Babel, page 17
Robin hesitated. He wasn’t quite sure how to verbalize his discomfort. Yes, there was a certain appeal to abandoning the Oxford life for Hermes. He wanted to do what Griffin did; he wanted access to Hermes’s inner workings, wanted to see where the stolen bars went and what was done with them. He wanted to see the hidden world.
But if he went, he knew, he could never come back.
‘It just seems so hard to be cut off,’ he said. ‘From everything.’
‘Do you know how the Romans fattened up their dormice?’ Griffin asked.
Robin sighed. ‘Griffin.’
‘Your tutors had you read Varro, didn’t they? He describes a glirarium in the Res Rustica.* It’s quite an elegant contraption. You make a jar, only it’s perforated with holes so the dormice can breathe, and the surfaces are polished so smooth that escape is impossible. You put food in the hollows, and you make sure there are some ledges and walkways so the dormice don’t get too bored. Most importantly, you keep it dark, so the dormice always think it’s time to hibernate. All they do is sleep and fatten themselves up.’
‘All right,’ Robin said impatiently. ‘All right. I get the picture.’
‘I know it’s difficult,’ said Griffin. ‘It’s hard to give up the trappings of your station. You still love your stipend and scholar’s gowns and wine parties, I’m sure—’
‘It’s not the wine parties,’ Robin insisted. ‘I don’t – I mean, I don’t go to wine parties. And it’s not about the stipend, or the stupid gowns. It’s just that – I don’t know, it’s such a leap.’
How could he explain it? Babel represented more than material comforts. Babel was the reason he belonged in England, why he was not begging on the streets of Canton. Babel was the only place where his talents mattered. Babel was security. And perhaps all that was morally compromised, yes – but was it so wrong to want to survive?
‘Don’t trouble yourself,’ said Griffin. ‘No one’s asking you to leave Oxford. It’s not prudent, strategically speaking. See, I’m free, and I’m happy on the outside, but I also can’t get into the tower. We’re trapped in a symbiotic relationship with the levers of power. We need their silver. We need their tools. And, loath as we are to admit it, we benefit from their research.’
He gave Robin a shove. It was meant as a fraternal gesture, but neither of them was very practised at those, and it came off as more threatening than perhaps Griffin intended. ‘You do your reading and you stay on the inside. Don’t you worry about the contradiction. Your guilt is assuaged, for now. Enjoy your glirarium, little dormouse.’
Griffin left him at the corner of Woodstock. Robin watched his narrow frame disappear into the streets, his coat flapping around him like the wings of a giant bird, and wondered at how he could both admire and resent someone so much at the same time.
In Classical Chinese, the characters 二心 referred to disloyal or traitorous intentions; literally, they translated as ‘two hearts’. And Robin found himself in the impossible position of loving that which he betrayed, twice.
He did adore Oxford, and his life at Oxford. It was very nice to be among the Babblers, who were in many ways the most privileged group of students there. If they flaunted their Babel affiliation, they were allowed in any of the college libraries, including the absurdly gorgeous Codrington, which didn’t actually hold any reference materials they needed, but which they haunted regardless because its high walls and marble floors made them feel so very grand. All their living expenses were taken care of. Unlike the other servitors, they never had to serve food in hall or clean tutors’ rooms. Their room, board, and tuition were paid directly by Babel, so they never even saw the bill – on top of that, they received their stipend of twenty shillings a month, and were also given access to a discretionary fund they could use to purchase whatever course materials they liked. If they could make even the flimsiest case that a gold-capped fountain pen would aid their studies, then Babel paid for it.
The significance of this never crossed Robin’s mind until one night he stumbled upon Bill Jameson in the common room, scratching numbers onto a sheet of scrap paper with a wretched look on his face.
‘This month’s battels,’ he explained to Robin. ‘I’ve overspent what they sent me from home – I keep coming up short.’
The numbers on the paper astonished Robin; he had never imagined Oxford tuition could be so expensive.
‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.
‘I’ve got a few things I can pawn to make up the difference until next month. Or I’ll pass on a few meals until then.’ Jameson glanced up. He looked desperately uncomfortable. ‘I say, and I do hate to ask, but do you think—’
‘Of course,’ Robin said hastily. ‘How much do you need?’
