Babel : Or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution (9780063021440)

He spent the first few days of the voyage sleeping. He was still recuperating; Mrs Piper insisted he take daily walks above deck for his health, but initially he could manage only a few minutes at a time before he had to lie down. He was fortunate to be spared the nausea of seasickness; a childhood along docks and rivers had habituated his senses to the roiling instability. When he felt strong enough to spend whole afternoons above deck, he loved sitting by the railings, watching the ceaseless waves changing colour with the sky, feeling the ocean spray on his face.

Occasionally Professor Lovell would chat with him as they paced the deck together. Robin learned quickly that the professor was a precise and reticent man. He offered up information when he thought Robin needed it, but otherwise, he was happy to let questions lie.

He told Robin they would reside in his estate in Hampstead when they reached England. He did not say whether he had family at that estate. He confirmed that he had paid Miss Betty all those years, but did not explain why. He intimated that he’d known Robin’s mother, which was how he’d known Robin’s address, but he did not elaborate on the nature of their relationship or how they’d met. The only time he acknowledged their prior acquaintance was when he asked Robin how his family came to live in that riverside shack.

‘They were a well-off merchant family when I knew them,’ he said. ‘Had an estate in Peking before they moved south. What was it, gambling? I suppose it was the brother, wasn’t it?’

Months ago Robin would have spat at anyone for speaking so cruelly about his family. But here, alone in the middle of the ocean with no relatives and nothing to his name, he could not summon the ire. He had no fire left in him. He was only scared, and so very tired.

In any case, all this accorded with what Robin had been told of his family’s previous wealth, which had been squandered completely in the years after his birth. His mother had complained about it bitterly and often. Robin was fuzzy on the details, but the story involved what so many tales of decline in Qing dynasty China did: an aging patriarch, a profligate son, malicious and manipulative friends, and a helpless daughter whom, for some mysterious reason, no one would marry. Once, he’d been told, he’d slept in a lacquered crib. Once, they’d enjoyed a dozen servants and a chef who cooked rare delicacies imported from northern markets. Once, they’d lived in an estate that could have housed five families, with peacocks roaming about the yard. But all Robin had ever known was the little house on the river.

‘My mother said that my uncle lost all their money at the opium houses,’ Robin told him. ‘Debtors seized their estate, and we had to move. Then my uncle went missing when I was three, and it was just us and my aunts and grandparents. And Miss Betty.’

Professor Lovell made a noncommittal hum of sympathy. ‘That’s too bad.’

Apart from these talks, the professor spent most of the day holed up in his cabin. They saw him only semi-regularly in the mess for dinners; more often Mrs Piper had to fill a plate with hardtack and dried pork and take it to his room.

‘He’s working on his translations,’ Mrs Piper told Robin. ‘He’s always picking up scrolls and old books on these trips, you see, and he likes to get a head start on rendering them into English before he gets back to London. They keep him so busy there – he’s a very important man, a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, you know – and he says sea voyages are the only time he gets any peace and quiet. Isn’t that funny. He bought some nice rhyming dictionaries in Macau – lovely things, though he won’t let me touch them, the pages are so fragile.’

Robin was startled to hear that they’d been to Macau. He had not been aware of any Macau trip; naively, he’d imagined he was the only reason why Professor Lovell had come to China at all. ‘How long were you there? In Macau, I mean.’

‘Oh, two weeks and some change. It would have been just two, but we were held up at customs. They don’t like letting foreign women onto the mainland – I had to dress up and pretend to be the professor’s uncle, can you imagine!’

Two weeks.

Two weeks ago, Robin’s mother was still alive.

‘Are you all right, dear?’ Mrs Piper ruffled his hair. ‘You look pale.’

Robin nodded, and swallowed down the words he knew he could not say.

He had no right to be resentful. Professor Lovell had promised him everything, and owed him nothing. Robin did not yet fully understand the rules of this world he was about to enter, but he understood the necessity of gratitude. Of deference. One did not spite one’s saviours.

‘Do you want me to take this plate down to the professor?’ he asked.

‘Thank you, dear. That’s very sweet of you. Come and meet me above deck afterwards and we’ll watch the sun go down.’