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

What he couldn’t wrap his mind around was what a truly fleeting moment the actual killing had been – no more than a split second of impulsive hatred, a single uttered phrase, a single throw. The Analects of Confucius made the claim sìbùjíshé;^* that even a four-horse chariot could not catch a word once uttered, that the spoken word was irrevocable. But this seemed like a great trick of time. It did not seem fair that such a minuscule action could have such reverberating consequences. Something that broke not only his world but Ramy’s, Letty’s, and Victoire’s should have taken minutes at least, it seemed; should have required repeated effort. The truth of the murder would have made more sense had he stood over his father’s body with a blunt axe, bringing it down over and over into his skull and chest until blood sprayed across both their faces. Something brutal, something sustained, a true manifestation of monstrous intent.

But that did not describe what had happened at all. It had not been vicious. It had not taken effort. It was all over so fast, he hadn’t even had time to deliberate. He couldn’t remember acting at all. Could you intend a murder if you couldn’t remember wanting it?

But what kind of question was that? What was the blasted point of sorting through whether he’d desired his father’s death or not, when his ruined corpse was incontrovertibly, irreversibly sinking to the bottom of the ocean?

The nights were far worse than the days. At least the days offered the temporary distractions of the outdoors, the rolling ocean and spraying mists. At night, confined to his hammock, there was only the unforgiving dark. Nights meant sweat-drenched sheets, chills, and shakes, and not even the privacy to moan and scream out loud. Robin lay with his knees curled up to his chest, muffling his frantic breathing with both hands. When he managed snatches of sleep, his dreams were fragmented and horrifyingly vivid, revisiting every beat of that final conversation until the devastating finale. But the details kept changing. What were the last words Professor Lovell had said? How had he looked at Robin? Had he really stepped closer? Who had moved first? Was it self-defence, or was it a preemptive strike? Was there a difference? He wrecked his own memory. Awake and asleep, he examined the same moment from a thousand different angles until he truly no longer knew what had happened.

He wanted all thoughts to stop. He wanted to disappear. At night, the black, endless waves seemed like utopia, and he wanted nothing more than to hurl himself over the side, to let the ocean swallow him and his guilt into its obliterating depths. But that would only condemn the others. How would that look, one student drowned and their professor killed? No excuses, however creative, however true, could extricate them from that.

But if death was not an option, perhaps punishment still was. ‘I have to confess,’ he whispered to Ramy one sleepless night. ‘That’s the only way, we have to end it—’

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ said Ramy.

He scrambled madly out of his hammock. ‘I mean it, I’m going to the captain—’

Ramy jumped up and caught him in the passageway. ‘Birdie, get back in there.’

Robin tried to push past Ramy for the stairs. Ramy promptly slapped him across the face. Somehow this calmed him, if only due to shock – the blinding white pain wiped everything from his mind, just for a few seconds, just long enough to still his racing heart.

‘We are all implicated now,’ Ramy hissed. ‘We cleaned that room. We hid the body for you. To protect you. We’ve all lied a dozen times now; we are accessories in this crime, and if you go to the hangman, you doom us all. Do you understand?’

Chastened, he hung his head and nodded.

‘Good,’ said Ramy. ‘Now back to bed.’

The only silver lining to this whole grotesque affair was that he and Ramy were finally reconciled. The act of murder had bridged the gap between them, had blown Ramy’s accusations of complicity and cowardice out of the water. It didn’t matter that it had been an accident, or that Robin would take it back immediately if he could. Ramy no longer had any ideological grounds to resent him, for between them, only one of them had killed a colonizer. They were co-conspirators now, and this brought them closer than they ever had been. Ramy took on the role of comforter and counsellor, witness to his confessions. Robin didn’t know why he thought speaking his thoughts might make anything better, for saying any of it out loud only served to make him more confused, but he was desperately grateful that Ramy was at least there to listen.

‘Do you think I’m evil?’ he asked.

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘You’ve been saying that a lot.’

‘You’ve been ridiculous a lot. But you’re not evil.’