Page 109 of Babel

‘I – all right, then.’ Robin folded his arms. He had nothing to apologize for, nothing more to hide. Ramy and Victoire were safe; he had nothing to lose. No more bowing, no more silence. ‘Fine. Let’s be honest with each other. I don’t agree with what Jardine & Matheson is doing in Canton. It’s wrong, it disgusts me—’

Professor Lovell shook his head. ‘For heaven’s sake, it’s just a market. Don’t be childish.’

‘It’s a sovereign nation.’

‘It is a nation mired in superstition and antiquity, devoid of the rule of law, hopelessly behind the West on every possible register. It is a nation of semi-barbarous, incorrigibly backwards fools—’

‘It’s a nation of people,’ Robin snapped. ‘People you’re poisoning, whose lives you’re ruining. And if the question is whether I’ll keep facilitating that project, then it’s no – I won’t come back to Canton again, not for the traders, and not for anything remotely related to opium. I’ll do research at Babel, I’ll do translations, but I won’t do that. You can’t make me.’

He was breathing very hard when he finished. Professor Lovell’s expression had not changed. He watched Robin for a long moment, eyelids half-closed, tapping his fingers against his desk as if it were a piano.

‘You know what astounds me?’ His voice had grown very soft. ‘How utterly ungrateful one can be.’

This line of argument again. Robin could have kicked something. Always this, the argument from bondage, as if his loyalties were shackled by privilege he had not asked for and did not choose to receive. 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?

‘This wasn’t for me,’ he said. ‘I didn’t ask for it. It was all for you, because you wanted a Chinese pupil, because you wanted someone who was fluent—’

‘You resent me, then?’ asked Professor Lovell. ‘For giving you a life? For giving you opportunities you couldn’t have dreamed of?’ He sneered. ‘Yes, Robin, I took you from your home. From the squalor and disease and hunger. What do you want? An apology?’

What he wanted, Robin thought, was for Professor Lovell to admit what he’d done. That it was unnatural, this entire arrangement; that children were not stock to be experimented on, judged for their blood, spirited away from their homeland in service of Crown and country. That Robin was more than a talking dictionary, and that his motherland was more than a fat golden goose. But he knew these were acknowledgments that Professor Lovell would never make. The truth between them was not buried because it was painful, but because it was inconvenient, and because Professor Lovell simply refused to address it.

It was so obvious now that he was not, and could never be, a person in his father’s eyes. No, personhood demanded the blood purity of the European man, the racial status that would make him Professor Lovell’s equal. Little Dick and Philippa were persons. Robin Swift was an asset, and assets should be undyingly grateful that they were treated well at all.

There could be no resolution here. But at least Robin would have the truth about something.

‘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?’

He had become so good at holding two truths in his head at once. That he was an Englishman and not. That Professor Lovell was his father and not. That the Chinese were a stupid, backwards people, and that he was also one of them. That he hated Babel, and wanted to live forever in its embrace. He had danced for years on the razor’s edge of these truths, had remained there as a means of survival, a way to cope, unable to accept either side fully because an unflinching examination of the truth was so frightening that the contradictions threatened to break him.

But he could not go on like this. He could not exist a split man, his psyche constantly erasing and re-erasing the truth. He felt a great pressure in the back of his mind. He felt like he would quite literally burst, unless he stopped being double. Unless he chose.

‘Did you think,’ said Robin, ‘that enough time in England would make me just like you?’

Professor Lovell cocked his head. ‘You know, I once thought that having offspring was a kind of translation of its own. Especially when the parents are of such vastly different stock. One is curious to see what ends up coming through.’ His face underwent the strangest transformation as he spoke. His eyes grew larger and larger until they were frighteningly bulbous; his condescending sneer grew more pronounced, and his lips drew back to reveal teeth. It was meant, perhaps, as a look of exaggerated disgust, but it appeared more to Robin as if a mask of civility had been stripped away. It was the ugliest expression he had ever seen his father wear. ‘I’d hoped to raise you to avoid the failings of your brother. I hoped to instill you with a more civilized sense of ethics. Quo semel est imbuta recens, servabit odorem testa diu,* and all that. I hoped I might develop you into a more elevated cask. But for all your education, there is no raising you from that base, original stock, is there?’

‘You’re a monster,’ Robin said, amazed.

‘I haven’t the time for this.’ Professor Lovell flipped the dictionary shut. ‘It’s clear bringing you to Canton was the wrong idea. I had hoped it might remind you how lucky you were, but all it’s done is confuse you.’

‘I’m not confused—’

‘We’ll re-evaluate your position at Babel when we return.’ Professor Lovell gestured towards the door. ‘For now, I think, you ought to take some time to reflect. Imagine spending the rest of your life in Newgate, Robin. You can rail against the evils of commerce all you like, if you do it in a prison cell. Would you prefer that?’

Robin’s hands formed fists. ‘Say her name.’

Professor Lovell’s eyebrow twitched. He gestured again to the door. ‘That will be all.’