The Ferry of Tongues

Inquirer heard the river Babel a good while before he saw it.

He came down out of the hills on the second morning after the House of the Copyists, and as the road dropped through a wood of tall pines a sound came up to meet him. He thought at first it was wind, or a crowd somewhere. It was a huge, low, endless murmur, like a thousand people all talking at once in the next room. When he came out of the trees onto the bank he understood. The river was talking.

It was enormously wide, a mile at least, brown and fast and full of eddies, and every eddy muttered. Every ripple that slapped the bank said something, in a language he didn’t know. He knelt and put his ear down close to the water. One swirl gave him something harsh and old, full of sounds made far back in the throat. Another was lighter and quicker, with long words that seemed to fold over each other. A third sounded like the first, only softer. None of it meant a thing to him.

“Hebrew,” said a voice behind him. “And Greek. That one’s Aramaic. It’s the Book’s own speech, coming down from the hills where it was first spoken. You’ll learn to hear it, if you cross.”

He turned round. A boy of ten or eleven was sitting on an upturned crate by the path with a basket of apples. “Ferry, sir? You’ll want one. Nobody swims the Babel. Three landings, three ferrymen, down that way.” He pointed along the bank. “Choose careful, my mum says. Apple?”

Inquirer bought an apple and went on down the bank.

There were three wooden jetties sticking out into the stream a few hundred yards apart, each with a boat tied up, a ferryman, and a sign.

The first boat was a huge flat barge, very broad and very heavy, built of thick square timbers all exactly the same size, laid edge to edge in perfect rows. It had no sail and no rudder. It was pulled across on a rope strung from bank to bank and would go along the line of that rope and nowhere else. The sign on its jetty said:

Wooden-Literal’S Ferry. Every Word Carried. Nothing Added. Nothing Lost. Word For Word Since Time Began.

The ferryman was a tall, square, solemn man in a grey coat buttoned to the chin, standing at the end of his jetty like a post.

The second boat was its opposite in every way: a slim pleasure-barge in bright paint, with a striped awning and cushions and a little band playing in the stern. It had a big bellying sail and a sharp prow and was obviously built to go fast. Its sign said:

Loose-Paraphrase’S Express. Across In Minutes! The Meaning Without The Baggage! You’Ll Understand It Like Never Before!

The ferryman, a lively curly-haired man in a yellow waistcoat, was shouting to everyone on the bank and waving his hat.

The third was a plain wooden rowing-boat, bigger than it looked, well tarred and well looked after, with a short mast and a patched brown sail furled at the foot of it. It had a rudder and two long oars with a word carved in each blade, Accuracy on one and Clarity on the other. There was no sign on that jetty at all. Its ferryman was a stocky, weather-beaten woman in middle life, sitting in the sun mending a net. She wasn’t calling to anybody.

Inquirer stood at the top of the three jetties for some time.

Loose-Paraphrase spotted him and came bounding up the bank. “A pilgrim, a pilgrim! Welcome, friend! For the far side? Course you are. Hop on the Express and we’ll have you over before you’ve finished that apple.” He glanced at the two heavy Books under Inquirer’s arm and laughed. “Oh, my dear chap, you’ve brought the originals. All that Hebrew and Greek. You won’t need them. Leave them here, I’ll mind them for you. On my boat you get the meaning, fresh, in plain modern talk, none of that musty old wording. Look here!”

He whipped a little pamphlet out of his waistcoat and opened it. “Sermon on the Mount, my version. ‘You’re blessed when you feel good about who you are. That’s when you know you’ve got the kingdom.’ Isn’t that clearer? Isn’t that you?”

Inquirer took the pamphlet. Then he opened the old black-boarded Book and found the place. Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“But that’s the opposite,” he said. “Poor in spirit means people who know they’ve got nothing. Not people who feel good about themselves.”

“Oh, means,” said Loose-Paraphrase, with a wave. “Who can really say what it means? I give you what it says to us today. That’s what translation is, friend. Carrying the feeling over.”

Then Inquirer noticed who was sitting under the striped awning of the Express, sipping something from a glass: a long thin man in a scholar’s cap, turning a quill in his fingers. Mr. Felt-Meaning lifted his glass to him and smiled.

That settled the Express.

He went down to the first jetty instead. If Loose-Paraphrase was a cousin of Mine-Own-Meaning, he reasoned, then the safest boat must be the one least like it. Wooden-Literal looked at him without any expression whatsoever.

“You wish to cross.” It wasn’t a question.

“I do. Is it true you carry every word and add nothing?”

“Every word. In its place. In its order. One Hebrew word to one plank. One Greek word to one plank. Nothing changed. I do not interpret. I carry. Interpretation is the sin of the man in the yellow waistcoat.”