‘I wouldn’t, but the costs this term – they’re charging us to dissect corpses for Anatomy, I really—’
‘Don’t mention it.’ Robin reached into his pocket, pulled out his purse, and began counting out coins. He felt awfully pretentious as he did this – he’d just retrieved his stipend from the bursar that morning, and he hoped Jameson did not think he always walked around with such a stuffed purse. ‘Would that cover meals, at least?’
‘You’re an angel, Swift. I’ll pay you back first thing next month.’ Jameson sighed and shook his head. ‘Babel. They take care of you, don’t they?’
They did. Not only was Babel very rich, it was also respected. Theirs was by far the most prestigious faculty at Oxford. It was Babel that new undergraduates bragged about when showing their visiting relatives around campus. It was a Babel student who invariably won Oxford’s yearly Chancellor’s Prize, given to the best composition of Latin verse, as well as the Kennicott Hebrew Scholarship. It was Babel undergraduates who were invited to special receptions* with the politicians, aristocrats, and the unimaginably wealthy who made up the lobby clientele. Once it was rumoured that Princess Victoria herself would be in attendance at the faculty’s annual garden party; this turned out to be false, but she did give them a new marble fountain which was installed on the green a week later, and which Professor Playfair enchanted to shoot high, glistening arcs of water at all hours of the day.
By the middle of Hilary term, like every Babel cohort before them, Robin, Ramy, Victoire, and Letty had absorbed the insufferable superiority of scholars who knew they had the run of campus. They took much amusement in how visiting scholars, who either condescended to or ignored them in hall, started fawning and shaking their hands when they revealed they studied translation. They dropped mention of how they had access to the Senior Common Room, which was both very nice and inaccessible to other undergraduates, though in truth they rarely spent much time there, as it was difficult to have a plain conversation when an ancient, wrinkled don sat snoring in the corner.
Victoire and Letty, who now understood that the presence of women at Oxford was more of an open secret than an outright taboo, began slowly growing out their hair. One day Letty even appeared in hall for dinner wearing a skirt instead of trousers. The Univ boys whispered and pointed, but the staff said nothing, and she was served her three courses and wine without incident.
But there were also significant ways in which they did not belong. No one would serve Ramy at any of their favourite pubs if he was the first to arrive. Letty and Victoire could not take books out of the library without a male student present to vouch for them. Victoire was assumed by shopkeepers to be Letty or Robin’s maid. Porters regularly asked all four of them if they could please not step on the green for it was off limits, while the other boys trampled over the so-called delicate grass all around them.
What’s more, it took them all several months to learn to speak like Oxfordians. Oxford English was different from London English, and was developed largely by the undergraduate tendency to corrupt and abbreviate just about everything. Magdalene was pronounced maudlin; by the same token, St Aldate’s had become St Old’s. The Magna Vacatio became the Long Vacation became the Long. New College became New; St Edmund’s became Teddy. It took months before Robin was used to uttering ‘Univ’ when he meant ‘University College’. A spread was a party with a sizable number of guests; a pidge was short for pigeonhole, which in turn meant one of the wooden cubbies where their post was sorted.
Fluency also entailed a whole host of social rules and unspoken conventions that Robin feared he might never fully grasp. None of them could quite understand the particular etiquette of calling cards, for instance, or how it was that one wormed oneself into the social ecosystem of the college in the first place, or how the many distinct but overlapping tiers of said ecosystem worked.* They were always hearing rumours of wild parties, nights at the pub spinning out of control, secret society meetings, and teas where so-and-so had been devastatingly rude to his tutor or where so-and-so had insulted someone else’s sister, but they never witnessed these events in person.
‘How is it we don’t get invited to wine parties?’ Ramy asked. ‘We’re delightful.’
‘You don’t drink wine,’ Victoire pointed out.
‘Well, I’d like to appreciate the ambience—’
‘It’s because you don’t throw any wine parties yourself,’ said Letty. ‘It’s a give-and-take economy. Have either of you ever delivered a calling card?’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a calling card,’ said Robin. ‘Is there an art to it?’
