The Memory of Babel

by Christelle Dabos

  Once everyone had left her laboratory, Lady Septima closed the door and turned to Ophelia with stonelike rigidity. “Apprentice Eulalia, are you bored among us?”

  Ophelia tensed. This woman made her feel uncomfortable. And yet she was very calm, and almost as small as her.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Lady Septima looked at her. No, look was the wrong verb for such eyes. She dissected her. Penetrating the loose lens of Ophelia’s glasses, she calculated the dilation of her pupils; probed inside her veins; measured her blood-flow rate; delved into the intimate chemistry of her organs; examined, one by one, every molecule of her body.

  “You remained idle for the entire duration of my class.”

  “Because you asked me to touch nothing.” Ophelia felt sweat soaking her gloves. She had only just noticed, now that they were standing close to one another, the emblem that Lady Septima wore as a clasp on her cape. A sun with the word “LUX” engraved within it.

  This woman, on whom Ophelia would depend from now on, was a sentinel of God.

  Lady Septima pulled on a glove as golden as her uniform. Delicately, between thumb and index finger, she picked up the minuscule sample that had remained at Ophelia’s place on the bench. Her red eyes examined it in the light.

  “Let’s see . . . This metal is composed of more than three-quarters tin, just under a quarter lead, and a tiny part copper,” she murmured. “This alloy was created . . . eh bien . . . three centuries ago, maybe even four. A variant of bronze, but with an entirely distinctive makeup. That is reserved for the manufacture of organ pipes.”

  Ophelia felt, much despite herself, a rare admiration. Sons and Daughters of Pollux were known for their highly developed senses, but Lady Septima would have made the best microscope on Anima blanch. So this was what Visionaries were really capable of.

  “Why do you think I left this within your reach?” the teacher asked, returning the fragment to its velvet pad

  It was a test, Ophelia realized. And she’d failed it.

  “You could have tried to impress me, to show me what your reader’s hands are capable of,” Lady Septima persisted, her tone measured. “You did nothing of the sort. Either you lack daring, or you lack curiosity. What, in your opinion, is the foremost quality of a Forerunner?”

  Ophelia almost retorted that she didn’t think she lacked either daring or curiosity, in her own way, but refrained at the last second. Become a FORERUNNER in the city’s service! the recruitment poster had proclaimed. It was now that the true test was taking place. “Obedience.”

  Lady Septima broke into a fleeting smile of approval. How could a woman with such fire in her eyes send such shivers down one’s spine?

  “That, indeed, is the correct answer, but I would like to be sure of its sincerity. Take your place on this,” she requested, pulling a stool in front of the stained-glass window.

  As Ophelia was sitting on it, Lady Septima made a sign for her to stop. “Not like that, apprentice. Standing.”

  With great stiffness, Ophelia hoisted herself, awkwardly, up on to the stool.

  “Perfect,” Lady Septima said, appreciatively. “You will remain like that until you receive permission to leave.”

  “And my apprenticeship?”

  “During your period of probation, your every day will be broken down into four periods: theory, practical, training, and chores. Theory and practical are done for today. So consider this little exercise as training.”

  With these words, Lady Septima pulled the cords of the fans to stop them and closed the door behind her. Ophelia found herself alone among the test tubes and the scales, in the dazzling light of the rose window. Without the fans, the laboratory gradually turned into a furnace. Having already played at being a servant, Ophelia knew it was hard to remain standing still for a lengthy period, but this was the first time she was trying it on a stool: it was impossible for her to stretch her legs, impossible to change position, impossible to shift her body weight more to one side than to the other. All her muscles were straining to maintain her balance, but they were aching due to the night without a mattress and the fall on the stairs. The numbness spread, like slow petrifaction, from her calves up to her hips, from her lower back up to her shoulders. Ophelia focused on the rose window’s colors sliding across the precious wood of the laboratory, as the sun gradually moved in the sky. Sweat was trickling under her trousers and she felt the increasingly urgent need to go to the toilet.

