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Chapter Nine
Translators are of the same faithless and stolid race that they have ever been: the particle of gold they bring us over is hidden from all but the most patient eye, among shiploads of yellow sand and sulphur.
THOMAS CARLYLE, ‘State of German Literature’
Babel students did not take qualifying exams until the end of their third year, so Trinity flew by with no more and no less stress than the previous two terms. Somewhere in this flurry of papers, readings, and doomed late-night attempts to perfect Ramy’s potato curry, their first year came to an end.
It was customary for rising second years to go abroad during the summer for language immersion. Ramy spent June and July in Madrid learning Spanish and studying the Umayyad archives. Letty went to Frankfurt, where she apparently read nothing but incomprehensible German philosophy, and Victoire to Strasbourg, from which she returned with insufferable opinions * on food and fine dining.Robin had hoped he might have the chance to visit Japan that summer, but he was sent instead to the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca to maintain his Mandarin. The college, which was run by Protestant missionaries, enforced an exhausting routine of prayers, readings in the classics, and courses in medicine, moral philosophy, and logic. Never did he get the chance to wander out of the compound onto Heeren Street, where the Chinese residents lived; instead, those weeks were an unbroken stream of sun, sand, and endless Bible study meetings among white Protestants.
He was very glad when summer ended. They all returned to Oxford sun- darkened and at least a stone heavier each from eating better than they had all term. Still, none of them would have extended their breaks if they could have done. They’d missed each other, they’d missed Oxford with its rain and dreadful food, and they’d missed the academic rigour of Babel. Their minds,
enriched with new sounds and words, were like sleek muscles waiting to be
stretched.
They were ready to make magic.
This year, they were finally allowed access to the silver-working department. They would not be allowed to make their own engravings until year four, but this term they would begin a preparatory theory course called Etymology – taught, Robin learned with some trepidation, by Professor Lovell.
On the first day of term, they went up to the eighth floor for a special introductory seminar with Professor Playfair. ‘Welcome back.’ Normally he lectured in a plain suit, but today he’d donned a black master’s gown with tassels that swished dramatically around his ankles. ‘The last time you were allowed on this floor, you saw the extent of the magic we create here. Today, we’ll dismantle its mysteries. Have a seat.’ They settled into chairs at the nearest workstations. Letty moved aside a stack of books on hers so she could see better, but Professor Playfair barked
suddenly, ‘Don’t touch that.’ Letty flinched. ‘Pardon?’ ‘That’s Evie’s desk,’ said Professor Playfair. ‘Can’t you see the plaque?’ There was, indeed, a small bronze plaque affixed to the front of the desk.
They craned their necks to read it. Desk Belonging to Eveline Brooke, it read. Do not touch.
Letty gathered her things, stood up, and took the seat next to Ramy. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled, cheeks scarlet.
They sat in silence for a moment, not sure what to do. They’d never seen Professor Playfair so upset. But just as abruptly, his features rearranged themselves back into his regular warmth and, with a slight hop, he began to lecture as if nothing had happened. ‘The core principle underlying silver-working is untranslatability. When we say a word or phrase is untranslatable, we mean that it lacks a precise equivalent in another language. Even if its meaning can be partially captured in several words or sentences, something is still lost – something that falls into semantic gaps which are, of course, created by cultural differences in lived experience. Take the Chinese concept dao, which we translate
sometimes as “the way”, “the path”, or “the way things ought to be”. Yet none of those truly encapsulates the meaning of dao, a little word that requires an entire philosophical tome to explain. Are you with me so far?’ They nodded. This was nothing more than the thesis Professor Playfair had hammered into their heads all of last term – that all translation involved some degree of warp and distortion. Finally, it appeared, they were going to do something with this distortion. ‘No translation can perfectly carry over the meaning of the original. But what is meaning? Does meaning refer to something that supersedes the words we use to describe our world? I think, intuitively, yes. Otherwise we would have no basis for critiquing a translation as accurate or inaccurate, not * without some unspeakable sense of what it lacked. Humboldt,for instance, argues that words are connected to the concepts they describe by something invisible, intangible – a mystical realm of meaning and ideas, emanating from a pure mental energy which only takes form when we ascribe it an imperfect signifier.’ Professor Playfair tapped the desk in front of him, where a number of silver bars, both blank and engraved, had been arranged in a neat row. ‘That pure realm of meaning – whatever it is, wherever it exists – is the core of our craft. The basic principles of silver-working are very simple. You inscribe a word or phrase in one language on one side, and a corresponding word or phrase in a different language on the other. Because translation can never be perfect, the necessary distortions – the meanings lost or warped in the journey – are caught, and then manifested by the silver. And that, dear students, is as close to magic as anything within the realm of natural science.’ He appraised them. ‘Are you still with me?’ They looked more unsure now. ‘I think, Professor,’ said Victoire. ‘If you gave us an example . . .’ ‘Of course.’ Professor Playfair picked up the bar on the far right. ‘We’ve sold quite a few copies of this bar to fishermen. The Greek kárabos has a number of different meanings including “boat”, “crab”, or “beetle”. Where do you think the associations come from?’ ‘Function?’ Ramy ventured. ‘Were the boats used for catching crabs?’ ‘Good try, but no.’
