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Chapter Eighteen
It were too much to expect that they will not require a further demonstration of force on a larger scale before being brought to their senses.
JAMES MATHESON, letter to John Purvis
The Hellas departed Pearl Bay with impressive haste. Within fifteen minutes of their boarding, the ropes were cut, the anchors pulled, and the sails unfurled. They darted out of the harbour, chased by billowing smoke that seemed to engulf the whole of the city.
The crew, who had not been told until boarding that they would be responsible for the room and board of five additional passengers, were curt and annoyed. The Hellas was not a passenger ship, and its quarters were already cramped. Ramy and Robin were told to bunk with the sailors, but the girls were afforded a private cabin, which they shared with the only other civilian on board – a woman named Jemima Smythe, a Christian missionary from America who’d tried to sneak into the mainland but was caught trying to ford the river into Canton’s suburbs. ‘Do you know what all the fuss is?’ She kept asking this as they sat hunched together in the mess. ‘Was it an accident, or did the Chinese do it on purpose? Will it be open war now, do you think?’ The last question she kept repeating excitedly at intervals, despite their exasperated assurances that they did not know. At last she changed the subject to what they’d been doing in Canton, and how they’d passed their days in the English Factory. ‘There are quite a few reverends under that roof, aren’t there? What did you do for your Sunday services?’ She stared inquiringly at Ramy. ‘Do you go to Sunday services?’ ‘Of course.’ Ramy did not miss a beat. ‘I go because I’m forced, where I mumble apologies to Allah whenever possible.’
‘He’s joking,’ Letty said quickly before the horrified Miss Smythe could begin trying to convert him. ‘He’s Christian, of course – we all had to *subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles at Oxford matriculation.’ ‘I’m very glad for you,’ Ms. Smythe said sincerely. ‘Will you be spreading the gospel back home as well?’ ‘Home is Oxford,’ Ramy said, blinking innocently. God help us, thought Robin, he’s snapped. ‘Do you mean that Oxford is full of heathens? Good heavens. Has anyone told them?’ At last Miss Smythe grew tired of them and wandered above deck to say her prayers, or whatever it was that missionaries did. Robin, Letty, Ramy, and Victoire huddled around the table, fidgeting like naughty schoolchildren awaiting punishment. Professor Lovell was nowhere to be seen; the moment they’d boarded, he’d gone off to speak to the captain. Still, no one had told them what was going on, or what would happen next. ‘What did you say to the Commissioner?’ Victoire asked quietly. ‘The truth,’ said Robin. ‘All I told him was the truth.’ ‘But surely something set him off—’ Professor Lovell appeared at the door. They fell silent. ‘Robin,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a chat.’ He did not wait for Robin’s answer before he turned and headed down the passage. Reluctantly, Robin stood.
Ramy touched his arm. ‘Are you all right?’ ‘I’m fine.’ Robin hoped they could not tell how quickly his heart was beating, or how loudly the blood thundered through his ears. He did not want to follow Professor Lovell; he wanted to hide and stall, to sit in the corner of the mess with his head buried in his arms. But this confrontation had been a long time coming. The fragile truce struck on the morning of his arrest was never sustainable. They’d been lying to themselves for too long, he and his father. Things could not remain buried, hidden, and wilfully ignored forever.
Sooner or later, things had to come to a head.
‘I’m curious.’ Professor Lovell was sitting behind a desk, paging idly through a dictionary when Robin at last made his way to his cabin. ‘Do you know the value of those chests burned in the harbour?’ Robin stepped inside and closed the door behind him. His knees trembled. He could have been eleven again, caught for reading fiction when
he shouldn’t have been, cringing from the impending blow. But he was not a child anymore. He tried his very best to keep his voice from wobbling. ‘Sir, I don’t know what happened with the Commissioner, but it’s not—’ ‘Over two million pounds,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘You heard Mr Baylis.
