Page 120 of Babel

‘You were trying to let yourself off the hook,’ Ramy said, not unkindly. ‘But all sacrifice does is make you feel better. It doesn’t help the rest of us, so it’s an ultimately meaningless gesture. Now, if you’re finished with grand attempts at martyrdom, I think we should discuss...’

He trailed off. Victoire and Ramy followed his gaze to the door, where Letty stood, hands clutched against her chest. None of them knew how long she’d been there. Her face had gone very pale, save for two blotches of colour high on her cheeks.

‘Oh,’ said Ramy. ‘We thought you were asleep.’

Letty’s throat pulsed. She looked about to burst into sobs. ‘What,’ she asked in a tremulous whisper, ‘is the Hermes Society?’

‘But I don’t understand.’

Letty had been repeating this for the last ten minutes at regular intervals. It didn’t matter how they explained it – the necessity of the Hermes Society, and the myriad reasons why such an organization had to exist in the shadows – she kept shaking her head, her eyes blank and uncomprehending. She didn’t seem outraged or upset so much as truly baffled, as if they were trying to convince her that the sky was green. ‘I don’t understand. Weren’t you happy at Babel?’

‘Happy?’ Ramy repeated. ‘I suppose no one’s ever asked you if your skin’s been washed with walnut juice.’

‘Oh, Ramy, do they really?’ Her eyes widened. ‘But I never heard – but your skin is lovely—’

‘Or said you weren’t allowed in a shop, for reasons unclear,’ Ramy continued. ‘Or cut a wide circle around you on the pavement as if you had fleas.’

‘But that’s just Oxfordians being stupid and provincial,’ said Letty, ‘it doesn’t mean—’

‘I know you don’t see it,’ said Ramy. ‘And I don’t expect you to, that’s not your lot in life. But it’s not really about whether we were happy at Babel. It’s about what our conscience demands.’

‘But Babel gave you everything.’ Letty seemed unable to move past this point. ‘You had everything you wanted, you had such privileges—’

‘Not enough to make us forget where we’re from.’

‘But the scholarships – I mean, without those scholarships all of you would have been – I don’t understand—’

‘You’ve made that abundantly clear,’ Ramy snapped. ‘You’re a proper little princess, aren’t you? Big estate in Brighton, summers in Toulouse, porcelain china on your shelves and Assam in your teacups? How could you understand? Your people reap the fruits of the Empire. Ours don’t. So shut up, Letty, and just listen to what we’re trying to tell you. It’s not right what they’re doing to our countries.’ His voice grew louder, harder. ‘And it’s not right that I’m trained to use my languages for their benefit, to translate laws and texts to facilitate their rule, when there are people in India and China and Haiti and all over the Empire and the world who are hungry and starving because the British would rather put silver in their hats and harpsichords than anywhere it could do some good.’

Letty took this better than Robin thought she would. She sat in silence for a moment, blinking, her eyes huge. Then her brows furrowed, and she asked, ‘But... but if inequality is the issue, then couldn’t you have gone through the university? There are all sorts of aid programmes, missionary groups. There’s philanthropy, you know, why couldn’t we just go to the colonial governments and—’

‘That’s a bit difficult when the whole point of the institution is preserving the Empire,’ said Victoire. ‘Babel doesn’t do anything that doesn’t benefit itself.’

‘But that’s not true,’ said Letty. ‘They contribute to charity all the time, I know, Professor Leblanc was leading research into London’s waterworks so that the tenement housing wouldn’t be so diseased, and there are humanitarian societies all over the globe—’*

‘Did you know that Babel sells bars to slave traders?’ Victoire interrupted.

Letty blinked at her. ‘What?’

‘Capitale,’ Victoire said. ‘The Latin capitale, derived from caput, becomes the Old French chatel, which in English becomes chattel. Livestock and property become wealth. They write that on the bars, daisy-chain it with the word cattle, and then they fix those bars to iron chains so that slaves can’t escape. You know how? It makes them docile. Like animals.’

‘But that’s...’ Letty was blinking very rapidly now, as if trying to force a mote of dust from her eye. ‘But, Victoire love, the slave trade was abolished in 1807.’*

‘And you think they just stopped?’ Victoire made a noise that was half laugh, half sob. ‘You don’t think we sell bars to America? You think British manufacturers don’t still profit from shackles and irons? You don’t think there are people who still keep slaves in England who simply manage to hide it well?’

‘But Babel scholars wouldn’t—’

‘That’s exactly the kind of thing Babel scholars do,’ Victoire said viciously. ‘I should know. It’s the kind of thing our supervisor was working on. Every time I met with Leblanc he’d change the subject to his precious chattel bars. He said he thought I might have special insight. He even asked once if I would put them on. He said he wanted to make sure it worked on Negroes.’

‘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.

And where were he and Ramy? Looking away, failing to notice, hoping secretly the girls would simply stop bickering and move on. Occasionally Ramy made jabs at Letty, but only for his own satisfaction. Never had either of them paused to consider how deeply alone Victoire had to have felt, all this time.

‘You didn’t care,’ Victoire continued. ‘Letty, you don’t even care that our landlady doesn’t let me use the indoor bathroom—’

‘What? That’s ridiculous, I would have noticed—’