Page 25 of Babel

They both burst into giggles. Robin could not understand French, but felt distinctly that he had been judged and found wanting.

‘There you are.’

They were saved from further conversation by a tall, slender Black man who shook all their hands and introduced himself as Anthony Ribben, a postgraduate specializing in French, Spanish, and German. ‘My guardian fancied himself a Romanticist,’ he explained. ‘He hoped I’d follow his passion for poetry, but when it became apparent I had more than just a passing talent for languages, he had me sent here.’

He paused expectantly, which prompted them to respond with their own languages.

‘Urdu, Arabic, and Persian,’ said Ramy.

‘French and Kreyòl,’ said Victoire. ‘I mean – Haitian Creole, if you think that counts.’

‘That counts,’ Anthony said cheerfully.

‘French and German,’ said Letty.

‘Chinese,’ Robin said, feeling somewhat inadequate. ‘And Latin and Greek.’

‘Well, we’ve all got Latin and Greek,’ said Letty. ‘It’s an entry requirement, isn’t it?’

Robin’s cheeks flushed; he hadn’t known.

Anthony looked amused. ‘A nicely cosmopolitan group, aren’t you? Welcome to Oxford! How are you finding it?’

‘Lovely,’ said Victoire. ‘Though... I don’t know, it’s strange. It doesn’t quite feel real. It feels like I’m at the theatre, and I keep waiting for the curtains to come down.’

‘That doesn’t go away.’ Anthony headed towards the tower, gesturing for them to follow. ‘Especially once you’ve gone through these doors. They’ve asked me to show you about the Institute until eleven, and then I’ll leave you with Professor Playfair. Will this be your first time inside?’

They gazed up at the tower. It was a magnificent building – a gleaming white edifice built in the neoclassical style, eight storeys tall and ringed with ornamental pillars and high stained-glass windows. It dominated the skyline of High Street, and made the nearby Radcliffe Library and University Church of St Mary the Virgin look quite pathetic in comparison. Ramy and Robin had walked past it countless times over the weekend, marvelling at it together, but always from a distance. They hadn’t dared approach. Not then.

‘Magnificent, isn’t it?’ Anthony sighed with satisfaction. ‘You never get used to the sight. Welcome to your home for the next four years, believe it or not. We call it Babel.’

‘Babel,’ Robin repeated. ‘Is that why—?’

‘Why they call us Babblers?’ Anthony nodded. ‘A joke as old as the Institute itself. But some first year at Balliol thinks he conceived it for the first time every September, and so we’ve been doomed to that unwieldy moniker for decades.’

He strode briskly up the front steps. At the top a blue and gold seal was carved into the stone before the door, the Oxford University coat of arms. Dominus illuminatio mea, it read. The Lord is my light. The moment Anthony’s foot touched the seal, the heavy wooden door swung out on its own accord, revealing a golden, lamplit interior of staircases, bustling dark-robed scholars, and books upon books upon books.

Robin paused, too dazzled to follow. Of all the marvels of Oxford, Babel seemed the most impossible – a tower out of time, a vision from a dream. Those stained-glass windows, that high, imposing dome; it all seemed to have been pulled straight from the painting in Professor Lovell’s dining room and dropped whole onto this drab grey street. An illumination in a medieval manuscript; a door to a fairy land. It seemed impossible that they should come here every day to study, that they had the right to enter at all.

Yet here it stood, right in front of them, waiting.

Anthony beckoned, beaming. ‘Well, come on in.’

‘Translation agencies have always been indispensable tools of – nay, the centres of – great civilizations. In 1527, Charles V of Spain created the Secretaría de Interpretación de Lenguas, whose employees juggled over a dozen languages in service of governing his empire’s territories. The Royal Institute of Translation was founded in London in the early seventeenth century, though it didn’t move to its current home in Oxford until 1715 and the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, after which the British decided it might be prudent to train young lads to speak the languages of the colonies the Spanish had just lost. Yes, I’ve memorized all this, and no, I didn’t write it, but I’ve been giving this tour since my first year on account of my immense personal charisma, so I’ve got quite good at it. Through the foyer this way.’

Anthony had the rare skill of talking smoothly while walking backwards. ‘There’s eight floors to Babel,’ he said. ‘The Book of Jubilees claims the historical Tower of Babel reached a height of over five thousand cubits – that’s nearly two miles – which is of course impossible, though our Babel is the tallest building in Oxford, and likely all of England, excepting St Paul’s. We’re nearly three hundred feet tall, not counting the basement, which means our total height is twice that of the Radcliffe Library—’

Victoire lifted her hand. ‘Is the tower—’

‘Larger on the inside than it seems on the outside?’ Anthony asked. ‘Indeed.’ Robin had not noticed this at first, but now felt disoriented by the contradiction. Babel’s exterior was massive, but it still did not appear tall enough to admit the high ceilings and towering shelves of each interior floor. ‘It’s a pretty trick of silver-working, though I’m not sure of the match-pair involved. It’s been like this since I got here; we take it for granted.’

Anthony guided them through a throng of townsfolk standing in busy queues before cashier windows. ‘We’re in the lobby now – all business gets conducted here. Local tradesmen ordering bars for their equipment, city officials requesting public works maintenance, that sort of thing. It’s the only area of the tower accessible to civilians, though they don’t interact with scholars much – we’ve got clerks to process their requests.’ Anthony waved for them to follow him up the central staircase. ‘This way.’

The second floor was the Legal Department, which was full of dour-faced scholars scratching at paper and flipping through thick, musty reference volumes.

‘It’s always busy here,’ said Anthony. ‘International treaties, overseas trade, that sort of thing. The gears of empire, the stuff that makes the world go round. Most Babel students end up here after graduation, as the pay is good and they’re always hiring. They do quite a lot of pro bono work here, too – the whole southwest quadrant is a team working on translating the Code Napoléon into other European languages.* But we charge a pretty penny for the rest. This is the floor that draws the largest income – except silver-working, of course.’

‘Where’s silver-working?’ Victoire asked.