The Memory of Babel

by Christelle Dabos

  Professor Wolf’s face creased into a nasty smile that uncovered his bottom teeth. “I didn’t do so. I didn’t contact Sir Henry. I denounced no one. Instead, I read the book with my hands.”

  The professor fell silent so abruptly that Ophelia and Octavio finally exchanged a look. He had turned very pale. His black side-whiskers were dripping with sweat. The closer he got to the denouement of his story, the more the muscles of his jaw seized up. His shaking spread to the wood of his neck brace and the springs of the bed.

  “Et puis?” Octavio encouraged him. “The book that you . . . purloined, was it as recent as you thought? Were you right?”

  His questions made Professor Wolf pull himself together. “No, young man. I was wrong. Wrong beyond all that I had imagined. E. G.’s books are a great deal older.”

  Professor Wolf slid a hand under the mattress of his camp bed. He pulled out a packet of cigarettes that he must have bought on the black market. It was seeing the lighter flame glowing in the half-light that made Ophelia aware that dusk had just descended on every pane of the greenhouse. All around there was total silence: not a puff of wind anymore, not an insect’s chirr.

  “E. G.’s books weren’t written after the Rupture,” Professor Wolf then declared, in a cloud of smoke. “They were written before it.”

  Ophelia felt a shiver coursing up her spine, like an electric current.

  “That’s impossible,” whispered Octavio.

  Professor Wolf’s cigarette crackled. His voice took on the same ghostly quality as the smoke he was exhaling. “That’s what I thought, too. I cut a piece off a page to submit it to one of my colleagues. I gave him no indication of the source of this sample. He confirmed my evaluation. The very composition of the paper resembles nothing we’re familiar with, its longevity defies the imagination. In other words,” Professor Wolf stressed, “E. G.’s tales never described the new world. They anticipated it.”

  Ophelia was seized by sudden dizziness, as if she’d just discovered that her chair was dangling over the void. The last time she had felt that way was when she had read Farouk’s Book.

  “The Rupture, the arks, the families, the world as we know it today . . . ” Professor Wolf elaborated, “it was all planned. And E. G. knew it.”

  “Impossible,” Octavio repeated. His eyes gleamed like those of an animal in the evening. The light was fading fast in the greenhouse. The silhouettes of the plants barely stood out against the indigo of the glass.

  The tiny glow of the cigarette disappeared when Professor Wolf stubbed it out. His utterances became telegram-like: “E. G.’s books are dangerous. My life was turned upside down because of them. Literally. From the top of my ladder.”

  “Who?” Ophelia pressed him. “Who pushed you?”

  Professor Wolf’s breathing quickened in the dark. “He didn’t push me. He didn’t need to do so. He simply appeared before me . . . appeared from nowhere. He didn’t need either to touch me or to speak to me. His mere presence made me . . . ”

  He went quiet. He didn’t need to say it. The terror was constricting his voice.

  “And do you know the most ironic part of the whole affair? It’s that I can no longer even remember what he looks like. I can see myself again going up the ladder. He was waiting for me at the top of the steps. And then . . . I don’t know . . . it was like falling in a nightmare . . . no . . . into the very substance of the nightmare. Not an image, not a sound. Just an abyss of absurdity. All the horror of nothingness.” Professor Wolf inhaled slowly, deeply, to steady his panicky breathing. “It was my landlady who found me, at the foot of the ladder, the following day. Broken in body and soul. The book I had stolen, I realized later that it was no longer in my home. I learnt afterwards that it had been put back on its shelf at the Memorial. No one seemed to have noticed anything over there. In Babel, people only see what they want to see.”

  The professor stood up, to a creaking of springs.

  “So there you have ‘my truth,’” he said, sounding disillusioned. “I have nothing else to tell you that wouldn’t be even more pitiful. When I learnt that there had been further attacks at the Memorial, I fled from my apartment and shut myself away here, like a coward. I was afraid, viscerally afraid, that he would return to pay me a visit. I don’t understand either who he is, or what he wants. The only thing I’m convinced of,” he spat out between his teeth, “is that you drew him here.”

