Babel, page 6
It never occurred to Robin to run, not then, and not once in the weeks that followed. Some other child might have been frightened, might have seized the first chance to escape into London’s streets. Some other child suited to better, kinder treatment might have realized that such nonchalance on the part of adults like Mrs Piper, Mr Felton, and Mr Chester to a badly bruised eleven-year-old was frightfully wrong. But Robin was so grateful for this return to equilibrium that he couldn’t find it in himself to even resent what had happened.
After all, it never happened again. Robin made sure it did not. He spent the next six years studying to the point of exhaustion. With the threat of expatriation looming constantly above him, he devoted his life to becoming the student Professor Lovell wanted to see.
Greek and Latin grew more entertaining after the first year, after he’d assembled enough building blocks of each language to piece together fragments of meaning for himself. From then on it felt less like groping in the dark whenever he encountered a new text and more like filling in the blanks. Figuring out the precise grammatical formulation of a phrase that had been frustrating him gave him the same sort of satisfaction he derived from reshelving a book where it belonged or finding a missing sock – all the pieces fitted together, and everything was whole and complete.
In Latin, he read through Cicero, Livy, Virgil, Horace, Caesar, and Juvenal; in Greek, he tackled Xenophon, Homer, Lysias, and Plato. In time, he realized he was quite good at languages. His memory was strong, and he had a knack for tones and rhythm. He soon reached a level of fluency in both Greek and Latin that any Oxford undergraduate would have been jealous of. In time, Professor Lovell stopped commenting on his inherited inclination to sloth, and instead nodded in approval at every update on Robin’s rapid progress through the canon.
History, meanwhile, marched on around them. In 1830, King George IV had died and was succeeded by his younger brother, William IV, the eternal compromiser who pleased no one. In 1831, another cholera epidemic swept through London, leaving thirty thousand dead in its wake. The brunt of its impact fell on the poor and the destitute; those living in close, cramped quarters who could not escape each other’s tainted miasmas.* But the neighbourhood in Hampstead was untouched – to Professor Lovell and his friends in their remote walled estates, the epidemic was something to mention in passing, wince about in sympathy, and quickly forget.
In 1833, a momentous thing happened – slavery was abolished in England and its colonies, to be replaced by a six-year apprenticeship term as a transition to freedom. Among Professor Lovell’s interlocutors, this news was taken with the mild disappointment of a lost cricket match.
‘Well, that’s ruined the West Indies for us,’ Mr Hallows complained. ‘The abolitionists with their damned moralizing. I still believe this obsession with abolition is a product of the British needing to at least feel culturally superior now that they’ve lost America. And on what grounds? It isn’t as if those poor fellows aren’t equally enslaved back in Africa under those tyrants they call kings.’*
‘I wouldn’t give up on the West Indies just yet,’ Professor Lovell said. ‘They’re still allowing a legal kind of forced labour—’
‘But without ownership, it takes the teeth out of it all.’
‘Perhaps that’s for the best, though – freedmen do work better than slaves after all, and slavery is in fact more expensive than a free labour market—’
‘You’ve been reading too much of Smith. Hobart and MacQueen had the right idea – just smuggle in a ship full of Chinamen,* that’ll do the trick. They’re so very industrious and orderly, Richard should know—’
‘No, Richard thinks they’re lazy, don’t you, Richard?’
‘Now, what I wish,’ interrupted Mr Ratcliffe, ‘is that all these women would stop taking part in those anti-slavery debates. They see too much of themselves in their situation; it puts ideas in their head.’
‘What,’ asked Professor Lovell, ‘is Mrs Ratcliffe unsatisfied with her domestic situation?’
‘She’d like to think that it’s a hop and a skip from abolition to women’s suffrage.’ Mr Ratcliffe let out a nasty laugh. ‘That would be the day.’
And with that, the conversation turned to the absurdity of women’s rights.
Never, Robin thought, would he understand these men, who talked of the world and its movements like a grand chess game, where countries and peoples were pieces to be moved and manipulated at will.
