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

Professor Lovell cocked his head. ‘You know, I once thought that having offspring was a kind of translation of its own. Especially when the parents are of such vastly different stock. One is curious to see what ends up coming through.’ His face underwent the strangest transformation as he spoke. His eyes grew larger and larger until they were frighteningly bulbous; his condescending sneer grew more pronounced, and his lips drew back to reveal teeth. It was meant, perhaps, as a look of exaggerated disgust, but it appeared more to Robin as if a mask of civility had been stripped away. It was the ugliest expression he had ever seen his father wear. ‘I’d hoped to raise you to avoid the failings of your brother. I hoped to instill you with a more civilized sense of ethics. Quo semel est imbuta recens, servabit odorem testa diu,^* and all that. I hoped I might develop you into a more elevated cask. But for all your education, there is no raising you from that base, original stock, is there?’

‘You’re a monster,’ Robin said, amazed.

‘I haven’t the time for this.’ Professor Lovell flipped the dictionary shut. ‘It’s clear bringing you to Canton was the wrong idea. I had hoped it might remind you how lucky you were, but all it’s done is confuse you.’

‘I’m not confused—’

‘We’ll re-evaluate your position at Babel when we return.’ Professor Lovell gestured towards the door. ‘For now, I think, you ought to take some time to reflect. Imagine spending the rest of your life in Newgate, Robin. You can rail against the evils of commerce all you like, if you do it in a prison cell. Would you prefer that?’

Robin’s hands formed fists. ‘Say her name.’

Professor Lovell’s eyebrow twitched. He gestured again to the door. ‘That will be all.’

‘Say her name, you coward.’

‘Robin.’

This was a warning. This was where his father drew the line. Everything Robin had done until now might still be forgiven, if he only backed down; if he only made his apologies, bent to authority, and returned to naive, ignorant luxury.

But Robin had been bending for so long. And even a gilded cage was still a cage.

He stepped forward. ‘Father, say her name.’

Professor Lovell pushed his chair back and stood.

The origins of the word anger were tied closely to physical suffering. Anger was first an ‘affliction’, as meant by the Old Icelandic angr, and then a ‘painful, cruel, narrow’ state, as meant by the Old English enge, which in turn came from the Latin angor, which meant ‘strangling, anguish, distress’. Anger was a chokehold. Anger did not empower you. It sat on your chest; it squeezed your ribs until you felt trapped, suffocated, out of options. Anger simmered, then exploded. Anger was constriction, and the consequent rage a desperate attempt to breathe.

And rage, of course, came from madness.^*

Afterwards, Robin wondered often if Professor Lovell had seen something in his eyes, a fire he hadn’t known his son possessed, and whether that – his startled realization that his linguistic experiment had developed a will of his own – had prompted Robin in turn to act. He would try desperately to justify what he’d done as self-defence, but such justification would rely on details he could hardly remember, details he wasn’t sure whether he’d made up to convince himself he had not really murdered his father in cold blood.

Over and over again he would ask himself who had moved first, and this would torture him for the rest of his days, for he truly did not know.

This he knew:

Professor Lovell stood abruptly. His hand went to his pocket. And Robin, either mirroring or provoking him, did the same. He reached for his front pocket, where he kept the bar that had killed Eveline Brooke. He was not imagining what the bar might do – of this he was certain. He spoke the match-pair because they were the only words that came to mind to describe this moment, its immensity. He thought of Professor Lovell’s poker cracking over and over against his ribs as he lay curled on the library floor, too startled and confused to cry out. He thought of Griffin, poor Griffin, spirited to England at a younger age than he’d been; chewed up and thrown away because he didn’t remember enough of his native tongue. He thought of the listless men in the opium den. He thought of his mother.

He was not thinking of how the bar would claw apart his father’s chest. Some part of him must have known, of course, because words only activated the bars if you meant them. If you only uttered the syllables, they had no effect. And when he saw the character in his mind, saw the grooves etched in shining silver, and spoke the word and its translation out loud, he must have thought of what it would do.

Bào: to explode, to burst forth with what could no longer be contained.

But it was not until Professor Lovell fell to the floor, until the heady, salty scent of blood filled the air, that Robin realized what he’d done.

He dropped to his knees. ‘Sir?’