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Chapter Six
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master, that’s all.’ LEWIS CARROLL, Through the Looking-Glass
Professor Playfair’s introductory class to Translation Theory met at Tuesday mornings on the fifth floor of the tower. They’d barely been seated when he began to lecture, filling the narrow classroom with his booming showman’s voice. ‘By now you are each passably fluent in at least three languages, which is a feat in its own right. Today, however, I will try to impress upon you the unique difficulty of translation. Consider how tricky it is merely to say the word hello. Hello seems so easy! Bonjour. Ciao. Hallo. And on and on. But then say we are translating from Italian into English. In Italian, ciao can be used upon greeting or upon parting – it does not specify either, it simply marks etiquette at the point of contact. It is derived from the Venetian s-ciào vostro, meaning something akin to ‘your obedient servant’. But I digress. The point is, when we bring ciao into English – if we are translating a scene where the characters disperse, for example – we must impose that ciao has been said as goodbye. Sometimes this is obvious from context, but sometimes not – sometimes we must add new words in our translation. So already things are complicated, and we haven’t moved past hello. ‘The first lesson any good translator internalizes is that there exists no one-to-one correlation between words or even concepts from one language to another. The Swiss philologist Johann Breitinger, who claimed that languages were merely “collections of totally equivalent words and locutions which are interchangeable, and which fully correspond to each other in meaning”,
was dreadfully wrong. Language is not like maths. And even maths differs * depending on the language– but we will revisit that later.’ Robin found himself searching Professor Playfair’s face as he spoke. He was not sure what he was looking for. Some evidence of evil, perhaps. The cruel, selfish, lurking monster Griffin had sketched. But Professor Playfair seemed only a cheerful, beaming scholar, enamored by the beauty of words.
Indeed, in daylight, in the classroom, his brother’s grand conspiracies felt quite ridiculous. ‘Language does not exist as a nomenclature for a set of universal concepts,’ Professor Playfair went on. ‘If it did, then translation would not be a highly skilled profession – we would simply sit a class full of dewy- eyed freshers down with dictionaries and have the completed works of the Buddha on our shelves in no time. Instead, we have to learn to dance between that age-old dichotomy, helpfully elucidated by Cicero and Hieronymus: verbum e verbo and sensum e sensu. Can anyone—’ ‘Word for word,’ Letty said promptly. ‘And sense for sense.’ ‘Good,’ said Professor Playfair. ‘That is the dilemma. Do we take words as our unit of translation, or do we subordinate accuracy of individual words to the overall spirit of the text?’ ‘I don’t understand,’ said Letty. ‘Shouldn’t a faithful translation of individual words produce an equally faithful text?’ ‘It would,’ said Professor Playfair, ‘if, again, words existed in relation to each other in the same way in every language. But they do not. The words schlecht and schlimm both mean “bad” in German, but how do you know when to use one or the other? When do we use fleuve or rivière in French?
How do we render the French esprit into English? We ought not merely translate each word on its own, but must rather evoke the sense of how they fit the whole of the passage. But how can that be done, if languages are indeed so different? These differences aren’t trivial, mind you – Erasmus wrote an entire treatise on why he rendered the Greek logos into the Latin sermo in his translation of the New Testament. Translating word-for-word is simply inadequate.’ ‘That servile path thou nobly dost decline,’ Ramy recited, ‘of tracing word by word, and line by line.’
‘Those are the laboured births of slavish brains, not the effect of poetry, but pains,’ Professor Playfair finished. ‘John Denham. Very nice, Mr Mirza. So you see, translators do not so much deliver a message as they rewrite the original. And herein lies the difficulty – rewriting is still writing, and writing always reflects the author’s ideology and biases. After all, the Latin translatio means “to carry across”. Translation involves a spatial dimension – a literal transportation of texts across conquered territory, words delivered like spices from an alien land. Words mean something quite different when they journey from the palaces of Rome to the tearooms of today’s Britain. ‘And we have not yet moved past the lexical. If translation were only a matter of finding the right themes, the right general ideas, then theoretically we could eventually make our meaning clear, couldn’t we? But something gets in the way – syntax, grammar, morphology and orthography, all the things that form the bones of a language. Consider the Heinrich Heine poem “Ein Fichtenbaum”. It’s short, and its message is quite easy to grasp. A pine tree, longing for a palm tree, represents a man’s desire for a woman. Yet translating it into English has been devilishly tricky, because English doesn’t have genders like German does. So there’s no way to convey the binary opposition between the masculine ein Fichtenbaum and the feminine einer Palme. You see? So we must proceed from the starting assumption that distortion is inevitable. The question is how to distort with deliberation.’ He tapped the book lying on his desk. ‘You’ve all finished Tytler, yes?’ They nodded. They’d been assigned the introductory chapter of Essay on Principles of Translation by Lord Alexander Fraser Tytler Wood-houselee the night before. ‘Then you’ll have read that Tytler recommends three basic principles.