‘The shape,’ Robin guessed. As he spoke it made more sense. ‘Think of a galley with rows of oars. They’d look like little scuttling legs, wouldn’t they? Wait – scuttle, sculler . . .’ ‘You’re getting carried away, Mr Swift. But you’re on the right path.
Focus on kárabos for now. From kárabos we get caravel, which is a quick and lightweight ship. Both words mean “ship”, but only kárabos retains the sea-creature associations in the original Greek. Are you following?’ They nodded.
He tapped the ends of the bar, where the words kárabos and caravel were written on opposite sides. ‘Affix this to a fishing ship, and you’ll find it yields a better load than any of its sister crafts. These bars were quite popular in the last century, until overuse meant fishing yields dropped down to what they were before. The bars can warp reality to some extent, but they can’t materialize new fish. You’d need a better word for that. Is this all
starting to make sense?’ They nodded again. ‘Now, this one is one of our most widely replicated bars. You’ll find these in doctors’ bags throughout England.’ He lifted the second bar to the right. ‘Triacle and treacle.’ Robin reeled back, startled. It was the bar, or a copy of the bar, that Professor Lovell had used to save him in Canton. The first enchanted silver he’d ever touched. ‘It is most often used to create a sugary home remedy that acts as an antidote to most types of poison. An ingenious discovery by a student named Evie Brooke – yes, that Evie – who realized the word treacle was first recorded in the seventeenth century in relation to the heavy use of sugar to disguise the bad taste of medicine. She then traced that back to the Old French triacle, meaning “antidote” or “cure from snakebite”, then the Latin theriaca, and finally to the Greek theriake, both meaning “antidote”.’ ‘But the match-pair is only between English and French,’ said Victoire. ‘How—’ ‘Daisy-chaining,’ said Professor Playfair. He turned the bar around to show them the Latin and Greek engraved along the sides. ‘It’s a technique that invokes older etymologies as guides, shepherding meaning across miles and centuries. You might also think of it as extra stakes for a tent. It keeps the whole thing stable and helps us identify with accuracy the distortion we’re
trying to capture. But that’s quite an advanced technique – don’t worry about that for now.’ He lifted the third bar to the right. ‘Here’s something I came up with quite recently on commission for the Duke of Wellington.’ He uttered this with evident pride. ‘The Greek word idiótes can mean a fool, as our idiot implies. But it also carries the definition of one who is private, unengaged with worldly affairs – his idiocy is derived not from lack of natural faculties, but from ignorance and lack of education. When we translate idiótes to idiot, it has the effect of removing knowledge. This bar, then, can make you forget, quite abruptly, things you thought you’d learned. Very nice when you’re trying *to get enemy spies to forget what they’ve seen.’ Professor Playfair put the bar down. ‘So there it is. It’s all quite easy once you’ve grasped the basic principle. We capture what is lost in translation – for there is always something lost in translation – and the bar manifests it into being. Simple enough?’ ‘But that’s absurdly powerful,’ said Letty. ‘You could do anything with those bars. You could be God—’ ‘Not quite, Miss Price. We are restrained by the natural evolution of languages. Even words that diverge in meaning still have quite a close relationship with each other. This limits the magnitude of change the bars can effect. For example, you can’t use them to bring back the dead, because we haven’t found a good match-pair in a language where life and death are not in opposition to each other. Besides that, there’s one other rather severe limitation to the bars – one that keeps every peasant in England from running around wielding them like talismans. Can anyone guess what it is?’ Victoire raised her hand. ‘You need a fluent speaker.’ ‘Quite right,’ said Professor Playfair. ‘Words have no meaning unless there is someone present who can understand them. And it can’t be a shallow level of understanding – you can’t simply tell a farmer what triacle means in French and expect that the bar will work. You need to be able to think in a language – to live and breathe it, not just recognize it as a smattering of * letters on a page. This is also why invented languageswill never work, and why ancient languages like Old English have lost their effect. Old English would be a silver-worker’s dream – we’ve got such extensive dictionaries and we can trace the etymology quite clearly, so the bars would be
