Babel, page 61
She shook her head. She was weeping freely now; both of them were. ‘Don’t say this to me.’
‘Someone’s got to speak the words. Someone has to stay.’
‘Then aren’t you going to ask me to stay with you?’
‘Oh, Victoire.’
What else was there to say? He could not ask this of her, and she knew he would never dare. Yet the question hung between them, unanswered.
Victoire’s gaze was fixed steadily on the window, at the black lawn outside, at the torchlit barricades. She cried, steadily and silently; the tears kept streaming down her cheeks and she kept wiping them away, pointlessly. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. This was the first time, since all this had started, that he couldn’t read her heart.
At last she took a deep breath and lifted her head. Without turning around, she asked, ‘Did you ever read that poem the abolitionists love? That one by Bicknell and Day. It’s called The Dying Negro.’
Robin had read it, in fact, in an abolitionist pamphlet he’d picked up in London. He’d found it striking; he still remembered it in detail. It described the story of an African man who, facing the prospects of capture and return to slavery, killed himself instead.* Robin had found it romantic and moving at the time, but now, seeing Victoire’s expression, he realized it was anything but.
‘I did,’ he said. ‘It was – tragic.’
‘We have to die to get their pity,’ said Victoire. ‘We have to die for them to find us noble. Our deaths are thus great acts of rebellion, a wretched lament that highlights their inhumanity. Our deaths become their battle cry. But I don’t want to die, Robin.’ Her throat hitched. ‘I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be their Imoinda, their Oroonoko.* I don’t want to be their tragic, lovely lacquer figure. I want to live.’
She fell against his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight, rocking back and forth.
‘I want to live,’ she repeated, ‘and live, and thrive, and survive them. I want a future. I don’t think death is a reprieve. I think it’s – it’s just the end. It forecloses everything – a future where I might be happy, and free. And it’s not about being brave. It’s about wanting another chance. Even if all I did was run away, even if I never lifted a finger to help anyone else as long as I lived – at least I would get to be happy. At least the world might be all right, just for a day, just for me. Is that selfish?’
Her shoulders crumpled. Robin held her tight against him. What an anchor she was, he thought, an anchor he did not deserve. She was his rock, his light, the sole presence that had kept him going. And he wished, he wished, that was enough for him to hold on to.
‘Be selfish,’ he whispered. ‘Be brave.’
Chapter Thirty-Three
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways – I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.
PLATO, Apology, trans. Benjamin Jowett
‘The whole tower?’ asked Professor Craft.
She was the first to speak. The rest of them stared at Robin and Victoire in varying states of disbelief, and even Professor Craft seemed like she was still wrapping her mind around the idea as she spoke its implications out loud. ‘That’s decades – centuries – of research, that’s everything, buried – lost – oh, but who knows how many . . .’ She trailed off.
‘And the ramifications for England will be much worse,’ said Robin. ‘This country runs on silver. Silver pumps through its blood; England can’t live without it.’
‘They’d build it all back—’
‘Eventually, yes,’ said Robin. ‘But not before the rest of the world has time to muster a defence.’
‘And China?’
‘They won’t go to war. They won’t be able to. Silver powers the gunships, you see. Silver feeds the Navy. For months after this, perhaps years, they’ll no longer be the strongest nation in the world. And what happens next is anyone’s guess.’
The future would be fluid. It was just as Griffin had predicted. One individual choice, made at just the right time. This was how they defied momentum. This was how they altered the tracks of history.
And in the end, the answer had been so obvious – to simply refuse to participate. To remove their labour – and the fruits of their labour – permanently from the offering.
‘That can’t be it,’ said Juliana. Her voice trailed up at the end; it was a question, not a declaration. ‘There’s got to be – there must be some other way—’
‘They’re storming us at dawn,’ said Robin. ‘They’ll shoot a few of us to make an example, and then hold the rest of us at gunpoint until we start repairing the damage. They’ll put us in chains, and they’ll put us to work.’