But if the world was an abstract object for them, it was even more abstract to him, for he had no stake in any of these matters. Robin processed that era through the myopic world of Lovell Manor. Reforms, colonial uprisings, slave revolts, women’s suffrage, and the latest Parliamentary debates all meant nothing to him. All that mattered were the dead languages before him, and the fact that one day, a day that drew ever closer as the years trickled by, he would matriculate at the university he knew only from the painting on the wall – the city of knowledge, the city of dreaming spires.
It all ended without circumstance, without celebration. One day Mr Chester told Robin as he packed up his books that he’d enjoyed their lessons, and that he wished him well at university. This was how Robin discovered he was to be sent up to Oxford the next week.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Professor Lovell when asked. ‘Did I forget to tell you? I’ve written to the college. They’ll be expecting you.’
Supposedly there was an application process, some exchange of letters of introduction and guarantees of funding that secured his position. Robin was involved with none of this. Professor Lovell simply informed him he was due to move into his new lodgings on 29th September, so he’d best have his bags packed by the evening of the 28th. ‘You’ll arrive a few days before the start of term. We’ll ride up together.’
The night before they left, Mrs Piper baked Robin a plate of small, hard, round biscuits so rich and crumbly they seemed to melt away in his mouth.
‘It’s shortbread,’ she explained. ‘Now, they’re very rich, so don’t eat them all at once. I don’t make them much, as Richard thinks sugar ruins a boy, but you’ve deserved it.’
‘Shortbread,’ Robin repeated. ‘Because they don’t last long?’
They had been playing this game since the night of the bannock debate.
‘No, dear.’ She laughed. ‘Because of the crumble. Fat “shortens” the pastry. That’s what short means, you know – it’s how we get the word shortening.’
He swallowed the sweet, fatty lump and chased it down with a gulp of milk. ‘I’ll miss your etymology lessons, Mrs Piper.’
To his surprise, her eyes turned red at the corners. Her voice grew thick. ‘Write home whenever you need a sack of victuals,’ she said. ‘I don’t know much of what goes on inside those colleges, but I know their food is something awful.’
Chapter Three
But this shall never be: to us remains
One city that has nothing of the beast,
That was not built for gross, material gains,
Sharp, wolfish power or empire’s glutted feast.
C.S. LEWIS, ‘Oxford’
The next morning Robin and Professor Lovell took a cab to a station in central London, where they transferred to a stagecoach bound all the way for Oxford. As they waited to board, Robin entertained himself by trying to guess at the etymology of stagecoach. Coach was obvious, but why stage? Was it because the flat, wide carriage looked something like a stage? Because entire troupes of actors might have travelled thus, or performed atop one? But that was a stretch. A carriage looked like a lot of things, but he couldn’t imagine how a stage – a raised public platform – was the obvious association. Why not a basketcoach? An omnicoach?
‘Because the journey happens in stages,’ Professor Lovell explained when Robin gave up. ‘Horses don’t want to run all the way from London to Oxford, and usually neither do we. But I detest travellers’ inns, so we’re doing the single-day run; it’s about ten hours with no stops, so use that lavatory before we go.’
They shared their stagecoach with nine other passengers – a well-dressed little family of four and a group of slouching gentlemen in drab suits and elbow patches who Robin assumed were all professors. Robin sat squeezed between Professor Lovell and one of the suited men. It was too early for conversation. As the carriage bounced along the cobblestones, the passengers either dozed or stared blankly in various directions.
It took Robin a while to realize the woman across from him was staring over her knitting. When he met her eyes, she promptly turned to Professor Lovell and asked, ‘Is that an Oriental?’
Professor Lovell jerked his head up, roused from slumber. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I was asking about your boy,’ said the woman. ‘Is he from Peking?’
Robin glanced at Professor Lovell, suddenly very curious what he might say.
But Professor Lovell only shook his head. ‘Canton,’ he said curtly. ‘Further south.’
‘Ah,’ said the woman, clearly disappointed when he wouldn’t elaborate.
