Babel, page 21
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 autumn, 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: 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.
Chapter Ten
To preserve the principles of their pupils they confine them to the safe and elegant imbecilities of classical learning. A genuine Oxford tutor would shudder to hear his young men disputing upon moral and political truth, forming and pulling down theories, and indulging in all the boldness of political discussion. He would augur nothing from it but impiety to God, and treason to Kings.
SYDNEY SMITH, ‘Edgeworth’s Professional Education’
Near the end of Michaelmas term that year, Griffin seemed to be around more than usual. Robin had been starting to wonder where he’d gone; since he’d got back from Malacca, his assignments had dropped from twice a month to once to none. But in December, Robin began to receive notes instructing him to meet Griffin outside the Twisted Root every few days, where they commenced their usual routine of walking frantically round the city. Usually these were preludes to planned thefts. But occasionally Griffin seemed to have no agenda in mind, and instead wanted only to chat. Robin eagerly awaited these talks; they were the only times when his brother seemed less mysterious, more human, more flesh and bone. But Griffin never answered the questions Robin really wanted to discuss, which were what Hermes did with the materials he helped steal, and how the revolution, if there was one, was proceeding. ‘I still don’t trust you,’ he would say. ‘You’re still too new.’
I don’t trust you either, Robin thought but didn’t say. Instead, he probed at things in a roundabout way. ‘How long has Hermes been around?’
Griffin shot him a droll look. ‘I know what you’re doing.’
‘I just want to know if it’s a modern invention, or, or—’
‘I don’t know. I’ve no idea. Decades at least, perhaps longer, but I’ve never found out. Why don’t you ask what you really want to know?’
‘Because you won’t tell me.’
‘Try me.’
‘Fine. Then if it’s been around for longer, I can’t understand . . . ’
‘You can’t see why we haven’t won already. Is that it?’
‘No. I just don’t see what difference it makes,’ said Robin. ‘Babel is – Babel. And you’re just—’
‘A small cluster of exiled scholars chipping away at the behemoth?’ Griffin supplied. ‘Say what you mean, brother, don’t dither.’
‘I was going to say “massively outnumbered idealists”, but yes. I mean – please, Griffin, it’s just hard to keep faith when it’s unclear what effect there is to anything I do.’
Griffin slowed his pace. He was silent for a few seconds, considering, and then he said, ‘I’m going to paint you a picture. Where does silver come from?’
‘Griffin, honestly—’
‘Indulge me.’
‘I’ve got class in ten minutes.’
‘And it’s not a simple answer. Craft won’t throw you out for being late just once. Where does silver come from?’
‘I don’t know. Mines?’
Griffin sighed heavily. ‘Don’t they teach you anything?’
‘Griffin—’
‘Just listen. Silver’s been around forever. The Athenians were mining it in Attica, and the Romans, as you know, used silver to expand their empire once they realized what it could do. But silver didn’t become international currency, didn’t facilitate a trade network spanning continents, until much later. There simply wasn’t enough of it. Then in the sixteenth century, the Hapsburgs – the first truly global empire – stumbled upon massive silver deposits in the Andes. The Spaniards brought it out of the mountains, courtesy of indigenous miners you can be certain weren’t paid fairly for their labour,* and minted it into their little pieces of eight, which brought riches flowing into Seville and Madrid.
‘Silver made them rich – rich enough to buy printed cotton cloth from India, which they used to pay for bound slaves from Africa, who they put to work on plantations in their colonies. So the Spanish become richer and richer, and everywhere they go they leave death, slavery, and impoverishment in their wake. You see the patterns so far, surely?’
Griffin, when lecturing, bore a peculiar resemblance to Professor Lovell. Both made very sharp gestures with their hands, as if punctuating their lengthy diatribes with hand movements instead of full stops, and both spoke in a very precise, syncopated manner. They also shared a fondness for Socratic questioning. ‘Jump forward two hundred years, and what do you have?’
Robin sighed, but played along. ‘All the silver, and all the power, flows from the New World to Europe.’
‘Right,’ said Griffin. ‘Silver accrues where it’s already in use. The Spanish held the lead for a long time, while the Dutch, British, and French were nipping at their heels. Jump ahead another century, and Spain’s a shadow of what it once was; the Napoleonic wars have eroded France’s power, and now glorious Britannia is on top. Largest silver reserves in Europe. Best translation institute in the world by far. The best navy on the seas, cemented after Trafalgar, meaning this island is well on its way to ruling the world, isn’t it? But something funny’s been happening over the last century. Something that’s been giving Parliament and all the British trading companies quite a headache. Can you guess what it is?’
‘Don’t tell me we’re running out of silver.’
Griffin grinned. ‘They’re running out of silver. Can you guess where it’s all flowing now?’
This Robin knew the answer to, only because he’d heard Professor Lovell and his friends complaining about it for years during those sitting room nights in Hampstead. ‘China.’
‘China. This country is gorging itself on imports from the Orient. They can’t get enough of China’s porcelain, lacquered cabinets, and silks. And tea. Heavens. Do you know how much tea gets exported from China to England every year? At least thirty million pounds’ worth. The British love tea so much that Parliament used to insist that the East India Company always keep a year’s worth of supply in stock in case of shortages. We spend millions and millions on tea from China every year, and we pay for it in silver.
