The Indian Clerk

by David Leavitt

  “Oh, come now, Bertie,” Milne says. “Surely they're not that bad.”

  “They are that bad.”

  “Well, haven't we got into a gloom!” Sheppard says. “And when the whole purpose of this evening is to welcome Mr. Lawrence to Cambridge.” With that, he strides up to Lawrence and starts talking to him about his books. And really, he is a marvel, with his gift for shepherding (Sheppard shepherds) a conversation along. Whether he's actually read the books is immaterial: what matters is that he gives the impression, brilliantly, of having read them. And clearly he's read something, for now he starts quoting to Lawrence from Lawrence's own work. “Sons and Lovers, of course, is a masterpiece,” he says, “though personally I shall always feel a special fondness for The White Peacock. And that early chapter, ‘A Poem of Friendship,’ the two boys frolicking in the water and drying each other off afterwards!” He clears his throat. “‘He saw I had forgotten to continue my rubbing, and laughing he took hold of me and began to rub me briskly, as if I were a child, or rather, a woman he loved and did not fear. I left myself quite limply in his hands, and to get a better grip of me, he put his arms round me and pressed me against him, and the sweetness of the touch of our naked bodies one against the other was superb.’” Sheppard breathes deeply. “What language! You see, I've memorized it.”

  Silence greets this unexpected declamation. Lawrence says, “Thank you,” then turns away.

  Now Russell introduces him to Hardy, whose hand Lawrence grips warmly, fervently, for too long. Perhaps he simply finds it a relief to have been saved from Sheppard's insinuating little performance. Much more pleasant, no doubt, to listen as Hardy, at Russell's request, rambles on about the Riemann hypothesis. Indeed, even after Russell's gone off to chat with Winstanley, Lawrence sticks close to him; leans into him; clings to him almost as a life raft. And how ironic that is, considering Hardy's own—how to put it?—predilections. Yet he takes a certain pride in the misreading; if Lawrence takes him to be normal, if he does not ally him with Sheppard, so much the better.

  And meanwhile, in the background, Sheppard doesn't stop declaiming. It's the oddest thing. He has no audience. He knows Lawrence is valiantly not listening. And still he declaims, with an almost vicious irony: “‘It satisfied in some measure the vague, indecipherable yearning of my soul; and it was the same with him.’”

  “There must be a revolution of the state,” Lawrence says to Hardy. “Everything must be nationalized—all industries, all the means of communication. And of course the land. In one fell blow. Then a man shall have his wages whether he's sick or well or old. If anything prevents his working, he shall have his wages all the same. He shouldn't live in fear of the wolf.”

  Sheppard: “‘When he had rubbed me all warm, he let me go, and we looked at each other with eyes of still laughter, and our love was perfect for a moment, more perfect than any love I have known since, either for man or woman.’”

  Lawrence: “And every woman shall have her wage, too, until she dies, whether she works or not, so long as she works while she's fit to.”

  Sheppard: “‘The cool, moist fragrance of the morning, the intentional stillness of everything, of the tall bluish trees, of the wet, frank flowers’—Isn't that marvelous? ‘Wet, frank flowers’—‘of the trustful moths folded and unfolded in the fallen swaths, was a perfect medium of sympathy.’”

  Lawrence: “But for now we live trapped within a shell. And the shell is a prison to life. If we don't break the shell, our lives turn in upon themselves. But if we can smash the shell, then anything is possible. Then and only then we shall begin living. We can examine marriage and love and all. But until then we are fast within the hard, unliving, impervious shell.”

  Hardy, in imitation of Ramanujan, waggles his head. Lawrence frowns. “You must have patience with me. I know sometimes my language isn't clear.”

  Hardy doesn't expect to see Lawrence again. The next afternoon, though, as he's crossing Great Court, he hears a voice calling his name, and turns to see Lawrence running toward him, on storkish legs.

  “What a boon,” he says, taking Hardy's arm. “I've had a very terrible morning. Please, may I walk with you?”

  “Of course.”

  “It was one of the crises of my life.”

