Babel

by R.F. Kuang

‘One more thing. It occurs to me you need a name.’ ‘I have a name,’ said the boy. ‘It’s—’ ‘No, that won’t do. No Englishman can pronounce that.

That makes me wanna cry

The crewman merely looked annoyed, but the labourer seemed relieved – he seemed to recognize immediately in Robin’s face an ally, the only other Chinese person in sight.

Only he could determine the truth, because only he could communicate it to all parties.

The word loss was inadequate. Loss just meant a lack, meant something was missing, but it did not encompass the totality of this severance, this terrifying un-anchoring from all that he’d ever known.

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.

‘Get in, we’ve got to make you an Englishman.’

This has much sadder vibes than get in bitch we’re going shopping

Consider the Bible.

I’d really rather not

Robin had always attributed this to some accidental arrangement of nature that ascribed him features that could have belonged anywhere on the spectrum of either race, white or yellow.

*gasps in hapa*

A lie was not a lie if it was never uttered; questions that were never asked did not need answers. They would both remain perfectly content to linger in the liminal, endless space between truth and denial.

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’.

He seemed simply, with every hard and deliberate blow, to be attempting to inflict maximum pain with the minimum risk of permanent injury. 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.

‘Well, that’s one good thing about you,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘When you’re beaten, you don’t cry.’

‘Oh.’ She chuckled, then glanced at Robin. ‘He’d like to know if you can see.’ ‘I – what?’ ‘If you can see?’ The woman raised her voice and overenunciated her every syllable, as if Robin had difficulty hearing. (This had happened often to Robin on the Countess of Harcourt; he could never understand why people treated those who couldn’t understand English as if they were deaf.) ‘With your eyes like that – can you see everything? Or is it only in little slits?’ ‘I can see perfectly well,’ Robin said quietly.

Im livid

This was how things had always been between them: conversations unfinished, words best left unsaid.

The stranger had smooth dusky skin, a tall and graceful build, and the longest, darkest eyelashes that Robin had ever seen. His eyes flickered up and down Robin’s frame before settling on his face, questioning – determining, Robin suspected, just how foreign Robin was in return.

I feel yearning already

In the years to come, Robin would return so many times to this night.

after the poppy war im feeling sick with dread just reading this

At some point they began reciting poems to each other

now kiss

(he’d already started calling Robin ‘Birdie’),

awe

‘What happened?’ Ramy gave him a long look. ‘The British, Birdie. Keep up.’

‘You’re Babblers, aren’t you? I heard all Babblers are on scholarships.’ ‘Babblers?’ Robin repeated. It was the first time he’d heard the term. ‘The Translation Institute,’ Edward said impatiently. ‘You’ve got to be, right? They don’t let your kind in otherwise.’

Fuck maybe it is pronounced "Babble"

They were men at Oxford; they were not Oxford men.

‘Babel,’ Robin repeated. ‘Is that why—?’ ‘Why they call us Babblers?’ Anthony nodded.

This was a pattern, Robin noticed – the initial authors all tended to be white British men rather than native speakers of those languages.

One thing united them all – without Babel, they had nowhere in this country to go. They’d been chosen for privileges they couldn’t have ever imagined, funded by powerful and wealthy men whose motives they did not fully understand, and they were acutely aware these could be lost at any moment. That precariousness made them simultaneously bold and terrified. They had the keys to the kingdom; they did not want to give them back.

Later, when everything went sideways and the world broke in half, Robin would think back to this day, to this hour at this table, and wonder why they had been so quick, so carelessly eager to trust one another. Why had they refused to see the myriad ways they could hurt each other? Why had they not paused to interrogate their differences in birth, in raising, that meant they were not and could never be on the same side? But the answer was obvious – that they were all four of them drowning in the unfamiliar, and they saw in each other a raft, and clinging to one another was the only way to stay afloat.

WHY SO OMINOUS

‘Who are you?’ ‘You’re Robin Swift,’ said the man. ‘You grew up without a father but with an inexplicable English nursemaid and a never-ending supply of books in English, and when Professor Lovell turned up to carry you off to England, you said farewell to your motherland for good. You think the professor might be your father, but he hasn’t admitted that you are his own. You’re quite sure he never will. Does that make sense?’

