Babel : Or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution (9780063021440)

Robin’s teeth were chattering too hard for him to speak. He hadn’t known how debilitatingly scared he would be. The written exams had involved their fair share of shakes and retching, but when it came down to it, when his pen hit parchment, it felt routine. It had been nothing more and nothing less than the accumulation of everything he’d practised for the past three years. This was something else entirely. He had no idea what to expect.

‘It’s all right, Robin,’ Professor Chakravarti said gently. ‘It’ll work. You’ve just got to focus. It’s nothing you won’t do a hundred times in your career.’

Robin took a deep breath and exhaled. ‘It’s something very basic. It’s – theoretically, metaphorically, I mean, it’s a bit messy, and I don’t think it’ll work—’

‘Well, why don’t you walk me through the theory first and then we’ll see.’

‘Míngbai,’ Robin blurted. ‘Mandarin. It means – so it means, “to understand”, right? But the characters are loaded with imagery. Míng – bright, a light, clear. And bai – white, like the colour. So it doesn’t just mean to understand, or to realize – it has the visual component of making clear, to shine a light on.’ He paused to clear his throat. He was not quite so nervous anymore – the match-pair he’d prepared did sound better when he spoke it out loud. In fact, it seemed halfway plausible. ‘So – now this is the part I’m not very sure about, because I don’t know what the light will be associated with. But it should be a way of making things clear, of revealing things, I think.’

Professor Chakravarti gave him an encouraging smile. ‘Well, why don’t we see what it does?’

Robin took the bar in trembling hands and positioned the tip of the stylus against the smooth, blank surface. It took an unexpected amount of force to make the stylus etch out a clear line. This was, somehow, calming – it made him focus on keeping the pressure steady instead of the thousand other things he could do wrong.

He finished writing.

‘Míngbai,’ he said, holding up the bar so that Professor Chakravarti could see. 明白. Then he flipped it over. ‘Understand.’

Something pulsed in the silver – something alive, something forceful and bold; a gale of wind, a crashing wave; and in that fraction of a second Robin felt the source of its power, that sublime, unnameable place where meaning was created, that place which words approximated but could not, could never pin down; the place which could only be invoked, imperfectly, but even so would make its presence felt. A bright, warm sphere of light shone out of the bar and grew until it enveloped them both. Robin had not specified what sort of understanding this light would signify; he had not planned that far; yet in that moment he knew perfectly and, from the look on Professor Chakravarti’s face, his supervisor did too.

He dropped the bar. It stopped glowing. It lay inert on the desk between them, a perfectly ordinary hunk of metal.

‘Very good,’ was all Professor Chakravarti said. ‘Will you retrieve Mr Mirza?’

Letty was waiting for him outside the tower. She’d calmed significantly; the colour had returned to her cheeks, and her eyes were no longer wide with panic. She must have just dashed to the bakery up the street, for she held a crumpled paper bag in her hands.

‘Lemon biscuit?’ she asked as he approached.

He realized he was starving. ‘Yes please, thanks.’

She passed him the bag. ‘How’d it go?’

‘All right. It wasn’t the precise effect I wanted, but it was something.’ Robin hesitated, biscuit halfway to his mouth, not wanting to celebrate nor elaborate in case she’d failed.

But she beamed at him. ‘Same. I just wanted something to happen, and then it did, and oh, Robin, it was so wonderful—’

‘Like rewriting the world,’ he said.

‘Like drawing with the hand of God,’ she said. ‘Like nothing I’d ever felt before.’

They grinned at each other. Robin savoured the taste of the biscuit melting in his mouth – he saw why these were Letty’s favourite; they were so buttery that they dissolved instantly, and the lemony sweetness spread across his tongue like honey. They’d done it. Everything was okay; the world could keep moving; nothing else mattered, because they’d done it.

The bells rang for one o’clock, and the doors opened again. Ramy strode out, grinning widely.

‘It worked for you too, eh?’ He helped himself to a biscuit.

‘How do you know?’ asked Robin.

‘Because Letty’s eating,’ he said, chewing. ‘If either of you’d failed, she’d be pummelling these biscuits to crumbs.’

Victoire took the longest. It was nearly an hour before she emerged from the building, scowling and flustered. Immediately Ramy was at her side, one arm slung around her shoulder. ‘What happened? Are you all right?’