  The words in her dream came crashing back to Ophelia: If you seek E. G., the other will find you.

  “I think I know what he wants,” she whispered. “Mademoiselle Silence threw all of E. G.’s tales into the incinerator, and that’s surely what caused her to be . . . um . . . terrified herself. All the tales,” she said more loudly, to stop Octavio and Professor Wolf, already opening their mouths, from interrupting, “apart from just one. The Era of Miracles. That book escaped destruction and disappeared from circulation. If your mysterious visitor is protecting E. G.’s oeuvre, as I believe he is, then that’s what he’s looking for. Maybe Mediana and Fearless got in his way unwittingly?”

  Ophelia’s question remained hanging in the air. The silence between the three of them was as heavy as the night that had finally descended. Octavio’s wide, staring eyes were now the only source of light in the greenhouse.

  Professor Wolf’s shadow eventually made a move. Ophelia jumped when he threw a basket onto her lap that smelt strongly of figs.

  “Eat and sleep while I keep watch. You won’t find a single birdtrain at this hour to take you back to your conservatoire. Be sure not to go near the bed,” he muttered as he left. “If anyone other than me lies on it, it will snap shut like an oyster.”

  THE SUMMONS

  Ophelia spent the night staring up at the stars through the dirty panes of glass. Occasionally, a red glow would appear inside the greenhouse when Professor Wolf dragged on a cigarette, telescope still pressed to eye. She had found his revelations rather disappointing. The Rupture and the foundation of the families having been planned in advance was a terrifying concept. But Ophelia still didn’t know who E. G. was, where The Era of Miracles was to be found, and whether, yes or no, it was the work Thorn was looking for. She was equally in the dark as to the identity of the killer who had traumatized so many people around her.

  It seemed to her that, once again, she had ended up with more questions than answers.

  Ophelia was just dozing off among the ferns when Octavio shook her and pointed at the sky: dawn was approaching. In turn, they splashed water on their faces in a dubious-smelling washroom. Their uniforms could have done with a visit to the laundry.

  Professor Wolf stubbed out his final cigarette without saying a word to them. He put on his black morning coat, removed the blunderbuss blocking the greenhouse door, and guided them across the roofs to the safety ladder they had climbed the previous day. “This is where we part,” he declared. “You go. I stay.”

  He shook the hand Octavio offered him half-heartedly, watched him climb down, and then held Ophelia back by the shoulder.

  “Do you trust him?”

  “Yes.”

  She was the first to be surprised by this spontaneous reply. Two days earlier, she considered Octavio an enemy. The professor’s fingers tightened around her shoulder, making his gloves creak.

  “He’s still a Son of Pollux, all the same. Everything we spoke of yesterday, he will repeat it to the authorities. If I were you, I wouldn’t trust people who manipulate the collective memory, especially now that you know what I know.”

  Ophelia nodded in agreement.

  “I have one request,” he continued. “You certainly owe me a favor, young lady.”

  She nodded again.

  “Do you know an assistant at the Memorial by the name of Blaise?”

  Another nod, but with less conviction this time. She knew she was indebted, but if the favor involved compromising
a friend, that was different. Professor Wolf, however, seemed to feel as awkward as she did. He had started to tug at what remained of his charred goatee, twisting and untwisting his mouth, as if he wanted to chew his words well before uttering them.

  “Could you . . . just tell him to watch his back?”

  Ophelia stared at him over the top of her glasses, and was suddenly struck by the obvious. The man in Blaise’s life was the one standing before her right now.

  “Does he know?” she murmured. “Is Blaise aware of what really happened to you?”

  The professor instantly frowned again. With his ill-combed hair, ill-shaven chops, and ill-humored expression, he was definitely more wild animal than respectable scientist.

  “No,” he growled. “If he finds out, he’ll want to help me, and if he tries to help me, he’ll cause trouble for himself. Believe me, he’s jinxed enough without that. Can I count on you? Put him on his guard, but not a word about me.”

