The Indian Clerk

by David Leavitt

  After he has gone, she unpins her hair. She brushes it. She looks at herself in the mirror. “You are a terrible woman,” she says, and feels it as true. She has been thinking terrible thoughts. For example, she has been thinking: what a pity that Eric has such weak eyesight! For if Eric had normal eyesight, he might enlist and go to France. Then strangers would treat her with great kindness, knowing that she had a husband fighting in France. She would be alone in the house. She could be alone with Ramanujan.

  It is not exactly that she is in love with him. Or at least, she is not in love with him the way she was (or is) in love with Eric. For Eric's appeal is his familiarity. From the start, he attracted her precisely because he was so simple to know. He was the proverbial open book, the sentences written out in the large, legible print of a child's primer. In this regard he could not have differed more from her sister Jane, a creature of strata and stratagems, whose words were often fishing lures or traps. Eric, by contrast, was incapable of subterfuge. Bespectacled and virginal and perennially cheerful, he lived for his work—the prospect of returning to it in the morning was enough to keep him awake much of the night— and for lovemaking, at which he is clumsy. Still, he tries. Now he is slower than he was. He waits for her. For all her exasperation, she cannot help but be touched by his grunts of pleasure and the gratitude afterward. Oddly, it is those aspects of her husband's character that she finds most irritating—his absentmindedness and his thickheadedness— that evoke in her the greatest tenderness.

  And then there is Ramanujan. With Ramanujan, nothing, or next to nothing, is straightforward. Far from a child's primer, he is a text written in a language she does not know how to read. Even when he is in her presence, even when he sits physically by her side, she cannot guess his thoughts. Eric's thoughts she can guess easily, and she's almost always right. Ramanujan, on the other hand, she sees as a closed door behind which lie untold treasures. Things she cannot guess at. Mysterious Eastern lovemaking techniques, and occult lore, and a certain ancient wisdom. No specifics are available to her, only the vague sense of an atmosphere very different from that of her living room: a tent draped in spice-colored fabrics from which bits of mirror wink, scented by jasmine petals drying in a silver bowl.

  Her life, she sometimes feels, has been reduced to alternating anticipation and anxiety. Mornings she frets as to whether he will come. If he does not come, she lapses into despair. If he does, she begins to worry, almost from the instant of his stepping through the door, about what she will do once he leaves. And once he does leave, the dread closes in like dusk in winter.

  The next morning she wakes, as always, to the voice of the battalion commander, and finds that she can bear it no longer. Not the waiting, not the rifle reports. Without telling anyone, not even Ethel, she gathers her umbrella and hat, walks to the station, and boards the first train to London. The platform is full of young men on their way to join regiments. Only some are in uniform. Every day Cambridge's reservoir of youth empties a little more, she thinks, as she sits down in a compartment the other occupants of which are three of these young men, one in dusky khaki, the other two in Norfolk jackets. The ones in Norfolk jackets discuss the latest news from Belgium in animated voices, as if war was a football match, while the one in khaki gazes listlessly out the window.

  Not wanting to call attention to herself, Alice opens her handbag and takes out a copy of the Times. “Nearly all the persons I interrogated,” she reads, “had stories to tell of German atrocities. Whole villages, they said, had been put to fire and sword. One man whom I did not see told an official of the Catholic Society that he had seen with his own eyes German soldiery chop off the arms of a baby which clung to its mother's skirts.”

  With a wheeze, the train moves out of the station. Alice puts her paper down; watches the tracks give way to another train going the opposite direction, and then the backs of mean houses. In one of them a child is staring at an iris. The listless young man takes a book from his satchel: The War of the Worlds. One of Eric's favorites. And what will happen if Germany invades England? Will this young man protect her? Will she be raped by the Huns? Will they bayonet poor Ramanujan? She shouldn't be asking such questions, she knows. She is a pacifist, after all. And these boys—they could be Eric's students, the ones he sometimes brings home for tea and differential geometry.

