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

He couldn’t do it. He kept bringing the needle close to the wound and then, anticipating the pain, pulling it away. He reached for the brandy and took three massive gulps. He waited several minutes until the alcohol had settled nicely in his stomach and his extremities had begun tingling pleasantly. This was where he needed to be – dull enough not to mind the pain, alert enough to sew himself together. He tried again. It was easier this time, though he still had to stop to jam a wadded cloth in his mouth to keep from yelling. At last he made the final stitch. His forehead dripped with sweat; tears flowed freely down his cheeks. Somehow, he found the strength to snip the thread, tie the sutures off with his teeth, and toss the bloody needle into the sink. Then he collapsed back on his bed and, curling onto his side, finished the rest of the bottle.

Griffin was not in touch that night.

Robin knew it was foolish to expect he would be. Griffin, upon learning what had happened, would likely have gone underground, and for good reason. Robin wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t hear from Griffin for an entire term. Still, he felt an overwhelming, black wave of resentment.

He’d told Griffin this would happen. He’d warned him, he’d told him exactly what he’d seen. This had been utterly avoidable.

He wanted their next meeting to happen sooner just so he could yell at him, say he’d told him so, that Griffin should have listened. That if Griffin weren’t so arrogant, perhaps his little brother wouldn’t have a line of messy stitches up his arm. But the appointment didn’t come. Griffin left no notes in his window the next night, or the night after. He seemed to have disappeared without a trace from Oxford, leaving Robin with no way of contacting him or Hermes at all.

He couldn’t talk to Griffin. Couldn’t confide in Victoire, Letty, or Ramy. He had only himself for company that night, crying miserably over the empty bottle while his arm throbbed. And for the first time since he’d arrived at Oxford, Robin felt truly alone.

Chapter Eleven

But slaves we are, and labour in another man’s plantation; we dress the vineyard, but the wine is the owner’s.

JOHN DRYDEN, extract from the ‘Dedication’ to his translation of the Aeneid

Robin saw none of Griffin for the rest of Hilary Term, or Trinity. In truth, he hardly noticed; his second-year coursework only got more difficult as the weeks went on, and he barely had time to dwell on his resentment.

Summer came, though it was not a summer at all but rather an accelerated term, and his days were occupied with frantically cramming Sanskrit vocabulary for an assessment the week before next Michaelmas began. Then they were third-year students, a status that entailed all the exhaustion of Babel with none of its novelties. Oxford lost its charm that September; the golden sunsets and bright blue skies replaced by an endless chill and fog. It rained an inordinate amount, and the storm winds felt uniquely vicious compared to previous years. Their umbrellas kept breaking. Their socks were always wet. Rowing that term was cancelled.^*

That was just as well. None of them had time for sports anymore. The third year at Babel was traditionally known as the Siberian winter, and the reason became obvious when they were issued their courses lists. They were all continuing in their tertiary languages and in Latin, which was rumoured to become devilishly difficult when Tacitus entered the picture. They were also continuing in Translation Theory with Professor Playfair and Etymology with Professor Lovell, though the workload for each course had now doubled, as they were expected to produce a five-page paper for each class every week.

Most importantly, they were all assigned supervisors with whom they would pursue an independent research project. This counted as their proto-dissertation – their first piece of work that would, if completed successfully, be preserved on Babel’s shelves as a true piece of scholarly contribution.

Ramy and Victoire were both immediately unhappy with their supervisors. Ramy had been invited by Professor Joseph Harding to contribute to an editorial round of the Persian Grammatica, which was nominally a great honour.^* But Ramy couldn’t see the romance in such a project.