The Indian Clerk

by David Leavitt

  “Eric? Are you all right?”

  Dimly he turns. “Oh, hello, Alice.”

  “Where's Ethel?”

  “Making supper, I suspect.”

  “Eric, is something wrong?”

  He says nothing. She goes to him, gets on her knees next to him, and sees the tears on his face.

  “Eric, what's happened?”

  “They're throwing me out.”

  “Who is?”

  “Trinity. They're not renewing my fellowship.”

  Alice reels back. She tries to maintain her composure. She says to herself: do not be shocked. You knew this was possible. More than possible, likely. And yet shock is what she feels—selfish shock— because if Eric is to leave Cambridge, what is to become of them? What is to become of her life in London? And then the old question, suppressed for more than a year now: will she ever see Ramanujan again?

  “It's not the end of the world,” she says, almost automatically. “You'll find another position.”

  “Of course I will.”

  “It's because of your pacifism,” she adds, in a tone the accusatory edge of which she cannot quite suppress.

  “What are you suggesting? That I should have lied?”

  “It's the glass half full versus the glass half empty.”

  “I can't believe you're saying this. I thought you believed in the same things I did. I expected you'd at least offer me some comfort.”

  “You could have kept quieter. There's nothing wrong with being circumspect. Look at Hardy.” And she stands. The venom rising in her thrills and horrifies her. She does not want to be saying these things, she wants to be on her knees again, caressing his face, promising him everything will be fine … But everything will not be fine. And this anger—how free it makes her feel!

  “I don't see why you care so much. You're never here these days anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you more or less live in London, don't you? I'd think you'd be glad to be shed of this place.”

  “This is still my home.”

  Eric stands and steps closer to her. She does not back away. She is calmer now. Shock, she realizes, isn't really an emotion: it's what happens when two emotions clash, dread storming quotidian contentment or quotidian sorrow. And when opposing forces rub together like that—well, the current surges, jolting the inner core of the body and then rippling outward, leaving in its wake a tingling numbness. And in this numbness possibilities open. You could flee. You could castigate. You could give in.

  “There is one thought I had,” Eric says. “It might solve everything.”

  “What?”

  “We could move to London. Over the summer. Live there until— well, until I've got a new position sorted out.” He tries to take her chin in his hands but she pulls away. “It could be lovely, Alice. You could go on with your work. And you wouldn't have to stay in Hardy's flat. We'd have our own flat.”

  At first she wants to laugh—at his ignorance, his innocence. Is it possible, after all this time, that he hasn't seen? Or is he having her on, trying to win her sympathy by pretending to be a child?

  Well, maybe she should just say it, what she's never dared to say before: It's you I want to get away from … But something holds her back.

  His eyes. She looks into them. No, he's feigning nothing. He's actually innocent, not just of disloyalty, but of psychology. He loves her, and he wants her to stay with him, and he wants to make her happy, and he wants to cling to his ideals, and he wants to stay at Trinity … He wants everything, he wants things that don't fit. Only he doesn't understand that. And somehow the look in his eyes, the simplicity of his longing and his sorrow, cools her rage. She can't hurt him anymore. Not so long as he doesn't understand the source of his own pain.

  She lets her expression soften. “Yes, all right,” she says. “We'll move to London. But is there enough money to live on?”

  “There's what I get from my grandfather. And my brother will help. He can find us a place near him, in High Barnet.”

  “No, I don't want to be in High Barnet. It'll have to be somewhere more central. Bloomsbury, perhaps.”

  “As you like.”

  “And what we can't fit in the flat, we'll leave with my parents until we're settled somewhere else.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And you'll show them, Eric. Perhaps you can go to Oxford. That would show them.”

  “I doubt I could get a position at Oxford.”

  “Well, then, anywhere.” She touches his face. He starts to cry again.

  “Darling—”

  “Shall we have a baby?” she asks.

  “Yes, let's.” And they kiss. Simple as that, he's happy! So much easier than to make Ramanujan, or Gertrude, or Littlewood happy. And if she can make at least one person happy, that's something, isn't it? Something to be proud of. She releases him, and lets herself sink into that very soft chair.