wonderfully exact. But nobody thinks in Old English. Nobody lives and breathes in Old English. It’s partly for this reason that the Classics education at Oxford is so rigorous. Fluency in Latin and Greek are still mandatory for many degrees, though the reformers have been agitating for years for us to drop those requirements. But if we ever did so, half the silver bars in Oxford would stop working.’ ‘That’s why we’re here,’ said Ramy. ‘We’re already fluent.’ ‘That’s why you’re here,’ Professor Playfair agreed. ‘Psammetichus’s boys. Wonderful, no, to hold such power by virtue of your foreign birth? I’m quite good with new languages, yet it would take me years to invoke Urdu the way you can without hesitation.’ ‘How do the bars work if a fluent speaker must be present?’ Victoire asked. ‘Shouldn’t they lose their effect as soon as the translator leaves the room?’ ‘Very good question.’ Professor Playfair held up the first and second bars. Placed side by side, the second bar was clearly slightly longer than the first. ‘Now you’ve raised the issue of endurance. Several things affect the endurance of a bar’s effect. First is the concentration and amount of silver.
Both these bars are over ninety per cent silver – the rest is a copper alloy, which is used often in coins – but the triacle bar is about twenty per cent larger, which means it’ll last a few months longer, depending on frequency and intensity of use.’ He lowered the bars. ‘Many of the cheaper bars you see around London don’t last quite as long. Very few of them are actually silver all the way through. More often, they’re just a thin sheen of silver coating over wood or some other cheap metal. They run out of charge in a matter of weeks, after which they need to be touched up, as we put it.’ ‘For a fee?’ Robin asked.
Professor Playfair nodded, smiling. ‘Something has to pay for your stipends.’ ‘So that’s all it takes to maintain a bar?’ asked Letty. ‘Just having a translator speak the words in the match-pair?’ ‘It’s a bit more complicated than that,’ said Professor Playfair. ‘Sometimes the engravings have to be reinscribed, or the bars have to be refitted—’
‘How much do you charge for those services, though?’ Letty pressed. ‘A dozen shillings, I’ve heard? Is it really worth so much to perform a little touch-up?’ Professor Playfair’s grin widened. He looked rather like a boy who’d been caught sticking his thumb in a pie. ‘It pays well to perform what the general public thinks of as magic, doesn’t it?’ ‘Then the expense is entirely invented?’ Robin asked.
This came out more sharply than he’d intended. But he was thinking, then, of the choleric plague that had swept through London; of how Mrs Piper explained the poor simply could not be helped, for silver-work was so terribly costly. ‘Oh, yes.’ Professor Playfair seemed to find this all very funny. ‘We hold the secrets, and we can set whatever terms we like. That’s the beauty of being cleverer than everyone else. Now, one last thing before we conclude.’ He plucked up one gleaming blank bar from the far end of the table. ‘I must issue a warning. There is one match-pair that you must never, ever attempt.
Can anyone guess what that is?’
‘Good and evil,’ said Letty.
‘Good guess, but no.’ ‘The names of God,’ said Ramy. ‘We trust you not to be that stupid. No, this one’s trickier.’ No one else had the answer. ‘It’s translation,’ said Professor Playfair. ‘Simply, the words for translation itself.’ As he spoke, he engraved a word quickly on one side of the bar, and then showed them what he’d written: Translate. ‘The verb translate has slightly different connotations in each language.
The English, Spanish, and French words – translate, traducir, and traduire – come from the Latin translat, which means “to carry across”. But we get something different once we move past Romance languages.’ He began inscribing a new set of letters on the other side. ‘The Chinese fānyì, for example, connotes turning or flipping something over, while the second character yì comes with a connotation of change and exchange. In Arabic, tarjama can refer both to biography and translation. In Sanskrit, the word for translation is anuvad, which also means “to say or repeat after and again”.
