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

Professor Lovell did not stir.

‘Father?’ He grasped Professor Lovell’s shoulders. Hot, wet blood spilled over his fingers. It would not stop; it was everywhere, an endless fountain gushing out of that ruin of a chest.

‘Diē?’

He did not know what made him say it, the word for father. Perhaps he thought it would stun Professor Lovell, that the shock alone would bring him back to life, that he could yank his father’s soul back to his body by naming the one thing that they had never named. But Professor Lovell was limp, gone, and no matter how hard Robin shook him the blood would not stop pouring.

‘Diē,’ he said again. Then a laugh escaped his throat; hysterical, helpless, because it was so very funny, so apt that the romanization of father contained the same letters for death in English. And Professor Lovell was so clearly, incontrovertibly dead. There was no walking back from this. There could be no more pretending.

‘Robin?’

Someone banged at the door. Dazed, without thinking, Robin stood and unlatched it. Ramy, Letty, and Victoire came tumbling in, a babble of voices – ‘Oh, Robin, are you—’; ‘What’s happening—’; ‘We heard shouting, we thought—’

Then they saw the body and the blood. Letty let out a muffled shriek. Victoire’s hands flew to her mouth. Ramy blinked several times, then uttered, very softly, ‘Oh.’

Letty asked, very faintly, ‘Is he . . . ?’

‘Yes,’ Robin whispered.

The cabin went very silent. Robin’s ears were ringing; he brought his hands to his head, then immediately lowered them, for they were bright scarlet and dripping.

‘What happened . . . ?’ Victoire ventured.

‘We quarrelled.’ Robin could barely get the words out. He was struggling now to breathe. Black pressed in at the edges of his vision. His knees felt very weak, and he wanted badly to sit down, only the floor was drenched in a spreading pool of blood. ‘We quarrelled, and . . .’

‘Don’t look,’ Ramy instructed.

No one obeyed. They all stood frozen in place, gazes locked on Professor Lovell’s still form as Ramy knelt beside him and held two fingers against his neck. A long moment passed. Ramy murmured a prayer under his breath – ‘Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi Raji’un’ – and then moved his hands over Professor Lovell’s eyelids to push them closed.

He exhaled very slowly, pressed his hands against his knees for a moment, then stood up. ‘What now?’

Book IV

Chapter Nineteen

‘There is, first of all,’ I said, ‘the greatest lie about the things of greatest concernment, which was no pretty invention of him who told how Uranus did what Hesiod says he did to Cronos, and how Cronos in turn took his revenge; and then there are the doings and sufferings of Cronos at the hands of his son. Even if they were true I should not think that they ought to be thus lightly told to thoughtless young persons.’

PLATO, Republic, trans. Paul Shorey

‘Keep him in the cabin,’ Victoire said with amazing composure, though the words that came out of her mouth were quite mad. ‘We’ll just . . . roll him up in those sheets and keep him out of sight until we get back to England—’

‘We can’t keep a body concealed for six weeks,’ Letty shrilled.

‘Why not?’

‘It’ll rot!’

‘Fair that,’ said Ramy. ‘Sailors smell bad, but they don’t smell that bad.’

Robin was stunned that their first instinct was to discuss how to hide the body. It didn’t change the fact that he’d just killed his father, or that he’d possibly implicated all of them in the murder, or that scarlet streaked the walls, the floor, his neck, and his hands. But they were talking as if this were only a matter to be fixed – a thorny translation that could be resolved, if they could only find the right turn of phrase.

‘All right, look – here’s what we’ll do.’ Victoire pushed her palms against her temples and took a deep breath. ‘We’ll get rid of the body somehow. I don’t know how, we’ll figure out a way. Then when we dock—’

‘How do we tell the crew to leave him alone for six weeks?’ Letty demanded.

‘Nine weeks,’ said Victoire.

‘What?’

‘This isn’t one of the fast clippers,’ said Victoire. ‘It’ll take nine weeks.’

Letty pressed her palms against her eyes. ‘For the love of God.’

‘How’s this?’ asked Victoire. ‘We’ll tell them he’s got some contagion. I don’t know, some – some scary disease – Robin, you come up with something exotic and disgusting that will scare them off. Say it’s something he picked up in the slums and they’ll all be too scared to come in.’