Zadie Smith - White Teeth

Professor Marcus Chalfen, writer, celebrated scientist and leading figure of a group of research geneticists from St Jude’s College, intends to ‘launch’ his latest ‘design’ in a public space; to increase understanding of transgenics and to raise interest and further investment in his work. The design will demonstrate the sophistication of the work being done on gene manipulation and demystify this much maligned branch of biological research. It will be accompanied by a full exhibition, a lecture hall, a multimedia area and interactive games for children. It will be funded in part by the government’s Millennial Science Commission, with additional monies from business and industry.

A two-week-old FutureMouse ©is to be put on display at the Perret Institute in London on 31 December 1992. There it will remain on public display until 31 December 1999. This mouse is genetically normal except for a select group of novel genes that are added to the genome. A DNA clone of these genes is injected into the fertilized mouse egg, thus linking them to the chromosomal DNA in the zygote, which is subsequently inherited by cells of the resulting embryo. Before injection into the germ line, these genes are custom-designed so they can be ‘turned on’ and expressed only in specific mouse tissue and along a predictable timetable. The mouse will be the site for an experiment into the ageing of cells, the progression of cancer within cells, and a few other matters that will serve as surprises along the way!

The journalist laughed. ‘Jesus. What the fuck does that mean?’

‘I dunno,’ said Irie. ‘Surprises, I guess.’

She continued:

The mouse will live the seven years it is on display, roughly double the normal life expectancy of a mouse. The mouse development is retarded, therefore, at a ratio of two years for every one. At the end of the first year the SV40 large-T oncogene, which the mouse carries in the insulin-producing pancreas cells, will express itself in pancreatic carcinomas that will continue to develop at a retarded pace throughout its life. At the end of the second year the H-ras oncogene in its skin cells will begin to express itself in multiple benign papillomas that an observer will be able to see clearly three months later with the naked eye. Four years into the experiment the mouse will begin to lose its ability to produce melanin by means of a slow, programmed eradication of the enzyme tyrosinase. At this point the mouse will lose all its pigmentation and become albino: a white mouse. If no external or unexpected interference occurs, the mouse will live until 31 December 1999, dying within the month after that date. The FutureMouse ©experiment offers the public a unique opportunity to see a life and death in ‘close-up’. The opportunity to witness for themselves a technology that might yet slow the progress of disease, control the process of ageing and eliminate genetic defect. The FutureMouse ©holds out the tantalizing promise of a new phase in human history where we are not victims of the random but instead directors and arbitrators of our own fate.

‘Bloody hell,’ said the journo. ‘Scary shit.’

‘Yeah, I guess,’ said Irie vacantly (she had ten more calls to make this morning). ‘Do you want me to post on some of the photographic material?’

‘Yeah, go on. Save me going through the archive. Cheers.’

Just as Irie put down the phone, Joyce flew into the room like a hippy comet, a great stream of black fringed velvet, kaftan and multiple silk scarves.

‘Don’t use the phone! I’ve told you before. We’ve got to keep the phone free. Millat might be trying to ring.’

Four days earlier Millat had missed a psychiatrist’s appointment Joyce had arranged for him. He had not been seen since. Everyone knew he was with KEVIN, and everyone knew he had no intention of ringing Joyce. Everyone except Joyce.

‘It’s simply essential that I talk with him if he rings. We’re so close to a breakthrough. Marjorie’s almost certain it’s Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.’

‘And how come you know all this? I thought Marjorie was a doctor. What the fuck happened to doctor- patient privilege?’

‘Oh, Irie, don’t be silly. She’s a friend too. She’s just trying to keep me informed.’

‘Middle-class mafia, more like.’

‘Oh really . Don’t be so hysterical. You’re getting more hysterical by the day. Look, I need you to keep off the phone.’

‘I know. You said.’

‘Because if Marjorie’s right, and it is ADD, he really needs to get to a doctor and some methylphenidate. It’s a very debilitative condition.’

‘Joyce, he hasn’t got a disorder, he’s just a Muslim. There are one billion of them. They can’t all have ADD.’

Joyce took in a little gasp of air. ‘I think you’re being very cruel. That’s exactly the kind of comment that isn’t helpful.’

She stalked over to the bread board, tearfully cut off a huge lump of cheese and said, ‘Look. The most important thing is that I get the two of them to face each other. It’s time.’

Irie looked dubious. ‘Why is it time?’

Joyce popped the lump of cheese into her mouth. ‘It’s time because they need each other.’

‘But if they don’t want to, they don’t want to.’

‘Sometimes people don’t know what they want. They don’t know what they need. Those boys need each other like…’ Joyce thought for a moment. She was bad with metaphor. In a garden you never planted something where something else was meant to be. ‘They need each other like Laurel and Hardy, like Crick needed Watson-’

‘Like East Pakistan needed West Pakistan.’

‘Well, I don’t think that’s very funny, Irie.’

‘I’m not laughing, Joyce.’

Joyce cut more cheese from the block, tore two hunks of bread from a loaf, and sandwiched the three together.

‘The fact is both these boys have serious emotional problems and it’s not helped by Millat refusing to see Magid. It upsets him so much. They’ve been split by their religions, by their cultures. Can you imagine the trauma ?’

Irie wished at that moment she had allowed Magid to tell her to tell her to tell her. She would at least have had information. She would have had something to use against Joyce. Because if you listen to prophets, they give you ammunition. The nature of twins. The millionth position of pi (do infinite numbers have beginnings?). And most of all, the double meaning of the word cleave . Did he know which was worse, which more traumatic: pulling together or tearing apart?

‘Joyce, why don’t you worry about your own family for once? Just for a change. What about Josh? When’s the last time you saw Josh?’

Joyce’s upper lip stiffened. ‘Josh is in Glastonbury.’

‘Right. Glastonbury’s been over two months, Joyce.’

‘He’s doing a little travelling. He said he might.’

‘And who’s he with? You don’t know anything about those people. Why don’t you worry about that for a while, and keep the fuck out of everybody else’s business.’

Joyce didn’t even flinch at this. It is hard to explain just how familiar teenage abuse was to Joyce; she got it so regularly these days from her own children and other people’s that a swear-word or a cruel comment just couldn’t affect her. She simply weeded them out.

‘The reason I don’t worry about Josh, as you well know,’ said Joyce, smiling broadly and speaking in her Chalfen-guide-to-parenting voice, ‘is because he’s just trying to get a little bit of attention. Rather like you are at this moment. It’s perfectly natural for well-educated middle-class children to act up at his age.’ (Unlike many others around this time, Joyce felt no shame about using the term ‘middle class’. In the Chalfen lexicon the middle classes were the inheritors of the enlightenment, the creators of the welfare state, the intellectual elite and the source of all culture. Where they got this idea, it’s hard to say.) ‘But they soon come back into the fold. I’m perfectly confident about Joshua. He’s just acting up against his father and it will pass. But Magid has some real problems. I’ve been doing my research, Irie. And there are just so many signs . I can read them.’