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Chapter Thirty-Two
She sate upon her Dobie,
To watch the Evening Star,
And all the Punkahs as they passed Cried, ‘My! How fair you are!’
EDWARD LEAR, ‘The Cummerbund’
They sent everyone else upstairs before they opened the door. Letty was not here to negotiate with the crowd; they would not have sent an undergraduate to do so. This was personal; Letty was here for a reckoning.
‘Let her through,’ Robin told Abel. ‘Pardon?’ ‘She’s here to talk. Tell them to let her through.’ Abel spoke a word to his man, who ran across the green to inform the barricaders. Two men climbed on top of the barricade and bent down. A moment later Letty was lifted over the top, then lowered none-too-gently down onto the other side.
She made her way across the green, shoulders hunched, flag trailing behind her on the pavement. She did not raise her eyes until she met them at
the threshold. ‘Hello, Letty,’ said Victoire. ‘Hello,’ Letty murmured. ‘Thank you for seeing me.’ She looked miserable. She had clearly not been sleeping; her clothes were dirty and rumpled, her cheeks hollow, and her eyes red and puffy from crying. The way she hunched her shoulders around her, as if flinching from a blow, made her look very small. And despite himself, despite everything, all Robin wanted then was to give her a hug.
This instinct startled him. As she’d approached the tower he’d entertained, briefly, the thought of killing her – if only her death did not doom them all, if only he could just throw his own life into the bargain. But it was so hard to look at her now and not see a friend. How could you love someone who had hurt you so badly? Up close, staring her in the eyes, he had trouble believing that this Letty, their Letty, had done the things she had. She looked grief-stricken, vulnerable, the wretched heroine of a terrible fairy tale.
But that, he reminded himself, was the advantage of the image Letty occupied. In this country, she had the face and colouring that inspired sympathy. Among them, no matter what happened, Letty alone could walk out of here innocent.
He nodded at her flag. ‘Here to surrender?’ ‘Here to negotiate,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’ ‘Then come in,’ said Victoire.
Letty, invited, stepped through the door. It slammed shut behind her.
For a moment the three of them only looked at each other. They stood uncertain in the middle of the lobby, an unbalanced triangle. It felt so fundamentally wrong. There had always been four of them; they had always come in pairs, an even set, and all Robin could think of was the acute absence of Ramy among them. They were not themselves without him; without his laughter, his quick, easy wit, his sudden turns of conversation that made them feel like they were spinning plates. They were no longer a cohort.
Now they were only a wake.
Victoire asked, in a flat and toneless voice, ‘Why?’ Letty flinched, but only just barely. ‘I had to,’ she said, chin high, unwavering. ‘You know it’s all I could have done.’
‘No,’ said Victoire. ‘I don’t.’
‘I couldn’t betray my country.’ ‘You didn’t have to betray us.’ ‘You were in the thrall of a violent criminal organization,’ said Letty. The words came out so smoothly Robin could only assume they had been rehearsed. ‘And unless I pretended I agreed with you, unless I played along, I didn’t see how I was going to get out of there alive.’ Did she truly believe that? Robin wondered. Was that how she’d always seen them? He couldn’t believe these words were coming out of her mouth, that this was the same girl who’d once stayed up late with them, laughing so
hard their ribs had ached. Only Chinese had a character that encapsulated how much simple words could hurt: , cì, the character for thorns, for stabs, for criticism. Such a flexible character. In a phrase, , , it meant ‘barbed, stinging words’. could mean ‘to goad’. could also mean ‘to murder’. ‘So what’s this, then?’ Robin asked. ‘Parliament’s had enough?’ ‘Oh, Robin.’ Letty gave him a plaintive look. ‘You need to surrender.’ ‘I’m afraid that’s not how negotiation works, Letty.’ ‘I mean it. I’m trying to warn you. They don’t even want me to be here, but I begged them, I wrote to my father, I pulled every string I had.’ ‘Warn us about what?’ Victoire asked. ‘They’re going to storm the tower at dawn. And they’re going to destroy your resistance with guns. No more waiting. It’s over.’ Robin crossed his arms. ‘Good luck with getting their city back, then.’ ‘But that’s just it,’ said Letty. ‘They’ve held back because they thought they could starve you out. They don’t want you dead. Believe it or not, they don’t like shooting at scholars. You’re all very useful, you’re right about that.
