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

Free trade. This was always the British line of argument – free trade, free competition, an equal playing field for all. Only it never ended up that way, did it? What ‘free trade’ really meant was British imperial dominance, for what was free about a trade that relied on a massive build-up of naval power to secure maritime access? When mere trading companies could wage war, assess taxes, and administer civil and criminal justice?

Griffin was right to be angry, thought Robin, but he was wrong to think he could do anything about it. These trade networks were carved in stone. Nothing was pushing this arrangement off its course; there were too many private interests, too much money at stake. They could see where it was going, but the people who had the power to do anything about it had been placed in positions where they would profit, and the people who suffered most had no power at all.

‘It was so easy to forget,’ he said. ‘The cards it’s built on, I mean – because when you’re at Oxford, in the tower, they’re just words, just ideas. But the world’s so much bigger than I thought—’

‘It’s just as big as we thought,’ Ramy said. ‘It’s just that we forgot the rest of it mattered. We got so good at refusing to see what was right in front of us.’

‘But now I’ve seen it,’ said Robin, ‘or at least understand it a bit better, and it’s tearing me apart, Ramy, and I don’t even understand why. It’s not as if – as if—’

As if what? As if he’d seen anything properly horrible? As if he’d seen the slave plantations in the West Indies at the height of their cruelty, or the starved bodies in India, victims of utterly avoidable famines, or the slaughtered natives of the New World? All he’d seen was one opium den – but that was enough to act as synecdoche for the awful, undeniable rest.

He leaned over the side of the bridge, wondering how it might feel if he just toppled over the edge.

‘Are you going to jump, Birdie?’ Ramy asked.

‘It just doesn’t feel . . .’ Robin took a deep breath. ‘It doesn’t feel like we have the right to be alive.’

Ramy sounded very calm. ‘Do you mean that?’

‘No, I don’t, I just . . .’ Robin squeezed his eyes shut. His thoughts were so jumbled; he had no idea how to convey what he meant, and all he could grasp at were memories, passing references. ‘Did you ever read Gulliver’s Travels? I read it all the time, when I lived here – I read it so often I nearly memorized it. And there’s this chapter where Gulliver winds up on a land ruled by horses, who call themselves the Houyhnhnms, and where the humans are savage, idiot slaves called Yahoos. They’re swapped. And Gulliver gets so used to living with his Houyhnhnm master, gets so convinced of Houyhnhnm superiority, that when he gets home, he’s horrified by his fellow humans. He thinks they’re imbeciles. He can’t stand to be around them. And that’s how this . . . that’s . . .’ Robin rocked back and forth over the bridge. He felt like no matter how hard he breathed, he could not get enough air. ‘Do you know what I mean?’

‘I do,’ Ramy said gently. ‘But it does no one any good for us to get into histrionics about it. So step down, Birdie, and let’s go and have that glass of water.’

The next morning Robin accompanied Mr Baylis to the downtown government office for their audience with Imperial High Commissioner Lin Zexu.

‘This Lin fellow is smarter than the rest,’ said Mr Baylis as they walked. ‘Nigh incorruptible. In the southeast, they call him Lin Qingtian^* – clear as the heavens, he’s so impervious to bribes.’

Robin said nothing. He had decided to suffer through the rest of his duties in Canton by doing the bare minimum required of him, and this did not involve egging on Mr Baylis’s racist diatribes.

Mr Baylis did not appear to notice. ‘Now, be on your toes. The Chinese are a devilishly tricky sort – duplicitous by nature, and all that. Always saying one thing when they mean quite the opposite. Careful you don’t let them get the better of you.’

‘I’ll stay sharp,’ Robin said shortly.

By Mr Baylis’s account, one would imagine Commissioner Lin was nine-foot tall, had eyes that could shoot fire and trickster’s horns. In person, the Commissioner was a mild-mannered, gentle-featured man of average height and build. His person was entirely nondescript save for his eyes, which seemed unusually bright and perceptive. He had with him his own interpreter, a young Chinese man who introduced himself as William Botelho, and who, to Robin’s surprise, had studied English in the United States.

‘Welcome, Mr Baylis,’ said Commissioner Lin as William swiftly translated into English. ‘I’m told you have some thoughts you would like to share with me.’