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

‘Inhumane. Don’t you worry, I’ve cooked enough to make up for it.’ She patted his cheeks. ‘How’s college life besides? How do you like wearing those floppy black gowns? Have you made any friends?’

Robin was about to answer when Professor Lovell came down the stairs.

‘Hello, Robin,’ he said. ‘Come in. Mrs Piper, his coat—’ Robin shrugged it off and handed it to Mrs Piper, who examined the ink-stained cuffs with disapproval. ‘How goes the term?’

‘Challenging, just as you warned.’ Robin felt older as he spoke, his voice somehow deeper. He’d left home only a week ago, but he felt like he’d aged years, and could present himself now as a young man and not a boy. ‘But challenging in a way that’s enjoyable. I’m learning quite a lot.’

‘Professor Chakravarti says you’ve made some good contributions to the Grammatica.’

‘Not as much as I’d like,’ said Robin. ‘There are particles in Classical Chinese that I’ve just no idea what to do with. Half the time our translations feel like guesswork.’

‘I’ve felt that way for decades.’ Professor Lovell gestured towards the dining room. ‘Shall we?’

They might as well have been back in Hampstead. The long table was arranged precisely the same way Robin was used to, with him and Professor Lovell sitting at opposite ends and a painting to Robin’s right, which this time depicted the Thames rather than Oxford’s Broad Street. Mrs Piper poured their wine and, with a wink at Robin, disappeared back into the kitchen.

Professor Lovell raised his glass to him, then drank. ‘You’re taking theory with Jerome and Latin with Margaret, correct?’

‘Right. It’s fairly good going.’ Robin took a sip of wine. ‘Though Professor Craft lectures like she wouldn’t notice if she were speaking to an empty room, and Professor Playfair seems to have missed a calling for the stage.’

Professor Lovell chuckled. Robin smiled, despite himself; he had never been able to make his guardian laugh before.

‘Did he give you his Psammetichus speech?’

‘He did,’ said Robin. ‘Did all that really happen?’

‘Who knows, except that Herodotus tells us so,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘There’s another good Herodotus story, again about Psammetichus. Psammetichus wanted to determine which language was the foundation of all earthly languages, so he gave two newborn infants to a shepherd with the instructions that they should not be allowed to hear human speech. For a while all they did was babble, as infants do. Then one day one of the infants stretched out his little hands to the shepherd and exclaimed bekos, which is the Phrygian word for bread. And so Psammetichus decided the Phrygians must have been the first race on earth, and Phrygian the first language. Pretty story, isn’t it?’

‘I’m assuming no one accepts that argument,’ said Robin.

‘Heavens, no.’

‘But could that really work?’ asked Robin. ‘Could we actually learn anything from what infants utter?’

‘Not that I’m aware of,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘The issue is it’s impossible to isolate infants from an environment with language if you want them to develop as infants should. Might be interesting to buy a child and see – but, well, no.’ Professor Lovell tilted his head. ‘It’s fun to entertain the possibility of an original language, though.’

‘Professor Playfair mentioned something similar,’ said Robin. ‘About a perfect, innate, and unadulterated language. The Adamic language.’

He felt more confident talking to the professor now that he’d spent some time at Babel. They were on more of an equal footing; they could communicate as colleagues. Dinner felt less like an interrogation and more like a casual conversation between two scholars in the same fascinating field.

‘The Adamic language.’ Professor Lovell made a face. ‘I don’t know why he fills your minds with that stuff. It’s a pretty metaphor, certainly, but every few years we get an undergraduate who’s determined to discover the Adamic language in Proto-Indo-European, or otherwise wholly invent it on his own, and it always takes either a stern talking-to or a few weeks of failure for him to come back to his senses.’

‘You don’t think that an original language exists?’ Robin asked.