But the country can’t stand it anymore. You’ve pushed them to the edge.’ ‘Seems like the logical thing then would be to agree to our demands,’
said Victoire. ‘You know they can’t do that.’ ‘They’re going to destroy their own city?’ ‘Do you think Parliament cares what you destroy?’ Letty demanded, impatient. ‘Those men aren’t bothered about what you’re doing to Oxford, or to London. They laughed when the lights went dark, and they laughed when the bridge fell down. Those men want the city destroyed. They think it’s grown too big and unwieldy already, that its dark, squalid slums are overriding all its civilized boroughs. And you know it’s the poor who will suffer the most. The rich can ride out to the country and stay on their summer estates where they’ll have clean air and clean water until spring. The poor will die in droves. Listen, you two. The people who run this country care more about the pride of the British Empire than they do mild inconveniences, and they’ll let the city collapse before they bow to the demands of what they
see as a handful of – of Babblers.’
‘Say what you mean,’ said Victoire. ‘Of foreigners.’
‘That’s quite a sense of pride,’ said Robin. ‘I know,’ said Letty. ‘It’s what I grew up with. I know how deep it runs.
Believe me on this. You have no idea how much they’re willing to bleed for the sake of their pride. These men let Westminster Bridge fall. What else can you threaten them with?’ Silence, then. Westminster Bridge was the trump card. What rebuttal could they offer? ‘So you mean to talk us into our deaths,’ Victoire said finally. ‘I don’t,’ said Letty. ‘I mean to save you.’ She blinked, and suddenly tears traced two thin, clear lines down her face. This was not an act; they knew Letty could not act. She was heartbroken, truly heartbroken. She loved them; Robin did not doubt it; at least she really believed that she loved them. She wanted them safe and sound, only her version of a successful resolution was to put them back behind bars. ‘I didn’t want any of this,’ she said. ‘I just want things to go back to the way they were. We had a future together, all of us.’ Robin bit back a laugh. ‘What did you imagine?’ he asked quietly. ‘That we would keep eating lemon biscuits together while this country declared war on our motherlands?’ ‘They’re not your motherlands,’ said Letty. ‘They don’t have to be.’ ‘They do have to be,’ said Victoire. ‘Because we’ll never be British.
How can you still not understand? That identity is foreclosed to us. We are foreign because this nation has marked us so, and as long as we’re punished daily for our ties to our homelands, we might as well defend them. No, Letty, we can’t maintain this fantasy. The only one who can do that is you.’ Letty’s face tightened.
The truce was over; the walls were up; they had reminded her why she’d abandoned them, which was that she could never really, properly, be one of them. And Letty, if she could not belong to a place, would rather tear the whole thing down. ‘You realize that if I walk out of here with a no, they’ll come in prepared to kill all of you.’ ‘But they can’t do that.’ Victoire glanced at Robin as if for confirmation. ‘The whole point of this strike was that they need us; they can’t risk us.’
‘Please understand.’ Letty’s voice hardened. ‘You gave them a headache.