Which are – yes, Miss Desgraves?’ ‘First, that the translation conveys a complete and accurate idea of the original,’ said Victoire. ‘Second, that the translation mirrors the style and manner of writing of the original. And third, that the translation should read with all the ease of the original composition.’ She spoke with such confident precision, Robin thought she must have been reading from the text. He was very impressed when he glanced over and saw her consulting nothing but blank space. Ramy, too, had this talent for perfect recall – Robin was beginning to feel a bit intimidated by his cohort.
‘Very good,’ said Professor Playfair. ‘This sounds basic enough. But what do we mean by the “style and manner” of the original? What does it mean for a composition to read “easily”? What audience do we have in mind when we make these claims? These are the questions we will tackle this term, and such fascinating questions they are.’ He clasped his hands together. ‘Allow me again to descend into theatrics by discussing our namesake, Babel – yes, dear students, I can’t quite escape the romanticism of this institution.
Indulge me, please.’ His tone conveyed no regret at all. Professor Playfair loved this dramatic mysticism, these monologues that must have been rehearsed and perfected over years of teaching. But no one complained. They loved it too. ‘It is often argued that the greatest tragedy of the Old Testament was not man’s exile from the Garden of Eden, but the fall of the Tower of Babel. For Adam and Eve, though cast from grace, could still speak and comprehend the language of angels. But when men in their hubris decided to build a path to heaven, God confounded their understanding. He divided and confused them and scattered them about the face of the earth. ‘What was lost at Babel was not merely human unity, but the original language – something primordial and innate, perfectly understandable and lacking nothing in form or content. Biblical scholars call it the Adamic language. Some think it is Hebrew. Some think it is a real but ancient language that has been lost to time. Some think it is a new, artificial language that we ought to invent. Some think French fulfills this role; some think English, once it’s finished robbing and morphing, might.’ ‘Oh, no, this one is easy,’ said Ramy. ‘It’s Syriac.’ ‘Very funny, Mr Mirza.’ Robin did not know if Ramy was indeed joking, but no one else made a comment. Professor Playfair ploughed ahead. ‘For me, however, it matters not what the Adamic language was, for it’s clear we have lost any access to it. We will never speak the divine language. But by amassing all the world’s languages under this roof, by collecting the full range of human expressions, or as near to it as we can get, we can try. We will never touch heaven from this mortal plane, but our confusion is not infinite. We can, through perfecting the arts of translation, achieve what humanity lost at Babel.’ Professor Playfair sighed, moved by his own performance. Robin thought he saw actual tears form in the corners of his eyes.
‘Magic.’ Professor Playfair pressed a hand against his chest. ‘What we are doing is magic. It won’t always feel that way – indeed, when you do tonight’s exercise, it’ll feel more like folding laundry than chasing the ephemeral. But never forget the audacity of what you are attempting. Never forget that you are defying a curse laid by God.’ Robin raised his hand. ‘Do you mean, then, that our purpose here is to bring mankind closer together as well?’ Professor Playfair cocked his head. ‘What do you mean by that?’ ‘I only . . .’ Robin faltered. It sounded silly as he said it, a child’s fancy, not a serious scholarly query. Letty and Victoire were frowning at him; even Ramy was wrinkling his nose. Robin tried again – he knew what he meant to ask, only he couldn’t think of an elegant or subtle way to phrase it. ‘Well – since in the Bible, God split mankind apart. And I wonder if – if the purpose of translation, then, is to bring mankind back together. If we translate to – I don’t know, bring about that paradise again, on earth, between nations.’ Professor Playfair looked baffled by this. But quickly his features reassembled into a sprightly beam. ‘Well, of course. Such is the project of empire – and why, therefore, we translate at the pleasure of the Crown.’
Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays they had language tutorials, which, after Professor Playfair’s lecture, felt like reassuring solid ground.
They were required to take Latin together three times a week, regardless of regional specialty. (Greek, at this stage, could be dropped for anyone not specializing in Classics.) Latin was taught by a woman named Professor Margaret Craft, who could not have been more different from Professor Playfair. She rarely smiled. She delivered her lectures without feeling and by rote memory, never glancing once at her notes, although she flipped through these as she spoke, as if she’d long ago memorized her place on the page.
She did not ask their names – she only ever referred to them with a pointed finger and a cold, abrupt ‘You.’ She came off at first as utterly humourless, but when Ramy read aloud one of Ovid’s dryer injections – fugiebat enim, ‘for she was fleeing’, after Jove begs Io not to flee – she burst out in a fit of girlish laughter that made her seem twenty years younger; indeed, like a schoolgirl who might have sat among them. Then the moment passed, and her mask resumed its place.
Robin did not like her. Her lecturing voice had an awkward, unnatural rhythm with unexpected pauses that made it hard to follow her line of argument, and the two hours they spent in her classroom seemed to drag for an eternity. Letty, however, seemed rapt. She gazed at Professor Craft with shining admiration. When they filed out at the end of class, Robin hung by the door to wait as she collected her things so they could all walk to the Buttery together. But she instead went up to Professor Craft’s desk. ‘Professor, I was wondering if I could speak with you for—’ Professor Craft rose. ‘Class is over, Miss Price.’ ‘I know, but I wanted to ask you for a moment – if you have spare time – I mean, just as a woman at Oxford, I mean, there aren’t so many of us, and I hoped to hear your advice—’ Robin felt then he should stop listening, out of some vague sense of chivalry, but Professor Craft’s chilly voice cut through the air before he could reach the stairs. ‘Babel hardly discriminates against women. It’s simply that so few of our sex are interested in languages.’ ‘But you’re the only woman professor at Babel, and we all – that is, all the girls here and I – we think that’s quite admirable, so I wanted—’ ‘To know how it’s done? Hard work and innate brilliance. You know that already.’ ‘It’s different for women, though, and surely you’ve experienced—’ ‘When I have relevant topics for discussion, I will bring them up in class, Miss Price. But class is over. And you’re now infringing on my time.’ Robin hastened around the corner and down the winding steps before Letty could see him. When she sat down with her plate in the Buttery, he saw her eyes were a bit pink around the edges. But he pretended not to notice, and if Ramy or Victoire did, they said nothing.
* * *
On Wednesday afternoon, Robin had his solo tutorial in Chinese. He’d half expected to find Professor Lovell in the classroom, but his instructor turned out to be Professor Anand Chakravarti, a genial and understated man who spoke English with such a pitch-perfect Londoner’s accent that he might have been raised in Kensington.
Chinese class was a wholly different exercise from Latin. Professor Chakravarti didn’t lecture at Robin or make him do recitations. He conducted this tutorial as a conversation. He asked questions, Robin tried his best to answer, and they both tried to make sense out of what he’d said.
Professor Chakravarti began with questions so basic that Robin at first couldn’t see how they were worth answering, until he picked apart their implications and realized they were far beyond his scope of understanding.
What was a word? What was the smallest possible unit of meaning, and why was that different from a word? Was a word different from a character? In what ways was Chinese speech different from Chinese writing?
It was an odd exercise to analyze and dismantle a language he thought he knew like the back of his hand, to learn to classify words by ideogram or pictogram, and to memorize an entire vocabulary of new terms, most having to do with morphology or orthography. It was like tunnelling into the crevasses of his own mind, peeling things apart to see how they worked, and it both intrigued and unsettled him.
