Darwin's Bastards

by Zsuzsi Gartner

  He keeps the letters Father Krzysztof sends him tucked inside his Lives of the Saints, in the front cover of which he has pasted a periodic table of elements. He rereads these letters at night under the soft light of a sixty-watt bulb before he prays and consigns himself to sleep. Loneliness is placed in the human heart by God, little Francis. St. Augustine said, “My soul will not rest, O Lord, until it rests in thee.” Loneliness is what forces us to introduce ourselves to strangers, drives us outside of ourselves. It can lead to us to find love with our fellow human beings, a pale reflection of the love we have for God. Do not despise your loneliness, little Francis. It is a gift. And do not commit the sin of pride, thinking you are better than your colleagues. Make friends there. This Hermann you have mentioned seems to respect you and your work—seek out the good in him and turn a blind eye to the bad.

  From this point on, Maciej makes a point of taking meals with Hermann, talking to him in the afternoons and occasionally playing chess in the evenings. Hermann is the residence don on Maciej’s floor, and it is considered an honour for a second-year to be invited to play chess in his don’s room.

  One night in spring, when the chess game is over and the lights from the courtyard shine fluorescent into Hermann’s room, the older boy breaks the silence of some minutes and asks Maciej what he is thinking.

  “Of how to make a cow yield human milk,” Maciej answers, “and how this could benefit mankind.”

  “Always with such heavy thoughts,” Hermann says, reaching over to tousle his thin, mousy hair. “You should learn to lighten up.”

  “And I’m trying to isolate the gene for human kindness. Although I think that it must be a sequence rather than a single gene. But just think, Hermann! If I could increase people’s genetic capacity for sympathy, empathy, kindness itself! Think of the increase in Christian Charity I could bring into the world.”

  “If there is a gene for kindness, my friend, you definitely have it.” With this he takes Maciej’s hand and brings it to his rigid crotch. Maciej draws it back so fast a rush of air blows past his ears.

  “Maciej, relax,” Hermann whispers, laughing. “If you don’t want to touch it, that’s alright. But take yours out and let’s have a pull together. I have some magazines hidden inside an old chemistry textbook.” He grins.

  “You should be ashamed,” Maciej hisses. “Self-abuse is a terrible sin.”

  Maciej comes home from class the next day, opens the door to his room and places his books on his desk. He feels unsettled, his skin has goose bumps and he can taste bile. He looks around his bare room, trying to figure out what might make him feel so anxious. Finally he sees it; his mind catches on to what his physical senses had already noticed: his mother’s crucifix, in its place above his bed, is hanging upside down. This takes his breath away. His left knee is shaking uncontrollably, his face grows cold and pale and prickles with sweat, until the spell breaks and he lunges up onto the bed and takes it off the wall. He slows his breathing, thinks of his mother and Father Krzysztof, and says the Prayer Before a Crucifix in Polish and Latin. He puts the icon back in its place, right way up, and moves towards his textbooks with purpose.

  Maciej’s revenge is preemptive and swift. He thinks a week of stomach pain will make Hermann repent for his actions, suffer appropriately for his desecration. He extracts the venom of a dugite snake, Pseudonaja affinis, the most poisonous snake in the laboratory, and he mixes it with the toxins of three different plants. His work is methodical, measured, toiling under a single light until the rising sun illuminates his elixir with the soft golds and reds of dawn.

  It is not difficult for him to mix his concoction with gravy, or pour it over food, not unusual for him to bring Hermann his lunch, all smiles as though nothing has happened. He says nothing when Hermann loses his appetite half way through the meal, or when two other boys finish what Hermann has left.

  Maciej is not, strictly speaking, a biologist. He has miscalculated, misjudged. By dusk the three boys are struck with a mysterious illness, not expected to live through the night. He does not come forward with any information about what he has done. He does not sleep, but prays for the three boys, and for forgiveness, all through the night, imagining his prayers carried on the feet of birds, large black ravens, circling higher and higher to Heaven. The three boys do not die that night, but the doctors say none of them will ever move a muscle again. They are taken away the next morning.

  Three weeks later Maciej receives a letter from Father Benedykt telling him that Father Krzysztof has died. There is no money to bring Maciej back for the funeral. He is very sorry.