Well done you. But you are, in the end, expendable. All of you. Losing you would be a minor setback, but the imperial project involves more than a few scholars. And it will span more than a few decades. This nation is trying to achieve what no other civilization has done throughout history, and if mowing you down means a temporary delay, then they’ll do it. They’ll train new translators.’ ‘They won’t,’ said Robin. ‘No one will work for them after this.’ Letty scoffed. ‘Of course they will. We knew very well what they were up to, didn’t we? They told us on the very first day. And we still loved it here. They’ll always be able to find new translators. They’ll relearn what they lost. And they’ll just keep going, because no one else will be there to stop them.’ She seized Robin’s hand. The gesture was so sudden, so shocking that he didn’t have time to pull away. Her skin was icy cold, her grip so strong he was afraid she might snap his fingers off. ‘You can’t change things if you’re dead, Birdie.’ Violently, he shook her off. ‘Don’t call me Birdie.’ She pretended not to hear this. ‘Don’t lose sight of your end goal. If you want to fix the Empire, your best course is to work within it.’ ‘Like you do?’ asked Robin. ‘Like Sterling Jones did?’ ‘At least we’re not wanted by the police. At least we have the freedom to act.’ ‘Do you think the state’s ever going to change, Letty? I mean, have you ever thought about what happens if you win?’ She shrugged. ‘We will win a quick, bodiless war. And after that, all the silver in the world.’ ‘And then what? Your machines get faster. Wages fall. Inequality increases. Poverty increases. Everything Anthony predicted will happen. The revels will be unsustainable. What then?’ ‘I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.’ Letty’s lip curled. ‘As it were.’ ‘You won’t,’ said Robin. ‘There’s no solution. You’re on a train that you can’t jump off, don’t you see? This can’t end well for anyone. Liberation for us means liberation for you as well.’ ‘Or,’ said Letty, ‘it’ll just keep going faster and faster, and we’ll let it, because if the train’s speeding past everyone else, we may as well be riding
it.’ There was no arguing with that. But, if they were being honest with themselves, there had never been any arguing with Letty. ‘This isn’t worth it,’ Letty continued. ‘All those bodies in the streets – and for what? To make a point? Ideological righteousness is well and fine, but by God, Robin, you’re letting people die for a cause you must know is bound to fail. And you will fail,’ she continued, relentlessly. ‘You don’t have the numbers. You don’t have the public support, you don’t have the votes, and you don’t have the momentum. You don’t understand how determined the Empire is to reclaim its silver. You think you’re prepared to make sacrifices?
They will do anything it takes to smoke you out. You should know that they don’t plan on losing all of you. They just need to kill some of you. They’ll take the rest prisoner, and then they’ll break your strike. ‘Tell me – if you’d just seen your friends die, if you had a gun pointed at your head, wouldn’t you go back to work? They’ve already arrested Chakravarti, you know. They’ll torture him until he cooperates. Go on, tell me – when push comes to shove, how many people in this tower are going to stick to their principles?’ ‘We’re not all as spineless as you,’ said Victoire. ‘They’re here, aren’t they? They’re with us.’ ‘I ask again. How long do you think that’ll last? They haven’t yet lost one of their own. How do you think they’ll feel when the first body of your revolution hits the floor? When there’s a gun to their temple?’ Victoire pointed to the door. ‘Get out.’ ‘I’m trying to save you,’ Letty insisted. ‘I’m your last shot at salvation.
Surrender now, come out peacefully, and cooperate with restoration. You won’t be in prison for long. They need you, you said it yourself – you’ll be back at Babel in no time, doing the work you always dreamed of. It’s the best offer you’ll get. That’s all I came here to say. Take it, or you’ll die.’ Then we’ll die, Robin almost said, but stopped himself. He couldn’t sentence everyone upstairs to death. She knew that.
She had them beat. There was no arguing their way out of this. She had them utterly cornered; there was nothing she hadn’t foreseen, no more tricks to pull out of their sleeves.
Westminster Bridge had fallen. What more could they threaten?
He hated what came out of his lips next. It felt like surrender, like bowing. ‘We can’t decide for them all.’ ‘Then call a meeting.’ Letty’s lip curled. ‘Poll the room, get a consensus with whatever little form of democracy you’ve got running here.’ She placed the white flag down on a table. ‘But have an answer for us by dawn.’
She turned to go.
Robin rushed forward. ‘Letty, wait.’
She paused, one hand on the door. ‘Why Ramy?’ he asked.
