Babel, page 32
‘If it’s loyalty that’s keeping you quiet, then there’s nothing else to be done,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘But I think we can work together still. I think you’re not quite ready to leave Babel. Don’t you?’
Robin took a deep breath.
What was he giving up, really? The Hermes Society had abandoned him, had ignored his warnings and endangered his two dearest friends. He owed them nothing.
In the days and weeks that followed he would try to persuade himself that this was a moment of strategic concession, not of betrayal. That he was not giving up much of importance – Griffin himself had said they had multiple safe houses, hadn’t he? – and that this way Ramy and Victoire were protected, he was not expelled, and all the lines of communication existed still for some future cooperation with Hermes. But he’d never quite talk himself out of the nasty truth – that this was not about Hermes, nor about Ramy or Victoire, but about self-preservation.
‘St Aldate’s,’ he said. ‘The back entrance to the church. There’s a door near the basement that looks rusted shut, but Griffin has a key. They use it as a safe room.’
Professor Lovell scribbled this down. ‘How often does he go there?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What’s in there?’
‘I don’t know,’ Robin said again. ‘I never went myself. Truly, he told me very little. I’m sorry.’
Professor Lovell cast him a long, cool look, then appeared to relent.
‘I know you’re better than this.’ He leaned forward over his desk. ‘You are unlike Griffin in every way possible. You’re humble, you’re bright, and you work hard. You are less corrupted by your heritage than he was. If I’d only just met you, I’d be hard pressed to guess you were a Chinaman at all. You have prodigious talent, and talent deserves a second chance. But careful, boy.’ He gestured to the door. ‘There won’t be a third.’
Robin stood up, then glanced down at his hand. He noticed he’d been clutching the bar that had killed Evie Brooke this whole time. It felt simultaneously very hot and very cold, and he had the strange fear that if he touched it for a moment longer, it might erode a hole through his palm. He held it out. ‘Here, sir—’
‘Keep it,’ said Professor Lovell.
‘Sir?’
‘I have been staring at that bar every day for the past five years, wondering where I went wrong with Griffin. If I had raised him differently, or seen him earlier for what he was, if Evie would still – but never mind.’ Professor Lovell’s voice hardened. ‘Now it weighs on your conscience. Keep it, Robin Swift. Carry it in your front pocket. Pull it out whenever you begin to doubt, and let it remind you which side are the villains.’
He motioned for Robin to leave the office. Robin stumbled down the stairs, the silver clutched tight in his fingers, dazed and quite sure he’d pushed his entire world off course. Only he hadn’t the faintest clue whether he’d done the right thing, what right and wrong meant at all, or how the pieces might now fall.
Interlude
Ramy
Ramiz Rafi Mirza had always been a clever boy. He had a prodigious memory, the gift of the gab. He soaked up languages like a sponge, and he had an uncanny ear for rhythm and sound. He did not merely repeat the phrases he absorbed; he uttered them in such precise imitation of the original speaker, investing his words with all their intended emotion, it was like he momentarily became them. In another life, he would have been destined for the stage. He had that ineffable skill, of making simple words sing.
Ramy was brilliant, and he had ample opportunity to show off. The Mirza family had navigated the vicissitudes of that era with great fortune. Although they were among the Muslim families who had lost land and holdings after the Permanent Settlement, the Mirzas had found steady, if not very lucrative, employment in the household of one Mr Horace Hayman Wilson, secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta. Sir Horace had a keen interest in Indian languages and literatures, and he took great delight in conversing with Ramy’s father, who had been well educated in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu.
So Ramy grew up among the elite English families of Calcutta’s white town, among porticoed and colonnaded houses built in European styles and shops catering exclusively to a European clientele. Wilson took an early interest in his education, and while other boys his age were still playing in the streets, Ramy was auditing classes at the Mohammedan College of Calcutta, where he learned arithmetic, theology, and philosophy. Arabic, Persian, and Urdu he studied with his father. Latin and Greek he learned from tutors hired by Wilson. English he absorbed from the world around him.