That sounded very sound to Inquirer, and very honest. He had just come from a house full of people working to put every word back in its place, and here was a ferryman who would take them across untouched.

He glanced at the third jetty. The woman with the net had looked up and was watching him. She didn’t say anything, only lifted her eyebrows a fraction, as if to say, You’re sure, are you?

He wasn’t entirely sure. But the barge did look safe, so broad and solid, with the rope holding it steady. He stepped aboard.

It went well enough at first. Wooden-Literal hauled on the rope hand over hand and the barge crept out from the bank, and the murmur of the river grew louder all round them. Inquirer sat down on one of the square planks and watched the far side come slowly closer.

Then he looked down at the plank under him and saw there was a word burned into it. There was one in the next plank too, and the next. Every plank in the barge was a word, laid in order, so that the whole deck made a sentence. He got up and walked along it, reading.

It was a line from the Psalms, brought over from the Hebrew word by word:

And-He-Lifted-Up Horn To-His-People.

He frowned. “What does that mean? God gave His people a horn? A trumpet?”

“It means what it says.” Wooden-Literal kept hauling. “A horn was lifted up. I do not interpret.”

Inquirer went on to another sentence, from the prophets.

And-Burned Nose-Of-Him.

“Whose nose burned? Was there a fire?”

“It says what it says.”

Another one, from Paul:

If Any Bowels And Mercies.

“Bowels? What have bowels got to do with mercy?”

Wooden-Literal hauled on and said nothing.

They were halfway across now, and the river was running harder. Inquirer stood in the middle of the planks and felt a chill come up in him. The words were all there, every one of them carried over exactly and in its place, and he couldn’t make sense of half of them. He had the planks without the sentences. It was like being handed every brick of a house in a heap and told, There’s your house.

He looked out over the water and saw that the plain rowing-boat had put out from the third jetty and was keeping level with them fifty yards upstream. The woman was at the oars, and a young man sat in the stern with a Book open on his knee, reading it as if nothing else in the world existed.

Then the wind came.

It came down the river from the hills with no warning at all, a black squall that flattened the water and then threw it up in short steep waves, and the murmur rose to a roar, every eddy yelling at once in three languages. Wooden-Literal’s barge couldn’t turn into the waves; it had no rudder and could only follow its rope. It took them broadside and lurched, and water came over the low edge and ran across the planks until the burned words were dark and slick.

“Turn her!” Inquirer shouted. “Turn her into the wind!”

“I do not turn.” Wooden-Literal hauled grimly on. “I go along the line. The line is fixed. Any turning is interpretation.”

A big wave hit them and the barge heeled over. Inquirer slid across the wet planks and fetched up against the side with both Books hugged to his chest and the brown water a foot from his face. Downstream he caught a glimpse of the Express, flying before the wind under full sail, perfectly safe and very fast, but heading not for the far landing at all. It was running away down the river toward the sea, and the band was still playing.

Then the rowing-boat came alongside.

The woman had brought her round in a few strong strokes with her bow into the waves. She held the boat off the lurching barge with one oar, the Accuracy oar, and reached out a broad brown hand.

“Jump.”

Inquirer looked at Wooden-Literal. The ferryman was still hauling on his rope with his eyes fixed dead ahead and water running off his grey coat. He didn’t turn his head.

“Will you come?” Inquirer called.

“I do not leave the line.”

Inquirer jumped.

He landed in a heap in the bottom of the rowing-boat. The young man in the stern hauled him upright, and the woman put her back into the oars, and the boat climbed the next wave and came down safe on the far side of it. She rowed straight into the teeth of the squall, giving a little this way when a wave came at an angle and a little that way when the current pulled, and all the time the far bank kept getting nearer.

“You sank back there,” she said between strokes. “Very nearly.”

“I thought,” Inquirer panted, “I thought that was the faithful boat. Every word, nothing added.”

“Every word in the wrong shape. Look.” She shipped the Clarity oar a moment and held out a hand to the young man, who passed her a slate, and steadying it on her knee she wrote out the sentence from the barge: And-Burned Nose-Of-Him.

“In Hebrew, that’s how you say he was angry. That’s all it means. It’s an idiom. When a Hebrew’s temper rose, he said his nose burned, same as we’d say a man’s blood boils. If I carry over nose and burned, I’ve brought over the words and dropped the meaning; a man on this side thinks of fire. If I carry over he was angry, or his anger was kindled to keep a bit of the heat, I’ve carried what the writer actually said. You see? Faithfulness isn’t to the planks. It’s to what the planks were built to carry.”