She froze. She looked like a statue; under the moonlight, her cheeks shone a pale, marble white. This was how he should always have seen her, he thought. Cold. Bloodless. Devoid of anything that made her a living, breathing, loving, hurting human being. ‘You aimed,’ he said. ‘You pulled the trigger. And you’re a terribly good shot, Letty. Why him? What did Ramy ever do to you?’ He knew what. They both knew; there was no question. But Robin wanted to give it a name, wanted to make sure Letty knew what he knew, wanted to pull the memory fresh between them, sharp and vicious, because he could see the pain it brought to Letty’s eyes and because she deserved it.
Letty stared at him for a long time. She did not move, save for the rapid rise and fall of her chest. When she spoke, her voice was high and cold. ‘I didn’t,’ she said; and Robin could tell from the way she narrowed her eyes and drawled her words, punctuating them just so, like daggers, what was going to come next. His own words, thrown back in his face. ‘I didn’t think at all. I panicked. And then I killed him.’ ‘Murder’s not that simple,’ he said. ‘It turns out it is, Birdie.’ She cast him a scornful look. ‘Isn’t that how we got here?’ ‘We loved you,’ Victoire whispered. ‘Letty, we would have died for you.’ Letty did not answer. She turned on her heel, threw the door open, and fled into the night.
The door slammed shut, and then there was silence. They weren’t ready to take the news upstairs. They didn’t know what they could say. ‘You think she means it?’ Robin asked finally.
‘She absolutely does,’ said Victoire. ‘Letty doesn’t flinch.’ ‘Then do we let her win?’ ‘How,’ Victoire asked slowly, ‘do you think we make her lose?’ An awful weight hung between them. Robin knew his answer, only not how to utter it. Victoire knew everything in his heart except this. It was the one thing he’d concealed from her – in part because he did not want to make her share this burden, and in part because he was afraid of how she might
respond.
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Robin.’ ‘We destroy the tower,’ he said. ‘And we destroy ourselves.’ She didn’t flinch; she only seemed to deflate, as if she’d been waiting for confirmation. He hadn’t pretended as well as he’d thought; she’d expected this from him. ‘You can’t.’ ‘There’s a way.’ Robin misinterpreted her words on purpose, hoping, rather, that her objection was one of logistics. ‘You know there is. They showed us at the very beginning.’ Victoire flinched. Robin knew what she was imagining. The shrill, vibrating bar in Professor Playfair’s hands, screaming as if in pain, shattering into a thousand sharp, glinting pieces. Multiply that over and over. Instead of a bar, imagine a tower. Imagine a country. ‘It’s a chain reaction,’ he whispered. ‘It’ll finish the job on its own.
Remember? Playfair showed us how it’s done. If it so much as touches another bar, the effect transmits across the metal. It doesn’t stop, it just keeps going, until it renders all the silver unusable.’ How much silver lined the walls of Babel? When this was over, all those bars would be worthless. Then the cooperation of the translators wouldn’t matter. Their facilities would be gone. Their library, gone. The Grammaticas, gone. Their resonance rods, their silver, useless, gone. ‘How long have you been planning this?’ Victoire demanded.
‘Since the beginning,’ he said. ‘I hate you.’ ‘It’s the only way we have left to win.’ ‘It’s your suicide plan,’ she said angrily. ‘And don’t tell me that it’s anything but. You want this; you’ve always wanted this.’ But that was just it, Robin thought. How did he explain the weight crushing his chest, the constant inability to breathe? ‘I think – ever since
Ramy and Griffin – no, ever since Canton, I . . . ’ He swallowed. ‘I’ve felt I
didn’t have the right.’ ‘Don’t say that.’ ‘It’s true. They were better men, and they died—’ ‘Robin, that’s not how it works—’ ‘And what did I do? I lived a life I shouldn’t have, I had what millions of people didn’t – all that suffering, Victoire, and the whole time I was drinking champagne—’ ‘Don’t you dare.’ She raised a hand as if to slap him. ‘Don’t tell me you’re just some fragile academic who can’t handle the weight of the world now that you’ve seen it – that’s absolute tripe, Robin. You’re not some foppish dandy who faints at the first mention of suffering. You know what those men are? They’re cowards, romantics, idiots who never did a thing to change the world they found so upsetting, hiding away because they felt so guilty—’ ‘Guilty,’ he repeated. ‘Guilty, that’s exactly what I am. Ramy told me once that I didn’t care about doing the right thing, that I just wanted to take the easy way out.’ ‘He was right,’ she said fiercely. ‘It’s the coward’s way, you know it—’ ‘No, listen.’ He gripped her hands. They were trembling. She tried to pull away, but he squeezed her fingers between his. He needed her with him.