Then came the harder questions. Which Chinese words could be traced back to recognizable pictures? Which couldn’t? Why was the character for ‘woman’ – – also the radical used in the character for ‘slavery’? In the character for ‘good’? ‘I don’t know,’ Robin admitted. ‘Why is it? Are slavery and goodness both innately feminine?’ Professor Chakravarti shrugged. ‘I don’t know either. These are questions Richard and I are still trying to answer. We’re far from a satisfactory edition of the Chinese Grammatica, you see. When I was studying Chinese, I had no good Chinese-English resources – I had to make do with Abel-Rémusat’s Elémens de la grammaire chinoise and Fourmont’s Grammatica Sinica. Can you imagine? I still associate both Chinese and French with a headache. But I think we’ve made progress today, actually.’ Then Robin realized what his place here was. He was not simply a student but a colleague, a rare native speaker capable of expanding the bounds of Babel’s scant existing knowledge. Or a silver mine to be plundered, said Griffin’s voice, though he pushed the thought away.
The truth was, it felt exciting to contribute to the Grammaticas. But he still had much to learn. The second half of their tutorial was spent on readings in Classical Chinese, which Robin had dabbled in at Professor Lovell’s home but had never tackled in a systematic manner. Classical Chinese was to vernacular Mandarin what Latin was to English; one could guess at the gist of a phrase, but the rules of grammar were unintuitive and impossible to grasp without rigorous reading practice. Punctuation was a guessing game. Nouns could be verbs when they felt like it. Often, characters had different and contradictory meanings, either of which produced valid possible interpretations – the character , for instance, could mean both ‘to restrict’ and ‘large, substantial’.
That afternoon they tackled the Shijing – the Book of Songs – which was written in a discursive context so far removed from contemporary China that even readers of the Han period would have considered it written in a foreign language. ‘I propose we break here,’ Professor Chakravarti said after twenty minutes of debating the character , which in most contexts meant a negative ‘no, not’, but in the given context seemed instead like a word of praise, which didn’t track with anything they knew about the word. ‘I suspect we’ll have to leave this as an open question.’ ‘But I don’t understand,’ Robin said, frustrated. ‘How can we just not know? Could we ask someone about all this? Couldn’t we go on a research trip to Peking?’ ‘We could,’ said Professor Chakravarti. ‘But it makes things a bit hard when the Qing Emperor has decreed it punishable by death to teach a foreigner Chinese, you see.’ He patted Robin’s shoulder. ‘We make do with what we have. You’re the next best thing.’ ‘Isn’t there anyone else here who speaks Chinese?’ Robin asked. ‘Am I the only student?’ A strange look came over Professor Chakravarti’s face then. Robin was not supposed to know about Griffin, he realized. Probably Professor Lovell had sworn the rest of the faculty to secrecy; probably, according to the official record, Griffin did not exist.
Still, he couldn’t help but press. ‘I heard there was another student, a few years before me. Also from the coast.’
‘Oh – yes, I suppose there was.’ Professor Chakravarti’s fingers drummed anxiously against the desk. ‘A nice boy, though not quite as diligent
as you are. Griffin Harley.’ ‘Was? What happened to him?’ ‘Well – it’s a sad story, really. He passed away. Just before his fourth year.’ Professor Chakravarti scratched his temple. ‘He fell ill on an overseas research trip and didn’t make it home. It happens all the time.’ ‘It does?’ ‘Yes, there’s always a certain . . . risk, entailed in the profession. There’s so much travel, you know. You expect attrition.’ ‘But I still don’t understand,’ said Robin. ‘Surely there’s any number of Chinese students who would love to study in England.’ Professor Chakravarti’s fingers quickened against the wood. ‘Well, yes.
But first there’s the matter of national loyalties. It’s no good recruiting scholars who might run home to the Qing government at any moment, you know. Second, Richard is of the opinion that . . . well. One requires a certain
upbringing.’ ‘Like mine?’ ‘Like yours. Otherwise, Richard thinks . . .’ Professor Chakravarti was using this construction quite a lot, Robin noticed, ‘that the Chinese tend towards certain natural inclinations. Which is to say, he doesn’t think Chinese students would acclimatize well here.’ Lowly, uncivilized stock. ‘I see.’ ‘But that doesn’t mean you,’ Professor Chakravarti said quickly. ‘You’re raised properly, and all that. Wonderfully diligent, I don’t expect that will be a problem.’ ‘Yes.’ Robin swallowed. His throat felt very tight. ‘I’ve been very lucky.’
