And they never would say it out loud. It hurt too much to consider the truth. It was so much easier to pretend; to keep spinning the fantasy for as long as they could.
‘Well,’ Robin said lamely, ‘good night.’
Ramy nodded and, without speaking, closed his door.
Chapter Four
So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.
Genesis 11:8–9, Revised Standard Version
Sleep felt impossible. Robin kept seeing the face of his doppelgänger floating in the dark. Had he, fatigued and rattled, imagined the whole thing? But the streetlamps had shone so brightly, and his twin’s features – his fear, his panic – were so sharply etched into his memory. He knew it was not a projection. It had not quite felt like looking into a mirror, where all his features were reflected backwards, a false representation of what the world saw, but a gut recognition of sameness. Whatever was in that man’s face was in his as well.
Was that why he had helped him? Some instinctive sympathy?
He was only beginning to fathom the weight of his actions. He’d stolen from the university. Was it a test? Stranger rituals were practised at Oxford. Had he passed or failed? Or would constables come banging on his door the next morning and ask him to leave?
But I can’t be sent down, he thought. I’ve only just got here. Suddenly the delights of Oxford – the warmth of his bed, the smell of new books and new clothes – made him squirm in discomfort, for now all he could think about was how soon he might lose it all. He tossed and turned in sweaty sheets, conjuring up more and more detailed visions of how the morning might go – how the constables would pull him from his bed, how they’d shackle his wrists and drag him to the gaol, how Professor Lovell would sternly ask Robin never to contact him or Mrs Piper again.
At last he fell asleep from exhaustion. He woke to a persistent tapping at his door.
‘What are you doing?’ Ramy demanded. ‘You haven’t even washed?’
Robin blinked at him. ‘What’s going on?’
‘It’s Monday morning, you dolt.’ Ramy was already dressed in his black gown, cap in hand. ‘We’re due at the tower in twenty minutes.’
They made it in time, but barely; they were half running down the greens of the quadrangle to the Institute, gowns flapping in the wind, when the bells rang for nine.
Two slim youths awaited them on the green – the other half of their cohort, Robin assumed. One was white; the other was Black.
‘Hello,’ said the white one as they approached. ‘You’re late.’
Robin gaped at her, trying to catch his breath. ‘You’re a girl.’
This was a shock. Robin and Ramy had both grown up in sterile, isolated environments, kept far away from girls their own age. The feminine was an idea that existed in theory, the stuff of novels or a rare phenomenon to be glimpsed from across the street. The best description Robin knew of women came from a treatise he’d once flipped through by a Mrs Sarah Ellis,* which labelled girls ‘gentle, inoffensive, delicate, and passively amiable’. As far as Robin was concerned, girls were mysterious subjects imbued not with a rich inner life but with qualities that made them otherworldly, inscrutable, and possibly not human at all.
‘Sorry – I mean, hello,’ he managed. ‘I didn’t mean to – anyhow.’
Ramy was less subtle. ‘Why are you girls?’
The white girl gave him a look of such withering scorn that Robin wilted on Ramy’s behalf.
‘Well,’ she drawled, ‘I suppose we decided to be girls because being boys seems to require giving up half your brain cells.’
‘The university has asked us to dress like this so as to not upset or distract the young gentlemen,’ the Black girl explained. Her English carried a faint accent, which Robin thought resembled French, though he wasn’t sure. She shook her left leg at him, displaying trousers so crisp and stiff they looked like they’d been purchased yesterday. ‘Not every faculty is as liberal as the Translation Institute, you see.’
‘Is it uncomfortable?’ Robin asked, trying valiantly to prove his own lack of prejudice. ‘Wearing trousers, I mean?’
‘It’s not, in fact, since we have two legs and not fish tails.’ She extended her hand to him. ‘Victoire Desgraves.’
He shook it. ‘Robin Swift.’
She arched an eyebrow. ‘Swift? But surely—’
‘Letitia Price,’ the white girl interjected. ‘Letty, if you like. And you?’
‘Ramiz.’ Ramy halfway extended his hand, as if unsure whether he wanted to touch the girls or not. Letty decided for him and shook it; Ramy winced in discomfort. ‘Ramiz Mirza. Ramy to friends.’
‘Hello, Ramiz.’ Letty glanced around. ‘So we’re the whole cohort, then.’
Victoire gave a little sigh. ‘Ce sont des idiots,’ she said to Letty.
‘Je suis tout à fait d’accord,’ Letty murmured back.
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.’