  PART EIGHT

  Lightning Fells a Tree

  1

  MAHALANOBIS COMES TO Hardy's rooms to tell him that Ramanujan has been taken ill. He is in a nursing hostel that caters to Trinity men, on Thompson's Lane.

  “A nursing hostel!” Hardy says. “But why?”

  “We were with him last night,” Mahalanobis says. “Ananda Rao and I. He had asked us over to share his meal. We were eating rasam, and discussing the work of Mr. Oliver Lodge—”

  “Oliver Lodge?”

  “And in the middle of the conversation poor Ramanujan keeled over with a terrible sharp pain in his stomach.”

  “Why didn't you call me?”

  “He insisted we not trouble you. We fetched the porter, and the porter fetched a doctor. And the doctor said he must go in the nursing hostel.”

  “But I saw him just yesterday morning and he seemed fine.”

  “My impression,” Mahalanobis says, “is that he has been hiding the severity of his symptoms for some time now.”

  Hardy puts on his coat, and they walk together to the nursing hostel. It is early in the spring, the season when you veer to the sunny rather than the shady side of the street, when despite the chill—ice crystals still hang from awnings—you can feel incipient warmth on your head. Ramanujan in a hospital: although he wouldn't say so to Mahalanobis, Hardy feels as annoyed as he is alarmed. Either God has once again vexed him, or Ramanujan is acting out of sheer perversity, as he did the night he left his own dinner party and went to Oxford. For he has managed to get sick not just as spring is beginning but just as they are completing their big paper on the partitions function—and this is something Hardy would never allow himself to do. Even if he did get sick, he wouldn't let it stop him from working. He'd keep working.

  No, no. Unreasonable. A man can't help what happens to his stomach. You can't expect him to ignore pain. Also, for all Hardy knows, Ramanujan may be working even now, writing out formulae in his bed.

  When they arrive at the nursing hostel, a matron wearing a severe and elaborate hat leads them up to Ramanujan's room. Although it is a room designed to hold two inmates, he is alone in it. The furniture consists of two iron bedsteads, two side tables, two chairs, and a dresser. No pictures on the chalky white walls, just the one window, which looks out on the Cam. The scent of Dettol permeates the air.

  Ramanujan is lying in the bed closer to the window, gazing with pallid indifference at the river.

  No pad, no pencil.

  “Ramanujan,” Hardy says, and he turns; smiles faintly.

  Hardy pulls up a chair and sits next to him. His appearance is alarming. Perhaps it's the glaring hospital light that does it, revealing a haggardness and a leanness that the gloaming of Trinity disguised. Or is the truth that anyone would look sick in such a light? Hardy as well? He wishes there was a mirror in the room.

  “So I gather you were taken ill,” he says.

  Ramanujan's lips, when he speaks, are parched. “I had a pain in my stomach,” he says. “Perhaps some curd I ate.”

&
nbsp; “Where exactly does it hurt?”

  “Here. The right side.”

  “Is it a sharp pain or a dull pain?”

  “It is not a continuous pain. I seem to be feeling fine, and then there are … stabs, shall we call them?”

  “And have you seen the doctor?”

  “Dr. Wingate will be in later this morning, sir,” says the matron, who's pouring water from a jug into a basin. “He'll examine the patient then.”

  “Of course.”

  “The trouble is, he won't eat his breakfast.”

  “Mr. Ramanujan is a Hindu. He has a very strict diet.”

  “It was only porridge.”

  “I have no appetite, thank you,” Ramanujan says, glaring at Mahalanobis, who looks away. Is he angry, Hardy wonders, that

  Mahalanobis disobeyed his instructions and told Hardy that he was in the nursing hostel?

  “Did you bring the book?”

  “I shall bring it this afternoon,” Mahalanobis says.

  “What book? I can bring you books,” Hardy says.

  “It doesn't matter.”

  “But I assure you—”

  “It doesn't matter.”