She wiped the slate and wrote again: He Lifted Up A Horn For His People. “Horn means strength. A bull’s horns are its power. So the writer means God’s raised up strength for His people, a strong deliverer. Some good translators keep horn and trust the reader to learn it, because it’s a fine picture and the Book uses it over and over. Some put strength. Both are honest. But you’ve got to know which it means before you carry it either way, and that one,” she jerked her head back toward the barge, “never asks.”

“And bowels?”

She gave a short bark of a laugh. “The old Greeks kept the feelings in the gut, the way we keep them in the heart. If any affection and compassion, that’s what Paul’s saying. Nothing to do with your innards.”

They came into the lee of the far bank and the wind dropped. She took up the Clarity oar again and rowed easily.

“My name’s Faithful-Rendering. I’ve been rowing this river longer than the man in grey’s been hauling his rope, and longer than that fellow in yellow’s been selling tickets. Two oars, you see, Accuracy and Clarity. Pull only on Accuracy and you go round in circles: every word and no sense, and you end up stuck in midstream like him. Pull only on Clarity and you go round the other way: a lovely smooth sense that turns out to be your own, and you end up out at sea like the Express. You’ve got to pull on both together and steer for the far bank. And the far bank is what the writer meant.”

“But Wooden-Literal said all turning is interpretation. And interpreting is what the man in yellow does.”

Faithful-Rendering snorted. “Every translation is interpretation. Every single one, his included. When he picked bowels over heart, that was a choice. When he sets a Greek word on a plank and calls it one English word, he’s chosen which English word. He just won’t own up to choosing. He thinks if he never turns the boat he can’t be blamed for where it goes. But it still goes somewhere. It goes into the river.”

She rowed on a while without talking.

“The difference between me and the man in yellow,” she said finally, “isn’t that I interpret and he does too. It’s what we’re interpreting toward. I’m trying to get what the writer meant across to the reader on this side, as near as I can, with as little of me in it as I can manage. He’s trying to get across what he thinks the reader would like. And the man in grey is trying not to carry anything at all and calling that faith.”

The young man in the stern spoke up for the first time. “Tell him about the hard ones.”

“Ah, the hard ones.” She nodded. “Some words haven’t got a twin on this side. One Greek word might need three of ours, or one of ours might have to cover three of theirs. Some sentences can go two ways in the Greek, and you have to choose, and your choice will lean. Take Paul’s word sarx. It means flesh. Sometimes he means the body. Sometimes he means a man’s whole fallen nature, his sinful self. If I always put flesh, a reader over here might think Paul hated the body, and he didn’t. If I always put sinful nature, I’ve decided for the reader what Paul meant every time, and some of the time I’ll be wrong. So you weigh it place by place and do your best, and you put a note in the margin.”

“Then nobody can ever be sure his translation’s right?”

“He can be sure enough to live by it. Listen. That old confession your Herald’s so fond of has a word on this.” She recited it between strokes in a rough, practical voice. “Because these original tongues are not known to all the people of God… therefore they are to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come, that, the Word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship him in an acceptable manner. That’s what I’m for. So the farmer’s wife can have the Word. A good translation is the Word of God, as much as a good copy is, so far as it carries the meaning faithfully. Don’t let the man in grey or anybody else tell you only scholars have the real Book. But the tongues themselves are the last court. When there’s a question, you go back to the Hebrew and the Greek. The copyists gave you those for a reason.”

They reached the landing on the far side, a plain stone quay with a path going up from it into green country, and she shipped her oars and made fast.

The young man in the stern shut his Book and stood up. He was twenty-five or so, square-built and fair, with a steady face and no spectacles. Then Inquirer looked again and saw that he did have spectacles; the glass was just so clear you hardly noticed it.

“This is my son,” said Faithful-Rendering. “He’s crossing too. He’s for the City.”

“I’m Plain-Sense.” The young man held out his hand. “I’m glad you jumped. I was praying you would.”

Inquirer shook it and liked him at once. He told me on the wall that it was the first time since leaving Mine-Own-Meaning that he had met anyone near his own road whom he felt he could walk beside.

But Plain-Sense didn’t walk beside him, not then. “I’ve a long way to go. Further than you, I think. I set out this morning and I’m meant to be at the Diggings by dark. And you’ll want to stop at the Schoolhouse first; everybody who’s just crossed does. You’ll need the tongues.” He smiled. “We’ll meet further on, I’m sure of it. The road’s narrow and there’s only one of it.”

He went off up the path at a quick walk and was soon over the green rise and out of sight.

“He’s a good lad,” said his mother, watching him go. “He reads things for what they are. That’s his gift. It’ll get him into trouble one day. People hate it more than you’d think.”

