Babel Tower

by A. S. Byatt

  “ ‘Just a bush, burning,’ said Claus.

  “ ‘All the nests,’ said Dol Throstle. ‘All the young birds will be burned.’

  “ ‘They may well be flown,’ said Artegall. ‘It is late in the year for them to be still in the nest.’

  “He remembered his huge leather books, with page after page of drawings of eggs, speckled and mottled, of nestlings and fledglings, of plumage and claws.

  “ ‘There’s something moving in there,’ said Dol Throstle.

  “The four travellers peered into the smoke. Deep in the heart of the burning bush something stirred and writhed in the heat.

  “ ‘It’s a bird burned naked,’ said Claus. ‘A very big bird.’

  “ ‘It’s not a bird,’ said Dol Throstle. ‘I can see its beaky mouth. It’s got teeth.’

  “ ‘It’s a snake, a nasty snake,’ said Mark.

  “ ‘We must rescue it,’ said Artegall.

  “ ‘It’s just a nasty snake,’ said Mark. ‘And badly burned I should think. Better leave it. Rescued snakes always bite you. I read stories too.’

  “The two boys, prince and page, glared at each other with brief anger. Then Artegall drew his sword and moved towards the bush. The heat flared in his face: he could smell his own hair burning. He cut away a few branches, in order to get nearer. He was afraid of trying to hook the snake: a sword was not the best implement for that purpose, and if he pushed wrongly the snake might fall from the branch it was on, into the roaring bonfire beneath it. Wrapping his cloak about his face, Artegall pushed nearer to the bush, and pushed his sword under the whole body of the snake, which, to his surprise, seemed to have strength and intelligence enough to coil and cling to the blade.

  “ ‘You’ve skewered it,’ said Mark.

  “ ‘Hold on!’ said Artegall to the snake.

  “He withdrew the sword and its burden, steel and sinuous flesh, carefully through the flames and smoke. His own hand was scorched, and his sleeve black.

  “ ‘It’s roasted,’ said Mark.

  “The snake was very large, and mostly blackish in colour, with a weaving pattern of gold spirals and coins visible under the smoke. Its belly was pale golden, and it had horned eyebrows above a diamond-shaped head. It lay limp for a little time, like a piece of rope, and then a ripple of life ran along its body and it coiled itself, painfully it appeared, raised its head, and opened two great eyes like carbuncles, fiery and burning with inner light.”

  • • •

  “What’s a carbuncle?” says Leo.

  “A big red jewel,” says Agatha. “A big fiery-red jewel. Sometimes also a painful bump on your skin, which can also be red and shiny.”

  “I don’t like snakes,” says Saskia.

  “You don’t know any,” says Agatha. “But most people don’t.” She is sitting on the sofa, with Leo on one side and Saskia on the other. Frederica sits down on the floor.

  “Go on,” she says.

  “And then the snake spoke. It spoke with a kind of hissing, sibilant voice, a voice like leaves rustling, and silk being pulled swiftly through a ring or a buckle, a voice dry and yet sharp and swift. It said, ‘I am the Horned Viper, the King of the snakes in this country, and I was thrown into that bush by an angry soldier who set it on fire. I have it in my power to make you able to hear the speech of the creatures that have speech: the birds, and the running and creeping things with legs, and the flying things, and the things that tunnel and burrow. But only you can hear, because only you held out your hand through the flames.’

  “ ‘I didn’t believe the creatures talked,’ said Artegall. ‘I have read it, of course—’

  “ ‘It wasn’t exactly talk, in the beginning. Once, we were all one thing, and could hear each other’s nature well enough if we listened, with no need for speech. And then men made words, and used words for mastery, and we also spoke out what once we had heard and known in our heads, and understood. There have always been a few Men who can hear, or remember in their blood, the old speech—’

  “ ‘And will everything speak to me?’ said Artegall.

  “ ‘Why are you talking to it?’ said Mark. ‘It can’t answer.’

  “ ‘No, of course not,’ said the snake. ‘Most things won’t want to go anywhere near you, and most will pretend to be dumb, even if you challenge them. We do not love you. But you may overhear things that are useful, even in the gossip of woodlice or the chatter of starlings.’

