Babel, page 8
Some noise had been made that night about a house breakfast. But when Ramy and Robin appeared in the kitchen the next morning, they found a note for them on the table.
We’ve gone to a café the Sharps know in Iffley. Didn’t think you’d like it – see you later. – CT
‘I suppose,’ Ramy said drily, ‘it’s going to be them and us.’
Robin didn’t mind this one bit. ‘I like just us.’
Ramy cast him a smile.
They spent their third day together touring the jewels of the university. Oxford in 1836 was in an era of becoming, an insatiable creature feeding on the wealth which it bred. The colleges were constantly renovating; buying up more land from the city; replacing medieval buildings with newer, lovelier halls; constructing new libraries to house recently acquired collections. Almost every building in Oxford had a name – derived not from function or location, but from the wealthy and powerful individual who inspired its creation. There was the massive, imposing Ashmolean Museum, which housed the cabinet of curiosities donated by Elias Ashmole, including a dodo’s head, hippopotamus skulls, and a three-inch-long sheep’s horn that was supposed to have grown out of the head of an old woman in Cheshire named Mary Davis; the Radcliffe Library, a domed library that somehow appeared even larger and grander from the inside than from the outside; and the Sheldonian Theatre, ringed by massive stone busts known as the Emperor Heads, all of whom looked like ordinary men who had stumbled upon Medusa.
And there was the Bodleian – oh, the Bodleian, a national treasure in its own right: home of the largest collection of manuscripts in England (‘Cambridge has only got a hundred thousand titles,’ sniffed the clerk who admitted them, ‘and Edinburgh’s only got a paltry sixty-three’), whose collection only continued to expand under the proud leadership of the Reverend Doctor Bulkeley Bandinel, who had a book-buying budget of nearly £2,000 a year.
It was the Reverend Doctor Bandinel himself who came to greet them on their first tour of their library and guided them to the Translators’ Reading Room. ‘Couldn’t let a clerk do it,’ he sighed. ‘Normally we let the fools wander about on their own and ask around for directions if they get lost. But you translators – you truly appreciate what’s going on here.’
He was a heavy-set man with droopy eyes and a similarly droopy demeanour whose mouth seemed permanently slumped in a frown. Yet as he moved through the building, his eyes lit up with genuine pleasure. ‘We’ll start in the main wings, then traipse over to the Duke Humphreys. Follow along, feel free to have a look – books are meant to be touched, otherwise they’re useless, so don’t be nervous. We’re quite proud of our last few major acquisitions. There’s the Richard Gough map collection donated in 1809 – the British Museum didn’t want them, can you believe it? And then the Malone donation ten or so years ago – it greatly expanded our Shakespearean materials. Oh, and just two years ago, we received the Francis Douce collection – that’s thirteen thousand volumes in French and English, though I suppose neither of you is specializing in French . . . Arabic? Oh, yes – right this way; the Institute has the bulk of Arabic materials at Oxford, but I’ve got some poetry volumes from Egypt and Syria that may interest you . . .’
They left the Bodleian dazed, impressed, and a bit intimidated by the sheer amount of material at their disposal. Ramy made an imitation of Reverend Doctor Bandinel’s hanging jowls, but could summon no real malice; it was difficult to disdain a man who so clearly adored the accumulation of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.
They ended the day with a tour of University College by Billings, a senior porter. It turned out that thus far they had seen only a small corner of their new home. The college, which lay just to the east of the houses on Magpie Lane, boasted two green quadrangle courtyards and an arrangement of stone buildings that resembled castle keeps. As they walked, Billings rattled off a list of namesakes and biographies of those namesakes, including donors, architects, and otherwise significant figures. ‘ . . . now, the statues over the entrances are of Queen Anne and Queen Mary, and in the interior, James II and Dr Radcliffe . . . And those brilliant painted windows in the chapel were done by Abraham van Linge in 1640, yes, they’ve held up very well, and the glass painter Henry Giles of York did the east window . . . There’s no service on, so we can take a poke around inside; follow me.’