The Schoolhouse stood a little way up the path from the quay, a square stone house with a garden and three doors, each painted a different color.

Over the first door, which was the deep red of old leather, were letters Inquirer couldn’t read, square and heavy, running right to left. Faithful-Rendering told him it was Hebrew and said The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

Over the second, painted a dusty gold, the letters were like the first but rounder. That was Aramaic, the language of the exile, which a few chapters of Daniel and Ezra are written in, and which the Lord Himself spoke on earth.

Over the third, a clear sea-blue, the letters were different again, quick and curling. That was Greek, and it said In the beginning was the Word.

“Three teachers,” said Faithful-Rendering. “Old Dame Aleph does the Hebrew. Her husband does the Aramaic, though he’s not called on much. And Master Koine does the Greek. He’s the young one, only two thousand years old.” She laughed at Inquirer’s face. “You won’t learn it all here. Nobody does. You’ll learn your letters and your first verbs and how to use a lexicon without hurting yourself, and then you’ll go on learning the rest of your life. Every pilgrim who can, should. And the ones who can’t learn them deep ought at least to learn enough to use the helps that the men who did learn them have made, and to put more than one good translation side by side so they can see where the scholars had to choose.”

Inquirer stayed at the Schoolhouse a month. I won’t go through that month, since it was mostly work, and work is better done than described. He said Dame Aleph was the sternest teacher he ever had. She made him write his letters right to left on a slate a thousand times over and rapped his knuckles whenever his daleth looked like a resh, because, she said, a slip like that could change a whole verse. Master Koine was the kindest and also the most demanding. He would never let a sentence go until Inquirer could tell him exactly what every word in it was doing.

He told me one thing about that month I’ve never forgotten.

Toward the end of it, Master Koine set him to read a whole passage of Greek on his own for the first time, the opening of John’s Gospel. Inquirer sat in the blue-doored schoolroom by lamplight with the plain Book the copyists had given him and a lexicon at his elbow and went through it word by word. It took him the whole evening.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He had read that verse a hundred times in his life, in Mine-Own-Meaning, polished until his own face shone through it. He had read it again in the black-boarded Book after the scraping. But he had never read it in the very words the apostle wrote. He said it was like hearing a voice you had only ever known from letters suddenly speak out loud in the room.

And he noticed things he’d never noticed before. He saw that John kept using the same little word was, over and over, quiet and steady, while everything around the Word was becoming and coming to be. He saw there was no the in front of God in the Word was God, and wondered why. He took the question to Master Koine in the morning, and they spent two hours on it, and he came away understanding better than he ever had what it means that the Son is truly God, and yet not the Father.

“That’s what the tongues are for,” said Master Koine. “Not to make you clever. To make you close. Every translation’s a window, and some are very clear windows. But this,” and he laid his hand on the Greek page, “this is the door.”

When the month was up he said goodbye to Dame Aleph, who gave him a little Hebrew lexicon in red leather, and to Master Koine, who gave him a Greek one in blue, and went down to the quay to say goodbye to Faithful-Rendering.

She was mending her net in the sun, the same as before. Out on the river the great flat barge was crawling along its rope with its load of planks. And a long, long way downstream, near the river mouth where it opened into the sea, there was a fleck of bright color that might have been the Express, still sailing.

“Does it ever come back?”

“Now and then. Empty. He puts his passengers off somewhere out by the sea, on a place called Relevant Isle. Very pleasant spot. Lots of cafés. Nobody there’s read the Book in years. They’ve got his pamphlets instead.”

“And Wooden-Literal?”

“Oh, he gets them across, mostly, in fine weather. But they come off that barge with their heads full of burning noses and bowels and lifted horns, and half of them decide the Book’s nonsense and the other half decide it’s a code. I see them on the road sometimes, going back.” She bit off a thread. “Mind you, he’s an honest man and he means well. He’s just so frightened of what the man in yellow does that he’s forgotten what a boat’s for.”

Inquirer thanked her for his life. She waved that away.

“Go on with you. The road goes up to the Diggings of Then. My boy’ll be there ahead of you, if he hasn’t gone on already. Down in the Diggings you’ll find out who these words were said to, and when, and why. Words without their world are like my net without water, all knots and no catch.” She squinted up at him in the sun. “And watch yourself in the ruins. Some of the men who dig there turn up things that were never buried.”

So Inquirer went up from the river into the green country with two Books and two lexicons in his pack, and the Charter, and a small grey pebble. The roar of the Babel faded behind him, and he found, to his wonder, that he could catch a word in it here and there. Logos. Chesed. Shalom. He wasn’t fluent. He never would be. But the river had begun, very faintly, to talk to him.