On the second Saturday after his arrival to Oxford, Robin made his way north for dinner with his guardian.
Professor Lovell’s Oxford residence was only a shade more humble than his Hampstead estate. It was a bit smaller, and enjoyed a mere front and back garden instead of an expansive green, but it was still more than someone on a professor’s salary should have been able to afford. Trees bearing plump red cherries lined the hedges by the front door, though cherries could hardly still
be in season at the turn of autumn. Robin suspected that if he bent down to check the grass by their roots, he would find silver bars in the soil. ‘Dear boy!’ He’d scarce rung the bell when Mrs Piper was upon him, brushing leaves from his jacket and turning him in circles to examine his reedy frame. ‘My heavens, you’re so thin already—’ ‘The food’s horrible,’ he said. A great big smile spread over his face; he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed her. ‘Just like you said. Dinner
yesterday was salt herrings—’
She gasped. ‘No.’
‘—cold beef—’
‘No!’ ‘—and stale bread.’ ‘Inhumane. Don’t you worry, I’ve cooked enough to make up for it.’ She patted his cheeks. ‘How’s college life besides? How do you like wearing those floppy black gowns? Have you made any friends?’ Robin was about to answer when Professor Lovell came down the stairs. ‘Hello, Robin,’ he said. ‘Come in. Mrs Piper, his coat—’ Robin shrugged it off and handed it to Mrs Piper, who examined the ink-stained cuffs with disapproval. ‘How goes the term?’ ‘Challenging, just as you warned.’ Robin felt older as he spoke, his voice somehow deeper. He’d left home only a week ago, but he felt like he’d aged years, and could present himself now as a young man and not a boy. ‘But challenging in a way that’s enjoyable. I’m learning quite a lot.’ ‘Professor Chakravarti says you’ve made some good contributions to the Grammatica.’ ‘Not as much as I’d like,’ said Robin. ‘There are particles in Classical Chinese that I’ve just no idea what to do with. Half the time our translations feel like guesswork.’ ‘I’ve felt that way for decades.’ Professor Lovell gestured towards the dining room. ‘Shall we?’ They might as well have been back in Hampstead. The long table was arranged precisely the same way Robin was used to, with him and Professor Lovell sitting at opposite ends and a painting to Robin’s right, which this time depicted the Thames rather than Oxford’s Broad Street. Mrs Piper poured their wine and, with a wink at Robin, disappeared back into the kitchen.
Professor Lovell raised his glass to him, then drank. ‘You’re taking theory with Jerome and Latin with Margaret, correct?’ ‘Right. It’s fairly good going.’ Robin took a sip of wine. ‘Though Professor Craft lectures like she wouldn’t notice if she were speaking to an empty room, and Professor Playfair seems to have missed a calling for the stage.’ Professor Lovell chuckled. Robin smiled, despite himself; he had never been able to make his guardian laugh before. ‘Did he give you his Psammetichus speech?’ ‘He did,’ said Robin. ‘Did all that really happen?’ ‘Who knows, except that Herodotus tells us so,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘There’s another good Herodotus story, again about Psammetichus.
Psammetichus wanted to determine which language was the foundation of all earthly languages, so he gave two newborn infants to a shepherd with the instructions that they should not be allowed to hear human speech. For a while all they did was babble, as infants do. Then one day one of the infants stretched out his little hands to the shepherd and exclaimed bekos, which is the Phrygian word for bread. And so Psammetichus decided the Phrygians must have been the first race on earth, and Phrygian the first language. Pretty story, isn’t it?’ ‘I’m assuming no one accepts that argument,’ said Robin. ‘Heavens, no.’ ‘But could that really work?’ asked Robin. ‘Could we actually learn anything from what infants utter?’ ‘Not that I’m aware of,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘The issue is it’s impossible to isolate infants from an environment with language if you want them to develop as infants should. Might be interesting to buy a child and see – but, well, no.’ Professor Lovell tilted his head. ‘It’s fun to entertain the possibility of an original language, though.’ ‘Professor Playfair mentioned something similar,’ said Robin. ‘About a perfect, innate, and unadulterated language. The Adamic language.’ He felt more confident talking to the professor now that he’d spent some time at Babel. They were on more of an equal footing now; they could communicate as colleagues. Dinner felt less like an interrogation and more like a casual conversation between two scholars in the same fascinating field.
