design by Victor Horta to Metzger’s recent renovations—as well as its every nook and cranny, its hallways, shops, and galleries. He could run through the station with his eyes closed, if it weren’t for the nearly two hundred thousand passengers crowding its six platforms every day. Even today, a Saturday, at this hour of light traffic, he has to hug the walls, weave through the crowd, and jump over the suitcases passengers drag behind rather than beside them.
Finally, he arrives at the foot of the main hall and the three staircases that climb toward the departures board. Ten steps, one narrow landing. Ten more, a second landing. And the last five steps up to the hall itself. There aren’t many people on the staircase. Twenty or so. Sun Hee’s slight silhouette is easy to pick out. She reaches the second landing, her tiny suitcase in hand.
Jeroen stops, hesitates. In a few seconds he could catch up with her. He feels both relieved and ridiculous; bold enough to risk everything and incapable of forming a sentence; his thoughts racing but the words eluding him; wiser than he’s ever been, clumsy as an adolescent.
Then everything slows down, even his heart, which only beats harder. His field of vision blurs and widens, distorting into a kind of fish-eye lens; his brain swims, as it does whenever this happens to him. A bit more than the other times, in fact. Probably because he’s remembering the events linked to each previous incident, and the trauma that followed. Jeroen forces himself to calm the anxiety roiling up from his subconscious. He breathes gently, deeply, and the scene comes into focus, piece by piece, until he can see what it is that caused him to panic.
Above him, to the right of a staircase, a man on a mountain bike leans against a column. His helmet looks more like a motorcyclist’s than a regular bicycle helmet, with an opaque visor covering his cheekbones and most of his nose. His visor turned in Sun Hee’s direction, the man plunges his hand into his half-opened jacket.
Jeroen’s vision returns to normal; the scene accelerates. He runs up the staircase as the man bolts away from the column. Sun Hee begins walking up the last flight of stairs.
The cyclist’s left hand emerges from his jacket. His arm points toward Sun Hee, elongated by a gun that thunders twice in the direction of the Korean student.
The bike continues to race toward the exit on rue de l’Infante Isabelle.
Sun Hee flies backward.
Jeroen reaches the second landing, opens his arms, catches the falling young woman, leans forward to keep from being thrown back along with her, and kneels down as Sun Hee collapses, her head on his lap.
* * *
The cyclist has disappeared. Two young people who tried to stop him each took a bullet in the head and lay lifeless on the ground. Several more shots rang out in the street. Jeroen looks only at Sun Hee, can see nothing but her chest covered in blood, can do nothing but try to keep the glimmer of life in her eyes from fading as they look into his.
People rush toward them, some taking out their cell phones to call the police or emergency services. Others stand there filming or taking photos. Normally, Jeroen would have cursed them out. Now, he doesn’t give a damn; Sun Hee is dying.
She raises her hand, he clasps it in his.
She smiles, he holds back tears.
She looks serene, he hides his despair.
They are just as they were in the short time they knew each other. Day and night. Yin and yang. For her, they are two forces in equilibrium, perfectly complementary. For him, they are a universe that will not have had time to expand. She opens her mouth slightly, a trickle of blood comes out.
“I was sure, you know.”
“The cyclist?” he guesses.
A clot of bloody mucus stifles Sun Hee’s laughter. “That you wouldn’t give up.”
“I won’t give up.”
She can no longer speak without coughing; she has to communicate with her eyes, and seeing the resignation in them, he responds with even greater determination.
“I won’t give up,” he repeats.
Sun Hee’s eyes tell him he’s only trying to convince himself, that she wishes she were able to fight with him, that she thanks him. Then they close. She is still here, with him, but she has no more strength. Life is leaving her.
Jeroen squeezes her hand a little tighter to remind her that he won’t give up, but it’s a promise anchored in helplessness. They’re alone in the middle of a crowd that neither one of them hears or sees any longer, a crowd the security guards have started to disperse as they cordon off the area to allow access to the paramedics. The sirens are still far off; death is near.
There’s nothing more Jeroen can do, only close his eyes and plead with the ghosts that Sun Hee took as metaphorical, try to summon the first one who had intruded on his life, until then so full of certainty; the one who’d been watching over him long before he became a spirit. His grandfather.
* * *
Bompa, help me.
But Bompa doesn’t hear him. Bompa only appears, only has any influence, in the house without end, in Uccle, so far south of the city.