  Mahalanobis looks away. And now Hardy understands, or thinks he does: the book in question must be one Ramanujan doesn't want Hardy to know that he wants. Perhaps a cheap novel. Or something by Oliver Lodge?

  Then the doctor comes in, all swagger and flourish, sweeping into the room when in Hardy's view a doctor ought to step in mildly, just as a lecturer ought to speak with minimal inflection. Like a character in a Shakespeare play, he enters from stage left, carrying a pad, followed by a retinue of assistants and a nurse. He is in his early fifties, with raisin-shaped eyes and pockmarks on his cheeks. “Hello, there!” he says, and the matron motions to Hardy to get up from his chair. “Well, now, Mister—what's his name?”

  “Ramanujan,” Ramanujan says.

  “I won't try to pronounce it. So what seems to be the trouble?”

  “A pain in his stomach, doctor.”

  “Shall we let the man speak for himself?” Dr. Wingate puts his hand on Ramanujan's head. “Any fever?”

  “None this morning, doctor. Last night 99.5.”

  “And where exactly is the pain? You do speak English.”

  “Yes.” Ramanujan points to the right side of his abdomen.

  “I see. May I?” The doctor holds out his hand and flexes his fingers. “Now I won't press too hard. Just tell me when you feel the pain. Here? Here?” Ramanujan waggles his head. “What's that supposed to mean?”

  “Pain now and again,” Hardy says.

  “Here?”

  Ramanujan winces and cries out. “There's the trouble spot,” Dr. Wingate says with triumph, and writes something on the pad. “And what brings you to Trinity, young man? What are you studying?”

  “Mathematics.”

  “How interesting. I once had a mathematician as a patient. I said, ‘Sir, you have a distinctly odd sense of humor,’ and he said, ‘How do you mean odd? 3, 5, 7?’”

  Ramanujan looks at the window.

  “Yes, to the same gentleman I said, ‘Even if you're feeling better, you must finish your medicine.’ And he said, ‘How do you mean even?’”

  “When may I go home?”

  “Not any time soon.”

  “But my work—”

  “You're not in any shape to be working. Intermittent fever, a severe, undiagnosed pain.” Dr. Wingate puts the pad under his arm. “No, you'll need to stay where we can watch you, at least until we can work out what's wrong with you. Who are you, by the way?” He is speaking to Hardy.

  “G. H. Hardy.”

  “And what's your relationship to the patient?”

  He stumbles. No one's ever asked him this question before. And how is he supposed to describe his relationship to Ramanujan?

  “Mr. Hardy is a don at Trinity,” Mahalanobis says. “Mr. Ramanujan is his pupil.”

  “I see. A word, if you don't mind?” And he motions for Hardy to follow him into the hall. “Now don't quote me on this,” he says in a low voice, “but ten to one, he's suffering from gastric ulcer. Has he been under any strain lately?”

  “I don't know … He's been working hard. But no harder than usual.”

  “Anxieties over the war? Family troubles?”

  “Not that I … He hasn't mentioned anything.”

  “Well, we'll keep an eye on him. If it is gastric ulcer, he'll need to be on a special diet.”

  “He's already on a special diet. He cooks all his own food. He's a strict vegetarian.”

  “That may be the problem. Not much in the way of fresh vegetables to be had these days.” Dr. Wingate holds out his hand. “A mathematics don, eh? Beastly stuff, mathematics. My brother was better at it than me, he was a senior optime in—1898, I believe.”

  “Yes, I remember a Wingate.”

  “Do you? He's with the home office now. Well, good day, Hardy.”

  “Good day.”

  Then the doctor, followed by his retinue, exits stage right. Hardy goes back into Ramanujan's room. The matron is fussing with a white enameled ewer and basin. Mahalanobis, who is now sitting on the chair by the bed, jumps up as soon as he sees Hardy.

  “It's all right,” Hardy says. “Stay where you are.”

  “No, please,” Mahalanobis says, offering the chair with the obsequiousness of a waiter.

  “But I don't want to sit.”

