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

She said this with a solicitous glance at Victoire, who among them had known Anthony the best. But Victoire looked surprisingly unfazed; she didn’t seem shocked or upset so much as vaguely uncomfortable. Indeed, she looked as if she hoped they might change topics as quickly as possible. Professor Playfair was more than happy to oblige.

‘Well, on to business,’ he said. ‘We left off last Friday on the innovations of the German Romantics . . .’

Babel did not mourn Anthony. The faculty did not so much as hold a memorial service. The next time Robin went up to the silver-working floor, a wheat-haired graduate fellow he didn’t know had taken over Anthony’s workstation.

‘It’s disgusting,’ Letty said. ‘Can you believe – I mean, a Babel graduate, and they just act like he was never here?’

Her distress belied a deeper terror, a terror which Robin felt as well, which was that Anthony had been expendable. That they were all expendable. That this tower – this place where they had for the first time found belonging – treasured and loved them when they were alive and useful but didn’t, in fact, care about them at all. That they were, in the end, only vessels for the languages they spoke.

No one said that out loud. It came too close to breaking the spell.

Of them all, Robin had assumed Victoire would be most devastated. She and Anthony had grown quite close over the years; they were two of only a handful of Black scholars in the tower, and they were both born in the West Indies. Occasionally he’d seen them talking, heads bent together, as they walked from the tower to the Buttery.

But he never once saw her cry that winter. He wanted to comfort her, but he did not know how, especially as it seemed impossible to broach the topic with her. Whenever Anthony was brought up, she flinched, blinked rapidly, and then tried very hard to change the subject.

‘Did you know Anthony was a slave?’ Letty asked one night in hall. Unlike Victoire, she was determined to raise the issue at every opportunity; indeed, she was obsessed with Anthony’s death in a way that felt uncomfortably, performatively righteous. ‘Or would have been. His master didn’t want him freed when abolition took effect, so he was going to take him to America, and he only got to stay at Oxford because Babel paid for his freedom. Paid. Can you believe it?’

Robin glanced to Victoire, but her face had not changed one bit.

‘Letty,’ she said very calmly, ‘I am trying to eat.’

Chapter Twelve

‘In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.’

CHARLES DICKENS, Great Expectations

They were well into Hilary term before Griffin resurfaced. So many months had passed by then that Robin had stopped checking his window with his usual rigour, and he would have missed the note if he had not spotted a magpie trying in vain to retrieve it from under the pane.

The note instructed Robin to show up at the Twisted Root at half past two the next day, but Griffin was nearly an hour late. When he did arrive, Robin was astounded by his haggard appearance. The sheer act of walking through the pub seemed to exhaust him; by the time he sat down, he was breathing as hard as if he’d just run the length of Parks. He’d clearly not had a change of clothes in days; his smell wafted, attracting glares. He moved with a slight limp, and Robin glimpsed bandages under his shirt every time he raised his arm.

Robin was not sure what to do with this. He’d had a rant prepared for this meeting, but the words died at the sight of his brother’s obvious misery. Instead, he sat silently as Griffin ordered shepherd’s pie and two glasses of ale.

‘Term going all right?’ Griffin asked.

‘It’s fine,’ said Robin. ‘I’m, uh, working on an independent project now.’

‘With whom?’

Robin scratched at his shirt collar. He felt stupid bringing it up at all. ‘Chakravarti.’

‘That’s nice.’ The ale arrived. Griffin drained his glass, set it down, and winced. ‘That’s lovely.’

‘The rest of my cohort’s not too happy with their assignments, though.’

‘Of course they aren’t.’ Griffin snorted. ‘Babel’s never going to let you do the research you ought to be doing. Only the research that fills the coffers.’

A long silence passed. Robin felt vaguely guilty, though he had no good reason to be; still, a worm of discomfort ate further into his gut with every passing second. Food came. The plate was steaming hot, but Griffin wolfed his down like a man starved. And he just might have been, too; when he bent over his place, his collarbones protruded in a way that hurt to look at.

‘Say . . .’ Robin cleared his throat, unsure how to ask. ‘Griffin, is everything—’

‘Sorry.’ Griffin put his fork down. ‘I’m just – I only got back to Oxford last night, and I’m exhausted.’

Robin sighed. ‘Sure.’