In the Wilson household, they called him the little professor. Blessed Ramy, dazzling Ramy. He had no idea what the purpose was of anything he studied, only that it delighted the adults so when he mastered it all. Often, he performed tricks for the guests Sir Horace had over to his sitting room. They would show him a series of playing cards, and he’d repeat with perfect accuracy the suit and number of the cards in the order in which they’d appeared. They would read out whole passages or poems in Spanish or Italian and he, not understanding a word of what was said, would recite it back, intonations and all.
He once took pride in this. He liked hearing the guests’ shouts of wonder, liked the way they ruffled his hair and pressed sweets into his palm before they bade him scamper off to the kitchens. He had no understanding of class then, or of race. He thought it was all a game. He did not see his father watching from around the corner, eyebrows knitted with worry. He did not know that impressing a white man could be as dangerous as provoking one.
One afternoon when he was twelve years old, Wilson’s guests summoned him during a heated debate.
‘Ramy.’ The man who waved him over was Mr Trevelyan, a frequent visitor, a man with prodigious sideburns and a dry, wolflike smile. ‘Come here.’
‘Oh, leave him be,’ said Sir Horace.
‘I’m proving a point.’ Mr Trevelyan beckoned with one hand. ‘Ramy, if you please.’
Sir Horace did not tell Ramy not to, so Ramy hurried to Mr Trevelyan’s side and stood straight, hands clasped behind his back like a little soldier. He’d learned that English guests adored this stance; they found it precious. ‘Yes, sir?’
‘Count to ten in English,’ said Mr Trevelyan.
Ramy obliged. Mr Trevelyan knew perfectly well he could do this; the performance was for the other gentlemen present.
‘Now in Latin,’ said Mr Trevelyan, and when Ramy had accomplished that, ‘Now in Greek.’
Ramy complied. Gratified chuckles around the room. Ramy decided to test his luck. ‘Little numbers are for little children,’ he said in perfect English. ‘If you’d like to converse about algebra, pick a language and we’ll do that too.’
Charmed chuckles. Ramy grinned, rocking back and forth on his feet, waiting for the inevitable press of candy or coin.
Mr Trevelyan turned back to the other guests. ‘Consider this boy and his father. Both of similar ability, both of a similar background and education. The father begins with even more of an advantage, I would say, as his father, I’m told, belonged to a wealthier merchant class. But so fortunes rise and fall. Despite his natural talents, Mr Mirza here can attain no better than a posting as a domestic servant. Don’t you agree, Mr Mirza?’
Ramy saw the most peculiar expression then on his father’s face. He looked as if he were holding something in, as if he’d swallowed a very bitter seed but was unable to spit it out.
Suddenly this game did not seem such fun. He felt nervous now for showing off, but couldn’t quite put his finger on why.
‘Come now, Mr Mirza,’ said Mr Trevelyan. ‘You can’t claim that you wanted to be a footman.’
Mr Mirza gave a nervous chuckle. ‘It’s a great honour to serve Sir Horace Wilson.’
‘Oh, come off it – no need to be polite, we all know how he farts.’
Ramy stared at his father; the man he still thought was as tall as a mountain, the man who had taught him all his scripts: Roman, Arabic, and Nastaliq. The man who taught him salah. The man who taught him the meaning of respect. His hafiz.
Mr Mirza nodded and smiled. ‘Yes. That’s right, Mr Trevelyan, sir. Of course, I’d rather be in your position.’
‘Well, there you go,’ said Mr Trevelyan. ‘You see, Horace, these people have ambitions. They have the intellect, and the desire to self-govern, as so they should.* And it’s your educational policies that are keeping them down. India simply has no languages for statecraft. Your poems and epics are all very interesting, to be sure, but on the matters of administration—’
The room exploded again into clamorous debate. Ramy was forgotten. He glanced at Wilson, still hoping for his reward, but his father cast him a sharp look and shook his head.
Ramy was a clever boy. He knew to make himself scarce.
Two years later, in 1833, Sir Horace Wilson left Calcutta to take on the position of the first Chair of Sanskrit at Oxford University.* Mr and Mrs Mirza knew better than to protest when Wilson proposed to bring their son with him to England, and Ramy did not begrudge his parents for not fighting to keep him at their side. (He knew, by then, how dangerous it was to defy a white man.)