Whaaaaaat

‘Half-brothers,’ said Griffin. ‘Hello, brother. It’s lovely to meet you.’

Griffin turned to go, paused, then turned back around. ‘One more thing. Where do you live?’ ‘Hm? Univ – we’re all at University College.’ ‘I know that. What room?’ ‘Oh.’ Robin blushed. ‘Number four, Magpie Lane, room seven. The house with the green roof. I’m in the corner. With the sloping windows facing Oriel chapel.’ ‘I know it.’ The sun had long set. Robin could no longer see Griffin’s face, half-hidden in shadow. ‘That used to be my room.’

unsettled him. Then came the harder questions. Which Chinese words could be traced back to recognizable pictures? Which couldn’t? Why was the character for ‘woman’ – 女 – also the radical used in the character for ‘slavery’? In the character for ‘good’? ‘I don’t know,’ Robin admitted. ‘Why is it? Are slavery and goodness both innately feminine?’

‘If we’re talking about the spread of language, I wanted to ask . . .’ Robin cleared his throat. ‘Where do all those bars go? I mean, who buys them?’ Professor Lovell gave him a curious look. ‘To those who can afford them, of course.’ ‘But Britain is the only place where I’ve ever seen silver bars in wide use,’ said Robin. ‘They’re not nearly so popular in Canton, or, I’ve heard, in Calcutta. And it strikes me – I don’t know, it seems a bit strange that the British are the only ones who get to use them when the Chinese and Indians are contributing the crucial components of their functioning.’ ‘But that’s simple economics,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘It takes a great deal of cash to purchase what we create. The British happen to be able to afford it. We have deals with Chinese and Indian merchants too, but they’re often less able to pay the export fees.’

‘The board of undergraduate studies is always fighting over whether to prioritize European languages, or other . . . more exotic languages. Chakravarti and Lovell have been making a stink about diversifying the student body for years. They didn’t like that my cohort are all Classicists. I assume they were overcorrecting with you.’ Robin tried to be polite. ‘I’m not sure why that’s such a bad thing.’ ‘Well, it’s not a bad thing per se, but it does mean spots taken away from equally qualified candidates who passed the entrance exams.’ ‘I didn’t take any entrance exams,’ said Robin. ‘Precisely.’ Philip sniffed, and did not say another word to Robin for the entire evening.

Then he blinked, because he’d just registered what this most mundane and extraordinary moment meant – that in the space of several weeks, they had become what he’d never found in Hampstead, what he thought he’d never have again after Canton: a circle of people he loved so fiercely his chest hurt when he thought about them. A family. He felt a crush of guilt then for loving them, and Oxford, as much as he did.

He was a child starved of affection, which he now had in abundance – and was it so wrong for him to cling to what he had?

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

In Classical Chinese, the characters 二心 referred to disloyal or traitorous intentions; literally, they translated as ‘two hearts’. And Robin found himself in the impossible position of loving that which he betrayed, twice.

‘Very funny,’ said Ramy. ‘But it’s not manners that’s the issue, I think. It’s that Robin passes as white and we don’t.’

‘You’ve got to live and breathe a language, not just muddle through a text now and then. Do you dream in languages other than English?’

‘Daisy-chaining,’ said Professor Playfair. He turned the bar around to show them the Latin and Greek engraved along the sides. ‘It’s a technique that invokes older etymologies as guides, shepherding meaning across miles and centuries. You might also think of it as extra stakes for a tent. It keeps the whole thing stable and helps us identify with accuracy the distortion we’re trying to capture. But that’s quite an advanced technique – don’t worry about that for now.’