  She fell backwards onto the floor. The stool, overcome by the exasperation of her Animism, had suddenly launched into a tap-dancing number.

  As Ophelia was searching for the lens from her glasses, which, sneakily, had taken advantage of the situation to escape again, anger exploded inside her. A kid! Even far from home, even after all these years, she was still, and forever, being treated like a kid.

  She watched the stool galloping around the laboratory, and suddenly thought back to the periscope in the amphitheater, to the words that it was forbidden to utter, to that collective memory locked away in the Secretarium. It wasn’t she who was the kid. It was the whole of humanity. They were all, absolutely all, kept in a state of infantilism by God and his Guardians.

  “I’ve been Berenilde’s valet, Farouk’s plaything, and Baron Melchior’s prey,” she repeated to herself, once she’d halted the stool and got back on to it. “I’m not going to give Lady Septima any excuse to distance me from my objective.”

  The sun was fading from the laboratory when the door was at last reopened. Ophelia blinked several times to make the beads of sweat clinging to her eyelashes fall. Elizabeth was standing right in front of her, expressionless behind her constellation of freckles.

  “So, your first day? Still determined to remain with us, Apprentice Eulalia?”

  “Still.” Ophelia’s voice was croaky due to thirst.

  “As the person in charge of the second division of the company of Forerunners, I release you from that stool.”

  The phrase was so pompous, Ophelia thought she was making fun of her. So she was astonished when she offered her hand to help her get down, and then gave her a siphon of water, brought specially for her.

  “That was the good news,” Elizabeth said, watching her drink and cough all at once. “The bad news is that you’ve incurred a reprimand for having mislaid a mattress and a uniform. You will get twice the chores of the others to repay your debt.”

  “They were mislaid for me.”

  Elizabeth merely blinked slowly. “It’s tradition. You’ll have to be more vigilant. By the way, I have a telegram for you.”

  Ophelia’s heart missed a beat. She impatiently unfolded the little blue paper Elizabeth had just handed to her.

  CONGRATULATIONS. AMBROSE.

  She turned the telegram over. That was it. The voluble, inexhaustible Ambrose had no other message for her. Ophelia felt something tighten inside her. Had she just lost the only friend she’d made on Babel?

  “I seem to be going from blunder to blunder.” Her avowal had slipped out almost despite herself, while she was putting the stool back in its place. For a moment, she feared it would lead to a lot of indiscreet questions, but Elizabeth asked not one. She had already got her notebook out again to scribble code in it.

  “The only real mistake is that which one doesn’t remedy.”

  As Elizabeth concentrated on her notebook, Ophelia studied her waxen face at length. As a character, she was hard to figure out, but what she had just said to her was the most reassuring thing she had heard all day.

  “Elizabeth?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What happened at the Memorial today?”

  “Oh, that?” Elizabeth said, crossing out another lot of code. “Mademoiselle Silence died.”

  Ophelia’s eyebrows shot up. Mademoiselle Silence? That name rang a bell . . . Wasn’t it that of the Memorialist wit
h the sensitive ears? That tyrannical woman who wanted to search her bag?

  “Her body was found this morning in the Memorial,” continued Elizabeth.”When I arrived there, like every morning, to work on my database, I was immediately asked to return to the conservatoire. They told me that it was an unfortunate accident, and that poor Mademoiselle Silence had fallen from a library ladder.”

  “Fallen from a ladder,” repeated Ophelia, who had expected something a little more scandalous. “That’s really unlucky.”

  Elizabeth concurred, distractedly, chewing the end of her pencil. “Yes, that’s what Mademoiselle Silence must have thought just before dying. I barely had time to see her body. Her face, mainly. I didn’t think a fall could leave you with an expression like that.”

  “What expression?” murmured Ophelia.

  Elizabeth lifted her lampshade eyelids, revealing eyes as inscrutable as the codes in her notebook. “An expression of abject terror.”

  Until that moment, Ophelia had convinced herself that nothing she would experience here would remind her of the Pole. It was now clear to her that she had underestimated Babel.