‘Oh, they’re easy enough,’ said Ramy. ‘To Pendennis, Esq., Infernal beast, I will give you lashings of booze tonight. Confound you, your enemy, Mirza. No?’
‘Very civil.’ Letty snorted. ‘Small wonder you aren’t college royalty.’
They were decidedly not college royalty. Not even the white Babblers in the years above them were college royalty, for Babel kept them all too busy with coursework to enjoy a social life. That label could only describe a second year at Univ named Elton Pendennis and his friends. They were all gentlemen-commoners, which meant they’d paid higher fees to the university to avoid entrance examinations and to enjoy the privileges of fellows of the college. They sat at high table in hall, they lodged in apartments far nicer than the Magpie Lane dormitories, and they played snooker in the Senior Common Room whenever they liked. They enjoyed hunting, tennis, and billiards at the weekends and headed to London by coach every month for dinner parties and balls. They never did their shopping on High Street; all the newest fashions and cigars and accessories were brought straight from London to their quarters by salesmen who did not even bother quoting prices.
Letty, who’d grown up around boys like Pendennis, made him and his friends the target of a running stream of vituperation. ‘Rich boys studying on their father’s money. I bet they’ve never cracked open a textbook in their lives. I don’t know why Elton thinks he’s so handsome. Those lips are girlish; he shouldn’t pout so. Those double-breasted purple jackets look ridiculous. And I don’t know why he keeps telling everyone that he has an understanding with Clara Lilly. I know Clara and she’s as good as engaged to the Woolcotts’ oldest boy . . .’
Still, Robin could not help but envy those boys – those born into this world, who uttered its codes as native speakers. When he saw Elton Pendennis and his crowd strolling and laughing across the green, he couldn’t help but imagine, just for a moment, what it might be like to be a part of that circle. He wanted Pendennis’s life, not so much for its material pleasures – the wine, the cigars, the clothes, the dinners – but for what it represented: the assurance that one would always be welcome in England. If he could only attain Pendennis’s fluency, or at least an imitation of it, then he, too, would blend into the tapestry of this idyllic campus life. And he would no longer be the foreigner, second-guessing his pronunciation at every turn, but a native whose belonging could not possibly be questioned or revoked.
It was a great shock when one night Robin found a card made of embossed stationery waiting in his pidge. It read:
Robin Swift—
Would appreciate the pleasure of your company for drinks next Friday – seven o’clock if you like to be there at the start or any reasonable time thereafter we are not fussy.
It was signed, in a very impressive calligraphy that took Robin a moment to decipher, Elton Pendennis.
‘I think you’re making a rather big deal of this,’ said Ramy when Robin showed them the card. ‘Don’t tell me you’ll actually go.’
‘I don’t want to be rude,’ Robin said weakly.
‘Who cares if Pendennis thinks you’re rude? He didn’t invite you for your impeccable manners, he just wants to be friends with someone at Babel.’
‘Thank you, Ramy.’
Ramy brushed this off. ‘The question is, why you? I’m infinitely more charming.’
‘You’re not genteel enough,’ Victoire said. ‘Robin is.’
‘I don’t understand what anyone means by genteel,’ said Ramy. ‘People always throw it around in reference to the high- and well-born. But what’s it actually mean? Does it just mean that you’re very wealthy?’
‘I mean it in the context of manners,’ said Victoire.
‘Very funny,’ said Ramy. ‘But it’s not manners that’s the issue, I think. It’s that Robin passes as white and we don’t.’
Robin could not believe they were being so rude about this. ‘Is it impossible they might just want my company?’
‘Not impossible, just unlikely. You’re horrible with people you don’t know.’
‘I am not.’
‘You are too. You always clam up and retreat into the corner like they’re about to shoot you.’ Ramy folded his arms and cocked his head. ‘What do you want to dine with them for?’
‘I don’t know. It’s just a wine party.’
‘A wine party, and then what?’ Ramy persisted. ‘You think they’ll make you one of the lads? Are you hoping they’ll take you to the Bullingdon Club?’
