Babel

by R.F. Kuang

Family names were not things to be dropped and replaced at whim, he thought. They marked lineage; they marked belonging.

He buried his past life, not because it was so terrible but because abandoning it was the only way to survive. He pulled on his English accent like a new coat, adjusted everything he could about himself to make it fit, and, within weeks, wore it with comfort.

‘But that’s the beauty of learning a new language. It should feel like an enormous undertaking. It ought to intimidate you. It makes you appreciate the complexity of the ones you know already.’

The English made regular use of only two flavours – salty and not salty – and did not seem to recognize any of the others. For a country that profited so well from trading in spices, its citizens were violently averse to actually using them; in all his time in Hampstead, he never tasted a dish that could be properly described as ‘seasoned’, let alone ‘spicy’.

For he did not strike Robin’s head, nor did he apply so much force that Robin’s ribs would crack. No; he only dealt bruises that could be easily hidden and that, in time, would heal completely. He knew very well what he was doing. He seemed to have done this before.

‘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?’

Silence first; then resignation, then acceptance. They already lived in the impossible; what more was the fall of the most eternal thing they’d ever known?

‘That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.’

But survival demands severing the cord. Survival demands she look only to the future.

But who, in living history, ever understands their part in the tapestry? For the better part of her life, Victoire was not even aware she hailed from the world’s first Black republic.

She learned revolution is, in fact, always unimaginable. It shatters the world you know. The future is unwritten, brimming with potential. The colonizers have no idea what is coming, and that makes them panic. It terrifies them. Good. It should.