  JOURNEY

  Mommy had put her to bed even earlier than usual. Like every evening, she had taken her temperature, twice; given her a drink after first tasting the water; combed her long, white hair; and tucked her in, checking that she wasn’t cold. Like every evening, she had observed her for a long time from the bedroom door, hesitant yet smiling, before resolving to pull the door to and withdraw, with a rustle of dress.

  And now, Victoria was staring up at the ceiling.

  Mommy hadn’t closed the door—she never closed the door, regularly peeping into the bedroom to reassure herself that all was well—and distant voices were rising from the drawing room. The house was often filled with silence, sometimes with music, almost never with voices.

  Victoria had no desire to sleep at all; she wanted to be with the voices. Her sheets were tucked so tight, she could barely wriggle her toes. If she were an ordinary little girl, she would have struggled crossly, she would have called her mother, screaming and crying, but Victoria wasn’t ordinary.

  Victoria didn’t speak. Ever.

  Victoria didn’t walk. Ever.

  That is to say, the Other-Victoria. The true Victoria got out of bed, put her feet on the ground, and went over to the almost-closed door.

  She hesitated and, as Mommy had done earlier, she looked back toward the bed. A little girl was lying in it, eyes staring up at the ceiling. Her face, lips, and hair were as white as the pillowcase. Victoria knew that it was her in the bed, and out of it. She felt neither fear nor surprise at that. Rather, she felt at fault, a bit like when she tried to get down from her chair on her own, and Mommy darted toward her looking terrified.

  Victoria didn’t hesitate for long; the call of the journey was always strongest.

  She slipped into the corridor. She felt so light, so much lighter than the Other-Victoria! As light as in the warm bathwater. And just as when she ducked her head under the water, prompting panicked cries from Mommy, she saw objects differently: their forms had become blurred, their colors smudged. Victoria could neither grab them nor move them. She looked at a large wall mirror that didn’t return her reflection; its surface resembled a whirlpool, just like when Mommy pulled the plug to empty the bath.

  Victoria bounced on each step of the big staircase, like a soap bubble, drawn by the voices in the drawing room. Just as she was crossing the hall, she heard someone else behind the front door, which was still open.

  She took a quick look outside.

  At first she saw only the autumnal trees, stirred by the wind. It was raining. It rained nearly every day, and even though that rain didn’t wet you, Victoria still preferred the sun. Her eyes followed the flight of a bird in the sky, but she knew it wasn’t a real one. Nothing was really real outside the house. Mommy had told her so. Victoria wondered what real rain, real trees, and real birds might look like. Godfather hadn’t taken her to see them, and she’d never dared leave the house during her journeys.

  Victoria suddenly saw a hole. An enormous hole right in the middle of the garden. Here, there was neither grass nor tree nor rain. There was nothing but a dusty, old wooden floor. Right opposite, a couple were sitting on the steps. The Funny-Eyed-Lady and the Big-Ginger-Fellow. Godfather’s friends.

  Neither of them noticed Victoria as she approached. They were talking, but even when she got as close as possible, their voices remained distant and distorted.

  “He’s taking his time, that slowcoach!” moaned the Funny-Eyed-Lady. “LandmArk won’t find itself, and I can’t stand this manor. It’s swarming with illusions—I don’t know where to look anymore.” She spat out in the direction of the big hole.

  Victoria stepped back. Once, she had walked in front of the Funny-Eyed-Lady during a journey; doing so had instantly returned her to the position of the Other-Victoria, in bed. Although the Funny-Eyed-Lady couldn’t see her, she was very peculiar.

  The Big-Ginger-Fellow rested his elbows on the step behind his back. Victoria thought his smile strangely greedy, as if he suddenly wanted to gobble up the Funny-Eyed-Lady. “As far as I’m concerned, I know exactly where to look.”