The difference here is temporal, rather than the spatial metaphor of Latin. In
Igbo, the two words for translation – tapia and kowa – both involve narration, deconstruction, and reconstruction, a breaking into pieces that makes possible a change in form. And so on. The differences and their implications are infinite. As such, there are no languages in which translation means exactly the same thing.’ He showed them what he’d written on the other side. Italian – tradurre.
He put it on the table.
“Translate,” he said. “Tradurre.”
The moment he lifted his hand from the bar, it began to shake.
Amazed, they watched as the bar trembled with greater and greater violence. It was awful to witness. The bar seemed to have come alive, as if possessed by some spirit desperately trying to break free, or at least to split itself apart. It made no sound other than a fierce rattling against the table, but Robin heard in his mind a tortured, accompanying scream. ‘The translation match-pair creates a paradox,’ Professor Playfair said calmly as the bar started shaking so hard that it leapt inches off the table in its throes. ‘It attempts to create a purer translation, something that will align to the metaphors associated with each word, but this is of course impossible, because no perfect translations are possible.’ Cracks formed in the bar, thin veins that branched, split, and widened. ‘The manifestation has nowhere to go except the bar itself. So it creates an ongoing cycle until, at last, the bar breaks down. And . . . this happens.’ The bar leapt high into the air and shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces that scattered across the tables, the chairs, the floor. Robin’s cohort backed away, flinching. Professor Playfair did not bat an eye. ‘Do not try it. Not even out of curiosity. This silver,’ he kicked at one of the fallen shards, ‘cannot be reused. Even if it’s melted down and reforged, any bars made with even an ounce of it will be impotent. Even worse, the effect is contagious. You activate the bar when it’s on a pile of silver, and it spreads to everything it’s in contact with. Easy way to waste a couple dozen pounds if you’re not careful.’ He placed the engraving pen back on the worktable. ‘Is
this understood?’ They nodded. ‘Good. Never forget this. The ultimate viability of translation is a fascinating philosophical question – it is, after all, what lies at the heart of
the story of Babel. But such theoretical questions are best left for the classroom. Not for experiments that might bring down the building.’
‘Anthony was right,’ said Victoire. ‘Why would anyone bother with the Literature Department when there’s silver-working?’ They sat around their regular table at the Buttery, feeling rather dizzy with power. They’d been repeating the same sentiments about silver-working since class had been let out, but it didn’t matter; it all felt so novel, so incredible. The whole world had seemed different when they stepped out of the tower. They’d entered the wizard’s house, had watched him mix his potions and cast his spells, and now nothing would satisfy them until they’d tried it themselves. ‘Did I hear my name?’ Anthony slid into the seat across Robin. He peered around at their faces, then smiled knowingly. ‘Oh, I remember this look. Did Playfair give you his demonstration today?’ ‘Is that what you do all day?’ Victoire asked him excitedly. ‘Tinker with match-pairs?’ ‘Close enough,’ said Anthony. ‘It involves a lot more thumbing through etymological dictionaries than tinkering per se, but once you’ve seized upon something that might work, things get really fun. Right now I’m playing with a pair I think might be useful in bakeries. Flour and flower.’ ‘Aren’t those just entirely different words?’ asked Letty. ‘You would think,’ said Anthony. ‘But if you go back to the Anglo-French original of the thirteenth century, you’ll find they were originally the same word – flower simply referred to the finest part of grain meal. Over time, flower and flour diverged to represent different objects. But if this bar works right, then I should be able to install it in milling machines to refine flour with more efficiency.’ He sighed. ‘I’m not sure it will work. But I expect a lifetime of free scones from Vaults if it does.’ ‘Do you get royalties?’ asked Victoire. ‘Every time they make a copy of your bars, I mean?’ ‘Oh, no. I get a modest sum, but all proceeding profits go to the tower.
They do add my name to the ledger of match-pairs, though. I’ve got six in there so far. And there are only about twelve hundred active match-pairs currently in use throughout the Empire, so that’s about the highest academic laurel you can claim. Better than publishing a paper anywhere else.’
‘Hold on,’ said Ramy. ‘Isn’t twelve hundred quite low? I mean, match- pairs have been in use since the Roman Empire, so how—’ ‘How is it that we haven’t covered the country in silver expressing every match-pair possible?’ ‘Right,’ said Ramy. ‘Or at least, come up with more than twelve hundred.’ ‘Well, think about it,’ said Anthony. ‘The problem should be obvious.