Inside the chapel, Billings paused before a bas-relief monument. ‘I suppose you’ll know who that is, being translation students and all.’
They knew. Robin and Ramy both had been hearing the name constantly since their arrival at Oxford. The bas-relief was a memorial to the University College alum and widely recognized genius who in 1786 published a foundational text identifying Proto-Indo-European as a predecessor language linking Latin, Sanskrit, and Greek. He was now perhaps the single best-known translator on the continent, save for his nephew, the recently graduated Sterling Jones.
‘It’s Sir William Jones.’ Robin found the scene depicted in the frieze somewhat discomfiting. Jones was positioned at a writing desk, one leg crossed pertly over the other, while three figures, clearly meant to be Indians, sat submissively on the floor before him like children receiving a lesson.
Billings looked proud. ‘That’s right. Here he is translating a digest on the Hindu laws, and there are some Brahmins on the floor to assist him. We are, I believe, the only college whose walls are graced with Indians. But then Univ has always had a special link to the colonies.* And those tigers’ heads, as you know, are emblematic of Bengal.’
‘Why’s he the only one with a table?’ Ramy asked. ‘Why are the Brahmins on the floor?’
‘Well, I suppose Hindus preferred it that way,’ said Billings. ‘They like sitting cross-legged, you see, for they find it more comfortable.’
‘Very illuminating,’ said Ramy. ‘I never knew.’
They spent Sunday night in the depths of the Bodleian bookcases. They’d been assigned a reading list upon registration, but both, faced with a sudden deluge of freedom, had left it off until the last possible moment. The Bodleian was supposed to close by 8.00 p.m. on weekends. They reached its doors at 7.45 p.m., but mention of the Translation Institute seemed to hold immense power, for when Ramy explained what they needed, the clerks told them they could stay as late as they liked. The doors would be unlocked for the night staff; they could leave at their own convenience.
By the time they emerged from the stacks, satchels heavy with books and eyes dizzy from squinting at tiny fonts, the sun had long gone down. At night, the moon conspired with streetlamps to bathe the city in a faint, otherworldly glow. The cobblestones beneath their feet seemed like roads leading into and out of different centuries. This could be the Oxford of the Reformation, or the Oxford of the Middle Ages. They moved within a timeless space, shared by the ghosts of scholars past.
The journey back to college took less than five minutes, but they detoured up and around Broad Street to lengthen their walk. This was the first time they’d been out so late; they wanted to savour the city at night. They moved in silence, neither daring to break the spell.
A burst of laughter drifted from across the stone walls when they passed New College. As they turned down Holywell Lane, they saw a group of six or seven students, all garbed in black gowns, though from the sway of their walk they must have just departed not from a lecture but from a pub.
‘Balliol, you think?’ Ramy murmured.
Robin snorted.
They’d been three days at University College, but they’d already learned the intercollegiate pecking order and associated stereotypes. Exeter was genteel but unintellectual; Brasenose was rowdy and lush with wine. Their neighbouring Queen’s and Merton were safely ignored. Balliol boys, who paid near the highest tuitions at the University, next to Oriel, were better known for running up the tab than for showing up for their tutorials.
The students glanced their way as they approached. Robin and Ramy nodded towards them, and a few of them nodded back, a mutual acknowledgment between gentlemen of the university.
The street was wide, and the two groups were walking on opposite sides. They would have passed each other without commotion, except that one of the boys pointed suddenly at Ramy and shouted, ‘What’s that? Did you see that?’
His friends pulled him along, laughing.
‘Come on, Mark,’ one said. ‘Let them go—’
‘Hold it,’ said the boy called Mark. He shrugged his friends off. He stood still on the street, squinting at Ramy with drunken concentration. His hand hung in midair, still pointing. ‘Look at his face – you see it?’
‘Mark, please,’ said the boy furthest down the road. ‘Don’t be an idiot.’
None of them were laughing any more.
‘That’s a Hindu,’ said Mark. ‘What’s a Hindu doing here?’