Two million, much of which William Jardine and James Matheson are now personally responsible for.’ ‘He’d made up his mind,’ said Robin. ‘He’d made it up before he even met with us. There was nothing I could say—’ ‘Your job was not difficult. Be a mouthpiece for Harold Baylis. Present a friendly face to the Chinese. Smooth things over. I thought we were clear on your priorities here, no? What did you say to Commissioner Lin?’ ‘I don’t know what you think I did,’ said Robin, frustrated. ‘But what happened at the docks wasn’t because of me.’ ‘Did you suggest he should destroy the opium?’ ‘Of course not.’ ‘Did you intimate anything else to him about Jardine and Matheson? Did you, perhaps, usurp Harold in any way? You’re sure there was nothing untoward about how you conducted yourself?’ ‘I did what I was told,’ Robin insisted. ‘I don’t like Mr Baylis, no, but as far as how I represented the company—’ ‘For once, Robin, please try to simply say what you mean,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘Be honest. Whatever you’re doing now, it’s embarrassing.’ ‘I – all right, then.’ Robin folded his arms. He had nothing to apologize for, nothing more to hide. Ramy and Victoire were safe; he had nothing to lose. No more bowing, no more silence. ‘Fine. Let’s be honest with each other. I don’t agree with what Jardine & Matheson is doing in Canton. It’s wrong, it disgusts me—’ Professor Lovell shook his head. ‘For heaven’s sake, it’s just a market.
Don’t be childish.’ ‘It’s a sovereign nation.’ ‘It is a nation mired in superstition and antiquity, devoid of the rule of law, hopelessly behind the West on every possible register. It is a nation of semi-barbarous, incorrigibly backwards fools—’ ‘It’s a nation of people,’ Robin snapped. ‘People you’re poisoning, whose lives you’re ruining. And if the question is whether I’ll keep
facilitating that project, then it’s no – I won’t come back to Canton again, not for the traders, and not for anything remotely related to opium. I’ll do research at Babel, I’ll do translations, but I won’t do that. You can’t make me.’ He was breathing very hard when he finished. Professor Lovell’s expression had not changed. He watched Robin for a long moment, eyelids half-closed, tapping his fingers against his desk as if it were a piano. ‘You know what astounds me?’ His voice had grown very soft. ‘How utterly ungrateful one can be.’ This line of argument again. Robin could have kicked something. Always this, the argument from bondage, as if his loyalties were shackled by privilege he had not asked for and did not choose to receive. Did he owe Oxford his life, just because he had drunk champagne within its cloisters?
Did he owe Babel his loyalty because he had once believed its lies? ‘This wasn’t for me,’ he said. ‘I didn’t ask for it. It was all for you, because you wanted a Chinese pupil, because you wanted someone who was fluent—’ ‘You resent me, then?’ asked Professor Lovell. ‘For giving you a life?
For giving you opportunities you couldn’t have dreamed of?’ He sneered. ‘Yes, Robin, I took you from your home. From the squalor and disease and hunger. What do you want? An apology?’ What he wanted, Robin thought, was for Professor Lovell to admit what he’d done. That it was unnatural, this entire arrangement; that children were not stock to be experimented on, judged for their blood, spirited away from their homeland in service of Crown and country. That Robin was more than a talking dictionary, and that his motherland was more than a fat golden goose.
But he knew these were acknowledgments that Professor Lovell would never make. The truth between them was not buried because it was painful, but because it was inconvenient, and because Professor Lovell simply refused to address it.
It was so obvious now that he was not, and could never be, a person in his father’s eyes. No, personhood demanded the blood purity of the European man, the racial status that would make him Professor Lovell’s equal. Little Dick and Philippa were persons. Robin Swift was an asset, and assets should be undyingly grateful that they were treated well at all.
There could be no resolution here. But at least Robin would have the
truth about something. ‘Who was my mother to you?’ he asked.