Languages affect each other; they inject new meaning into each other, and like water rushing out of a dam, the more porous the barriers are, the weaker the force. Most of the silver bars that power London are translations from Latin, French, and German. But those bars are losing their efficacy. As linguistic flow spreads across continents – as words like saute and gratin become a standard part of the English lexicon – the semantic warp loses its potency.’ ‘Professor Lovell told me something similar,’ said Robin, remembering. ‘He’s convinced that Romance languages will yield fewer returns as time goes on.’ ‘He’s right,’ said Anthony. ‘So much has been translated from other European languages to English and vice versa in this century. We seem unable to kick our addiction to the Germans and their philosophers, or to the Italians and their poets. So, Romance Languages is really the most threatened branch of the department, as much as they’d like to pretend they own the building. The Classics are getting less promising as well. Latin and Greek will hang on for a bit, since fluency in either is still the purview of the elites, but Latin, at least, is getting more colloquial than you’d think. Somewhere on the eighth floor there’s a postdoc working on a revival of Manx and Cornish, but no one thinks that’s going to succeed. Same with Gaelic, but don’t tell Cathy. That’s why you three are so valuable.’ Anthony pointed at them all in turn except for Letty. ‘You know languages they haven’t milked to exhaustion yet.’ ‘What about me?’ Letty said indignantly. ‘Well, you’re all right for a bit, but only because Britain’s developed its sense of national identity in opposition to the French. The French are superstitious heathens; we are Protestants. The French wear wooden shoes, so we wear leather. We’ll resist French incursion on our language yet. But it’s really the colonies and the semi-colonies – Robin and China, Ramy and
India; boys, you’re uncharted territory. You’re the stuff that everyone’s fighting over.’ ‘You say it like it’s a resource,’ said Ramy. ‘Well, certainly. Language is a resource just like gold and silver. People have fought and died over those Grammaticas.’ ‘But that’s absurd,’ said Letty. ‘Language is just words, just thoughts – you can’t constrain the use of a language.’ ‘Can’t you?’ asked Anthony. ‘Do you know the official punishment in China for teaching Mandarin to a foreigner is death?’ Letty turned to Robin. ‘Is that true?’ ‘I think it is,’ said Robin. ‘Professor Chakravarti told me the same thing.
The Qing government are – they’re scared. They’re scared of the outside.’ ‘You see?’ asked Anthony. ‘Languages aren’t just made of words.
They’re modes of looking at the world. They’re the keys to civilization. And that’s knowledge worth killing for.’
‘Words tell stories.’ This was how Professor Lovell opened their first class that afternoon, held in a spare, windowless room on the tower’s fifth floor. ‘Specifically, the history of those words – how they came into use, and how their meanings morphed into what they mean today – tell us just as much about a people, if not more, than any other kind of historical artifact. Take the word knave. Where do you think it comes from?’ ‘Playing cards, right? You’ve got your king, queen . . .’ Letty started, then broke off when she realized the argument was circular. ‘Oh, never mind.’ Professor Lovell shook his head. ‘The Old English cnafa refers to a boy servant, or young male servant. We confirm this with its German cognate Knabe, which is an old term for boy. So knaves were originally young boys who attended to knights. But when the institution of knighthood crumbled at the end of the sixteenth century, and when lords realized they could hire cheaper and better professional armies, hundreds of knaves found themselves unemployed. So they did what any young men down on their luck would do – they fell in with highwaymen and robbers and became the lowlife scoundrels that we label as knaves now. So the history of the word does not describe just a change in language, but a change in an entire social order.’ Professor Lovell was not a passionate lecturer, nor a natural performer.
He looked ill at ease before an audience; his movements were stilted and
abrupt, and he spoke in a dry, sombre, straightforward manner. Still, every word out of his mouth was perfectly timed, well considered, and fascinating.
In the days before this lecture, Robin had dreaded taking a class with his guardian. But it turned out not to be awkward or embarrassing. Professor Lovell treated him just like he had in front of company back in Hampstead – distant, formal, his eyes flitting always over Robin’s face without landing, like the space where he existed could not be seen. ‘We get the word etymology from the Greek étymon,’ continued Professor Lovell. ‘The true sense of a word, from étumos, the “true or actual”. So we can think of etymology as an exercise in tracing how far a word has strayed from its roots. For they travel marvelous distances, both literally and metaphorically.’ He looked suddenly at Robin. ‘What’s the
word for a great storm in Mandarin?’
*Robin gave a start. ‘Ah – fēngbào?’