‘But the barricades—’
‘The barricades will fall,’ whispered Victoire. ‘They’re just walls, Juliana. Walls can be destroyed.’
Silence first; then resignation, then acceptance. They already lived in the impossible; what more was the fall of the most eternal thing they’d ever known?
‘Then I suppose we’ll have to get out fast,’ said Ibrahim. ‘Right after the chain reaction starts.’
But you can’t get out fast, Robin almost said before he stopped himself. The rejoinder was obvious. They couldn’t get out fast, because they couldn’t get out at all. A single incantation would not do. If they were not thorough, the tower might collapse partway, but its remains would be salvageable, easily repurposed. The only things they would have inflicted would be expense and frustration. They would have suffered for nothing.
No; for this plan to work – to strike a blow against empire from which it could not recover – they had to stay, and say the words again and again, and activate as many nodes of destruction as they could.
But how did he tell a room full of people that they needed to die?
‘I . . .’ he started, but the words stuck in his throat.
He didn’t have to explain. They’d all figured it out; they were all reaching the same conclusion, one after the other, and the change in their eyes was heartbreaking.
‘I’m going through with it,’ he said. ‘I’m not asking all of you to come with me – Abel can get you out if you won’t – but all I mean is . . . I just – I can’t do it by myself.’
Victoire looked away, arms crossed.
‘We won’t need everyone,’ he continued, desperate to fill the silence with words because, perhaps the more he spoke it, the less awful it sounded. ‘I suppose a diversity of languages would be good, to amplify the effect – and of course, we’ll want people standing in all corners of the tower, because . . .’ His throat pulsed. ‘But we don’t need everyone.’
‘I’ll stay,’ said Professor Craft.
‘I . . . thank you, Professor.’
She gave him a wobbly smile. ‘I suppose I wasn’t going to get tenure on the other side of this anyhow.’
He saw them all making the same calculation then: the finality of death against the persecution, prison, and possible execution they would face on the outside. Surviving Babel did not necessarily mean survival. And he could see them asking themselves if they could come to terms, now, with their own deaths; if that would, in the end, be easier.
‘You’re not afraid,’ Meghana told him, asked him.
‘No,’ said Robin. But that was all he could say. He didn’t understand his heart himself. He felt resolved, but perhaps that was only the adrenaline; perhaps his fear and hesitation were only pushed temporarily behind a flimsy wall, which would shatter upon closer examination. ‘No, I’m not, I . . . just – I’m ready. But we won’t need everyone.’
‘Possibly the younger students . . .’ Professor Craft cleared her throat. ‘The ones who don’t know any silver-working, I mean. There’s no reason—’
‘I want to stay.’ Ibrahim cast Juliana an anxious glance. ‘I don’t . . . I don’t want to run.’
Juliana, pale as paper, said nothing.
‘There is a way out?’ Yusuf asked Robin.
‘There is. Abel’s men can ferry you out of the city, they’ve promised; they’re waiting for us. But you’ll have to go as soon as you can. And then you’ll have to run. I don’t think you’ll ever be able to stop running.’
‘There are no terms of amnesty?’ Meghana asked.
‘There are if you work for them,’ said Robin. ‘If you help them restore things back to how they were. Letty made that offer, she wanted you to know. But you’ll always be under their thumb. They’ll never let you go. She intimated as much – they’ll own you, and they’ll make you feel grateful for it.’
At this, Juliana reached out and took Ibrahim’s hand. He squeezed her fingers. Both their knuckles turned white, and the sight of this was so intimate that Robin blinked and glanced away.
‘But we can still run,’ said Yusuf.
‘You can still run,’ said Robin. ‘You wouldn’t be safe anywhere in this country—’
‘But we could go home.’
Victoire’s voice was so soft that they could barely hear her. ‘We can go home.’
Yusuf nodded, considered this a moment, and then moved to stand beside her.
