Slow River

Chapter 4

Lore is seven. Her father, Oster, is brushing her hair. It is high summer. Outside, the buildings are washed gold by the sinking sun, but inside Lore’s bedroom the ancient wooden paneling sucks in what light manages to get through the tiny window set deep in the thick fifteenth-century walls. Oster has almost finished with her hair, but Lore wants him to stay longer with her instead of running off and talking to Tok about his stupid pictures, or playing with Stella’s hair, which she has just started dyeing yellow. Lore thinks about Stella’s yellow hair. Lore’s hair—and Oster’s and Katerine’s, and Tok’s and Willem’s and Greta’s—is gray, like Lore’s eyes. Gray all over.

“Why is our hair gray?”

Oster puts the hairbrush down, pulls back the bedcovers, and motions for her to climb in. “You won’t let me go until I explain everything, will you?”

“No,” she says seriously.

“A long time ago, in a fit of ostentation—” Lore frowns at ostentation but does not interrupt. “—your grandmother had the color-producing allele turned off, She was rich—”

“As rich as we are?”

“No, but rich enough to be stupid. Anyway, she was so rich she did not know what to spend her money on. Doctors had just discovered that those people with pigmentless hair—gray with age, or white-haired albinos—got a lot of cancer in the scalp. That’s because without pigment, the hair acts like a fiber-optic cable, conducting ultraviolet from sunlight straight to our follicles, bombarding them with mutagenic radiation.” She frowns and he sighs, tries again. “Like the telephone wire brings your mother’s voice and picture to you when she’s out in the field.” Katerine never calls her when she goes away to strange places to work, but Lore says nothing. It would only upset Oster.

“So when people get old and their hair turns gray, they get cancer?”

“No. They just dye their hair black or brown or dark red or whatever, or wear a hat.”

“Is that why Stella dyes her hair? To stop the cancer?”

“No. Stel changes her colors because she wants to. Like your mother changes the color of her contact lenses.” He smiles and ruffles her hair, the hair he has just brushed. Lore pats it back down. “She doesn’t have to, none of our family do, because Grandmama van de Oest was so rich she could have genetic treatment—do you understand what genetic treatment is?” Lore nods, even though she doesn’t. He is crossing and uncrossing his legs, which means he is getting restless. “She had genetic treatment against cancer. It’s very, very expensive, and it takes a long time, and it hurts.”

“Then why did she do it?”

“Because she was stupid and too rich. She—”

“Does that mean we’re too rich?”

He looks at her for a long moment, his blue eyes still. “I suppose it does.”

He doesn’t say anything for a minute, and Lore has to prompt him. “So Grandmama pays a lot of money for the cancer stuff…”

“Yes. And then she paid a lot more money to have her genes fixed so that all her children would have gray hair and the anticancer protection. Her way of saying to the world, look, I’m so rich I can afford to have this expensive anticancer treatment so I don’t need to care about having gray hair. And, like a lot of stupid and wasteful things, it became fashionable. Which is why your mother has gray hair, too.”

Lore sits up in bed so she can see herself in the mirror on the dresser. She turns her head this way and that, touches her gray hair. “Can we turn the gene back on?”

“Yes, but it won’t make any difference to you, Only your children.” He holds the covers, waiting for her to slide back down.

“Why didn’t you turn it back on?”

“I did, but your mother didn’t. She wanted you to have all the visible trappings of the rich and powerful. As she said to me at the time, you can always dye it. Now lie down.”

Lore does. “What color am I supposed to dye it?”

“Any color you like.” He goes to the window and pulls the curtains closed.

Lore frowns at his back. “But how will I know which color is the right one?”

Right, wrong; on, off, yes, no. She is used to black-and-whites, but at seven Lore is suddenly realizing she can make of herself what she wills. When she is old enough she can have red hair or golden eyebrows or hot, dark lashes like spiders’ legs. And no one will tell her she is wrong, because no one will know. She could become anyone she wishes. But how will she know she is still herself?

She stays awake a long time, thinking about it. How does Stel know who she is if every time she stands in front of a mirror, she looks different? Before she falls asleep, Lore resolves that she will never, ever dye her hair.