‘No, give me something bigger.’ †‘Táifēng?’ ‘Good.’ Professor Lovell pointed to Victoire. ‘And what weather patterns are always drifting across the Caribbean?’ ‘Typhoons,’ she said, then blinked. ‘Taifeng? Typhoon? How—’ ‘We start with Greco-Latin,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘Typhon was a monster, one of the sons of Gaia and Tartarus, a devastating creature with a hundred serpentine heads. At some point he became associated with violent winds, because later the Arabs started using tūfān to describe violent, windy storms. From Arabic it hopped over to Portuguese, which was brought to China on explorers’ ships.’ ‘But táifēng isn’t just a loanword,’ said Robin. ‘It means something in Chinese – tái is great, and fēng is wind–’ ‘And you don’t think the Chinese could have come up with a transliteration that had its own meaning?’ asked Professor Lovell. ‘This happens all the time. Phonological calques are often semantic calques as well. Words spread. And you can trace contact points of human history from words that have uncannily similar pronunciations. Languages are only shifting sets of symbols – stable enough to make mutual discourse possible, but fluid enough to reflect changing social dynamics. When we invoke words in silver, we call to mind that changing history.’
Letty raised her hand. ‘I have a question about method.’ ‘Go on.’ ‘Historical research is well and fine,’ said Letty. ‘All you have to do is look at artifacts, documents, and the like. But how do you research the history of words? How do you determine how far they’ve travelled?’ Professor Lovell looked very pleased by this question. ‘Reading,’ he said. ‘There is no other way around it. You compile all the sources you can get your hands on, and then you sit down to solve puzzles. You look for patterns and irregularities. We know, for instance, that the final Latin m was not pronounced in classical times, because inscriptions at Pompeii are misspelled in a way that leaves the m out. This is how we pin down sound changes. Once we do that, we can predict how words should have evolved, and if they don’t match our predictions, then perhaps our hypothesis about linked origins is wrong. Etymology is detective work across centuries, and it’s devilishly hard work, like finding a needle in a haystack. But our particular needles, I’d say, are quite worth the search.’
That year, using English as an example, they began the task of studying how languages grew, changed, morphed, multiplied, diverged, and converged.
They studied sound changes; why the English knee had a silent k that was pronounced in the German counterpart; why the stop consonants of Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit had such a regular correspondence with consonants in Germanic languages. They read Bopp, Grimm, and Rask in translation; they read the Etymologiae of Isidorus. They studied semantic shifts, syntactical change, dialectical divergence, and borrowing, as well as the reconstructive methods one might use to piece together the relationships between languages that at first glance seemed to have nothing to do with each other. They dug through languages like they were mines, searching for valuable veins of common heritage and distorted meaning.
It changed the way they spoke. Constantly they trailed off in the middle of sentences. They could not utter even common phrases and aphorisms without pausing to wonder where those words came from. Such interrogations infiltrated all their conversations, became the default way they made sense of * each other and everything else.They could no longer look at the world and not see stories, histories, layered everywhere like centuries’ worth of sediment.
And the influences on English were so much deeper and more diverse than they thought. Chit came from the Marathi chitti, meaning ‘letter’ or ‘note’. Coffee had made its way into English by way of Dutch (koffie), Turkish (kahveh), and originally Arabic (qahwah). Tabby cats were named after a striped silk that was in turn named for its place of origin: a quarter of Baghdad named al-‘Attābiyya. Even basic words for clothes all came from somewhere. Damask came from cloth made in Damascus; gingham came from the Malay word genggang, meaning ‘striped’; calico referred to Calicut in Kerala, and taffeta, Ramy told them, had its roots in the Persian word tafte, meaning ‘a shiny cloth’. But not all English words had their roots in such far-flung or noble origins. The curious thing about etymology, they soon learned, was that anything could influence a language, from the consumption habits of the rich and worldly to the so-called vulgar utterances of the poor and wretched. The lowly cants, the supposed secret languages of thieves, vagabonds, and foreigners, had contributed such common words such as bilk, booty, and bauble.
English did not just borrow words from other languages; it was stuffed to the brim with foreign influences, a Frankenstein vernacular. And Robin found it incredible, how this country, whose citizens prided themselves so much on being better than the rest of the world, could not make it through an afternoon tea without borrowed goods.
In addition to Etymology, they each took on an extra language that year. The point was not to attain fluency in this language, but to, through the process of its acquisition, deepen their understanding of their focus languages. Letty and Ramy began studying Proto-Indo-European with Professor De Vreese.