The club on Bullingdon Green was an exclusive eating and sporting establishment where young men could while away the afternoon hunting or playing cricket. Membership was assigned on mysterious grounds that seemed to strongly correlate with wealth and influence. For all of Babel’s prestige, none of the Babel students Robin knew had any expectations they might ever be invited.
‘Perhaps,’ said Robin, just to be contrary. ‘It’d be nice to have a look inside.’
‘You’re excited,’ Ramy accused. ‘You hope they love you.’
‘It’s all right to admit you’re jealous.’
‘Don’t come crying when they pour wine all down your shirt and call you names.’
Robin grinned. ‘You won’t defend my honour?’
Ramy swatted his shoulder. ‘Steal an ashtray for me; I’ll pawn it to pay off Jameson’s battels.’
For some reason it was Letty who most ardently opposed Robin’s accepting Pendennis’s invitation. When they left the coffee shop for the library, long after the conversation had drifted elsewhere, she tugged at his elbow until they fell back several paces behind Ramy and Victoire.
‘Those boys are no good,’ she said. ‘They’re lushes, they’re indolent, they’re bad influences.’
Robin laughed. ‘It’s only a wine party, Letty.’
‘So why do you want to go?’ she pressed. ‘You hardly even drink.’
He could not understand why she was making such a big deal of this. ‘I’m just curious, that’s all. It’s probably going to be awful.’
‘So don’t show up,’ she insisted. ‘Just throw the card away.’
‘Well no, that’s rude. And I really haven’t anything on that night—’
‘You could spend it with us,’ she said. ‘Ramy wants to cook something.’
‘Ramy’s always cooking something, and it always tastes awful.’
‘Oh, then are you hoping they’ll bring you into the ranks?’ She arched an eyebrow. ‘Swift and Pendennis, bosom friends, is that what you want?’
He felt a flare of irritation. ‘Are you really that terrified I’ll make some other friends? Trust me, Letitia, nothing could beat your company.’
‘I see.’ To his shock, her voice broke. Her eyes, he noticed, had turned very red. Was she about to cry? What was wrong with her? ‘So that’s how it is.’
‘It’s only a wine party,’ he said, frustrated. ‘What’s the matter, Letty?’
‘Never mind,’ she said, and quickened her pace. ‘Have drinks with whoever you like.’
‘I will,’ he snapped, but she’d already left him far behind.
At ten to seven the following Friday, Robin put on his one nice jacket, pulled a bottle of port he’d bought at Taylor’s from under his bed, and walked to the flats on Merton Street. He had no trouble finding Elton Pendennis’s rooms. Even before he’d made his way down the street, he heard loud voices and somewhat arrhythmic piano music floating out of the windows.
He had to knock several times before someone heard him. The door swung open, revealing a tow-haired boy whose name Robin vaguely remembered as St Cloud.
‘Oh,’ he said, looking Robin up and down through lidded eyes. He seemed quite drunk. ‘You came.’
‘It seemed polite,’ Robin said. ‘As I was invited?’ He hated how his voice crawled up into a question.
St Cloud blinked at him, then turned and gestured vaguely inside. ‘Well, come on.’
Indoors, three other boys were seated on lounge chairs in the sitting room, which was so thick with cigar smoke that Robin coughed upon entering.
The boys were all crowded around Elton Pendennis like leaves around a bloom. Up close, the reports of his good looks seemed not to be exaggerated one bit. He was one of the handsomest men Robin had ever encountered, a Byronic hero incarnate. His hooded eyes were framed by thick, dark lashes; his plump lips would have looked girlish, as Letty had accused, if they weren’t set off by such a strong, square jaw.
‘It’s not the company, it’s the ennui,’ he was saying. ‘London’s fun for a season, but then you start seeing all the same faces again year after year, and the girls don’t ever get any prettier, just older. Once you’ve been to one ball you might have been to them all. You know, one of my father’s friends once promised his closest acquaintances that he could liven up their gatherings. He prepared an elaborate dinner party, then told his servants to go out and extend an invitation to all the beggars and homeless sops they came across. When his friends arrived, they saw those motley stragglers, punch-drunk and dancing on tables – it was hilarious, I wish I’d been invited myself.’
