Babel

by R.F. Kuang

‘Good.’ Professor Lovell nodded to the waiting cab. ‘Get in, we’ve got to make you an Englishman.’ He meant this literally. For the rest of the afternoon, Professor Lovell took Robin on a series of errands in the service of assimilating him into British civil society. They saw a physician who weighed him, examined him, and reluctantly declared him fit for life on the island: ‘No tropical diseases nor fleas, thank heavens. He’s a bit small for his age, but raise him on mutton and mash and he’ll be fine. Now let’s have a smallpox jab – roll that sleeve up, please, thank you. It won’t hurt. Count to three.’ They saw a barber, who clipped Robin’s unruly, chin-length curls into a short, neat crop above his ears. They saw a hatter, a bootmaker, and finally a tailor, who measured every inch of Robin’s body and showed him several bolts of cloth among which Robin, overwhelmed, chose at random. As the afternoon wound down, they went to the courthouse for an appointment with a solicitor who drafted a set of papers which, Robin was told, would make him a legal citizen of the United Kingdom and a ward under the guardianship of Professor Richard Linton Lovell. Professor Lovell signed his name with a flourish. Then Robin went up to the solicitor’s desk. The surface was too high for him, so a clerk dragged over a bench on which he could stand. ‘I thought I had signed this already.’ Robin glanced down. The language seemed quite similar to the guardianship contract that Professor Lovell had...