Needed to make her understand, before she hated him forever for abandoning her to the dark. ‘He’s right. You’re right. I know it, I’m trying to say it – he was right. I’m so sorry. But I don’t know how to go on.’ ‘Day by day, Birdie.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘You go on, day by day.
Just as we’ve been doing. It’s not hard.’ ‘No, it’s – Victoire, I can’t.’ He didn’t want to cry; if he started crying, then all his words would disappear and he would never manage to say what he needed to. He ploughed through before his tears could catch up. ‘I want to believe in the future we’re fighting for, but it’s not there, it’s just not there, and I can’t take things day by day when I’m too horrified by the thought of tomorrow. I’m underwater. And I’ve been underwater for so long, and I wanted a way out, but couldn’t find one that didn’t feel like some – some great abdication of responsibility. But this – this is my way out.’ She shook her head. She was weeping freely now; both of them were. ‘Don’t say this to me.’
‘Someone’s got to speak the words. Someone has to stay.’ ‘Then aren’t you going to ask me to stay with you?’ ‘Oh, Victoire.’ What else was there to say? He could not ask this of her, and she knew he would never dare. Yet the question hung between them, unanswered.
Victoire’s gaze was fixed steadily on the window, at the black lawn outside, at the torchlit barricades. She cried, steadily and silently; the tears kept streaming down her cheeks and she kept wiping them away, pointlessly.
He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. This was the first time, since all this had started, that he couldn’t read her heart.
At last she took a deep breath and lifted her head. Without turning around, she asked, ‘Did you ever read that poem the abolitionists love? That one by Bicknell and Day. It’s called The Dying Negro.’ Robin had read it, in fact, in an abolitionist pamphlet he’d picked up in London. He’d found it striking; he still remembered it in detail. It described the story of an African man who, facing the prospects of capture and return to * slavery, killed himself instead.Robin had found it romantic and moving at the time, but now, seeing Victoire’s expression, he realized it was anything
but. ‘I did,’ he said. ‘It was – tragic.’ ‘We have to die to get their pity,’ said Victoire. ‘We have to die for them to find us noble. Our deaths are thus great acts of rebellion, a wretched lament that highlights their inhumanity. Our deaths become their battle cry.
But I don’t want to die, Robin.’ Her throat hitched. ‘I don’t want to die. I † don’t want to be their Imoinda, their Oroonoko. I don’t want to be their tragic, lovely lacquer figure. I want to live.’ She fell against his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight, rocking back and forth. ‘I want to live,’ she repeated, ‘and live, and thrive, and survive them. I want a future. I don’t think death is a reprieve. I think it’s – it’s just the end. It forecloses everything – a future where I might be happy, and free. And it’s not about being brave. It’s about wanting another chance. Even if all I did was run away, even if I never lifted a finger to help anyone else as long as I lived – at least I would get to be happy. At least the world might be all right, just for a day, just for me. Is that selfish?’
Her shoulders crumpled. Robin held her tight against him. What an anchor she was, he thought, an anchor he did not deserve. She was his rock, his light, the sole presence that had kept him going. And he wished, he wished, that was enough for him to hold on to. ‘Be selfish,’ he whispered. ‘Be brave.’
