Page 161 of Babel

No one, it seemed, shared this fantasy.

‘Can’t we just duck out in the evenings?’ asked Juliana. ‘We can sneak out past midnight and be back by morning, no one will notice—’

‘That’s absurd,’ said Robin. ‘This isn’t some kind of – of optional daytime activity—’

‘We’re going to smell,’ said Yusuf. ‘It’ll be disgusting.’

‘Still, we can’t just keep going in and out—’

‘Just once then,’ said Ibrahim. ‘Just for supplies—’

‘Stop it,’ snapped Victoire. ‘Just stop it, all of you, will you? We all chose treason against the Crown. We’ll be uncomfortable for some time yet.’

At half past ten, Meghana ran up from the lobby and breathlessly announced that London was sending a telegram. They crowded around the machine, watching nervously as Professor Chakravarti took down the message and transcribed it. He blinked at it for a moment, then said, ‘They’ve more or less told us to shove it.’

‘What?’ Robin reached for the telegram. ‘There’s nothing else?’

‘PLEASE REOPEN TOWER TO REGULAR BUSINESS STOP,’ read Professor Chakravarti. ‘That’s all it says.’

‘It’s not even signed?’

‘I can only assume it’s coming direct from the Foreign Office,’ said Professor Chakravarti. ‘They don’t take private messages this late.’

‘There’s no word about Playfair?’ Victoire asked.

‘Just the one line,’ said Professor Chakravarti. ‘That’s it.’

So Parliament had declined to meet their demands – or indeed to take them seriously at all. Perhaps it was silly to hope the strike would produce a response so soon, before the lack of silver had taken effect, but they had hoped at least that Parliament would acknowledge the threat. Did the MPs think this whole thing would blow over on its own? Were they trying to prevent a general panic? Was this why not a single policeman had knocked on the door, why the green outside was as serene and empty as it had ever been?

‘What now?’ Juliana asked.

No one had an answer. They couldn’t help feeling somewhat petulant, like toddlers who’d thrown tantrums but had not been rewarded for their efforts. All that trouble for such a curt response – it all seemed so pathetic.

They lingered around the telegraph machine for a few more moments, hoping it might spring to life with better news – that Parliament was greatly concerned, that they’d called a midnight debate, that crowds of protestors had flooded Trafalgar Square to demand the war be called off. But the needle remained still. One by one they slunk back upstairs, hungry and dispirited.

For the rest of the evening, Robin would occasionally step out onto the rooftop to peer over the city, scanning for any indication of change or unrest. But Oxford remained tranquil, undisturbed. Their pamphlets lay trodden in the street, stuck in grates, flapping pointlessly in the gentle night breeze. No one had even bothered to clean them up.

They had little to say to one another that night as they made their beds among the stacks, huddling under coats and spare gowns. The convivial atmosphere of that afternoon had vanished. They were all suffering the same unspoken, private fear, a creeping dread that this strike might do nothing but damn themselves, and that their cries would go unheard into the unforgiving dark.

Magdalen Tower fell the next morning.

None of them had anticipated this. They only worked out afterwards what had happened, after they’d checked the work order ledgers and realized what they could have done to prevent it. Magdalen Tower, the second-tallest building in Oxford, had relied since the eighteenth century on silver-facilitated engineering tricks to support its weight after centuries of soil erosion had eaten at its foundations. Babel scholars did routine maintenance on its supports every six months, once in January and once again in June.

In the hours that followed the disaster, they would learn that it was Professor Playfair who had overseen these biannual reinforcements for the past fifteen years, and whose notes on such procedures were locked in his office, inaccessible to the exiled Babel faculty, who had not even remembered Magdalen Tower’s upcoming appointment. They would find in their letterbox a flurry of messages from the panicked members of the city council who had expected Professor Playfair the previous evening, and who discovered only the next day that he was laid up in hospital, pumped full of laudanum and unconscious. They would learn that one council member had passed the early hours of the morning banging frantically at Babel’s door; only none of them heard or saw him, for the wards kept out all riffraff who might disrupt the scholars inside.

Meanwhile, the clock had run out on Magdalen Tower. At nine on the dot, a rumbling began at its base and spread through the entire city. At Babel, their teacups began clattering at breakfast. They thought they were experiencing an earthquake, until they rushed to the windows and saw that nothing was noticeably shaking except a single building in the distance.

Then they rushed to the rooftop and crowded around Professor Craft, who narrated what she saw from the telescope. ‘It’s – it’s breaking apart.’

By now the changes were so great they could be seen with the naked eye. Tiles dripped off the roof like raindrops. Huge chunks of turrets peeled away and crashed to the ground.

Victoire asked what no one else dared. ‘Do you think anyone’s inside?’

If they were, at least they had ample time to get out. The building had been shaking for a good fifteen minutes now. This was their ethical defence; they did not let themselves consider the alternatives.

At twenty past nine, all ten of the tower’s bells began to ring at once, without rhythm or harmony. They seemed to grow louder, building up to a terrible level; they reached a crescendo with an urgency that made Robin himself want to scream.

Then the tower collapsed, as simply and cleanly as a sandcastle kicked at the base. It took less than ten seconds for the building to fall, but nearly a minute for the rumbling to settle. Then, where Magdalen Tower had once stood was a great mound of brick, dust, and stone. And it was somehow lovely, unnervingly lovely because it was so awful, because it violated the rules of how things were supposed to move. That the city’s horizon could, in an instant, be changed this dramatically was both breathtaking and awesome.