Babel

by R.F. Kuang

‘Feeling better?’ Ramy asked Robin when they adjourned. He was, actually. It felt good to sink into the refuge of a dead language, to fight a rhetorical war whose stakes could not really touch him. He was astonished by how ordinary the rest of the day felt, how calmly he could sit among his cohort as Professor Playfair lectured and pretend that Tytler was the foremost subject on his mind. In the light of day, the exploits of last night seemed a faraway dream. The tangible and solid consisted of Oxford, of coursework and professors and freshly baked scones and clotted cream. Still, he could not erase the lurking dread that this was all a cruel joke, that the curtains would come down any minute on this charade. For how could there not be some consequence? Such an act of betrayal – of stealing from Babel itself, the institution to which he’d literally given his blood – should surely have made this life impossible.