  “What did the doctor say?” Ramanujan asks.

  “He thinks you may be suffering from gastric ulcer.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don't know exactly. I only know that it's caused by strain. So you'll have to relax.”

  “Probably it's something you ate,” Mahalanobis says. “Or didn't eat.”

  “The curd, I think.”

  “You have to take better care of yourself, Jam! You cannot be too careful with curd.”

  “I have not had time to think about cooking. I have been busy.”

  Hardy looks at his watch. “Well, I must be going,” he says. “I have to give a lecture. Mahalanobis, will you be coming or staying?”

  “I must go as well,” Mahalanobis says. “I shall come back this afternoon.”

  Ramanujan says nothing. Instead he rests his head against the pillow and turns, once again, to look at the river. And Hardy wonders: from his starting place, from the pial at twilight, could he have traveled further?

  2

  “IDIDN'T KNOW Ramanujan was interested in Oliver Lodge,” Hardy says to Mahalanobis as they cross Bridge Street. “Oh yes,” Mahalanobis says. “We all are.”

  “I assume you mean his work with radio waves?”

  “No, we are interested in his writings on psychical phenomena. You know that Mr. Lodge is president of the Society for Psychical Research.”

  “So I've been told.”

  “Ramanujan in particular is interested in psychical phenomena. Dowsing rods, poltergeists, automatic writing. Hauntings.”

  “Ramanujan?”

  “Yes.”

  “It probably won't surprise you to learn that in my view it's all nonsense.”

  “No, I am not surprised. Nor would Lodge be surprised. He anticipates scorn, and accepts it as inevitable.”

  “Then why does he go on?”

  “Because he believes that supernatural phenomena merit investigation.”

  “But these phenomena aren't real. They're in people's imaginations.”

  “Who can say? Have you never experienced the supernatural, Mr. Hardy?”

  Hardy thinks of Gaye; his occasional, if unwelcome, visits. How disconcerting those sudden entrances could be! Yet he dreamed them all—didn't he?

  “No, I never have. Have you, Mr. Mahalanobis?”

  “In India,” Mahalanobis says, “these things are regarded as … shall we say, part of ordinary life. My grandmother often claimed to have psychic visions. Once she received a message from the flames in her fire. A voic
e warned her not to visit a neighbor's house. She obeyed, and that very day, in the neighbor's house, there was an outbreak of typhoid.”

  “Could have been coincidence. Or your grandmother might have believed she'd had the vision, after the fact.”

  “As for me, they say certain rooms in King's are haunted by dead fellows. Last winter I put a scarf on the bedstead one night before I went to sleep. In the morning it was gone. I turned the room upside down looking for it. I assumed that my memory was faulty, that I had left it in Hall or on the train. And then, the next winter, the first cold day, it turned up again, perfectly folded, in my drawer.”

  “Well, you could have put it in the drawer and forgot.”

  “I open that drawer every day. No, I suspect the ghost needed the scarf.”

  “I don't think ghosts are supposed to feel the cold.”

  “That would be the kind of question Sir Oliver would have us look into.”

  Hardy laughs. “And this is what you talk about, while you have your supper?”

  “At first Ananda Rao and I were skeptical. Ramanujan, however, convinced us. You see, he too has had certain … experiences.”

  “Such as?”

  “I doubt you will believe him.”

  “Try me.”

  Mahalanobis looks away for a moment, as if trying to decide whether telling Hardy will amount to a breach of confidence. Then he says, “All right. This was in Kumbakonam, before he came to England. One night he had a dream. He was standing in a house he did not know, and under one of the pillars on the verandah he saw a distant relative. The relative was dead, and his people were in mourning. Then the dream passed, and he forgot it, until some time later he had occasion to visit the same relative, who was then living in a town far from Kumbakonam. Imagine his surprise when he discovered that the house was the same house he had seen in his dream— and not only that, but that there was a patient undergoing medical treatment staying in the house. Later he saw the man lying on a mattress under the same pillar that he had seen in his dream. And the man died there.”