  Maciej vomits after he reads the letter. He had sent no word since the night he spent making the poison. He was hoping to make a full confession the next time Father Krzysztof could visit, or he could get home. He turns on the cold-water faucet and lets the water pool in his hand, cups it to his mouth and rinses what he can’t spit out. Everyone he has ever loved has left him. Why does God take all those who love him? Who will be proud of him now? What is he working for?

  He rereads his letters from Father Krzysztof obsessively, neglecting his studies. He reads the priest’s concerns about the foreign policies of Britain and America, the comparisons with Rome. He remembers the parish baptismal font, the adults converting at Midnight Mass at Easter, the way the Joy of Christ’s Light can brighten a face. He wishes he had seen a miracle. He wishes he could show miracles to others: the way a tree draws water from the ground, fifty feet into the air; the way a kidney purifies the blood. The perfect symmetry of a double helix.

  He thinks about how he has been using science to try to help people, to help relieve the temporal suffering during this life, to help reveal the glory of God through the physical wonders of the world. But how much greater would it be to use science to reveal God directly, not through the medium of creation at all? Show people not merely the miracles that surround them in nature, but literal miracles like those in the pages of the Bible, enacted in their own lifetime? Show not merely the reflection of God, but His actual face made flesh?

  What then?

  “How fleeting are the wishes and effects of man! how short his time! and consequently how poor will be his results, compared with those accumulated by Nature during whole geological periods!”

  CHARLES DARWIN, from On the Origin of Species

  THE AUTHORS

  JAY BROWN’s fiction and non-fiction have appeared in many publications across Canada, including Vancouver Review, This Magazine, the Globe and Mail, and Grain, among others. He lives in Victoria.

  PAUL CARLUCCI came from an infinitely dense dot. “This Morning All Night” received the Honourable Mention in Vancouver Review’s inaugural fiction contest in 2009.

  DOUGLAS COUPLAND was born on a NATO base in Germany in 1961. He is the author of twelve novels and a variety of non-fiction books including a recent biography of Marshall McLuhan. He also maintains a practice as a visual artist and as a designer. He lives and works in Vancouver. Website: www.coupland.com

  Like most of her characters, BUFFY CRAM is a hobo who can’t decide where she lives. Her fiction has appeared in Prairie Fire and The Bellevue Review. In 2009 her short fiction was a finalist for a Western Magazine Award and Cutbank’s Montana Prize in Fiction. Her non-fiction has earned a National Magazine Award. She believes very intelligent homeless people will soon take over the world.

  ELYSE FRIEDMAN is the author most recently of Long Story Short, a Novella & Stories (Anansi). She has published two novels, Then Again (Random House Canada) and Waking Beauty (Crown U.S.), and the poetry collection Know Your Monkey (ECW). She resents any future that doesn’t include her, and predicts it will be just as sad, funny, beautiful and monstrous as the past. Website: www.elysefriedman.com

  WILLIAM GIBSON no longer lives in Kitsilano but is a Kitsilano loyalist. His next novel is called Zero History.

  JESSICA GRANT is the author of the novel Come, Thou Tortoise, published by Knopf in 2009. Her first collection of stories,
Making Light of Tragedy, includes a story that won both the Western Magazine Award for Fiction and the Journey Prize. She lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

  LEE HENDERSON is the author of the award-winning short story collection The Broken Record Technique and the novel The Man Game, winner of the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. He is a contributing editor to the art magazines Border Crossings and Contemporary and has published fiction and art criticism in numerous periodicals. His fiction has twice been featured in Journey Prize: Stories. He lives in Vancouver and is at work on more fiction to do with hell.

  SHEILA HETI is the author of the story collection The Middle Stories and the novel Ticknor. She is also the creator of the Trampoline Hall lecture series. She regularly conducts interviews for The Believer magazine. A slightly different version of “There Is No Time In Waterloo” was originally printed in McSweeney’s #32.

  ANOSH IRANI is the author of the acclaimed novels The Song of Kahunsha, a finalist for Canada Reads and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize in 2007, and The Cripple and His Talismans. His play Bombay Black won four Dora Mavor Moore Awards in 2006 including Outstanding New Play, and he was nominated for the 2007 Governor General’s Award for The Bombay Plays: The Matka King and Bombay Black. His new novel Dahanu Road will be published by Doubleday Canada in 2010.