  The Funny-Eyed-Lady tilted her cap, and the hole disappeared from the garden just as her face did. “I’m really serious, Foster. Since Mother Hildegarde died, I don’t feel I belong here anymore. Neither at Citaceleste nor anywhere else on the Pole. That the toffs hate me, I can handle—I feel the same about them. But to see all our old mates groveling like grubs before me, it makes me sick. The cowards! They want to call a strike, to challenge, to demand . . . and then they kowtow to the first aristo they encounter. How d’you think we’re going to overthrow God if we can’t be bothered to take the revolution to a few marquises? So, what’s Mr. Unionist got to say about it? You do realize, just being seen with me makes you be seen as a traitor?”

  The Big-Ginger-Fellow placed his hand on the Funny-Eyed-

  Lady’s head and drew it close to him. “I say that the first to say one word against my boss, just one, I’ll smash his teeth in. And I’m really serious, too, Gail.”

  The Funny-Eyed-Lady said nothing more, but Victoria glimpsed a smile under the peak of her cap. She’d never seen Father and Mommy behave like this, and that thought produced a sort of pain in her other body, the one that had stayed in the bed.

  She turned around and then noticed Twit on the banister. He was staring at her with his big yellow eyes. Victoria had never stroked Twit—Mommy thought cats far too dangerous—but she’d always wanted to. As she raised a timid hand toward him, Twit spat. He sped away so fast that the Big-Ginger-Fellow and the Funny-Eyed-Lady both got a start.

  Victoria ran back into the house, sure she’d made an unforgiveable mistake. For a moment, she was tempted to go back to being the Other-Victoria, in bed and sleeping, as Mommy had told her to, but as soon as she heard the harp, she forgot her fright.

  Once again, the call of the journey was strongest.

  She went into the drawing room. She slowed down on seeing Great-Godmother pressed to a window, arms crossed and frowning, looking up at the clouds. Victoria didn’t yet know her well. Her stern looks and yellow skin intimidated her.

  Luckily, Mommy was there. She was sitting beside the harp and her lovely tattooed hands flew from one string to another, like the fake birds in the garden. Victoria went closer to cuddle her, but Mommy didn’t see her. Her music was as hazy as her body was.

  To Victoria’s delight, Godfather was there, too, sprawled across an armchair. He was flicking through some envelopes as if they were a pack of cards. “More and more and more marriage proposals! Not yet three years old, and already she’s considered the finest match on the Pole. We’ll turn them all down, of course?”

  His voice was distorted, too, and Victoria had to strain to hear it properly. Mommy con
tinued to play the harp without replying to him.

  “You’re never as fine a musician as when you’re furious with me,” Godfather added, his smile as wide as the split in his hat. “I returned her to you safe and sound, didn’t I? She remained within the Compass Rose. I know you’re not at all keen on the Citaceleste, but you can’t keep your daughter locked away in this manor house forever. Believe me, I tried that approach with my ex-sisters, and they’ve become more outrageous in two years than I’ve been for my entire life.”

  Victoria didn’t know what Godfather was talking about—too many complicated words in one go—but she didn’t care. He had messy hair, cheeks all golden with beard, and held himself appallingly on his chair. She loved him to bits.

  “Come now, Berenilde,” he insisted, flapping the envelopes as he would a fan. “I’ll soon be embarking once more on my journey, let’s not part on bad terms.”

  Mommy burst into laughter as melodious as her harp. “Your journey? Roaming from Compass Rose to Compass Rose in search of an ark you know to be out of your reach? What you call a journey, I, personally, call an escape.”

  Godfather’s smile widened. Victoria climbed the chair to touch his ill-shaven skin and prickle her fingers, but to her great disappointment, she felt nothing at all. “Oh, I’m starting to understand. It’s not my escapade with your daughter for which you reproach me, is it? What you can’t accept is that I returned without our little Madame Thorn.”

  Mommy’s hands flew faster and faster across the strings, but Victoria sensed something was wrong. Mommy had told her once, while tucking her up in bed, that she possessed big, hidden nails that she wouldn’t hesitate for a second to use if someone tried to harm them. Victoria had sometimes almost felt them, those nails, when Mommy was cross.

  She could see them now.