‘My staff will raise him up in Yorkshire,’ Wilson explained. ‘I will visit him when I can take leave from the university. Then, when he’s grown, I’ll have him enrolled at University College. Charles Trevelyan might be right, and English might be the path forward for the natives, but there’s value yet in Indian languages where scholars are concerned. English is good enough for those chaps in civil administration, but we need our real geniuses studying Persian and Arabic, don’t we? Someone’s got to keep the ancient traditions alive.’
Ramy’s family bid him farewell at the docks. He hadn’t packed much; he would outgrow any clothes he brought in half a year.
His mother clasped the sides of his face and kissed him on the forehead. ‘Make sure to write. Once a month – no, once a week – and make sure to pray—’
‘Yes, Amma.’
His sisters clung to his jacket. ‘Will you send presents?’ they asked. ‘Will you meet the King?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And no, I don’t care to.’
His father stood a little way back, observing his wife and children, blinking hard as if trying to commit everything to memory. At last, when the boarding call sounded, he hugged his son to his chest and whispered, ‘Allah hafiz.* Write to your mother.’
‘Yes, Abbu.’
‘Forget not who you are, Ramiz.’
‘Yes, Abbu.’
Ramy was fourteen then, and old enough to understand the meaning of pride. Ramy intended to do more than remember. For he understood now why his father had smiled that day in the sitting room – not out of weakness or submission, and not out of fear of reprisal. He’d been playing a part. He’d been showing Ramy how it was done.
Lie, Ramiz. This was the lesson, the most important lesson he’d ever been taught. Hide, Ramiz. Show the world what they want; contort yourself into the image they want to see, because seizing control of the story is how you in turn control them. Hide your faith, hide your prayers, for Allah will still know your heart.
And what an act Ramy put on. He had no trouble navigating English high society – Calcutta had its fair share of English taverns, music halls, and theatres, and what he saw in Yorkshire was no more than an expansion of the elite microcosm he’d grown up in. He thickened and thinned his accent depending on his audience. He learned all the fanciful notions the English held about his people, elaborated on them like an expert playwright, and spat them back out. He knew when to play a lascar, a houseboy, a prince. He learned when to flatter and when to engage in self-deprecation. He could have written a thesis on white pride, on white curiosity. He knew how to make himself an object of fascination while neutralizing himself as a threat. He fine-tuned the greatest of all tricks, which was to swindle an Englishman into looking at him with respect.
He grew so good at this that he almost began to lose himself in the artifice. A dangerous trap indeed, for a player to believe his own stories, to be blinded by the applause. He could envision himself as a postgraduate fellow, dripping with distinctions and awards. A richly paid solicitor on Legal. A highly acclaimed spontaneous interpreter, sailing back and forth between London and Calcutta, bringing riches and gifts for his family every time he returned.
And this scared him sometimes, how easily he danced around Oxford, how attainable this imagined future seemed. Outside, he dazzled. Inside, he felt like a fraud, a traitor. And he was just starting to despair, to wonder if all he would ever accomplish was to become a lackey of empire as Wilson had intended, for the avenues of anticolonial resistance seemed so few, and so hopeless.
Until his third year, when Anthony Ribben appeared back from the dead and asked, ‘Will you join us?’
And Ramy, without hesitating, looked him in the eyes and said, ‘Yes.’
Chapter Sixteen
It appears quite certain that the Chinese, a money-making and money-loving people, are as much addicted to trade, and as anxious as any nation on earth to court a commercial intercourse with strangers.
JOHN CRAWFURD, ‘Chinese Empire and Trade’
Morning came. Robin rose, washed, and dressed for class. He met Ramy outside the house. Neither said a word; they walked in silence to the tower door, which, despite Robin’s sudden fear, opened to let them in. They were late; Professor Craft was already lecturing when they took their seats. Letty shot them an irritated glare. Victoire gave Robin a nod, her face inscrutable. Professor Craft continued as if she hadn’t seen them; this was how she always dealt with tardiness. They pulled out their pens and began taking down notes on Tacitus and his thorny ablative absolutes.
The room seemed at once both mundane and heartbreakingly beautiful: the morning light streaming through stained-glass windows, casting colourful patterns on the polished wooden desks; the clean scratch of chalk against the blackboard; and the sweet, woody smell of old books. A dream; this was an impossible dream, this fragile, lovely world in which, for the price of his convictions, he had been allowed to remain.