Professor Lovell went back to sleep. The woman looked Robin up and down again with an unsettlingly eager curiosity, then turned her attention to her children. Robin remained silent. Suddenly his chest felt very tight, though he couldn’t understand why this was.
The children wouldn’t stop staring at him; their eyes were wide and their mouths gaped in a way that would have been precious if they didn’t make Robin feel as if he’d sprouted another head. After a moment the boy tugged on his mother’s sleeve and made her bend down so he could whisper in her ear.
‘Oh.’ She chuckled, then glanced at Robin. ‘He’d like to know if you can see.’
‘I – what?’
‘If you can see?’ The woman raised her voice and overenunciated her every syllable, as if Robin had difficulty hearing. (This had happened often to Robin on the Countess of Harcourt; he could never understand why people treated those who couldn’t understand English as if they were deaf.) ‘With your eyes like that – can you see everything? Or is it only in little slits?’
‘I can see perfectly well,’ Robin said quietly.
The boy, disappointed, turned his attention to pinching his sister. The woman resumed her knitting as if nothing had happened.
The little family got off at Reading. Robin found he breathed more easily when they were gone. He could also stretch his legs over the aisle to give his stiff knees a respite without the mother shooting him a startled, suspicious look, as if she’d caught him in the act of trying to pick her pockets.
The last ten or so miles to Oxford were an idyllic stretch of green pastureland, punctuated by the occasional herd of cows. Robin tried reading a guidebook entitled The University of Oxford and Her Colleges, but found himself with a throbbing headache, and so began nodding off. Some stagecoaches were outfitted with silver-work to make the ride feel as smooth as skates on ice, but theirs was an older model, and the constant jostling was exhausting. He awoke to wheels rumbling against cobblestones and glanced around to discover they had arrived in the middle of High Street, right before the walled gates of his new home.
Oxford was composed of twenty-two colleges, all with their own residential complexes, coats of arms, dining halls, customs, and traditions. Christ Church, Trinity, St John’s, and All Souls boasted the largest endowments and therefore the nicest grounds. ‘You’ll want to make friends there, if only to have a look at the gardens,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘You can safely ignore anyone from Worcester or Hertford. They’re poor and ugly,’ whether he was referring to the people or the gardens, Robin couldn’t be sure, ‘and their food is bad.’ One of the other gentlemen gave him a sour look as they stepped off the coach.
Robin would live in University College. His guidebook informed him that it was commonly referred to as ‘Univ’, that it housed all students enrolled in the Royal Institute of Translation, and that in aesthetic it was ‘sombre and venerable, a look befitting of the university’s oldest daughter’. It certainly looked like a Gothic sanctuary; its front wall was all turrets and uniform windows against smooth white stone.
‘Well, here you are.’ Professor Lovell stood with his hands shoved in his pockets, looking slightly uncomfortable. Now that they’d been to the porter’s lodge, acquired Robin’s keys, and dragged Robin’s trunks off High Street onto the paved sidewalk, it seemed obvious that a parting was imminent. Professor Lovell simply didn’t know how to go about it. ‘Well,’ he said again. ‘You have a few days before classes start, so you ought to spend them getting to know the city. You’ve got a map – yes, there – though the place is small enough you’ll learn it by heart after a few strolls. Perhaps seek out the members of your cohort; they’ll likely have moved in by now. My residence here is up north in Jericho; I’ve written you directions in that envelope. Mrs Piper will join me there next week, and we’ll expect you at dinner the Saturday after next. She’ll be very happy to see you.’ All this he rattled off like a memorized checklist. He seemed to have a hard time looking Robin in the eyes. ‘Are you all set?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Robin. ‘I’ll be very happy to see Mrs Piper as well.’
They blinked at each other. Robin felt that surely there were other words that should be said, words to mark this occasion – his growing up, leaving home, his entering university – as momentous. But he couldn’t imagine what they might be, and apparently neither could Professor Lovell.