Bompa, please.
Suddenly, a presence fills his spirit.
I don’t know how to help you, ketje.
His grandfather’s voice rings false to Jeroen. It holds true sadness for him and compassion for Sun Hee, but Bompa’s words are deceiving. When he says know, he doesn’t only mean can, as any Belgian would; he also, secretly, means want.
You don’t want to. Why not, Bompa?
I’m sorry, ketje. I can see that you’re sweet on this stranger, but what you don’t know about her isn’t worth the price you’d have to pay.
The young Korean’s hand is growing cold in Jeroen’s.
What don’t I know, Bompa?
Look at her, ketje. She accepts her death like someone settling a payment.
You mean she doesn’t want to live?
No, she loves life. Today, she loves it more than anything. It’s the gift you gave her, and she doesn’t want to waste it.
What gift?
How do you expect me to know? I can only feel her emotions.
Jeroen understands that his grandfather is trying to stall for what little time Sun Hee has left, to put off answering his grandson.
What do I have to do, Bompa?
He replies with a sigh.
Bompa!
Nothing less than to offer her half the life you’ve left, ketje.
I don’t understand.
I don’t know a better way to tell you. It’s something you must draw on deep within yourself. A heartbeat, a pulse—all of your strength. Make it into a ball of lightning and project it into her.
Jeroen doesn’t need to summon the strength his grandfather’s ghost evokes—it’s already rising up out of his desperation.
Ketje, it’s inevitable. You’ll die in the same second, halfway through what would have been the rest of your life.
I don’t believe in destiny, Bompa.
And I never believed in ghosts or balls of lightning. You don’t know what you’re giving away. You don’t know what you’re losing—in months, in years, in decades. Do you think I enjoy being nothing more than a specter? Do you think I have no regrets?
Jeroen is no longer listening; he doesn’t want to hear anymore, but can’t keep himself from remembering that he never knew his father’s mother, who died before he was born, and that the one he called Bomma passed away on the same night as Bo
mpa.
You did it!
Not me, ketje. Bomma. And it pains me to think of what I stole from her by accepting her gift.
Between his stomach and his heart, the ball of energy continues to swell and finally overwhelms Jeroen’s spirit. Sun Hee’s hand tightens around his, then goes limp. Jeroen leans over her, rests his forehead against hers, and lets out, in one breath, half of what would have been the rest of his life.
* * *
Sun Hee’s back arches, her hand grips Jeroen’s fingers, her eyelids open. She suddenly breathes in the air her lungs were missing.
Jeroen sits up, smiles, caresses her forehead without taking his eyes off hers, winks at her.
“I don’t know how to give up,” he whispers. “That’s my secret. One day, perhaps you’ll tell me yours.”
The sirens have stopped wailing. The emergency paramedics are rushing between the security cordons, immediately followed by police. One of them asks Jeroen to move aside while two paramedics kneel down by Sun Hee.
“Stand up, sir,” insists the policeman. “She’s in good hands. We’ll let you visit her at urgent care as soon as possible.”
A paramedic supports Sun Hee’s head in order to allow Jeroen to stand. He does so, reluctantly.
“He’s coming with me,” says Sun Hee. “He’s my trickster.”
The Killer Wore Slippers
BY NADINE MONFILS
Place du Jeu de Balle
Hick in the daytime and pinup at night: that was the life of Jefke Vanwafels, a.k.a Mimi Castafiore after dark. No one in all of Brussels would have suspected this affable retiree of supplementing his pension by giving blow jobs in the Bois de la Cambre, dolled up like a whore in flea-market frocks.
Jefke spent his days in sweatpants and slippers, quietly tending his garden full of plaster gnomes. He was well-liked in his part of the Marolles; the local shopkeepers were fond of him, and he willingly lent a hand to his elderly neighbors. He even helped some of the merchants to pack up their goods at the end of the market day; then they’d go and throw back a few Mort Subites at Willy’s or la Clef d’Or. Since Marcel’s joint had disappeared, they were left to carry on wherever a bit of the city’s soul survived, knowing that one day soon, Brussels as they knew it would be as good as gone, thanks to those asshole real-estate developers. Sometimes, he visited his mother at the Bergamot nursing home in Schaerbeek, and brought her tomatoes he’d grown on his balcony (the garden, of course, being reserved for the gnomes). Oh, little lamb . . .
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