This, at least, seemed to rattle the professor, if only for the briefest moment. ‘We are not here to discuss your mother.’ ‘You killed her. And you didn’t even bother to bury her.’ ‘Don’t be absurd. It was the Asiatic Cholera that killed her—’ ‘You were in Macau for two weeks before she died. Mrs Piper told me.
You knew the plague was spreading, you know you could have saved her—’ ‘Heavens, Robin, she was just some Chink.’ ‘But I’m just some Chink, Professor. I’m also her son.’ Robin felt a fierce urge to cry. He forced it down. Hurt never garnered sympathy from his father.
But anger, perhaps, might spark fear. ‘Did you think you’d washed that part out of me?’ He had become so good at holding two truths in his head at once. That he was an Englishman and not. That Professor Lovell was his father and not.
That the Chinese were a stupid, backwards people, and that he was also one of them. That he hated Babel, and wanted to live forever in its embrace. He had danced for years on the razor’s edge of these truths, had remained there as a means of survival, a way to cope, unable to accept either side fully because an unflinching examination of the truth was so frightening that the contradictions threatened to break him.
But he could not go on like this. He could not exist a split man, his psyche constantly erasing and re-erasing the truth. He felt a great pressure in the back of his mind. He felt like he would quite literally burst, unless he stopped being double. Unless he chose. ‘Did you think,’ said Robin, ‘that enough time in England would make me just like you?’ Professor Lovell cocked his head. ‘You know, I once thought that having offspring was a kind of translation of its own. Especially when the parents are of such vastly different stock. One is curious to see what ends up coming through.’ His face underwent the strangest transformation as he spoke. His eyes grew larger and larger until they were frighteningly bulbous; his condescending sneer grew more pronounced, and his lips drew back to reveal teeth. It was meant, perhaps, as a look of exaggerated disgust, but it appeared more to Robin as if a mask of civility had been stripped away. It
was the ugliest expression he had ever seen his father wear. ‘I’d hoped to raise you to avoid the failings of your brother. I hoped to instill you with a more civilized sense of ethics. Quo semel est imbuta recens, servabit * odorem testa diu,and all that. I hoped I might develop you into a more elevated cask. But for all your education, there is no raising you from that
base, original stock, is there?’ ‘You’re a monster,’ Robin said, amazed. ‘I haven’t the time for this.’ Professor Lovell flipped the dictionary shut. ‘It’s clear bringing you to Canton was the wrong idea. I had hoped it might remind you how lucky you were, but all it’s done is confuse you.’ ‘I’m not confused—’ ‘We’ll re-evaluate your position at Babel when we return.’ Professor Lovell gestured towards the door. ‘For now, I think, you ought to take some time to reflect. Imagine spending the rest of your life in Newgate, Robin. You can rail against the evils of commerce all you like, if you do it in a prison cell. Would you prefer that?’ Robin’s hands formed fists. ‘Say her name.’ Professor Lovell’s eyebrow twitched. He gestured again to the door.
‘That will be all.’
‘Say her name, you coward.’ ‘Robin.’ This was a warning. This was where his father drew the line. Everything Robin had done until now might still be forgiven, if he only backed down; if he only made his apologies, bent to authority, and returned to naive, ignorant luxury.
But Robin had been bending for so long. And even a gilded cage was still a cage.
He stepped forward. ‘Father, say her name.’ Professor Lovell pushed his chair back and stood.
The origins of the word anger were tied closely to physical suffering.
Anger was first an ‘affliction’, as meant by the Old Icelandic angr, and then a ‘painful, cruel, narrow’ state, as meant by the Old English enge, which in turn came from the Latin angor, which meant ‘strangling, anguish, distress’.
Anger was a chokehold. Anger did not empower you. It sat on your chest; it squeezed your ribs until you felt trapped, suffocated, out of options. Anger
simmered, then exploded. Anger was constriction, and the consequent rage a desperate attempt to breathe. *And rage, of course, came from madness.
