Page 137 of Babel

‘I didn’t,’ Robin insisted. ‘It just happened – and it wasn’t on purpose, I never wanted—’

‘Don’t,’ said Griffin. ‘Don’t hide, don’t pretend – that’s so cowardly. Say how you feel. It felt good, admit it. The sheer power felt so good—’

‘I’d take it all back if I could,’ Robin insisted. He didn’t know why it felt so important that Griffin believe him, but this seemed like the last line he had to hold, the last truth he had to maintain about his identity. Otherwise he didn’t recognize himself. ‘I wish he’d lived—’

‘You don’t mean that. He deserved what he got.’

‘He didn’t deserve to die.’

‘Our father,’ Griffin said loudly, ‘was a cruel, selfish man who thought anyone who wasn’t white and English was less than human. Our father destroyed my mother’s life, and let yours perish. Our father is one of the principal engineers of a war on our motherland. If he’d come back from Canton alive, Parliament wouldn’t be debating right now. They’d have voted already. You’ve bought us days, perhaps weeks. So what if you’re a killer, brother? The world’s better off without the professor in it. Stop shrivelling under the weight of your conscience and take the damned credit.’ He turned the gun around and offered it handle-first to Robin. ‘Take it.’

‘I said no.’

‘You still don’t understand.’ Impatiently, Griffin grabbed Robin’s fingers and forced them around the handle. ‘We’ve moved out of the realm of ideas now, brother. We’re at war.’

‘But if this is a war, then you’ve lost.’ Still Robin refused to take the gun. ‘There’s no way you win on the battlefield. Your ranks are what, a couple dozen? At most? And you’re going to take on the entire British Army?’

‘Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong,’ said Griffin. ‘The thing about violence, see, is that the Empire has a lot more to lose than we do. Violence disrupts the extractive economy. You wreak havoc on one supply line, and there’s a dip in prices across the Atlantic. Their entire system of trade is high-strung and vulnerable to shocks because they’ve made it thus, because the rapacious greed of capitalism is punishing. It’s why slave revolts succeed. They can’t fire on their own source of labour – it’d be like killing their own golden geese.

‘But if the system is so fragile, why do we so easily accept the colonial situation? Why do we think it’s inevitable? Why doesn’t Man Friday ever get himself a rifle, or slit Robinson Crusoe’s neck in the night? The problem is that we’re always living like we’ve lost. We’re all living like you. We see their guns, their silver-work, and their ships, and we think it’s already over for us. We don’t stop to consider how even the playing field actually might be. And we never consider what things would look like if we took the gun.’ Once again, Griffin offered the gun to Robin. ‘Careful, it’s front-heavy.’

This time Robin accepted it. He aimed it experimentally at the trees. The barrel did, indeed, tip downwards; he tilted his hand up against his wrist to keep it level.

‘Violence shows them how much we’re willing to give up,’ said Griffin. ‘Violence is the only language they understand, because their system of extraction is inherently violent. Violence shocks the system. And the system cannot survive the shock. You have no idea what you’re capable of, truly. You can’t imagine how the world might shift unless you pull the trigger.’ Griffin pointed at the middle birch. ‘Pull the trigger, kid.’

Robin obeyed. The bang split his ears; he nearly dropped the gun. He was sure he had not aimed true. He had not been prepared for the force of the kickback, and his arm trembled from wrist to shoulder. The birch was untouched. The bullet had flown pointlessly into the dark.

But he had to admit that Griffin was right – the rush of that moment, the explosion of force contained within its hands, the sheer power he could trigger with just a twitch of his finger – it felt good.