  They head toward the river, Hardy feeling at once flattered and embarrassed by the rapacity with which Lawrence clutches him. “I don't know whether Keynes is a friend of yours,” he says. “And if he is your friend, and you come to loathe me, that is regrettable, but I must speak or I shall die.”

  “What you say shall remain between the two of us. That goes without saying.”

  “Russell wanted me to meet him—Keynes,” he says. “So this morning we went to his rooms, but he wasn't there. It was very sunny, and Russell was writing him a note when Keynes came out of the bedroom, blinking from sleep. And he was in… his pyjamas. And as he stood there some knowledge passed into me. I can't describe it. There was the most dreadful sense of repulsiveness. Something like carrion. A vulture gives the same feeling.”

  “Oh my.”

  “And the pyjamas …” He shudders. “Striped. These horrible little frowsty people, men lovers of men, they give me a sense of corruption, almost of putrescence. They make me dream of black beetles. Of a beetle that bites like a scorpion. In the dream I kill it, a very large beetle, I scotch it and it runs off, but it comes again, and I must kill it again.”

  “How awful … and in striped pyjamas …”

  “I have thought a lot about sodomy. Love is this: you go to a woman to know yourself, and knowing yourself, to explore the unknown, which is the woman. You venture upon the coasts of the unknown, and open what you discover to all humanity. But what nearly all English people do is, a man goes to a woman, he takes a woman, and he's merely repeating a known reaction, not seeking a new reaction. And this is simply self-abuse. The ordinary Englishman of the educated classes goes to a woman to masturbate himself. And sodomy is just a nearer form of masturbation, because there are two bodies instead of one, but still it has the same object. A man of strong soul has too much honor for the other body, so he remains neutral. Celibate. Forster, for instance.”

  They have circled back to Trinity. All this way they have encountered no one, but now two soldiers pass by, student soldiers, in uniforms under their gowns. “How ugly they are,” Lawrence says. “I think of that line from Dostoevsky: ‘to insects—sensual lust.’ One insect mounting another—Oh God, the soldiers! So ugly. Like lice or bugs. Steer me clear of them!” Hardy steers him to Nevile's Court, and he lets go, at last, of Hardy's arm. “I feel better,” he says. “The bond of blood brotherhood is a crucial one.” Then he steps nearer. “Oh, how can you bear it here? I loathe Cambridge, its smell of rottenness, of marsh-stagnancy. Come visit me and Frieda. We live in Greatham. In Sussex. The air is fresh, the food plain. Come and see us.”

  “I will,” Hardy says, rubbing his arm, which has gone numb. And then Lawrence shakes his hand—his handshake is so weak, so ineffectual, so moist, Hardy recoils—and walks through the door that leads to Russell's staircase.

  Black beetles in striped pyjamas …

  6

  AGAIN, HE ENCOUNTERS Ramanujan with his Indian friends. This time they are sitting by the river. The shadows of an elm afford him the chance to study them more carefully. The stooped one with the turban is reading something aloud to the others. The youngest one—the one whose mortarboard blew away— has intense, darting, faunlike eyes. When he notices Hardy, he turns away.

  The next morning, Ramanujan says, “Ananda Rao is quite in awe of you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he is studying mathematics, and you are the great mathematician. The great Hardy. But he is shy to introduce himself.”

  “He need not be.”

  “I tell him that, but he won't listen. He is a youngster.”

  “Tell him he can come to see me anytime.”

  Hardy opens his notebook, indicating that the tim
e has come to go to work. “Ananda Rao is preparing an essay for the Smith's Prize,” Ramanujan says.

  “Oh, good for him.”

  “Might I submit an essay for the Smith's Prize?”

  “But the Smith's Prize is for undergraduates. You're well beyond that.”

  “I do not have a B.A.”

  “Yes, the requirement was waived in your case.”

  “I should like to have a B.A.”

  “Well, I suspect we could arrange that.”

  “How?”

  “You could do it ‘by research,’ as they say. Maybe your paper on highly composite numbers. You'll need to ask Barnes.”

  The next morning Ramanujan says, “I have asked Barnes, and he agrees. I can do the B.A. by research with the paper on highly composite numbers.”