  She resumes her reading:

  All the men with whom I talked were agreed that, apart from their heavy guns and overwhelming numbers, there was nothing about the German soldiers which need be feared. They describe the behaviour of the enemy as too brutal for any civilized nation, and most of them had seen Belgian villagers drawn in front of the Germans to act as a screen for them. One man declared that a favourite trick of the Germans is to terrify Belgian villagers by driving them along immediately in front of their heavy guns, where, owing to the elevation of the guns, they are really quite safe. Their experience has been that the Germans have no respect for the Red Cross, and that in fact they wait until the wounded have been picked up, and then fire.

  At Liverpool Street, she throws the paper in the dustbin. She catches a cab and rides to St. George's Square, to an address she looked up furtively in Eric's diary just before leaving. Not that she has any reason to assume that Gertrude will be there; still, she hopes so. She needs to talk to someone, to a woman.

  Having paid the driver, she approaches the building. It is narrow, upright, one of a sequence of houses pushed somehow too close together, like books crammed onto a library shelf. The window trim needs new paint. One of the bells (bronze, needing to be polished) is marked “Hardy.” She rings it, and is relieved when, a minute or so later, the door opens and Gertrude is standing before her, dressed in a rather dreary frock, blinking with surprise.

  “Mrs. Neville,” she says.

  “Hello,” Alice says. “I hope you don't mind my just showing up like this, I—I had to get out of Cambridge.”

  “But my brother's not here.”

  “I know. It's not your brother I want to see.”

  Gertrude does not appear especially happy to hear this. “Oh, well, come in,” she says after a moment, making space in the constricted corridor. “I'm afraid I haven't much to offer you,” she adds as they climb a narrow staircase, the treads of which creak under Alice's shoes.

  “I wasn't expecting anything.”

  “Nor is the flat particularly tidy.”

  “Really, it doesn't matter.”

  They go in together. Gertrude shuts the door, then leads Alice through a sitting room that is musty and nearly empty of furniture into a kitchen with a pebbled brown linoleum floor and a table over which newspapers are spread. “Do sit down. Would you like some tea?”

  “Thank you, yes.” Alice takes off her hat. She cannot say why, but for some reason she feels immense in this room. It's not that it's so small, or that she's so large—it's just that whenever she moves, she knocks into something. First her elbow upsets the dish rack. Then her head hits the door frame. Then, as she's pulling the chair Gertrude has indicated out from under the table, she shoves it accidentally into the wall.

  “Oh dear,” she says. “I hope it won't leave a mark.”

  “It doesn't matter. Do you take milk?”

  She shouldn't have come.

  “Yes, please.” Gertrude's copy of the Times is, as it happens, open to the article about the Belgian atrocities. “Did you read this yet?” Alice asks.

  “Yes, just now.”

  “I wonder if the stories are to be believed—if German soldiers really are chopping the hands off of babies.”

  “I can well believe it, coming from the nation that gave us Struw-welpeter.”

  “Who?”

  “Slovenly Peter. It's a book of German children's stories. And in one of them there's a little boy who sucks his thumbs, and his mother warns him that if he keeps sucking them, the great tall tailor will come and cut them off with his great sharp scissors, and he keeps sucking them, and lo and behold, the great
tall tailor does come and he does cut off his thumbs.”

  “How gruesome.”

  “The illustrations are quite fabulous, with vivid red blood spurting from the points of amputation.”

  “And this is given to children?”

  “Well, why do you think it is that German soldiers never suck their thumbs?”

  Gertrude places the cup of tea before Alice, sits down opposite her, crosses her arms. She looks impatient, suddenly, as if to say, all right, enough fun and games, why have you come to bother me? And why has Alice come to bother her?

  “I suspect you're wondering what I'm doing here,” she says. “The truth is, I'm not sure myself. Cambridge simply … feels rather sad right now.”

  “So my brother tells me.”

  “The train today was full of young men. Students. Every day Cambridge's reservoir of youth empties a little more.”

  No response. And Alice was proud of that line.