‘The Adamic language.’ Professor Lovell made a face. ‘I don’t know why he fills your minds with that stuff. It’s a pretty metaphor, certainly, but every few years we get an undergraduate who’s determined to discover the Adamic language in Proto-Indo-European, or otherwise wholly invent it on his own, and it always takes either a stern talking-to or a few weeks of failure for him to come back to his senses.’ ‘You don’t think that an original language exists?’ Robin asked. ‘Of course I don’t. The most devout Christians think it does, but you’d think if the Holy Word were so innate and unambiguous, there’d be less debate about its contents.’ He shook his head. ‘There are those who think that the Adamic language might be English – might become English – purely because the English language has enough military might and power behind it to credibly crowd out competitors, but then we must also remember that it was barely a century ago that Voltaire declared that French was the universal language. That was, of course, before Waterloo. Webb and Leibniz once speculated that Chinese might, in fact, have once been universally intelligible due to its ideogrammatic nature, but Percy debunks this by arguing Chinese is a derivative of Egyptian hieroglyphs. My point being, these things are contingent. Dominant languages might keep a little staying power even after their armies decline – Portuguese, for instance, has far outstayed its welcome – but they always fade from relevance eventually. But I do think there is a pure realm of meaning – a language in between, where all concepts are perfectly expressed, which we have not been able to approximate. There is a sense, a feeling of when we have got it right.’ ‘Like Voltaire,’ Robin said, emboldened by his wine and rather excited that he could remember the relevant quote. ‘Like what he writes in his preface to his translation of Shakespeare. I have tried to soar with the author where he soars.’ ‘Quite right,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘But how does Frere put it? The language of translation ought, we think, as far as possible, to be a pure, impalpable, and invisible element, the medium of thought and feeling, and nothing more. But what do we know of thought and feeling except as expressed through language?’ ‘Is that what powers the silver bars?’ Robin asked. This conversation was starting to get away from him; he sensed a depth to Professor Lovell’s theorizing into which he wasn’t prepared to follow, and he needed to bring
things back to the material before he got lost. ‘Do they work by capturing that pure meaning – whatever gets lost when we invoke it through crude approximations?’ Professor Lovell nodded. ‘It is as close to a theoretical explanation as we can get. But I also think that as languages evolve, as their speakers become more worldly and sophisticated, as they gorge on other concepts and swell and morph to encompass more over time – we approach something close to that language. There’s less room for misunderstanding. And we’ve only begun to work out what that means for silver-working.’ ‘I suppose that means the Romanticists might eventually run out of things to say,’ said Robin.
He was only joking, but Professor Lovell nodded vigorously at this. ‘You’re quite right. French, Italian, and Spanish dominate the department, but their new contributions to the silver-working ledgers dwindle by the year.
There’s simply too much communication across the continent. Too many loanwords. Connotations change and converge as French and Spanish grow closer to English, and vice versa. Decades from now, the silver bars we use from Romance languages might no longer have any effect. No, if we want to innovate, then we must look to the East. We need languages that aren’t spoken in Europe.’ ‘That’s why you specialize in Chinese,’ said Robin. ‘Precisely.’ Professor Lovell nodded. ‘China, I’m quite sure, is the future.’ ‘And that’s why you and Professor Chakravarti have been trying to diversify the cohorts?’ ‘Who’s been gossiping to you about departmental politics?’ Professor Lovell chuckled. ‘Yes, there are hurt feelings this year because we only took one Classicist, and a woman at that. But that’s how it has to be. The cohort above you are going to have a tough time finding jobs.’ ‘If we’re talking about the spread of language, I wanted to ask . . . ‘Robin cleared his throat. ‘Where do all those bars go? I mean, who buys them?’ Professor Lovell gave him a curious look. ‘To those who can afford them, of course.’ ‘But Britain is the only place where I’ve ever seen silver bars in wide use,’ said Robin. ‘They’re not nearly so popular in Canton, or, I’ve heard, in Calcutta. And it strikes me – I don’t know, it seems a bit strange that the
British are the only ones who get to use them when the Chinese and Indians are contributing the crucial components of their functioning.’ ‘But that’s simple economics,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘It takes a great deal of cash to purchase what we create. The British happen to be able to afford it. We have deals with Chinese and Indian merchants too, but they’re often less able to pay the export fees.’ ‘But we have silver bars in charities and hospitals and orphanages here,’ said Robin. ‘We have bars that can help people who need them most. None of that exists anywhere else in the world.’ He was playing a dangerous game, he knew. But he had to seek clarity.
