Babel, page 7
‘So,’ he said. ‘Tell me about Calcutta?’
Ramy grinned.
In the years to come, Robin would return so many times to this night. He was forever astonished by its mysterious alchemy, by how easily two badly socialized, restrictively raised strangers had transformed into kindred spirits in the span of minutes. Ramy seemed just as flushed and excited as Robin felt. They talked and talked. No topics seemed taboo; everything they brought up was either a point of instant agreement – scones are better without sultanas, thank you – or a cause for fascinating debate – no, London’s lovely, actually; you country mice are just prejudiced because you’re jealous. Only don’t swim in the Thames.
At some point they began reciting poems to each other – lovely chains of Urdu couplets Ramy told him were called ghazals, and Tang poetry which Robin frankly didn’t love but which sounded impressive. And he so badly wanted to impress Ramy. He was so witty, so well-read and funny. He had sharp, scathing opinions on everything – British cuisine, British manners, and the Oxbridge rivalry (‘Oxford is larger than Cambridge, but Cambridge is prettier, and anyhow I think they only established Cambridge as overflow for the mediocre talent.’) He’d travelled half the world; he’d been to Lucknow, Madras, Lisbon, Paris, and Madrid. He described his native India as a paradise: ‘The mangoes, Birdie’ (he’d already started calling Robin ‘Birdie’), ‘they’re ridiculously juicy, you can’t buy anything similar on this sorry little island. It’s been years since I’ve had one. I’d give anything to see a proper Bengal mango.’
‘I’ve read Arabian Nights,’ Robin offered, drunk on excitement and trying to seem worldly as well.
‘Calcutta’s not in the Arab world, Birdie.’
‘I know.’ Robin blushed. ‘I just meant—’
But Ramy had already moved on. ‘You didn’t tell me you read Arabic!’
‘I don’t, I read it in translation.’
Ramy sighed. ‘Whose?’
Robin tried hard to remember. ‘Jonathan Scott’s?’
‘That’s a terrible translation.’ Ramy waved his arm. ‘Throw it away. For one thing, it’s not even a direct translation – it went into French first, and then English – and for another, it’s not remotely like the original. What’s more, Galland – Antoine Galland, the French translator – did his very best to Frenchify the dialogue and to erase all cultural details he thought would confuse the reader. He translates Haroun Alraschid’s concubines as dames ses favourites. Favourite ladies. How do you get “favourite ladies” from “concubines”? And he entirely cuts out some of the more erotic passages, and injects cultural explanations whenever he feels like it – tell me, how would you like to read an epic with a doddering Frenchman breathing down your neck at all the raunchy bits?’
Ramy gesticulated wildly as he spoke. It was clear he wasn’t truly angry, just passionate and clearly brilliant, so invested in the truth he needed the whole world to know. Robin leaned back and watched Ramy’s lovely, agitated face, both amazed and delighted.
He could have cried then. He’d been so desperately lonely, and had only now realized it, and now he wasn’t, and this felt so good he didn’t know what to do with himself.
When at last they grew too sleepy to finish their sentences, the sweets were half-gone and Ramy’s floor was littered with wrappers. Yawning, they waved each other good night. Robin tripped back to his own quarters, swung the door shut, then turned around to face his empty rooms. This was his home for the next four years – the bed under the low, sloping ceiling where he would wake every morning, the leaking tap over the sink where he would wash his face, and the desk in the corner that he would hunch over every evening, scribbling by candlelight until wax dripped onto the floorboards.
For the first time since he’d arrived at Oxford, it struck him that he was to make a life here. He imagined it stretched out before him: the gradual accumulation of books and trinkets in those spare bookshelves; the wear and tear of those crisp new linen shirts still packed in his trunks, the change of seasons seen and heard through the wind-rattled window above his bed that wouldn’t quite shut. And Ramy, right across the hall.
This wouldn’t be so bad.
The bed was unmade, but he was too tired now to fiddle with the sheets or search for covers, so he curled up on his side and pulled his coat over him. In a very short while he was fast asleep and smiling.
Classes would not begin until the third of October, which left three full days in which Robin and Ramy were free to explore the city.
