Babel

by R.F. Kuang

So I can’t ask you to take your time reviewing all the information. I’m asking you to take a chance on a conviction.’

This was what he wanted: a smooth, even path to a future with no surprises. The only obstacle, of course, was his conscience.

It’s violent work that sustains the fantasy.’

‘Rich boys studying on their father’s money. I bet they’ve never cracked open a textbook in their lives.

‘Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?’

‘But slavery’s been abolished, hasn’t it?’ said Griffin. ‘At least in British territories. No – I’m not saying everything’s good and fixed, and I’m not saying we can fully take the credit for British legislation; I’m sure the abolitionists would take umbrage at that. But I am saying that if you think the 1833 Act passed because of the moral sensibilities of the British, you’re wrong. They passed that bill because they couldn’t keep absorbing the losses.’

It was strange to think the functioning of an entire empire depended on just a handful of people.

Professor Lovell’s promised future of progress and enlightenment seemed only to have wrought poverty and suffering; the new jobs he thought the displaced workers should take up never materialized. Truly, the only ones who seemed to profit from the silver industrial revolution were those who were already rich, and the select few others who were cunning or lucky enough to make themselves so.

‘You have such a great fear of freedom, brother. It’s shackling you. You’ve identified so hard with the colonizer, you think any threat to them is a threat to you. When are you going to realize you can’t be one of them?’

He was fine with resistance as long as it didn’t hurt him.

He did not know that impressing a white man could be as dangerous as provoking one.

A dream; this was an impossible dream, this fragile, lovely world in which, for the price of his convictions, he had been allowed to remain.

Robin was birthed by choices produced from poverty, poverty produced from this.

They could see where it was going, but the people who had the power to do anything about it had been placed in positions where they would profit, and the people who suffered most had no power at all.

You must know the barbarians to control the barbarians, don’t you think?’ Something about the man compelled Robin to speak frankly. ‘That’s rather the same attitude they have about you.’

‘Disappointing. For all their talk of rights and dignity.’ ‘I think those principles only apply to those they find human.’

Did he owe Oxford his life, just because he had drunk champagne within its cloisters? Did he owe Babel his loyalty because he had once believed its lies?

‘Heavens, Robin, she was just some Chink.’ ‘But I’m just some Chink, Professor. I’m also her son.’ Robin felt a fierce urge to cry. He forced it down. Hurt never garnered sympathy from his father. But anger, perhaps, might spark fear. ‘Did you think you’d washed that part out of me?’

‘You want to do the right thing,’ said Ramy, bullish. ‘You always do. But you think the right thing is martyrdom. You think if you suffer enough for whatever sins you’ve committed, then you’re absolved.’

‘There are no kind masters, Letty,’ Anthony continued. ‘It doesn’t matter how lenient, how gracious, how invested in your education they make out to be. Masters are masters in the end.’

‘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.’

‘Justice is exhausting.’ She rubbed her temples. ‘That’s what I think.’

We must simply make this a war of class instead of race. And this is, indeed, an issue of class.

Strikers in this country never won broad public support, for the public merely wanted all the conveniences of modern life without the guilt of knowing how those conveniences were procured. And why should the translators succeed where other strikers – white strikers, no less – had failed?

Robin cast them an amazed look. ‘Are you telling me this country’s going to fall because of academic territoriality?’ ‘Well, yes.’ Professor Craft lifted her teacup to her lips. ‘It’s Oxford, what did you expect?’