  “Fine.”

  “Then I can submit my research for the Smith's Prize?”

  “But you're eons beyond the Smith's Prize! Why should you even bother with the Smith's Prize?”

  “You won the Smith's Prize.”

  “Prizes are meaningless. Just things to gather dust on the mantel.” Then he catches himself. For how can he convey the meaninglessness of prizes to one who has suffered so from not having won enough?

  “Hardy,” Ramanujan says, “may I ask you a kindness?”

  “What?”

  “I wonder if you would allow me … if I did not come to see you for the next three days.”

  “Oh? And why's that?”

  “Chatterjee has invited me to go to London with him.”

  “To London?”

  “With him and Mahalanobis and Ananda Rao. He has found a boardinghouse with a very pleasant landlady who serves, he says, excellent vegetarian food.”

  “And what will you do in London?”

  “We will see Charley's Aunt.”

  “Charley's Aunt!” Hardy suppresses a laugh. “No, of course. I mean, yes. You should start getting to know more of England than the corridors of Trinity.”

  “Thank you. I promise that I shall continue my work in London. I shall have the mornings free.”

  “There's no need for that. Take a break from work. It'll clear your head.”

  “No, I shall work every morning, from eight to noon.”

  Four days later he's back at Hardy's fireside. “So how was London?” “Very pleasant, thank you.” “And you enjoyed Charley's Aunt?” “I laughed very much.”

  “What else did you do?”

  “I went to the zoo.”

  “The zoo in Regent's Park?”

  “Yes. And I saw Mr. Littlewood and his friend. They took me to tea.” He waggles his head. “She is very amiable, Mr. Littlewood's friend.”

  “So I've heard.”

  “And then after tea they took me to see Winnie.”

  “Who is Winnie?”

  “Winnie is a black bear cub from Canada. She was brought by a soldier. Her name is short for Winnipeg, not Winifred. But then the soldier's brigade was sent to France, and now Winnie lives at the zoo.”

  “And what is Winnie like?”

  “She is very tame. A gentleman from the zoo fed her. I stayed and watched her for an hour, with Mr. Littlewood and his friend.”

  “So you shall go to London again?”

  “I think so, yes. The boardinghouse was very comfortable. It is in Maida Vale.”

  “Very convenient for the zoo.”

  “And the landlady—Mrs. Peterson—she has taught herself Indian cooking. She even made sambar one night. Well, a sort of sambar.”

  “That would no doubt please your mother.”

  “She would be pleased. May I ask your guidance on a small matter?”

  “Of course.”

  “On the train back, Mahalanobis showed us a problem from the Strand magazine. They are published every month—mathematical puzzles—and this one he could not solve.”

  “What was it?”

  Ramanujan fishes a magazine cutting from his pocket and hands it to Hardy. “Puzzles at a Village Inn”; the setting, familiar to Hardy, is the Red Lion Inn in the Village of Little Wurzelfold. Only now the men speak of the war.

  “I was talking the other day,” said William Rogers to the other villagers gathered round the inn fire, “to a gentleman about that place called Louvain, what the Germans have burnt down. He said he knowed it well—used to visit a Belgian friend there. He said the house of his friend was in a long street, numbered on his side one, two, three, and so on, and that all the numbers on one side of him added up exactly the same as all the numbers on the other side of him. Funny thing that! He said he knew there was more than fifty houses on that side of the street, but not so many as five hundred. I made mention of the matter to our parson, and he took a pencil and worked out the number of the house where the Belgian lived. I don't know how he done it.”

  “Well,” Hardy says, “and what is the solution? It shouldn't be difficult—for you.”

  “The solution is that the house is number 204 out of 288. But that is not what is interesting.”

  “What is interesting?”

  “It is a continued fraction. The first term is the solution to the problem as stated. But each successive term is the solution for the same type of relation between two numbers as the number of houses increases toward infinity.”

  “Very good.”

  “I think I should like to publish a paper on continued fractions. Perhaps this continued fraction. You see, with my theorem I could now solve the puzzle no matter how many houses there were. Even on an infinite street.”