‘What’s the word for a great storm in Mandarin?’ Robin gave a start. ‘Ah – fēngbào?’* ‘No, give me something bigger.’ ‘Táifēng?’* ‘Good.’ Professor Lovell pointed to Victoire. ‘And what weather patterns are always drifting across the Caribbean?’ ‘Typhoons,’ she said, then blinked. ‘Taifeng? Typhoon? How—’

Letty insisted they all go in for a portrait. ‘Don’t you want a memento of us?’ she asked. ‘Preserved at this moment in time?’ Robin shrugged. ‘Not really.’ ‘Well, I do,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I want to remember exactly how we were now, in this year, in 1837. I never want to forget.’ They assembled themselves before the camera. Letty and Victoire sat down in chairs, hands folded stiffly in their laps. Robin and Ramy stood behind them, uncertain what to do with their hands. Should they place them on the girls’ shoulders? On the chairs? ‘Arms by your sides,’ said the photographer. ‘Hold still as best you can. No – first, cluster a bit closer – there you go.’ Robin smiled, realized he couldn’t keep his mouth stretched wide for that long, and promptly dropped it.

‘Why aren’t you coming on this one?’ he asked. ‘Why can’t you use the bar yourself?’ Griffin blinked slowly. Then he said, in a tone so level it must have been forced, ‘I can’t. You know I can’t.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because I don’t dream in Chinese.’

‘So I need you, darling brother.’ Griffin reached out, ruffled his hair. His touch was so forceful it hurt. ‘You’re the real thing. You’re indispensable.’

The worst, from Robin’s perspective, was that something had changed suddenly and mysteriously between Letty and Ramy.

At last, Griffin shook his head and said, ‘You’re lost, brother. You’re a ship adrift, searching for familiar shores. I understand what it is you want. I sought it too. But there is no homeland. It’s gone.’ He paused beside Robin on his way to the door. His fingers landed on Robin’s shoulder, squeezed so hard they hurt. ‘But realize this, brother. You fly no one’s flag. You’re free to seek your own harbour. And you can do so much more than tread water.’

At last, Ramy asked, ‘Well, are you going to ask anyone to dance?’ ‘I don’t know how,’ said Robin. He peered out at the throng, but all the girls in their bright balloon sleeves looked one and the same to him. ‘To dance? Or to ask?’ ‘Well – both. But certainly the latter. It seems you need to know them socially before it’s appropriate.’ ‘Oh, you’re handsome enough,’ said Ramy. ‘And you’re a Babbler. I’m sure one of them would say yes.’

‘Please, Birdie.’ Ramy sighed. ‘You know how it is.’ ‘She wants you,’ Robin said. He’d only just realized this, and now that he said it out loud, it seemed so obvious that he felt stupid for not seeing it earlier. ‘Very badly. So why—’ ‘Don’t you know why?’ Their eyes met. Robin felt a prickle at the back of his neck. The space between them felt very charged, like the moment between lightning and thunder, and Robin had no idea what was going on or what would happen next, only that it all felt very strange and terrifying, like teetering over the edge of a windy, roaring cliff.

AHHHHHHH

‘Who was my mother to you?’ he asked. This, at least, seemed to rattle the professor, if only for the briefest moment. ‘We are not here to discuss your mother.’ ‘You killed her. And you didn’t even bother to bury her.’ ‘Don’t be absurd. It was the Asiatic Cholera that killed her—’ ‘You were in Macau for two weeks before she died. Mrs Piper told me. You knew the plague was spreading, you know you could have saved her—’ ‘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?’

‘Father?’ He grasped Professor Lovell’s shoulders. Hot, wet blood spilled over his fingers. It would not stop; it was everywhere, an endless fountain gushing out of that ruin of a chest. ‘Diē?’

‘How strange,’ said Ramy. ‘To love the stuff and the language, but to hate the country.’ ‘Not as odd as you’d think,’ said Victoire. ‘There are people, after all, and then there are things.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ ‘Letty, I tried.’ Victoire’s voice broke. There was such pain in her eyes. And it made Robin deeply ashamed, for only now did he see the cruel pattern of their friendship. Robin had always had Ramy. But at the end of the day, when they parted ways, Victoire only had Letty, who professed always to love her, to absolutely adore her, but who failed to hear anything she was saying if it didn’t comport with how she already saw the world.