And it was that simple, the determination of who fled and who died. Robin, Professor Craft, Meghana, Ibrahim, and Juliana on one side. Yusuf and Victoire on the other. No one pleaded or begged, and no one changed their minds.
‘So.’ Ibrahim looked very small. ‘When—’
‘Dawn,’ said Robin. ‘They’re coming at dawn.’
‘Then we’d better stack the bars,’ said Professor Craft. ‘And we’d better place them properly, if we only get one go.’
‘What’s the word?’ Abel Goodfellow demanded. ‘They’re inching right up to us.’
‘Send your men home,’ Robin said.
‘What?’
‘As quick as you can. Get out of the barricades and go on the run. There’s not much time. The Guards – they don’t care about casualties anymore.’
Abel registered this, then nodded. ‘Who’s coming with us?’
‘Just two. Yusuf. Victoire. They’re saying their goodbyes, they’ll be ready soon.’ Robin pulled a wrapped parcel from inside his jacket. ‘There’s also this.’
Abel must have read something in his face, heard something in his voice, because his eyes narrowed. ‘And what are the rest of you up to in there?’
‘I shouldn’t tell you.’
Abel raised the parcel. ‘Is this a suicide note?’
‘It’s a written record,’ said Robin. ‘Of everything that’s happened in this tower. What we stood for. There’s a second copy, but in case it gets lost – I know you’ll find some way to get this out there. Print it all over England. Tell them what we did. Make them remember us.’ Abel looked like he wanted to argue, but Robin shook his head. ‘Please, my mind’s made up, and there’s not much time. I can’t explain this, and I think it’s best if you don’t ask.’
Abel watched him for a moment, then seemed to think better of what it was he was about to say. ‘You’ll end this?’
‘We’re going to try.’ Robin’s chest felt very tight. He was so exhausted; he wanted to curl up on the ground and go to sleep. He wanted this to be over. ‘But I can’t tell you more tonight. I just need you to go.’
Abel thrust out his arm. ‘Then this, I suppose, is goodbye.’
‘Goodbye.’ Robin grasped his palm and shook it. ‘Oh – and the blankets, I forgot—’
‘Think nothing of it.’ Abel wrapped his other hand over Robin’s. His grip was so warm, solid. Robin felt a catch in his throat; he was grateful that Abel was making this easy, that he hadn’t forced him to justify himself. He had to go swiftly, resolute to the very end.
‘Good luck, Robin Swift.’ Abel squeezed his hand. ‘God be with you.’
They spent the hours before dawn arranging hundreds of silver bars into pyramids at vulnerable points around the tower – around the base supports, beneath the windows, along the walls and bookshelves, and in veritable pyramids around the Grammaticas. They could not predict the scope, the scale, of the destruction, but they would prepare for it as well as they could, would make it near impossible to salvage any material from the remains.
Victoire and Yusuf left an hour after midnight. Their farewells were brief, constrained. It was an impossible parting; there was too much and yet nothing to say, and there was a sense that everyone was holding back for fear of opening the floodgates. If they said too little, they would regret it forever. If they said too much, they’d never bring themselves to part.
‘Safe travels,’ Robin whispered, embracing Victoire.
She choked out a laugh. ‘Yes. Thank you.’
They clung to each other for a long time, long enough that at last, once everyone had left to give them privacy, they were the only two standing in the lobby. Finally she stepped back, glanced round, eyes darting back and forth as if she was unsure whether to speak.
‘You don’t think this will work,’ said Robin.
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You’re thinking it.’
‘I’m just terrified that we’ll make this grand statement.’ She lifted her hands, let them fall. ‘And they’ll see it only as a temporary setback, something to recover from. That they’ll never understand what we meant.’
‘For what it’s worth, I don’t think they were ever going to listen.’
‘No, I don’t think they were.’ She was crying again. ‘Oh, Robin, I don’t know what to—’
‘Just go,’ he said. ‘And write to Ramy’s parents, will you? I just – they ought to know.’