  “ ‘I should go mad,’ whispered Artegall to the King Snake, ‘if I could hear everything’s voice all the time.’

  “ ‘Well you won’t hear it, unless you listen,’ said the snake. ‘And then only if you are patient and persistent. Now I shall go.’ And suddenly, like the crack of a whip, he was away, across the heather, and pouring himself into a crack between two great granite boulders.

  “ ‘Did it speak to you?’ said Dol Throstle.

  “ ‘I thought so,’ said Artegall.

  “ ‘I’ve heard of that,’ said Dol Throstle. ‘I couldn’t hear it.’

  “ ‘I don’t believe it said anything,’ said Mark.”

  “Mark is very silly,” says Leo.

  “No, he’s not,” says Agatha. “You’ll see. He’s just a bit cross, at the moment, because he was only a page and a whipping-boy before they escaped, and after the escape he thought that Artegall would be helpless and useless because he’d never come out of his tower.… But he’ll change. People change.”

  “Good,” says Saskia. “I don’t like people who are always cross.”

  “What are you telling them?” says Frederica to Agatha.

  “It’s my story,” says Saskia.

  “I can hear it too,” says Leo. “It’s all right, Agatha says I can hear.”

  “You’re very welcome,” says Agatha.

  During the next weeks, Frederica joins the others at the story-telling sessions. She gets a frisson of ancient pleasure from watching Leo and Saskia lost in another world; from time to time she is lost herself, for the story is intricate, and Agatha tells it with conviction, inhabits it herself. It is the tale of a prince, Artegall, who wakes one morning in the sunlit tower overlooking a harbour, and finds that everyone has gone. He has spent his whole life in this tower, because his country is at war with neighbouring powers; the town is empty because an enemy fleet has landed. Artegall is rescued by a cook’s maid, Dol Throstle, a palace guard, Claus, and his page and whipping-boy, Mark, with whom he has practised soldierly arts, fencing, wrestling, archery. The four escape in a wagon, in disguise, and undertake a journey north, in search of Artegall’s dangerous uncle, Ragna, who is neither friend nor enemy. They are pursued by various forces. Artegall is believed by everyone to be useless and simply a parcel, but turns out, despite his incarceration, to be a skilled tracker of game and finder of paths, simply because a princely education has included endless large leather books on venery, woodcraft, geography, navigation and so on. Mark, the page, assumes that he will now assert the superiority denied him by Artegall’s position, but Artegall proves “I am someone, not just a prince.” As they go north, Agatha tells Frederica, the landscape becomes alive: creatures are met that are magical, or from other worlds, and speak other languages.

  She says, “I wrote it for bookish children. Like myself, like you. For children despised because they read. To say, you can learn to live from books. Not didactically. But the obvious thing would have been to make Mark, the ordinary boy, triumphant. Whereas I think princes and princesses are what we all are in our minds—to be a prince is to be ordinary in a fairytale—”

  “Isn’t it too old for Leo and Saskia?”

  “Would it have been too old for you?”

  “No. I’d have loved it. I’d have devoured it.”

  “Well, then. They listen. They ask about the words. I don’t know what some of the teachers on our committee would say.”