  Ophelia gripped the security ladder and carefully placed her boots on the top rung. “I think Blaise would have preferred to hear it from your lips.”

  She went down the ladder with record-breaking slowness. Synchronizing her movements, both left and right, at various levels was, for her, fiendishly hard. She felt strange, setting foot again in the old courtyard. Only yesterday, this place was a maelstrom of dust. Today, the dawn was limpid as a lake. The air and the weather seemed quite still, as though nothing had ever happened.

  Ophelia found Octavio in the middle of the courtyard, busy searching the ground. She couldn’t have said where Fearless’s body had lain, but there remained not a trace of it. Pollux’s guard had cleaned the place up. Ophelia suddenly thought of Fearless’s son. Would he be appropriately informed of what had happened to his father? Did he have any other family?

  “Let’s go,” Octavio announced. “There’s nothing left to see here.”

  They went to the quayside, boarded the first gondola heading for the sea of clouds, and once in the city center, asked a whaxi to take them to the birdtrain landing stage. The sun was barely rising when their transport finally took off, but the benches were already packed with passengers.

  Sitting beside him, Ophelia observed Octavio out of the corner of her glasses. His fringe covered half his face, its shadow obscuring the wounds on brow and nose. His only visible eye was almost covered by an eyelid puffed with tiredness. His arms were crossed, defensively, and his thumb rubbed the apprentice-virtuoso stripe stitched to his sleeve. Ophelia sensed that something had changed in him.

  “What are you thinking of doing?” she whispered to him.

  Octavio continued to lean against the carriage window for a long while, his attention lost to the void, before whispering between his teeth: “Eh bien . . . I’ve hit a man, seen a murder, and witnessed more forbidden things in one day than in the rest of my life. I will tell the whole truth to my mother, after classes. She will know which decision is fairest. What do you think of that?”

  While saying that last sentence he had given Ophelia a questioning glance. It was then that she understood what had changed. This Visionary had always looked imperiously on the world, sure of the place he would have in it, and the role he would play in it. Now, quite simply, he had doubts.

  “What I think of it,” she replied, after some thought, “is that you should decide yourself what seems fairest to you.”

  Octavio stared at her with sudden intensity. “I wonder if I’m not starting, a little, to love you.”

  Ophelia took off her glasses to stop them turning crimson on her nose. She felt grubby and smelly; this was the last declaration she had expected!

  “Octavio . . . ”

  “Don’t bother to make some great speech,” he instantly cut in, sounding resigned. “Even if you were interested, there would be nothing between us, and not just due to the rule. Our lives are going to be complicated enough as it is. And,” he added, with a touch of irony, “you’re too blurry a person for me.”

  When Ophelia put her glasses back on, Octavio’s profile regained its clear contours, his dark skin and hair standing out against the light from the window. He was looking straight ahead, already focused on the future. She found herself admiring him then. He was almost the same size as her, but to her, he seemed much bigger because he had the courage to own his thoughts, feelings, and transgressions.

  “Too blurry, huh?” Ophelia thought, relaxing against the back of the bench. It was well deserved.

  They finally landed at the Good Family platform. Barely had they set off along the main path to the conservatoire when the watchtowers’ loudhailers bellowed in unison: “Apprentice Eulalia, Apprentice Octavio, you are urgently requested to go to Lady Helen’s office.”

  They exchanged tense looks. Spending the night away was a misdemeanor worthy of punishment, but the principal would never have made an apprentice miss a class, unless the circumstances were beyond her control.

  They crossed the maze of gardens and walkways, their silence underlined by the cicadas that suddenly stopped singing as they passed. When they walked along the Godchildren of Helen amphitheater, they spotted, through the high windows, a crowd of heads turned toward them. A summons was certainly more exciting than Monday’s radio lessons, and it might mean fewer competitors in the race for promotion.