  MARK ANTHONY JARMAN is the author of 19 Knives, New Orleans Is Sinking, Dancing Nightly in the Tavern, the travel book Ireland’s Eye, and Salvage King Ya!, which was chosen for Amazon.ca’s list of 50 Essential Canadian Books. He is a graduate of The Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has taught at the University of Victoria, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and the University of New Brunswick. His story collection, My White Planet, was published in 2008.

  Variously employed as a meat room clean-up attendant, business school lecturer, and conceptual artist, OLIVER KELLHAMMER makes his home on Cortes Island where he spends his days whittling toothpicks and raising turtles. There will always be odd and interesting things at www.oliverk.org.

  ANNABEL LYON is the author of Oxygen (stories), The Best Thing for You (novellas), All-Season Edie (a juvenile novel), and The Golden Mean (a novel), winner of the 2009 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. She lives in New Westminster, B.C., with her husband and two children.

  PASHA MALLA is the author of The Withdrawal Method (stories) and All Our Grandfathers Are Ghosts (poems, sort of).

  STEPHEN MARCHE is the author of Shining at the Bottom of the Sea (2007) and Raymond and Hannah (2005).

  YANN MARTEL’s latest book is What is Stephen Harper Reading?, a collection of letters addressed to the prime minister about reading. His next novel will come out in 2010. He lives in Saskatoon.

  HEATHER O’NEILL is the author of the best-selling novel Lullabies for Little Criminals. It won Canada Reads 2007 and the Hugh MacLennan Prize, and was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Governor General’s Award, the Amazon. ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the Grand Prix de Livre de Montreal. She lives in Montreal.

  ADAM LEWIS SCHROEDER is the author of the short fiction collection Kingdom of Monkeys and the novels Empress of Asia and In the Fabled East. He lives in Penticton with his wife and kids, and he teaches writing at UBC Okanagan. In the near future he plans to open a chain of jet-pack maintenance shops up and down the West Coast. Lube, oil, strap adjustments. It’s going to be big. Website: www.adamlewisschroeder.com

  NEIL SMITH lives in Montreal. Bang Crunch, his story collection, has been published in Canada, America, Britain, France, Germany, and India. It was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book and the Hugh MacLennan Prize, and was chosen as a book of the year by the Washington Post and the Globe and Mail. The story in this collection is adapted from his novel in progress, Heaven Is a Place Where Nothing Ever Happens. Website: www.bangcrunch.com

  TIMOTHY TAYLOR is the author of two novels, Stanley Park and Story House. His fiction has earned numerous accolades, including a Journey Prize, a National Magazine Award, and nominations for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His new novel, The Blue Light Project, will be published next year. He lives in Vancouver. Contact info and new writing can be found at www.timothytaylor.ca.

  MATTHEW J. TRAFFORD’s fiction has won the Far Horizons Award from The Malahat Review, been nominated for a National Magazine Award, and twice been shortlisted for a CBC Literary Award. He lives in Toronto, where he works with deaf college students and performs long-form improv with his brother in their two-person troupe, The Bromos.

  LAURA TRUNKEY’s fiction and non-fiction have appeared in literary journals. Her first book, the children’s novel The Incredibly Ordinary Danny Chandelier, was published in 2008. Currently, she is working on a collection of short fiction and another children’s novel. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

  DAVID WHITTON dedicates his story to his mother, Donna Whitton, a brave and noble Viking.

  GRATITUDE

  To D&M, for embracing Darwin’s Bastards: the concept and the title and all the bastards themselves.

  To Chris Labonté, for sharing the vision but giving free rein (and for the world’s fastest email-response times).

  To Peter Cocking, for “Clara,” the grooviest cover ever.

  To Melanie Little, for hawk-eyed and most companionable editing.

  To Gudrun Will, editor of Vancouver Review, who lets me play in the sandbox and whose great magazine gave an early home to some of these stories.

  To my grad students at UBC, past and present, for challenging me, with special thanks to Matthew J. Trafford and Laura Trunkey for the stories that were the inspiration for this book.

  And especially to all the writers, for their boundless enthusiasm, their sense of derring-do, and their astounding stories.

  And, as always, to Dexter, for rekindling my belief in other worlds.

  Z.G.