‘Sometimes they visit,’ said one of the other boys. ‘Remember the two foreigners last week, those Persian sultans or whatever they were—’
‘I think I do, those fellows in turbans—’
‘But he’s got a gown.’ Mark raised his voice at Ramy. ‘Hey! What have you got a gown for?’
His tone turned vicious. The atmosphere was no longer so cordial; the scholarly fraternity, if it had ever existed, evaporated.
‘You can’t wear a gown,’ Mark insisted. ‘Take that off.’
Ramy took a step forward.
Robin gripped his arm. ‘Don’t.’
‘Hello, I’m talking to you.’ Mark was now crossing the street towards them. ‘What’s the matter? Can’t you speak English? Take off that gown, do you hear me? Take it off.’
Clearly Ramy wanted to fight – his fists were clenched, his knees bent in preparation to spring. If Mark drew any closer, this night would end in blood.
So Robin began to run.
He hated it as he did so, he felt like such a coward, but it was the only act he could imagine that didn’t end in catastrophe. For he knew that Ramy, shocked, would follow. Indeed – seconds later he heard Ramy’s footsteps behind him, his hard breathing, the curses he muttered under his breath as they sprinted down Holywell.
The laughter – for there was laughter again, though it was no longer born of mirth – seemed to amplify behind them. The Balliol boys hooted like monkeys; their cackles stretched alongside their shadows against the brick walls. For a moment Robin was terrified they were being chased, that the boys were hot on their heels, footsteps hammering all around them. But it was only the blood thundering in his ears. The boys had not followed them; they were too drunk, too easily amused, and certainly, by now, distracted in pursuit of their next entertainment.
Even so, Robin didn’t stop until they reached High Street. The way was clear. They were alone, panting in the dark.
‘Damn it,’ Ramy muttered. ‘Damn it—’
‘I’m sorry,’ Robin said.
‘Don’t be,’ Ramy said, though he wouldn’t meet Robin’s eye. ‘You did the right thing.’
Robin wasn’t sure either of them believed that.
They were much further from home now, but they were at least back under the streetlamps, where they could see trouble coming from further off.
They walked awhile in silence. Robin could think of nothing appropriate to say; any words that came to mind died immediately on his tongue.
‘Damn it,’ Ramy said again. He stopped abruptly, one hand on his satchel. ‘I think – hold on.’ He dug through his books, then cursed again. ‘I left my notebook behind.’
Robin’s gut twisted. ‘On Holywell?’
‘In the Bod.’ Ramy pressed his fingertips against the bridge of his nose and groaned. ‘I know where – right on the corner of the desk; I was going to place it on top because I didn’t want the pages crumpled, only I got so tired I must have forgotten.’
‘Can’t you leave it until tomorrow? I don’t think the clerks will move it, and if they do we could just ask—’
‘No, it’s got my revision notes, and I’m nervous they’ll make us do a recitation tomorrow. I’ll just head back—’
‘I’ll get it,’ Robin said quickly. This felt like the right thing to do; it felt like making amends.
Ramy frowned. ‘Are you sure?’
There was no fight in his voice. They both knew what Robin would not say out loud – that Robin, at least, could pass for white in the dark, and that if Robin came across the Balliol boys alone, they wouldn’t give him a second glance.
‘I won’t be twenty minutes,’ Robin vowed. ‘I’ll drop it outside your door when I’m back.’
Oxford took on a sinister air now that he was alone; the lights were no longer warm but eerie, stretching and warping his shadow against the cobblestones. The Bodleian was locked, but a night clerk noticed him waving at the window and let him in. He was, thankfully, one of the staff from before, and he let Robin into the west wing without question. The Reading Room was pitch-black and freezing. All the lamps were off; Robin could only just see by the moonlight streaming in at the far end of the room. Shivering, he snatched Ramy’s notebook, shoved it into his satchel, and hurried out the door.
He’d just made it past the quadrangle when he heard whispers.