  “A battalion is encamped across the street from our house. From Ireland. Each morning they go through their exercises, starting at dawn.”

  “And your husband?”

  “He is getting on. At the college, the wounded are being bedded outdoors, in Nevile's Court. Officers dine in Hall.”

  “So my brother tells me.”

  “And will Mr. Hardy volunteer?”

  “He says he hasn't decided, though it's hard to imagine him in uniform. What about Mr. Neville?”

  “He has weak eyes.” Alice sips her tea, then adds: “It's a pity, too, because he's very brave. He's a very strong swimmer. Last winter he jumped into the Cam and saved a child from drowning.”

  Why did she say that? No doubt Gertrude is well aware that, even if Eric's eyesight were perfect, he'd never volunteer. He makes no bones about his pacifism. And yet it seems suddenly urgent that Gertrude know he's not a coward. “The other night, Eric overheard someone saying, ‘The way things are going, soon Trinity's going to be emptied out save for Hardy and a bunch of Indians.’”

  “That seems rather an exaggeration.”

  “Perhaps … Still, wouldn't it be astonishing if in a few months time he and Mr. Ramanujan were all that was left of Trinity?”

  “Your husband will be there too. And the Master.”

  “I know. I was exaggerating.”

  “And how is Mr. Ramanujan faring?”

  “As well as can be expected, I suppose. Not that I see him very often these days.”

  “You mean, since he's no longer under your roof?”

  “Of course he does come to visit a few times a week. I'm teaching him to sing.”

  “To sing?”

  “He has a lovely voice. Yesterday I taught him ‘Greensleeves.’”

  “I should like to hear that.”

  “Of course, he's far too shy to sing in front of strangers—only me.”

  “It's good to know that he has found such a friend in you, Mrs. Neville.”

  Alice looks up. So far, she has managed to evade Gertrude's gaze. Now, however, she meets those alarming eyes. The right one is peering at her assessingly, while the left one … how to say it? It floats.

  And suddenly, without even thinking to ask, she asks, “How did it happen?”

  “What?”

  “How did you lose your eye?”

  Gertrude seems to rear up in her chair. Like a cat. Good. Ever since she's arrived, Alice has wanted to get the upper hand. To make Gertrude flinch. Good.

  “I hope you don't mind my asking.”

  “Do you imagine you're the first to ask?”

  “Well—”

  “You're not. People ask all the time. Women especially.”

  To Alice's surprise, she uncrosses her arms.

  “If you must know, it was when I was nine. Harold hit me in the face with a cricket bat. An accident. I was knocked out cold. And then, when I woke, I was in the hospital, and it was gone. The eye was gone. That's all.”

  “But that's terrible.”

  “I suppose so. I was so young I hardly remember what it was like— before. Of course, afterwards, the important thing was to protect Harold.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was an accident, wasn't it, and he was so terribly fond of cricket, he shouldn't be made to feel any sense of responsibility or guilt. And so I was told never to speak of it.”

  “By your father?”

  “My mother.”

  “Did you mind?”

  “Only at first. But then I realized that she was being quite sensible, really. You see, she was determined that no one be steered off course. Even then, we knew Harold was a genius. The last thing we wanted was that this should hinder his progress. And it helped me, too. Having to act, from the start, as if nothing had happened—it made it possible for me to make that my … modus operandi.”

  “Let me see it.”

  “What?”

  “The eye. Take it out. Let me see it.”

  Gertrude laughs.

  “Why is this funny?” Alice asks.

  “Because everyone who's ever wanted to see it thinks she's the first to ask to see it.”

  “Is it always women?”

  “Always. Anyway, happy to oblige. Only please look away while I take it out.”

  Alice looks away. She hears, or imagines she hears, a sort of unscrewing, a plop and a pop, and then Gertrude says, “All right. You may turn now.”

  Alice turns around. Gertrude has her back to her. She holds her right hand behind her back, the fingers curled around … something.