‘Well, then.’ Professor Lovell gave him a curt nod and turned halfway towards High Street, as if confirming he was no longer needed. ‘You can manage your trunks?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, then,’ Professor Lovell said again, then headed back out to High Street.
It was an awkward phrase to end on, two words that suggested more to come. Robin watched him for a moment, half expecting him to turn around, but Professor Lovell seemed focused solely on hailing a cab. Strange, yes. But this did not bother Robin. This was how things had always been between them: conversations unfinished, words best left unsaid.
Robin’s lodgings were in Number 4, Magpie Lane* – a green-painted building halfway down the crooked, narrow alley that connected High Street and Merton Street. Someone else was already standing at the front door, fiddling with the lock. He had to be a new student – satchels and trunks were scattered on the cobblestones around him.
He was, Robin saw as he drew closer, very clearly not native to England. South Asia was more likely. Robin had seen sailors with the same colouring in Canton, all from ships arriving from India. The stranger had smooth dusky skin, a tall and graceful build, and the longest, darkest eyelashes that Robin had ever seen. His eyes flickered up and down Robin’s frame before settling on his face, questioning – determining, Robin suspected, just how foreign Robin was in return.
‘I’m Robin,’ Robin burst out. ‘Robin Swift.’
‘Ramiz Rafi Mirza,’ the other boy pronounced proudly, extending his hand. He spoke with such proper English diction he sounded nearly like Professor Lovell. ‘Or just Ramy, if you like. And you – you’re here for the Translation Institute, aren’t you?’
‘I am,’ said Robin, then added, on a hunch, ‘I’m from Canton.’
Ramy’s face relaxed. ‘Calcutta.’
‘Did you just get in?’
‘To Oxford, yes. To England, no – I came in through Liverpool on a ship four years ago and I’ve been holed up in a big, boring estate in Yorkshire until now. My guardian wanted me to acclimatize to English society before I matriculated.’
‘Mine too,’ Robin said eagerly. ‘What did you think?’
‘Awful weather.’ One side of Ramy’s mouth quirked up. ‘And the only thing I can eat here is fish.’
They beamed at each other.
Robin felt a strange, bursting feeling in his chest then. He’d never met someone else in his situation, or anything like it, and he strongly suspected that should he keep probing, he would uncover a dozen more similarities. He had a thousand questions, but he didn’t know where to start. Was Ramy also orphaned? Who was his sponsor? What was Calcutta like? Had he been back since? What brought him to Oxford? He was suddenly anxious – he felt his tongue stiffen, unable to choose a word – and there was also the matter of the keys, and their scattered trunks, which made the alley look as if a hurricane had emptied a ship’s hold onto the street—
‘Should we—’ Robin managed, just as Ramy asked, ‘Shall we open that door?’
They both laughed. Ramy smiled. ‘Let’s drag these inside.’ He nudged a trunk with his toe. ‘Then I’ve got a box of very nice sweets which I think we should open, yes?’
Their quarters were across the hall from one another – rooms six and seven. Each unit consisted of a large bedroom and a sitting room equipped with a low table, empty bookshelves, and a couch. The couch and table both seemed too formal, so they sat cross-legged on the floor of Ramy’s room, blinking like shy children as they regarded each other, unsure what to do with their hands.
Ramy pulled a colourfully wrapped parcel from one of his trunks and set it on the floor between them. ‘Sending-off gift from Sir Horace Wilson, my guardian. He gave me a bottle of port, too, but I threw that away. What would you like?’ Ramy ripped the parcel open. ‘There’s toffee, caramel, peanut brittle, chocolates, and all kinds of candied fruits . . .’
‘Oh, goodness – I’ll have some toffee, thank you.’ Robin hadn’t spoken to another person near his age in as long as he could remember.* He was only now realizing how badly he wanted a friend, but he didn’t know how to make one, and the prospect of trying but failing suddenly terrified him. What if Ramy found him dull? Annoying? Oversolicitous?
He took a bite of toffee, swallowed, and placed his hands in his lap.
