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

Letty, poor thing, was the most confused of all. The rest of them at least understood the cause for the hostilities. Letty hadn’t a clue what was going on. She was the only innocent here, unfairly caught in the crossfire. All she knew was that things were wrong and sour, and she was driving herself up the wall trying to figure out what the reason was. Someone else might have grown withdrawn and sullen, resentful at being shut out by their closest friends. But Letty was as pigheaded as ever, determined to resolve problems through brute force. When none of them would give her a concrete answer to the question ‘What’s happened?’ she decided to try conquering them one by one, to pry out their secrets through oversolicitous kindness.

But this had the opposite of her intended effect. Ramy began leaving the room every time she came in. Victoire, who as Letty’s roommate could not escape her, started showing up at breakfast looking haggard and exasperated. When Letty asked her for the salt, Victoire snapped so viciously at her to get it herself that Letty reeled back, wounded.

Undaunted, she began broaching startlingly personal topics every time she was alone with one of them, like a dentist prodding teeth to see where it hurt most, to find what needed fixing.

‘It can’t be easy,’ she said to Robin one day. ‘You and him.’

Robin, who thought at first she was talking about Ramy, stiffened. ‘I don’t – how do you mean?’

‘It’s just so obvious,’ she said. ‘I mean, you look so much like him. Everyone can see it, it’s not like anyone suspects otherwise.’

She meant Professor Lovell, Robin realized. Not Ramy. He was so relieved that he found himself engaging in the conversation. ‘It’s a strange arrangement,’ he admitted. ‘Only I’ve grown so used to it that I’ve stopped wondering why it isn’t otherwise.’

‘Why won’t he publicly acknowledge you?’ she asked. ‘Is it because of his family, do you think? The wife?’

‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But I’m really not bothered. I wouldn’t know what to do if he did declare himself my father, to be honest. I’m not sure I want to be a Lovell.’

‘But doesn’t it kill you?’

‘Why would it?’

‘Well, my father—’ she started, then broke off and coughed primly. ‘I mean. You all know. My father won’t speak to me, hasn’t looked me in the eyes and spoken to me after Lincoln, and . . . I just wanted to say, I know a bit what it’s like. That’s all.’

‘I’m sorry, Letty.’ He patted her hand and immediately felt guilty for doing it; it seemed so fake.

But she took the gesture at face value. She, too, must have been starved for familiar contact, for some indication that her friends still liked her. ‘And I just wanted to say, I’m here for you.’ She took his hand in hers. ‘I hope this isn’t too forward, but it’s just that I’ve noticed, he’s not treating you the same, not the way he used to. He won’t look you in the eyes, and he won’t speak to you directly. And I don’t know what happened, but it’s not right, and it’s very unfair what he’s done to you. And I want you to know that if you want to talk, Birdie, I’m here.’

She never called him Birdie. That’s Ramy’s word, Robin almost uttered, before realizing that would be the absolute worst thing to say. He tried to remind himself to be kind. She was, after all, only attempting her version of comfort. Letty was bull-headed and overbearing, but she did care.

‘Thank you.’ He gave her fingers a squeeze, hoping that if he did not elaborate, then this might force the end of the conversation. ‘I appreciate that.’

At least there was work to distract. Babel’s practice of sending entire cohorts, all of whom specialized in different languages, on the same graduation voyages was a testament to the reach and connectedness of the British trading companies. The colonial trade had its claws in dozens of countries across the world, and its labour, consumers, and producers spoke scores of tongues. During the voyage, Ramy was often asked to translate for the Urdu- and Bengali-speaking lascars; never mind that his Bengali was now rudimentary at best. Letty and Victoire were put to work looking over shipping manifests for their next leg to Mauritius, and translating stolen correspondences from French missionaries and French trading companies out of China – the Napoleonic Wars had ended, but the competition for empire had not.

Every afternoon, Professor Lovell tutored Ramy, Letty, and Victoire in Mandarin from two to five. No one expected they would be fluent by the time they docked in Canton, but the point was to force-feed them enough vocabulary that they would understand basic salutations, directions, and common nouns. There was also, Professor Lovell argued, a great pedagogical benefit to learning a wholly new language in a very short amount of time; it forced the mind to stretch and build rapid connections, to contrast unfamiliar language structures with what one already knew.