  The thing is passed from Gertrude's palm into Alice's. Alice examines it. The eye is white and globular and heavier than she would have thought—the size of a large marble, with the iris and the lens slightly raised. And what a piece of craftsmanship it is, the brown a perfect match for Gertrude's real eye, the white etched with tiny red lines, to suggest veins!

  “May I have it back now?”

  “How does it work? How do you insert it?”

  “You just pull back the lid and pop it in. The socket closes right around it.”

  “Is it uncomfortable?”

  “It was a bit strange, at first. This alien immense thing. But one gets used to it. Now I hardly think about it. May I have it back now, please?”

  “Does it dry out? Do you have to keep it lubricated?”

  “The tear glands weren't affected. May I have it back now?”

  Once again, Gertrude reaches her arm behind her back. Alice deposits the eye in her palm.

  “Don't look.”

  Alice closes her own eyes. Then Gertrude says, “It's all right now,” and when Alice looks again, Gertrude's face is across the table. An expression of warmth, even affection, seems to have suffused it.

  “Well,” she says. “Are you satisfied?”

  “Quite, thank you.”

  “Good, I'm glad we got past that.” She looks toward the kitchen window. “It's becoming a lovely day, isn't it? What would you say to going to the zoo?”

  “The zoo?”

  “Yes, why not?”

  “I'd say it's a wonderful idea,” Alice says. And she stands, in the process knocking her chair, once more, into the already bruised wall.

  4

  THERE IS A ROOM, a flat, a place they sometimes go when they're both in London. Usually at Littlewood's behest. Like C. Mallet of the India Office, the owner is a friend of his brother's. They stay there an hour or two and then, when they leave, Anne can't seem to get her underclothes adjusted. Because the flat is near Regent's Park, they walk to the zoo, where they sit on a bench in front of a cage inside which a Bengal tiger paces. It is the very end of September, and Littlewood has just told her that in a month he will be leaving, possibly going to France. He is joining the Royal Garrison Artillery as a Second Lieutenant. “Apparently I might be useful for gunnery calculations,” he says. “Ballistics. Hardy will keel over when he hears.”

  “I wish you hadn't done it.”

  “I thought of not doing it. But then I thought
, look, it's not like we're going to have much choice in the matter for long. Conscription's coming, I promise you. Churchill's already putting in for it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Hardy. Churchill's secretary is one of his Apostles.”

  Anne lights a cigarette. Across the pathway, the tiger lies down and licks its huge paw. Like Hardy's cat, only it gives off a muskier smell. What Littlewood thinks impatience must smell like. And now a child approaches with her nurse to gaze at the tiger. She clings to the nurse's hand. Keeping a safe distance.

  “When will we see each other?”

  “With any luck I'll be in London in a few months. Or nearby. Woolwich, probably.”

  “But will you be able to get down to Treen?”

  “Not as often as I do now, I'm afraid.”

  She takes his hand. She is holding back tears. Suddenly the tiger bounds up, giving an ill-tempered roar, which frightens the child, who starts to cry. The nurse leads her away, toward the elephants.

  “What will become of you?” Anne asks, weeping.

  “Darling, there's no need for this. I'll be fine.”

  “But what if they send you into battle? I've read the reports.”

  “But that's the whole point, they won't send me into battle. They don't send men like me into battle. We're too valuable behind the scenes.”

  “I'm sorry.” She takes a handkerchief from her handbag; wipes her eyes. “I feel so foolish. Maybe it's the children. They ask, you know. This is just—it's so awful. I can't believe I have to explain this to my children.”

  “I'm so sorry that you have to.”

  “And in the meantime, Hardy just goes about his business … I see be hasn't felt duty bound to volunteer.”

  “He may volunteer still. I know he's thinking about it.”

  “Then why can't you do as he does? Wait?”

  “Because if I put it off, I may not get such a safe position.”

  “But with all his connections, couldn't Hardy make sure you did?”

  “His influence doesn't extend that far, I'm afraid. I'm not part of that circle. He can protect himself, probably.”