He could not construct Professor Lovell and all his colleagues as the enemy in his mind, could not wholly buy into Griffin’s damning assessment of Babel, without some confirmation. ‘Well, we can’t expend energy researching any frivolous application,’ Professor Lovell scoffed.
Robin tried a different line of argument. ‘It’s just that – well, it only seems fair there ought to be some kind of exchange.’ He was regretting now that he’d drunk so much. He felt loose, vulnerable. Too passionate for what should have been an intellectual discussion. ‘We take their languages, their ways of seeing and describing the world. We ought to give them something in return.’ ‘But language,’ said Professor Lovell, ‘is not like a commercial good, like tea or silks, to be bought and paid for. Language is an infinite resource.
And if we learn it, if we use it – who are we stealing from?’ There was some logic in this, but the conclusion still made Robin uncomfortable. Surely things were not so simple; surely this still masked some unfair coercion or exploitation. But he could not formulate an objection, could not figure out where the fault in the argument lay. ‘The Qing Emperor has one of the largest silver reserves in the world,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘He has plenty of scholars. He even has linguists who understand English. So why doesn’t he fill his court with silver bars? Why is it that the Chinese, rich as their language is, have no grammars of their own?’ ‘It could be they don’t have the resources to get started,’ said Robin. ‘Then why should we just hand them to them?’ ‘But that’s not the point – the point is that they need it, so why doesn’t Babel send scholars abroad on exchange programmes? Why don’t we teach
them how it’s done?’ ‘Could be that all nations hoard their most precious resources.’ ‘Or that you’re hoarding knowledge that should be freely shared,’ said Robin. ‘Because if language is free, if knowledge is free, then why are all the Grammaticas under lock and key in the tower? Why don’t we ever host foreign scholars, or send scholars to help open translation centres elsewhere in the world?’ ‘Because as the Royal Institute of Translation, we serve the interests of
the Crown.’ ‘That seems fundamentally unjust.’ ‘Is that what you believe?’ A cold edge crept into Professor Lovell’s voice. ‘Robin Swift, do you think what we do here is fundamentally unjust?’ ‘I only want to know,’ said Robin, ‘why silver could not save my
mother.’ There was a brief silence. ‘Well, I’m sorry about your mother.’ Professor Lovell picked up his knife and began cutting into his steak. He seemed flustered, discomfited. ‘But the Asiatic Cholera was a product of Canton’s poor public hygiene, not the unequal distribution of bars. And anyhow, there’s no silver match-pair that can bring back the dead—’ ‘What excuse is that?’ Robin set down his glass. He was properly drunk now, and that made him combative. ‘You had the bars – they’re easy to make, you told me so yourself – so why—’ ‘For God’s sake,’ snapped Professor Lovell. ‘She was only just a woman.’ The doorbell rang. Robin flinched; his fork clattered against his plate and fell to the floor. He scooped it up, deeply embarrassed. Mrs Piper’s voice carried down the hall. ‘Oh, what a surprise! They’re having dinner now, I’ll bring you in—’ and then a blond, handsome, and elegantly dressed gentleman strode into the dining room, bearing a stack of books in his hand. ‘Sterling!’ Professor Lovell set down his knife and stood to greet the stranger. ‘I thought you were coming in late.’ ‘Finished up in London earlier than expected—’ Sterling’s eyes caught Robin’s, and the whole of him went rigid. ‘Oh, hello.’ ‘Hello,’ Robin said, flustered and shy. This was the famous Sterling Jones, he realized. William Jones’s nephew, the star of the department. ‘It’s –
nice to meet you.’ Sterling said nothing, only perused him for a long moment. His mouth twisted oddly, though Robin could not read the attendant expression. ‘My goodness.’ Professor Lovell cleared his throat. ‘Sterling.’ Sterling’s eyes lingered on Robin’s face for another moment, and then he looked away. ‘Welcome, anyhow.’ He said this like an afterthought; he had already turned his back on Robin, and the words sounded forced and awkward. He set the books on the table. ‘You were right, Dick, it’s precisely the Ricci dictionaries that are the key. We’ve been missing what happens when we go through Portuguese. That, I can help with. Now I think if we daisy-chain the characters I’ve marked here, and here—’ Professor Lovell was flipping through the pages. ‘This is waterlogged. I hope you didn’t pay him in full—’ ‘I paid nothing, Dick, do you think me a fool?’ ‘Well, after Macau—’ They fell into a heated discussion. Robin was entirely forgotten.
