Babel

by R.F. Kuang

‘What makes the English superior is guns. Guns, and the willingness to use them on innocent people.’

In truth, though, Robin found it was actually quite easy to put up with any degree of social unrest, as long as one got used to looking away.

‘But that’s the great contradiction of colonialism.’ Cathy uttered this like a simple matter of fact. ‘It’s built to destroy that which it prizes most.’

‘Our father,’ Griffin said loudly, ‘was a cruel, selfish man who thought anyone who wasn’t white and English was less than human. Our father destroyed my mother’s life, and let yours perish. Our father is one of the principal engineers of a war on our motherland. If he’d come back from Canton alive, Parliament wouldn’t be debating right now. They’d have voted already. You’ve bought us days, perhaps weeks. So what if you’re a killer, brother? The world’s better off without the professor in it. Stop shrivelling under the weight of your conscience and take the damned credit.’ He turned the gun around and offered it handle-first to Robin. ‘Take it.’

It’s why slave revolts succeed. They can’t fire on their own source of labour – it’d be like killing their own golden geese.

‘Violence is the only language they understand, because their system of extraction is inherently violent. Violence shocks the system. And the system cannot survive the shock. You have no idea what you’re capable of, truly. You can’t imagine how the world might shift unless you pull the trigger.’

‘Tùsĭhúbēi.* The rabbit dies, and the fox grieves, for they’re animals of a kind.’

Why, he wondered, did white people get so very upset when anyone disagreed with them?