These were three of the happiest days of Robin’s life. He had no readings or classes; no recitations or compositions to prepare. For the first time in his life he was in full control of his own purse and schedule, and he went mad with freedom.
They spent their first day shopping. They went to Ede & Ravenscroft to be fitted for gowns; to Thornton’s Bookshop for the entirety of their course list; to the home-goods stands at Cornmarket for teapots, spoons, bed linens, and Argand lamps. After acquiring everything they assumed necessary for student life, they both found they had a generous fraction of their stipends left over, with no danger of running out – their scholarship allowed them to withdraw the same amount from the bursary every month.
So they were profligate. They bought bags of candied nuts and caramels. They rented the college punts and spent the afternoon driving each other into the Cherwell’s banks. They went to the Queen’s Lane coffeehouse, at which they spent a ridiculous amount of money on a variety of pastries neither of them had ever tried. Ramy was very fond of flapjacks – ‘They make oats taste so good,’ he said, ‘I understand the joys of being a horse,’ – while Robin preferred sticky sweet buns so drenched in sugar they made his teeth ache for hours.
In Oxford, they stuck out like sore thumbs. This rattled Robin at first. In London, which was slightly more cosmopolitan, foreigners never drew such prolonged stares. But Oxford’s townsfolk seemed constantly startled by their presence. Ramy attracted more attention than Robin did. Robin was foreign only when viewed up close and in certain lights, but Ramy was immediately, visibly other.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, when the baker asked if he was from Hindustan, speaking in an exaggerated accent Robin had never heard before. ‘I’ve got quite a big family there. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m actually royalty, fourth in line to the throne – what throne? Oh, just a regional one; our political system is very complicated. But I wanted to experience a normal life – get a proper British education, you know – so I’ve left my palace for here.’
‘Why did you talk like that?’ Robin asked him once they were out of earshot. ‘And what do you mean, you’re actually royalty?’
‘Whenever the English see me, they try to determine what kind of story they know me from,’ Ramy said. ‘Either I’m a dirty thieving lascar, or I’m a servant in some nabob’s house. And I realized in Yorkshire that it’s easier if they think I’m a Mughal prince.’
‘I’ve always just tried to blend in,’ said Robin.
‘But that’s impossible for me,’ said Ramy. ‘I have to play a part. Back in Calcutta, we all tell the story of Sake Dean Mahomed, the first Muslim from Bengal to become a rich man in England. He has a white Irish wife. He owns property in London. And you know how he did it? He opened a restaurant, which failed; and then he tried to be hired as a butler or valet, which also failed. And then he had the brilliant idea of opening a shampoo house in Brighton.’ Ramy chuckled. ‘Come and get your healing vapours! Be massaged with Indian oils! It cures asthma and rheumatism; it heals paralysis. Of course, we don’t believe that at home. But all Dean Mahomed had to do was give himself some medical credentials, convince the world of this magical Oriental cure, and then he had them eating out of the palm of his hand. So what does that tell you, Birdie? If they’re going to tell stories about you, use it to your advantage. The English are never going to think I’m posh, but if I fit into their fantasy, then they’ll at least think I’m royalty.’
That marked the difference between them. Ever since his arrival in London, Robin had tried to keep his head down and assimilate, to play down his otherness. He thought the more unremarkable he seemed, the less attention he would draw. But Ramy, who had no choice but to stand out, had decided he might as well dazzle. He was bold to the extreme. Robin found him incredible and a little bit terrifying.
‘Does Mirza really mean “prince”?’ Robin asked, after he’d overheard Ramy declare this to a shopkeeper for the third time.
‘Sure. Well, really, it’s a title – it’s derived from the Persian Amīrzādeh, but “prince” comes close enough.’
‘Then are you—?’
‘No.’ Ramy snorted. ‘Well. Perhaps once. That’s the family story, anyhow; my father says we were aristocrats in the Mughal court, or something like that. But not anymore.’
‘What happened?’
Ramy gave him a long look. ‘The British, Birdie. Keep up.’
That evening they paid far too much money for a hamper of rolls, cheese, and sweet grapes, which they brought to a hill in South Park on the eastern part of campus for a picnic. They found a quiet spot near a thicket of trees, secluded enough that Ramy could conduct his sunset prayer, and sat cross-legged on the grass, pulling bread apart with their bare hands, interrogating each other about their lives with the eager fascination of boys who, for many years, thought they were the only ones in their particular situation.