He looked on, feeling tipsy and out of place. His cheeks burned. He had not finished his food, but it seemed very awkward to keep eating now. He had no appetite besides. His earlier confidence vanished. He felt again like a stupid little boy, laughed away and dismissed by those crow-like visitors in Professor Lovell’s sitting room.
And he wondered at the contradiction: that he despised them, that he knew they could be up to no good, and that still he wanted to be respected by them enough to be included in their ranks. It was a very strange mix of emotions. He hadn’t the faintest idea how to sort through them.
But we haven’t finished, he wanted to tell his father. We were discussing my mother.
He felt his chest constrict, as if his heart were a caged beast straining to burst out. That was curious. This dismissal was nothing he hadn’t experienced before. Professor Lovell had never acknowledged Robin’s feelings, or offered care or comfort, only abruptly changed the subject, only thrown up a cold, indifferent wall, only minimized Robin’s hurts so that it seemed frivolous to bring them up at all. Robin had grown used to it by now.
Only now – perhaps because of the wine, or perhaps it had all been building up for so long that things were past the tipping point – he felt he wanted to scream. Cry. Kick the wall. Anything, if only to make his father look him in the face. ‘Oh, Robin.’ Professor Lovell glanced up. ‘Tell Mrs Piper we’d like some coffees before you go, will you?’ Robin grabbed his coat and left the room.
* * *
He did not turn from High Street onto Magpie Lane.
Instead he went further and passed into the grounds of Merton College. At night, the gardens were twisted and eerie; black branches reached like fingers from behind a bolted iron gate. Robin fiddled uselessly with the lock, then hauled himself panting over a narrow gap between the spikes. He wandered a few feet into the garden before realizing he did not know what a birch looked like.
He stepped back and glanced around, feeling rather foolish. Then a patch of white caught his eye – a pale tree, surrounded by a cluster of mulberry bushes, trimmed to curl slightly upwards as if in adulation. A knob protruded from the white tree’s trunk; in the moonlight, it looked like a bald head. A
crystal ball.
As good a guess as any, Robin thought.
He thought of his brother in his flapping raven’s cloak, brushing his fingers over this pale wood by moonlight. Griffin did love his theatrics.
He wondered at the hot coil in his chest. The long, sobering walk had not dimmed his anger. He still felt ready to scream. Had dinner with his father infuriated him so? Was this the righteous indignation that Griffin spoke of?
But what he felt was not as simple as revolutionary flame. What he felt in his heart was not conviction so much as doubt, resentment, and a deep confusion.
He hated this place. He loved it. He resented how it treated him. He still wanted to be a part of it – because it felt so good to be a part of it, to speak to its professors as an intellectual equal, to be in on the great game.
One nasty thought crept into his mind – It’s because you’re a wounded little boy, and you wish they had paid you more attention – but he pushed
this away. Surely he could not be so petty; surely he was not merely lashing out at his father because he felt dismissed.
He had seen and heard enough. He knew what Babel was at its roots, and he knew enough to trust his gut.
He ran his finger over the wood. His nails would not do. A knife would have been ideal, but he’d never carried one. At last, he pulled a fountain pen from his pocket and pressed the tip into the knob. The wood gave purchase.
He scratched hard several times to make the cross visible – his fingers ached, and the nib was irreversibly ruined – but at last he left his mark.