  An infinite street, Hardy thinks, of Belgian houses. And Ramanujan pacing the rubble, holding his continued fraction before him like a sextant. And all the houses burning.

  “I suspect that it would make an excellent paper,” he says.

  “Might it be a paper,” Ramanujan asks, “with which I could win the Smith's Prize?”

  7

  WATCHING RAMANUJAN/ with Chatterjee has the oddest effect on Hardy: he remembers trying, back before he met Ramanujan, to form an image of what Ramanujan might look like, and seeing Chatterjee. And now Ramanujan is with Chatterjee, and it's like watching two incarnations of the same person. Much as he tries, he can't recapture the image of the Senior Combination Room that he formed after reading A Fellow of Trinity; the real Senior Combination Room has obliterated it. Chatterjee, though, remains, and as long as he does, so will the image of Ramanujan that Ramanujan, by virtue of his arrival, should have erased.

  Is he jealous? It's not exactly that he misses the summer days when he and Ramanujan strolled alone along the riverbanks. Nor does he begrudge him his new friends. And yet he can't help feeling … what? Left out? He tries to be logical with himself. He asks himself: what do you want? For the Indians to invite you to join them on one of their London jaunts? To share a room with Ramanujan at Mrs. Peterson's boardinghouse? To go with him to the zoo, and visit Winnie the black bear cub from Canada, and take tea with Littlewood and Mrs. Chase?

  Surely not. After all, he has his own flat. His own life.

  Whenever they see each other in public, Ramanujan gestures to Hardy, Hardy nods, and they move on. One afternoon on Great Court, though, Ramanujan actually waves. Hardy has no choice but to cross the lawn, where Ramanujan introduces him to his friends. Chatterjee has a firm handshake, Mahalanobis bows, Ananda Rao will not meet his eye. They talk about the Gallipoli campaign for a few minutes, and then Chatterjee says, “Well, I must be off. Goodbye, Dear Jam.”

  “Goodbye,” Ramanujan says.

  Dear Jam?

  “What is this, a nickname?”

  “It is what they call me.”

  Dear Jam. So far as Hardy can surmise, Ramanujan doesn't even like jam. At least he's refused it every time Hardy's offered it. True, in the words there's a faint echo of his name. Even a partial anagram. arjam/ is in ramanujan/. So is that where the name comes from? And does having heard it give Hardy the right to use it?

  “Dear Jam.” He tries it out when he gets
back to his rooms. “Dear Jam.” He can barely get his mouth around the words.

  “Why fret?” Gaye asks. “Indians are always giving each other silly nicknames. Pookie and Bonky and Oinky and Binky. It's a boarding-school affectation.”

  Hardy turns. Gaye is kneeling by the fireplace, stroking Hermione.

  “How did you become such an expert?”

  “I listen.”

  “And what do you hear?”

  “That you're jealous. Admit the truth.”

  “I'm not jealous!”

  “Then you're envious. You want his friends. Especially that cricketer … And I can't blame you for that.”

  “You're utterly wrong. It was the same when you were alive, Russell, you always assumed I was in love with everyone. You were ridiculous about it.”

  “So what's the truth?”

  “Just that I'm curious as to the origins of this pet name. And the very fact that he has a pet name—it seems out of character for him.”

  “Or perhaps be isn't the man you assume—or should I say require him—to be?”

  “I don't require him to be anything in particular.”

  “Yes you do, Harold. You need him to be shy and reclusive and obsessed with his work, because then you don't have to bother taking him around. He doesn't interfere with your life. But if he keeps you in the dark, you don't like it, which, if you ask me, is rather hypocritical, given that you've done next to nothing to introduce the poor man into your own, shall we say, social sphere.”

  “That's not true. Littlewood and I took him to dinner at Hall and he despised it. He hates the food. We tried. What can you do when you offer someone something and he doesn't want it?”

  “Well, I can't say I'm surprised.” Gaye strokes Hermione's neck, so that she purrs. “After all, you did the same thing to me.”

  “What did I do?”

  “You know perfectly well what. The thing you can't speak of. The Saturday night thing.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Yes, that.”

  “It was an entirely different situation.”