Ramy deduced very quickly that Professor Lovell was Robin’s father. ‘Has to be, right? Otherwise, why’s he so cagey about it? And otherwise to that otherwise, how’d he come to know your mother? Does he know that you know, or is he really still trying to hide it?’
Robin found his frankness alarming. He’d got so used to ignoring the issue that it was odd to hear it described in such blunt terms. ‘I don’t know. About any of it, I mean.’
‘Hm. Does he look like you?’
‘A bit, I think. He teaches here, he does East Asian languages – you’ll meet him, you’ll see.’
‘You’ve never asked him about it?’
‘I’ve never tried,’ said Robin. ‘I . . . I don’t know what he would say.’ No, that wasn’t true. ‘I mean, I just don’t think he would answer.’
They’d known each other for less than a day at that point, yet Ramy could read Robin’s face well enough not to push the subject.
Ramy was far more open about his own background. He had spent the first thirteen years of his life in Calcutta, the older brother to three younger sisters in a family employed by a wealthy nabob named Sir Horace Wilson, and the next four in a Yorkshire countryside estate as a consequence of impressing Wilson, reading Greek and Latin, and trying not to claw out his eyes from boredom.
‘Lucky you got your education in London,’ Ramy said. ‘At least you had somewhere to go at the weekends. My whole adolescence was hills and moors, and not a single person under forty in sight. Did you ever see the King?’
This was another talent of Ramy’s: switching subjects so nimbly that Robin found himself struggling to keep up.
‘William? No, not really, he doesn’t come out in public much. Especially recently, what with the Factory Act and the Poor Law – the reformers were always rioting in the streets, it wouldn’t have been safe.’
‘Reformers,’ Ramy repeated jealously. ‘Lucky you. All that ever happened in Yorkshire was a marriage or two. Sometimes the hens got out, on a good day.’
‘I didn’t get to participate, though,’ Robin said. ‘My days were rather monotonous, to be honest. Endless studying – all in preparation for here.’
‘But we’re here now.’
‘Cheers to that.’ Robin settled back with a sigh. Ramy passed him a cup – he’d been mixing elderflower syrup with honey and water – and they clinked and drank.
From their vantage point at South Park they could look over the whole of the university, draped in a golden blanket at sunset. The light made Ramy’s eyes glow, made his skin shine like burnished bronze. Robin had the absurd impulse to place his hand against Ramy’s cheek; indeed, he’d half lifted up his arm before his mind caught up with his body.
Ramy glanced down at him. A curl of black hair fell in his eyes. Robin found it absurdly charming. ‘You all right?’
Robin leaned back on his elbows, turning his gaze to the city. Professor Lovell was right, he thought. This was the loveliest place on earth.
‘I’m all right,’ he said. ‘I’m just perfect.’
The other residents of Number 4, Magpie Lane filled in over the weekend. None of them were translation students. They introduced themselves as they moved in: Colin Thornhill, a wide-eyed and effusive solicitor-in-training who talked only in full paragraphs and about himself; Bill Jameson, an affable redhead studying to be a surgeon who seemed perpetually worried about how much things cost; and at the end of the hall, a pair of twin brothers, Edgar and Edward Sharp, who were second years nominally pursuing an education in the Classics but who, as they loudly proclaimed, were more ‘just interested in the social aspect until we come into our inheritances.’
On Saturday night, they congregated for drinks in the common room adjoining the shared kitchen. Bill, Colin, and the Sharps were all seated around the low table when Ramy and Robin walked in. They’d been told to come at nine, but the wine had clearly been flowing for a while – empty bottles littered the floor around them, and the Sharp brothers were slouched against each other, both visibly drunk.
Colin was holding forth on the differences between the student gowns. ‘You can tell everything about a man from his gown,’ he said importantly. He had a peculiar, overpronounced, suspiciously exaggerated accent that Robin couldn’t place but quite disliked. ‘The bachelor’s gown loops at the elbow and terminates at a point. The gentleman-commoner’s gown is silk and plaited at the sleeves. The commoner’s gown has no sleeves, and has plaits at the shoulder, and you can tell the servitors and the commoners apart because their gowns don’t have plaits, and their caps don’t have tassels—’
‘Good Lord,’ said Ramy as he sat down. ‘Has he been going on about this all this time?’