  Frederica tells Agatha about her difficulties with the dreadful catalogue. She has been writing a quite different
kind of fantasy tale, she tells Agatha, grimacing. Agatha looks darkly composed, and says it must be most disagreeable. She listens, she is sympathetic, but she offers no confidences in return. Frederica wonders from time to time who is Saskia’s father. Agatha has visitors: married couples, single friends from Oxford days, male and female, members of the committee, Civil Servants. She cooks elegant little dinners, to which Frederica is sometimes invited. These are the great days of the marathon home-cooked meal, the five-course delicious gourmandising, pâtés and prawns in cream, delicate soups and imaginative hors d’oeuvres, followed by estouffades and boeuf en croûte, by gigot and ducklings in cider, by stuffed carp and paupiettes of sole, followed by delicious salads of endive and oranges, watercress and cucumber, followed by home-made tarts and soufflés, followed by a rich cheese board and possibly devils on horseback. Agatha serves, always, an avocado salad, a roast chicken with garlic, a tart from a French patisserie. Three courses, one cooked. The conversation is civilised and quiet. Agatha appears to have no attachments. Frederica notices at one of these dinners that Alexander is interested in Agatha. She notices the warmth with which he looks forward to a Bristol school visit on which he will go with Agatha, whilst Frederica takes care of Saskia and Leo. She thinks: They could do well together. She wonders what she means by this, and decides that she supposes they both have no need of violence. She thinks of Alexander sharing a house with Agatha, quiet and civilised, never quarrelling, never, she supposes, trembling with passion of any kind. She thinks, she does not know Agatha well enough to make any such supposition about her, however well she knows Alexander, by now. Agatha does not want to be known, and some people, Frederica can see, find this quality rebarbative, call her, in their own minds, cold. She is composed, Frederica thinks. She does everything carefully, just so.

  She likes to live in that story.

  But she’s not retreating into her childhood, she’s grown up. She seems to me much more grown up than I imagine I seem to her.

  Frederica feels safe, telling things to Agatha. She trusts her completely, not to gossip, and also not to distort or seethe what she’s told, in her mind. Because Agatha never reciprocates with confidences, Frederica only tells her things in a slightly ironic, impersonal tone, even if they are very personal and hurtful things, such as how to describe having an axe thrown at her, even, what to say about discovering you have a sexually transmitted disease. Agatha listens, and makes one or two precise remarks about the etymology of “venereal.” You can confuse Venus the hot and hurtful with the vernal airs of spring, she says. They seem to go together because of Botticelli’s Venus landing in Paphos covered with flowers. But really it isn’t that. You must just find some exact words.

  “I could leave it out,” says Frederica.

  “You could,” says Agatha. “But it might be very important, as proof of something. What matters is what’s evidence. That is.”

  “It’s just the life of some bacteria, really. I feel it’s a sort of violation, but really it isn’t, really I don’t care what he did when I wasn’t there.”

  “You might, if you cared more altogether.”

  “I don’t think I care about anything,” says Frederica. “Except Leo.”

  “I expect you will,” says Agatha.

  Frederica looks at Agatha’s neatly drawn face, its clear, elegant proportions. She wants to ask What do you care about? And dare not.

  XI

  Arnold Begbie has converted Frederica’s pitiful narrative into a Petition for Divorce.

  In the High Court of Justice

  Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division

  (Divorce)

  To the High Court of Justice

  Dated the 1st of April 1965

  The petition of Frederica Reiver showeth:—

  (1) That on October 19th 1959 the petitioner, Frederica Reiver, then Frederica Potter, was lawfully married to Nigel Reiver (hereinafter called “the respondent”) at the Parish Church, Spessendborough, in the County of Herefordshire.

  (2) That after the said marriage the petitioner and the respondent lived and cohabited at divers addresses and finally at Bran House, Longbarrow, in the County of Herefordshire.

  (3) That there is one child of the petitioner and the respondent now living, namely Leo Alexander, born on the 14th of July 1960.

  (4) That the petitioner proposes the following arrangements for support, care and upbringing of the said Leo Alexander. He will live with the petitioner at 42 Hamelin Square, London SE11, a house shared with Miss Agatha Mond and her daughter, Saskia Felicity Mond. He will start school in September at the William Blake Primary School, Lebanon Grove, London SE11, in company with the said Saskia Felicity Mond; the petitioner intends to apply for maintenance as hereinafter set out.

  (5) That since the celebration of the said marriage the respondent has treated the petitioner with cruelty.

  (6) That the respondent, who is a man of violent temper, has frequently nagged, sworn at, shouted at and struck the petitioner.

  (7) That on September 28th 1964 the respondent attacked the petitioner with several blows to the head, ribs and back; that when she sought refuge in the bathroom, he turned off the mains-electricity to the house, in order to frighten her, and kept her imprisoned therein for several hours.