Afterwards, Robin wondered often if Professor Lovell had seen something in his eyes, a fire he hadn’t known his son possessed, and whether that – his startled realization that his linguistic experiment had developed a will of his own – had prompted Robin in turn to act. He would try desperately to justify what he’d done as self-defence, but such justification would rely on details he could hardly remember, details he wasn’t sure whether he’d made up to convince himself he had not really murdered his father in cold blood.
Over and over again he would ask himself who had moved first, and this would torture him for the rest of his days, for he truly did not know.
This he knew: Professor Lovell stood abruptly. His hand went to his pocket. And Robin, either mirroring or provoking him, did the same. He reached for his front pocket, where he kept the bar that had killed Eveline Brooke. He was not imagining what the bar might do – of this he was certain. He spoke the match- pair because they were the only words that came to mind to describe this moment, its immensity. He thought of Professor Lovell’s poker cracking over and over against his ribs as he lay curled on the library floor, too startled and confused to cry out. He thought of Griffin, poor Griffin, spirited to England at a younger age than he’d been; chewed up and thrown away because he didn’t remember enough of his native tongue. He thought of the listless men in the opium den. He thought of his mother.
He was not thinking of how the bar would claw apart his father’s chest.
Some part of him must have known, of course, because words only activated the bars if you meant them. If you only uttered the syllables, they had no effect. And when he saw the character in his mind, saw the grooves etched in shining silver, and spoke the word and its translation out loud, he must have thought of what it would do.
Bào: to explode, to burst forth with what could no longer be contained.
But it was not until Professor Lovell fell to the floor, until the heady, salty scent of blood filled the air, that Robin realized what he’d done.
He dropped to his knees. ‘Sir?’
Professor Lovell did not stir. ‘Father?’ He grasped Professor Lovell’s shoulders. Hot, wet blood spilled over his fingers. It would not stop; it was everywhere, an endless fountain gushing out of that ruin of a chest. ‘Diē?’ He did not know what made him say it, the word for father. Perhaps he thought it would stun Professor Lovell, that the shock alone would bring him back to life, that he could yank his father’s soul back to his body by naming the one thing that they had never named. But Professor Lovell was limp, gone, and no matter how hard Robin shook him the blood would not stop pouring. ‘Diē,’ he said again. Then a laugh escaped his throat; hysterical, helpless, because it was so very funny, so apt that the romanization of father contained the same letters for death in English. And Professor Lovell was so clearly, incontrovertibly dead. There was no walking back from this. There could be
no more pretending. ‘Robin?’ Someone banged at the door. Dazed, without thinking, Robin stood and unlatched it. Ramy, Letty, and Victoire came tumbling in, a babble of voices – ‘Oh, Robin, are you—’; ‘What’s happening—’; ‘We heard shouting, we thought—’ Then they saw the body and the blood. Letty let out a muffled shriek.
Victoire’s hands flew to her mouth. Ramy blinked several times, then uttered, very softly, ‘Oh.’ Letty asked, very faintly, ‘Is he . . . ?’ ‘Yes,’ Robin whispered.
The cabin went very silent. Robin’s ears were ringing; he brought his hands to his head, then immediately lowered them, for they were bright scarlet and dripping. ‘What happened . . . ?’ Victoire ventured. ‘We quarrelled.’ Robin could barely get the words out. He was struggling now to breathe. Black pressed in at the edges of his vision. His knees felt very weak, and he wanted badly to sit down, only the floor was drenched in a spreading pool of blood. ‘We quarrelled, and . . .’ ‘Don’t look,’ Ramy instructed.
No one obeyed. They all stood frozen in place, gazes locked on Professor Lovell’s still form as Ramy knelt beside him and held two fingers against his neck. A long moment passed. Ramy murmured a prayer under his breath – ‘Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi Raji’un’ – and then moved his hands over Professor Lovell’s eyelids to push them closed.
He exhaled very slowly, pressed his hands against his knees for a moment, then stood up. ‘What now?’