‘But China has no reciprocal appetite for British goods. When the Qianlong Emperor received a display of British manufactured items from Lord Macartney, do you know what his response was? Strange and costly objects do not interest me. The Chinese don’t need anything we’re selling; they can produce everything they want on their own. So silver keeps flowing to China, and there’s nothing the British can do about it because they can’t alter supply and demand. One day it won’t matter how much translation talent we have, because the silver reserves will simply not exist to put it to use. The British Empire will crumble as a consequence of its own greed. Meanwhile, silver will accrue in new centres of power – places that have heretofore had their resources stolen and exploited. They’ll have the raw materials. All they’ll need then are silver-workers, and the talent will go where the work is; it always does. So it’s all as simple as running out the Empire. The cycles of history will do the rest, and you’ve only got to help us speed it along.’
‘But that’s . . . ’ Robin trailed off, struggling to find the words to phrase his objection. ‘That’s so abstract, so simple, it can’t possibly – I mean, certainly you can’t predict history like this with such broad strokes—’
‘There’s quite a lot you can predict.’ Griffin shot Robin a sideways look. ‘But that’s the problem with a Babel education, isn’t it? They teach you languages and translation, but never history, never science, never international politics. They don’t tell you about the armies that back dialects.’
‘But what does it all look like?’ Robin persisted. ‘What you’re describing, I mean – how is this going to come about? A global war? A slow economic decline until the world looks entirely different?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Griffin. ‘No one knows precisely what the future looks like. Whether the levers of power move to China, or to the Americas, or whether Britain’s going to fight tooth and nail to hold on to its place – that’s impossible to foretell.’
‘Then how do you know that what you’re doing has any effect?’
‘I can’t predict how every encounter will shake out,’ Griffin clarified. ‘But I do know this. The wealth of Britain depends on coercive extraction. And as Britain grows, only two options remain: either her mechanisms of coercion become vastly more brutal, or she collapses. The former’s more likely. But it might bring about the latter.’
‘It’s such an uneven fight, though,’ Robin said helplessly. ‘You on one side, the whole of the Empire on the other.’
‘Only if you think the Empire is inevitable,’ said Griffin. ‘But it’s not. Take this current moment. We are just at the tail end of a great crisis in the Atlantic, after the monarchic empires have fallen one after the other. Britain and France lost in America, and then they went to war against each other to nobody’s benefit. Now we’re watching a new consolidation of power, that’s true – Britain got Bengal, it got Dutch Java and the Cape Colony – and if it gets what it wants in China, if it can reverse this trade imbalance, it’s going to be unstoppable.
‘But nothing’s written in stone – or even silver, as it were. So much rests on these contingencies, and it’s at these tipping points where we can push and pull. Where individual choices, where even the smallest of resistance armies make a difference. Take Barbados, for example. Take Jamaica. We sent bars there to the revolts—’
‘Those slave revolts were crushed,’ said Robin.
‘But slavery’s been abolished, hasn’t it?’ said Griffin. ‘At least in British territories. No – I’m not saying everything’s good and fixed, and I’m not saying we can fully take the credit for British legislation; I’m sure the abolitionists would take umbrage at that. But I am saying that if you think the 1833 Act passed because of the moral sensibilities of the British, you’re wrong. They passed that bill because they couldn’t keep absorbing the losses.’
He waved a hand, gesturing at an invisible map. ‘It’s junctures like that where we have control. If we push in the right spots – if we create losses where the Empire can’t stand to suffer them – then we’ve moved things to the breaking point. Then the future becomes fluid, and change is possible. History isn’t a premade tapestry that we’ve got to suffer, a closed world with no exit. We can form it. Make it. We just have to choose to make it.’
‘You really believe that,’ said Robin, amazed. Griffin’s faith astounded him. For Robin, such abstract reasoning was a reason to divest from the world, to retreat into the safety of dead languages and books. For Griffin, it was a rallying call.
‘I have to,’ said Griffin. ‘Otherwise, you’re right. Otherwise we’ve got nothing.’
After that conversation, Griffin seemed to have decided Robin wasn’t about to betray the Hermes Society, for Robin’s assignments vastly increased in number. Not all of his missions involved theft. More often Griffin made requests for materials – etymological handbooks, Grammatica pages, orthography charts – which were easily acquired, copied out, and returned without drawing attention. Still, he had to be clever with when and how he took the books out, as he’d attract suspicion if he kept sneaking away materials unrelated to his focus areas. One time Ilse, the upperclassman from Japan, demanded to know what he was doing with the Old German Grammatica, and he had to stammer out a story about pulling the title by accident in the course of trying to trace a Chinese word back to Hittite origins. No matter that he was at the entirely wrong section of the library. Ilse seemed ready to believe he was simply that dim.
By and large, Griffin’s requests were painless. It was all less romantic than Robin had imagined – and, perhaps, hoped for. There were no thrilling escapades or coded conversations spoken on bridges over running water. It was all so mundane. The great achievement of the Hermes Society, Robin learned, was how effectively it rendered itself invisible, how completely it concealed information even from its members. If one day Griffin disappeared, then Robin would be hard-pressed to prove to anyone the Hermes Society ever existed except as a figment of his imagination. He often felt that he wasn’t a part of a secret society at all, but rather of a large, boring bureaucracy that functioned with exquisite coordination.