Victoire proposed a number of West African languages she hoped to learn to the advisory board, but was rejected on the grounds that Babel possessed insufficient resources for proper instruction in any of them. She ended up studying Spanish – Spanish contact was relevant to the Haitian-Dominican border, Professor Playfair argued – but was none too happy about it.
Robin took Sanskrit with Professor Chakravarti, who began their first lesson by scolding Robin for having no knowledge of the language to begin with. ‘They should teach Sanskrit to China scholars from the beginning.
Sanskrit came to China by way of Buddhist texts, and this caused a veritable explosion of linguistic innovation, as Buddhism introduced dozens of
concepts that Chinese had no easy word for. Nun, or bhiksunī in Sanskrit, * † became ni.Nirvana became nièpán. Core Chinese concepts like hell, consciousness, and calamity come from Sanskrit. You can’t begin to understand Chinese today without also understanding Buddhism, which means understanding Sanskrit. It’s like trying to understand multiplication before you know how to draw numbers.’ Robin thought it was a bit unfair to accuse him of learning out of order a language he’d spoken from birth, but he played along. ‘Where do we start, then?’ ‘The alphabet,’ Professor Chakravarti said cheerfully. ‘Back to basic building blocks. Take out your pen and trace these letters until you’ve developed a muscle memory for them – I expect it’ll take you about half an hour. Go on.’ Latin, translation theory, etymology, focus languages, and a new research language – it was an absurdly heavy class load, especially when each professor assigned coursework as if none of the other courses existed. The faculty was utterly unsympathetic. ‘The Germans have this lovely word, Sitzfleisch,’ Professor Playfair said pleasantly when Ramy protested that they had over forty hours of reading a week. ‘Translated literally, it means “sitting meat”. Which all goes to say, sometimes you need simply to sit on your bottom and get things done.’
Still, they found their moments of joy. Oxford had now begun to feel like a home of sorts, and they carved their own pockets into it, spaces where they were not just tolerated but in which they thrived. They’d learned which coffee shops would serve them without fuss, and which ones would either pretend Ramy did not exist or complain he was too dirty to sit on their chairs.
They learned which pubs they could frequent after dark without harassment.
They sat in the audience of the United Debating Society and gave themselves stitches trying to contain their laughter as boys like Colin Thornhill and Elton Pendennis shouted about justice, liberty, and equality until they were red in their faces.
Robin took up rowing at Anthony’s insistence. ‘It’s no good for you to stay cooped up in the library all the time,’ he told him. ‘One needs to stretch one’s muscles for the brain to work properly. Get the blood flowing. Try it, it’ll be good for you.’
As it happened, he adored it. He found great pleasure in the rhythmic straining motion of pulling a single oar against the water again and again. His arms grew stronger; his legs, somehow, felt longer. Gradually he lost his hunched-over reediness and acquired a filled-in look, which gave him deep satisfaction every morning when he glanced at the mirror. He started looking forward to chilly mornings on the Isis, when the rest of the town hadn’t woken up yet, when the only sound he could hear for miles around was the birds chirping and the pleasant splash of blades sinking into the water.
The girls tried, but failed, to sneak their way into the boat club. They weren’t nearly tall enough to row, and coxing involved too much shouting for them to pretend they were men. But weeks later, Robin began hearing rumours of two vicious additions to the Univ fencing team, though Victoire and Letty at first claimed innocence upon interrogation. ‘It’s the aggression that’s the attraction,’ Victoire finally confessed. ‘It’s so funny to watch. These boys always come out so strong at the front, and they lose all sight of strategy.’ Letty agreed. ‘Then it’s a simple manner of keeping your head and pricking them where they’re not guarded. That’s all it takes.’ In the winter, the Isis froze over and they went skating, which none of them save Letty had ever done before. They laced their boots on as tight as they could go – ‘Tighter,’ said Letty, ‘they can’t wobble, else you’ll break your ankles’ – and staggered onto the ice, clutching each other for balance as they teetered forth, though usually this only meant that they all fell when one did. Then Ramy realized if he leaned forward and bent his knees, he could drive himself faster and faster, and by the third day he was skating circles around the rest, even Letty, who pretended to be upset when he skidded in her path but who couldn’t stop laughing regardless.