She nodded, gave him one last, tight squeeze, and then darted out the door to the green where Yusuf and Abel’s men were waiting. One last wave – Victoire’s stricken expression under the moonlight – and then they were gone.
Then there was nothing to do but wait for the end.
How did one make peace with one’s own death? According to the accounts of the Crito, the Phaedo, and the Apology, Socrates went to his death without distress, with such preternatural calm that he refused multiple entreaties to escape. In fact, he’d been so cheerfully blasé, so convinced that dying was the just thing to do, that he beat his friends over their heads with his reasoning, in that insufferably righteous way of his, even as they burst into tears. Robin had been so struck, upon his first foray into the Greek texts, by Socrates’s utter indifference to his end.
And surely it was better, easier to die with such good cheer; no doubts, no fears, one’s heart at rest. He could, in theory, believe it. Often, he had thought of death as a reprieve. He had not stopped dreaming of it since the day Letty shot Ramy. He entertained himself with ideas of heaven as paradise, of green hills and brilliant skies where he and Ramy could sit and talk and watch an eternal sunset. But such fantasies did not comfort him so much as the idea that all death meant was nothingness, that everything would just stop: the pain, the anguish, the awful, suffocating grief. If nothing else, surely, death meant peace.
Still, facing the moment, he was terrified.
They wound up sitting on the floor in the lobby, taking comfort in the silence of the group, listening to each other breathe. Professor Craft tried, haltingly, to comfort them, surveying her memory for ancient words on this most human of dilemmas. She spoke to them of Seneca’s Troades, of Lucan’s Vulteius, of the martyrdom of Cato and Socrates. She quoted to them Cicero, Horace, and Pliny the Elder. Death is nature’s greatest good. Death is a better state. Death frees the immortal soul. Death is transcendence. Death is an act of bravery, a glorious act of defiance.
Seneca the Younger, describing Cato: una manu latam libertati viam faciet.*
Virgil, describing Dido: Sic, sic iuvat ire sub umbras.*
None of it really sank in; none of it moved them, for theorizing about death never could. Words and thoughts always ran up against the immovable limit of the imminent, permanent ending. Still, her voice, steady and unflinching, was a comfort; they let it wash over their ears, lulling them in these final hours.
Juliana glanced out of the window. ‘They’re moving across the green.’
‘It’s not dawn,’ said Robin.
‘They’re moving,’ she said simply.
‘Well then,’ said Professor Craft, ‘We’d better get on with it.’
They stood.
They would not face their ends together. Each man and woman to their station – to the pyramids of silver distributed on different floors and different wings across the building, positioned thus to reduce the chances that any part of the tower might remain intact. When the walls tumbled down upon them, they would be alone, and this was why, as the moment drew near, it felt so impossible to part.
Tears streamed down Ibrahim’s face.
‘I don’t want to die,’ he whispered. ‘There must be some other – I don’t want to die.’
They all felt the same, a desperate hope for some chance of escape. In these last moments, the seconds weren’t enough. In theory this decision they’d made was something beautiful. In theory they would be martyrs, heroes, the ones who’d pushed history off its path. But none of that was a comfort. In the moment, all that mattered was that death was painful and frightening and permanent, and none of them wanted to die.
But even as they trembled, not one of them broke. It was only a wish, after all. And the Army was on its way.
‘Let’s not tarry,’ said Professor Craft, and they ascended the stairs to their respective floors.
Robin remained in the centre of the lobby beneath the broken chandelier, surrounded by eight pyramids of silver bars as tall as he stood. He took a deep breath, watching the second hand tick across the clock above the door.
Oxford’s bell towers had long gone mute. As the minute drew near, the only indication of the time was the synchronized ticking of the grandfather clocks, all positioned in the same place on every floor. They’d chosen six o’clock on the dot; an arbitrary time, but they needed a final moment, an immovable fact on which to fix their will.
One minute to six.