‘For ten minutes at least,’ Bill said.
‘Oh, but proper academic dress is of the utmost importance,’ Colin insisted. ‘It’s how we display our status as Oxford men. It’s considered one of the seven deadly sins to wear an ordinary tweed cap with a gown, or to use a walking stick with a gown. And I once heard of a fellow who, not knowing the kinds of gowns, told the tailor he was a scholar, so of course he needed a scholar’s gown, only to be laughed out of hall the next day when it transpired that he was not a scholar, for he’d won no scholarship, but merely a paying commoner—’
‘So what gowns do we wear?’ Ramy cut in. ‘Just so I know if we told our tailor the right thing.’
‘Depends,’ Colin said. ‘Are you a gentleman-commoner or a servitor? I pay tuition, but not everyone does – what’s your arrangement with the bursar?’
‘Don’t know,’ said Ramy. ‘Do you think the black robes will do? All I know is we got the black ones.’
Robin snorted. Colin’s eyes bulged slightly. ‘Yes, but the sleeves—’
‘Leave off him,’ Bill said, smiling. ‘Colin’s very concerned with status.’
‘They take gowns very seriously here,’ Colin said solemnly. ‘I read it in my guidebook. They won’t even let you into lectures if you’re not in the proper attire. So are you a gentleman-commoner or a servitor?’
‘They’re neither.’ Edward turned to Robin. ‘You’re Babblers, aren’t you? I heard all Babblers are on scholarships.’
‘Babblers?’ Robin repeated. It was the first time he’d heard the term.
‘The Translation Institute,’ Edward said impatiently. ‘You’ve got to be, right? They don’t let your kind in otherwise.’
‘Our kind?’ Ramy arched an eyebrow.
‘So what are you, anyway?’ Edgar Sharp asked abruptly. He’d seemed on the verge of falling asleep, but now he made a mighty effort to sit up, squinting as if trying to see Ramy through a fog. ‘A Negro? A Turk?’
‘I’m from Calcutta,’ Ramy snapped. ‘Which makes me Indian, if you like.’
‘Hm,’ said Edward.
‘“London streets, where the turbaned Moslem, bearded Jew, and woolly Afric, meet the brown Hindu,”’ said Edgar in a sing-song tone. Beside him, his twin snorted and took another swig of port.
Ramy, for once, had no riposte; he only blinked at Edgar, amazed.
‘Right,’ Bill said, picking at his ear. ‘Well.’
‘Is that Anna Barbauld?’ Colin asked. ‘Lovely poet. Not as deft with wordplay as the male poets, of course, but my father loves her stuff. Very romantic.’
‘And you’re a Chinaman, aren’t you?’ Edgar fixed his lidded gaze on Robin. ‘Is it true that the Chinese break their women’s feet with bindings so that they can’t walk?’
‘What?’ Colin snorted. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘I read about it,’ Edgar insisted. ‘Tell me, is it meant to be erotic? Or is it just so that they can’t run away?’
‘I mean . . .’ Robin had no idea where to begin with this. ‘It’s not done everywhere – my mother didn’t have her feet bound, and there’s quite a lot of opposition where I’m from—’
‘So it’s true,’ Edgar crowed. ‘My God. You people are perverse.’
‘Do you really drink little boys’ urine for medicine?’ Edward inquired. ‘How’s it collected?’
‘Suppose you shut up and stick to dribbling wine down your front,’ Ramy said sharply.
Any hopes of fraternity fizzled out quite quickly after that. A round of whist was proposed, but the Sharp brothers did not know the rules and were too drunk to learn. Bill begged a headache and left for bed early. Colin went on another long tirade about the intricacies of hall etiquette, including the very long Latin grace he suggested they all learn by heart that night, but no one listened. The Sharp brothers, in a strange show of contrition, then asked Robin and Ramy some polite if inane questions about translation, but it was clear they were not too interested in the answers. Whatever esteemed company the Sharps were seeking at Oxford, they had clearly not found it here. In half an hour the gathering was over, and all parties slunk back to their respective rooms.