There was a solid, enduring quality to their friendship now. They were no longer dazzled and frightened first years, clinging to each other for stability. Instead they were weary veterans united by their trials, hardened soldiers who could lean against each other for anything. Meticulous Letty, despite her grumbling, would always mark up a translation, no matter how late at night or early in the morning. Victoire was like a vault; she would listen to any amount of complaining and petty griping without letting slip to the subjects thereof. And Robin could knock on Ramy’s door at any time, day
or night, if he needed a cup of tea, or something to laugh about, or someone to cry with.
When the new cohort – no girls, and four baby-faced boys – had appeared at Babel that fall, they’d given them scarcely any attention. They had, without consciously intending to, become just like the upperclassmen they had so envied during their first term. What they’d perceived as snobbery and haughtiness, it turned out, was only exhaustion. Older students had no intention of bullying newer ones. They simply didn’t have the time.
They became what they’d aspired to be since their first year – aloof, brilliant, and fatigued to the bone. They were miserable. They slept and ate too little, read too much, and fell completely out of touch with matters outside Oxford or Babel. They ignored the life of the world; they lived only the life of the mind. They adored it.
And Robin, despite everything, hoped the day Griffin prophesied would never come, that he could live hanging in this balance forever. For he had never been happier than he was now: exhausted, stretched thin, too preoccupied with the next thing before him to pay any attention to how it all fitted together.
In late Michaelmas a French chemist named Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre came to Babel with a curious object in tow. It was a heliographic camera obscura, he announced, and could be capable of replicating still images using exposed copper plates and light-sensitive compounds, although he couldn’t quite get the mechanics right. Could the Babblers take a look and see if they could improve it somehow?
The problem of Daguerre’s camera became the talk of the tower. The faculty made it a competition – any student cleared for silver-work who could solve Daguerre’s problem was entitled to have their name on his patent, and a percentage of the riches that were sure to follow. For two weeks, the eighth floor frothed with silent frenzy as fourth years and graduate fellows flipped through etymological dictionaries, trying to find a set of words that would get at the right nexus of meaning involving light, colour, image, and imitation.
It was Anthony Ribben who finally cracked it. As per contractual terms with Daguerre, the actual patented match-pair was kept a secret, but rumour was that Anthony had done something with the Latin imago, which in
addition to meaning ‘a likeness’ or ‘imitation’ also implied a ghost or phantom. Other rumours held that Anthony had found some way to dissolve the silver bar to create fumes from heated mercury. Whatever it was, Anthony could not say, but he was paid handsomely for his efforts.
The camera worked. Magically, the exact likeness of a captured subject could be replicated on a sheet of paper in marvellously little time.
Daguerre’s device – the daguerreotype, they called it – became a local sensation. Everyone wanted their picture taken. Daguerre and the Babel faculty put on a three-day exhibition in the tower lobby, and eager members of the public formed lines that wrapped around the street.
Robin was nervous about a Sanskrit translation due the next day, but Letty insisted they all go in for a portrait. ‘Don’t you want a memento of us?’ she asked. ‘Preserved at this moment in time?’ Robin shrugged. ‘Not really.’ ‘Well, I do,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I want to remember exactly how we were now, in this year, in 1837. I never want to forget.’ They assembled themselves before the camera. Letty and Victoire sat down in chairs, hands folded stiffly in their laps. Robin and Ramy stood behind them, uncertain what to do with their hands. Should they place them on the girls’ shoulders? On the chairs? ‘Arms by your sides,’ said the photographer. ‘Hold still as best you can.
No – first, cluster a bit closer – there you go.’ Robin smiled, realized he couldn’t keep his mouth stretched wide for that long, and promptly dropped it.
The next day, they retrieved their finished portrait from a clerk in the lobby. ‘Please,’ said Victoire. ‘That looks nothing like us at all.’ But Letty was delighted; she insisted they go shopping for a frame. ‘I’ll hang it over my mantel, what do you think?’ ‘I’d rather you throw that away,’ said Ramy. ‘It’s unnerving.’ ‘It is not,’ said Letty. She seemed bewitched as she observed the print, as if she’d seen actual magic. ‘It’s us. Frozen in time, captured in a moment we’ll never get back as long as we live. It’s wonderful.’ Robin, too, thought the photograph looked strange, though he did not say so aloud. All of their expressions were artificial, masks of faint discomfort.
The camera had distorted and flattened the spirit that bound them, and the
invisible warmth and camaraderie between them appeared now like a stilted, forced closeness. Photography, he thought, was also a kind of translation, and they had all come out the poorer for it.
Violets cast into crucibles, indeed.