He should have quickened his pace, but something – the tones, the shape of the words – compelled him to stop. Only after he’d paused to strain his ears did he realize he was listening to Chinese. One Chinese phrase, uttered over and over again with increasing urgency.
‘Wúxíng.’
Robin crept cautiously around the walled corner.
There were three people in the middle of Holywell Street, all slim youths dressed entirely in black, two men and a woman. They were struggling with a trunk. The bottom must have dropped out, because what were unmistakably silver bars were strewn across the cobblestones.
All three glanced up as Robin approached. The man whispering furiously in Chinese had his back to Robin; he turned around last, only after his associates had gone stock-still. He met Robin’s eyes. Robin’s heart caught in his throat.
He could have been looking in a mirror.
Those were his brown eyes. His own straight nose, his own chestnut hair that even fell over his eyes the same way, swooping messily from left to right.
The man held a silver bar in his hand.
Robin realized instantly what he was trying to do. Wúxíng – in Chinese, ‘formless, shapeless, incorporeal’.* The closest English translation was ‘invisible’. These people, whoever they were, were trying to hide. But something had gone wrong, for the silver bar was only barely working; the three youths’ images flickered under the streetlamp, and occasionally they seemed translucent, but they were decidedly not hidden.
Robin’s doppelgänger cast him a plaintive look.
‘Help me,’ he begged. Then in Chinese, ‘Bāngmáng.’*
Robin didn’t know what it was that compelled him to act – the recent terror of the Balliol boys, the utter absurdity of this scene, or the disorienting sight of his doppelgänger’s face – but he stepped forward and put his hand on the bar. His doppelgänger relinquished it without a word.
‘Wúxíng,’ Robin said, thinking of the myths his mother had told him, of spirits and ghosts hiding in the dark. Of shapelessness, of nonbeing. ‘Invisible.’
The bar vibrated in his hand. He heard a sound from nowhere, a breathy sigh.
All four of them disappeared.
No, disappeared was not quite the word for it. Robin didn’t have the words for it; it was lost in translation, a concept that neither the Chinese nor the English could fully describe. They existed, but in no human form. They were not merely beings that couldn’t be seen. They weren’t beings at all. They were shapeless. They drifted, expanded; they were the air, the brick walls, the cobblestones. Robin had no awareness of his body, where he ended and the bar began – he was the silver, the stones, the night.
Cold fear shot through his mind. What if I can’t go back?
Seconds later a constable rushed up to the end of the street. Robin caught his breath, squeezing the bar so hard that pangs of pain shot up his arm.
The constable stared right at him, squinting, seeing nothing but darkness.
‘They’re not down here,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Try chasing them up Parks . . .’
His voice faded as he sprinted away.
Robin dropped the bar. He couldn’t maintain his hold on it; he was barely aware of its presence anymore. He didn’t so much as use his hand and open his fingers as he did violently thrust the bar away to try to separate his essence from the silver.
It worked. The thieves rematerialized in the night.
‘Hurry,’ urged the other man, a youth with pale blond hair. ‘Shove it in your shirts and let’s leave the trunk behind.’
‘We can’t just leave it,’ said the woman. ‘They’ll trace it.’
‘Pick up the pieces then, come on.’
All three began scooping the silver bars off the ground. Robin hesitated for a moment, arms hanging awkwardly at his sides. Then he bent down to help them.
The absurdity of this had not yet sunk in. Dimly he realized that whatever was happening had to be very illegal. These youths could not be associated with Oxford, the Bodleian, or the Translation Institute, or else they wouldn’t be skulking about at midnight, clad in black and hiding from the police.
The right and obvious thing to do was to raise the alarm.
But somehow, helping seemed the only option. He didn’t question this logic, he simply acted. It felt like falling into a dream, like stepping into a play where he already knew his lines, though everything else was a mystery. This was an illusion with its own internal logic, and for some reason he couldn’t quite name, he didn’t want to break it.
At last all the silver bars had been shoved down shirt fronts and into pockets. Robin gave the ones he’d picked up to his doppelgänger. Their fingers touched, and Robin felt a chill.