That afternoon they received notices in their pidges to prepare to depart for Canton by way of London by the eleventh of October – the day after next. They would spend three weeks in China – two in Canton, and one in Macau – and then stop in Mauritius for ten days on the way home.
Your destinations are temperate, but the sea voyage can be chilly, read the notice. Bring a thick coat.
‘Isn’t this a bit early?’ asked Letty. ‘I thought we weren’t going until after our exams.’
‘It explains here.’ Ramy tapped the bottom of the page. ‘Special circumstances in Canton – they’re short on Chinese translators and want Babblers to fill in the gap, so they’ve pushed our voyage up ahead.’
‘Well, that’s exciting!’ Letty beamed. ‘It’ll be our first chance to go out in the world and do something.’
Robin, Ramy, and Victoire exchanged glances with one another. They all shared the same suspicion – that this sudden departure was somehow linked to Friday night. But they couldn’t know what that meant for Ramy’s and Victoire’s presumed innocence, or what this voyage held in store for them all.
The final day before they left was torture. The only one among them who felt any excitement was Letty, who took it upon herself to march into their rooms that night and make sure their trunks were properly packed. ‘You don’t realize how cold it gets at sea in the mornings,’ she said, folding Ramy’s shirts into a neat pile on his bed. ‘You’ll need more than just a linen shirt, Ramy, you’ll want two layers at least.’
‘Please, Letitia.’ Ramy swatted her hand away before she could get at his socks. ‘We’ve all been at sea before.’
‘Well, I’ve travelled regularly,’ she said, ignoring him. ‘I ought to know. And we should keep a little bag of remedies – sleeping tinctures, ginger – I’m not sure there’s time to run to a shop, we might have to do so in London—’
‘It’s a long time on a little ship,’ snapped Ramy. ‘It’s not the Crusades.’
Letty turned stiffly to sort through Robin’s trunk. Victoire cast Robin and Ramy a helpless look. They couldn’t speak freely in Letty’s presence, so they could only sit simmering in anxiety. The same unanswered questions bedevilled them all. What was happening? Had they been forgiven, or was the axe still waiting to drop? Would they naively board the ship to Canton, only to be abandoned on the other side?
Most importantly – how was it possible they’d been recruited separately to the Hermes Society without knowledge of the others? Ramy and Victoire at least had some excuse – they were new to Hermes; they might have been too frightened by the society’s demands for silence to say anything to Robin yet. But Robin had known about Hermes for three years now, and he’d never spoken of it once, not even to Ramy. He’d done a marvellous job hiding his greatest secret from friends who, he’d proclaimed, owned his heart.
This, Robin suspected, had greatly rattled Ramy. After they’d walked the girls north to their lodgings that night, Robin tried to broach the subject, but Ramy shook his head. ‘Not now, Birdie.’
Robin’s heart ached. ‘But I only wanted to explain—’
‘Then I think we ought to wait for Victoire,’ Ramy said curtly. ‘Don’t you?’
They headed to London the next afternoon with Professor Lovell, who was to be their supervisor throughout the voyage. The trip was, thankfully, much shorter than the ten-hour stagecoach ride that had brought Robin to Oxford three years ago. The railway line between Oxford and Paddington Station had finally been completed over the previous summer, its opening commemorated with the installation of silver bars under the platform of the newly constructed Oxford Station,* and so the journey took them only an hour and a half, during which Robin managed not to meet Professor Lovell’s eyes once.
Their ship did not depart until tomorrow; they would lodge overnight at an inn on New Bond Street. Letty insisted they go out and explore London for a bit, so they ended up going to see the sitting room show of someone who called herself Princess Caraboo. Princess Caraboo was notorious among Babel students. Once a humble cobbler’s daughter, she had persuaded several people into believing she was exotic royalty from the island of Javasu. But it was now nearly a decade since Princess Caraboo had been unmasked as Mary Willcocks of North Devon, and her show – which consisted of a strange hopping dance, several very emphatic utterances in a made-up tongue, and prayers to a god she called Allah-Tallah (here Ramy wrinkled his nose), came off as more pathetic than funny. The display put a bad taste in their mouths; they left early and returned to the inn, tired and laconic.
