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

‘Awfully dry.’ He hoped badly she’d get on with it; it was already five past twelve.

‘Is he making you compare translations in class?’ Cathy asked. ‘Once he interrogated me for nearly half an hour over my word choice of red instead of apple-like. I’d nearly sweated through my shirt by the end.’

Six minutes past. Robin’s eyes darted to the staircase, then back at Cathy, then back at the staircase until he realized Cathy was watching him expectantly.

‘Oh.’ He blinked. ‘Erm. Speaking of Dryden, I should really get on—’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, the first year is really so difficult and here I am keeping you—’

‘Anyway, nice to see you—’

‘Let me know if I can be of any assistance,’ she said cheerfully. ‘It’s a lot at first, but the terms do get easier, I promise.’

‘Sure. I will do – bye.’ He felt awful being so curt. She was so nice, and such offers were particularly generous coming from the upperclassmen. But all he could think of then was his accomplices upstairs, and what might happen if they came down at the same time that Cathy went up.

‘Good luck, then.’ Cathy gave him a little wave and headed into the lobby. Robin backed into the foyer and prayed she did not turn around.

An eternity later, two black-clad figures hurried down the opposite staircase.

‘What’d she say?’ one of them whispered. His voice seemed strangely familiar, though Robin was too distracted to try to place it then.

‘Just being friendly.’ Robin pushed the door open, and the three of them hurried out into the cool night. ‘Are you all right?’

But there was no answer. They’d already taken off, leaving him alone in the dark and the rain.

A more cautious personality would have quit Hermes then, would not have risked his entire future on such razor-thin possibilities. But Robin did go back to do it again. He assisted in a fifth theft, and then a sixth. Michaelmas term ended, the winter holidays sped by, and Hilary term began. His heartbeat no longer pounded in his ears when he approached the tower at midnight. The minutes between entrance and exit no longer felt like purgatory. It all started to feel easy, this simple act of opening a door twice; so easy that by the seventh theft, he had convinced himself he was not doing anything dangerous at all.

‘You’re very efficient,’ said Griffin. ‘They like working with you, you know. You stick to the instructions and don’t embellish.’

A week into Hilary term, Griffin had finally deigned to meet Robin again in person. Once more they strode briskly around Oxford, this time following the Thames down south towards Kennington. The meeting felt like a midterm progress report with a harsh and rarely available supervisor, and Robin found himself basking in the praise, trying and failing not to come off as a giddy kid brother.

‘So I’m doing a good job?’

‘You’re doing very well. I’m quite pleased.’

‘So you’ll tell me more about Hermes now?’ Robin asked. ‘Or at least tell me where the bars are going? What you’re doing with them?’

Griffin chuckled. ‘Patience.’

They walked in silence for a stretch. There had been a storm just that morning. The Isis flowed fast and loud under a misty, darkening sky. It was the kind of evening when the world seemed drained of colour, a painting in progress, a sketch really, existing in greys and shadows only.

‘I have another question, then,’ said Robin. ‘And I know you won’t tell me much about Hermes now. But at least tell me how this all ends up.’

‘How what ends up?’

‘I mean – my situation. This current arrangement feels fine – as long as I’m not caught, I mean – but it seems, I don’t know, rather unsustainable.’

‘Of course it’s unsustainable,’ said Griffin. ‘You’ll study hard and graduate, and then they’ll ask you to do all kinds of unsavoury things for the Empire. Or they’ll catch you, as you said. It all comes to a head eventually, like it did for us.’

‘Does everyone at Hermes leave Babel?’

‘I know very few who have stayed.’

Robin was not sure how to feel about this. He often lulled himself into the fantasy of the post-Babel life – a cushy fellowship, if he wanted it; a guarantee of more fully funded years of study in those gorgeous libraries, living in comfortable college housing and tutoring rich undergraduates in Latin if he wanted extra pocket money; or an exciting career travelling overseas with the book buyers and simultaneous interpreters. In the Zhuangzi, which he’d just translated with Professor Chakravarti, the phrase tǎntú^* literally meant ‘a flat road’, metaphorically, ‘a tranquil life’. This was what he wanted: a smooth, even path to a future with no surprises.

The only obstacle, of course, was his conscience.