  (8) That on Sunday 4th October 1964 the respondent again attacked the petitioner in her bedroom, so that she ran out of the house in fear and hid in the stables. That when she came out of hiding, the respondent was waiting with an axe, with which he threatened her; that when she ran out into the fields he pursued her, abusing her verbally, and threw the axe, wounding her in the hip.

  (9) That before the specific acts of cruelty set out above the respondent treated the petitioner with neglect, spending most of his time away from home, in the company of business friends, beyond the reasonable requirements of the pursuit of his business. That he insisted that the petitioner and child remain at all times in Bran House. That he treated visiting friends of the petitioner with rudeness, and unreasonably refused ever to entertain them or to allow his wife to see them.

  (10) That there is reason to believe that the respondent has committed adultery, since the petitioner was diagnosed in November 1964 as having contracted a venereal disease. The petitioner has sworn an affidavit that the disease could have been communicated by no one but the respondent.

  (11) That the petitioner discovered a large collection of lewd and filthy publications in the respondent’s wardrobe.

  (12) That the petitioner has not in any way been accessory to or connived at or condoned the adultery hereinbefore alleged and that she has not condoned the cruelty hereinbefore alleged.

  (13) That this petition is not presented or prosecuted in collusion with the respondent.

  Frederica considers this document: another narrative of her marriage. She says, “He won’t like this.”

  Begbie smiles. “He cannot be expected to like it.”

  Frederica tries to cast an analytic look over it.

  “You haven’t written that he stopped me from working.”

  “I didn’t think it was wise.”

  “In fact that was the most cruel thing.” Frederica’s tone is small and dry. “It stopped me from being myself.”

  “Marriage is expected to have that effect,” says Begbie.

  “And you have written that I am asking for maintenance. I don’t want it. I can work. I want to keep myself.”

  “You are asking for custody of your son. And for care and control of him. The Court is not necessarily going to look favourably on you as a parent if you put too much stress on your desire to work, if you display too much personal ambition.”

  “If I were a man—”

  “You have a good chance of custody because you are a woman. Women are presumed to wish to stay at home and care for children. Your sex is your principal advantage, if I may put it so. Your husband, as you have described him, has all the other advantages, in the Court’s eyes—a beautiful home, severa
l other devoted women who know the boy intimately, the capacity to pay fees at a good boarding school. You will not appear in a good light if you put your own pride before your son’s comfort. And if your husband has treated you as cruelly as you claim he has, you must surely wish him to pay you the support to which you are entitled.”

  “It isn’t like that. I don’t want his money. I don’t want a quarrel and a battle. I want Leo, and to be myself, and to work.”

  “In the adversarial system, both of the British law, and of the marriage relation, I fear a battle is what you must be resigned to. May I ask if your husband has ever been violent towards his son?”

  “No. Not really. It counts as violence to Leo to hurt me, I think. It hurts Leo. But no.”

  “Only towards yourself?”

  “Everyone else worships him. Yes, only towards me.”

  “A pity. A pity.” He sits back in his chair, contemplating the disadvantages of Nigel Reiver’s lack of cruelty towards his son.

  He explains to Frederica that the petition will be served by post; that it will be filed in the Divorce Registry, and that the respondent must enter an appearance in the Divorce Registry if he intends either to contest the divorce, or to cross-petition. If he does not intend to defend the divorce, he must return an acknowledgement to the petitioner’s solicitor. He asks Frederica what she thinks her husband will do.

  Frederica tries to think. She imagines Nigel’s dark face, looking down on the foolscap pages. The blows, the axe, the lewd and filthy pictures. She imagines rage. Nigel’s face becomes that of a blue-black demon. She crosses her own arms defensively across her breasts.

  “He won’t let it pass. He’ll fight, and he’ll want Leo.”

  “Then we will fight. We will fight resourcefully. We shall need witnesses to the acts of cruelty—a Court does not always accept the unsupported evidence of an aggrieved spouse. Doctors, family, friends who saw the injuries? It would be a great advantage to be able to prove adultery, which we should be able to do if your account of your—infection—is accurate (and again supported by medical evidence). Are you sure you have no idea where your husband went on his journeys, whom he saw, what he did?”