  Ophelia held her breath on seeing an airship tethered near the entrance to the administrative building. A giant sun with a human face was painted in gold on its white surface.

  “They’ve beaten us to it,” Octavio remarked.

  After a series of colonnades and stairs, they arrived at the principal’s office. As always, semidarkness prevailed, and Ophelia took a moment to adjust to the abrupt change of light. Helen’s elephantine form was enthroned behind the marble desk; for once, all of her chair’s articulated arms were still. There were three other people in the room: a family guardsman with helmet under arm, a photographer with sticking-out ears, and Lady Septima. The last barely batted an eyelid when she saw her son’s injured face.

  “Knowledge serves peace,” Octavio and Ophelia both said in greeting, standing to attention.

  “Knowledge serves peace,” the guardsman responded. His beard was like a soaring wave, every bristle glistening like silver against his brown skin. Going by his leonine nose, and its forceful inhaling, he was an Olfactory.

  “I present my utmost apologies in advance to Lady Septima’s son for the inconvenience caused by this summons. I know the grade-awarding ceremony is imminent, you hardly want any interruption to your lessons.”

  “I see,” Ophelia thought. “For me, it’s not important.” At least the tone was set.

  “Here, Octavio is not my son, but one apprentice among others,” Lady Septima stated, with indifference. “Just as here, I am not his mother, but Sir Pollux’s official representative. Question him as your duty demands.”

  The guardsman assented and, without further ado, deposited an object that tinkled on the marble of the desk. “Apprentice Octavio, does this belong to you?”

  It was the gold chain that Fearless had torn off. Ophelia felt her stomach contract on noticing that a small piece of flesh remained attached at one end.

  “It does belong to me, monsieur,” Octavio confirmed.

  “We found it yesterday, in the courtyard of a building in a neighborhood of the powerless, close to the body of an agitator whom our forces have been actively pursuing for years. Is it that man who did that to you?” the guardsman asked, indicating Octavio’s injuries.

  “It is indeed, monsieur, but I’m not responsible for his death.”

  The guardsman’s face broke into a kindly smile that made his silvery moustache shoot up on both sides. “No one is. Don’t worry, my lord, the cause of death isn’t in question.”

  Ophelia wondered what more he needed. She recalled the bulging eyes, gaping mouth, convulsed body. In Babel, pe
ople only see what they want to see. Professor Wolf was right.

  She considered Helen’s gigantic body on the other side of the desk, motionless in its chair, long, spiderlike fingers pressed up against each other. Her optical appliance was directed at her visitors like opera glasses, but she didn’t seem inclined to relinquish her role of spectator.

  “What we wish to establish,” the guardsman continued, “is whether Fearless-and-Almost-Blameless was well and truly guilty of violence. It’s sad to say, but that troublemaker enjoyed a popularity—only relative, certainly—among the weakest and most easily influenced elements in our city. We will not allow his death to turn him into a heroic figure,” he grunted, nostrils flaring with indignation.

  A bright flash of light cut through the gloom of the office. The photographer with sticking-out ears had just taken a headshot of Octavio. Ophelia didn’t doubt for a second that, tomorrow, the Official Journal would publish a close-up of his injuries.

  “That will be all,” the guardsman said, donning his golden helmet. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

  “I, too, was guilty of violence.”

  Octavio’s statement made time in the office stop still. Lady Septima’s impassive eyelids allowed a spark to filter through them. The photographer froze while putting away his equipment. Helen remained immovable as a mountain.

  Octavio himself put on a calm front. Standing just behind him, Ophelia saw that he was clasping his hands behind his back to stop them shaking. She almost gave in to the impulse of telling all, but, with a sidelong glance, he dissuaded her. This was a battle he had to fight alone.

  “You must have found bruises on the body,” he insisted. “They’re the marks of the blows I dealt him.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, the family guardsman consulted Lady Septima with a glance, and then wound his moustache around his index finger. “That is regrettable, en effet. I do not, however, consider that detail of sufficient relevance to feature in my report. I bid you an excellent day.”