The Indian Clerk

by David Leavitt

  “Last night I was cooking. I am hosting a dinner. Tuesday week. I wonder if you would do me the honor of attending.”

  “Of course,” Hardy says. “What's the occasion?”

  “Chatterjee is getting married.”

  “Is he now? How lovely for him. So—round numbers.”

  “Yes, round numbers.”

  Hardy steps up to the blackboard. At present he's trying to get Ramanujan to focus on a proof that almost all numbers n are composed of approximately log log n prime factors. This proof Hardy feels especially determined to complete, not only because the result will be their first joint publication, but because, if they finish it, he'll feel that he's succeeded, at last, in converting Ramanujan to his own religion: the religion of proof.

  The trouble, as usual, is that Ramanujan won't concentrate. He fidgets with his pen. He keeps blowing his nose.

  “Are you sure you're all right?” Hardy asks.

  Ramanujan waggles his head.

  “I'm only asking because you seem a bit distracted. Is it the dinner?”

  “Oh, no. The lentils.”

  “The lentils?”

  “For the rasam.” And Ramanujan proceeds to explain that, as he laid out the ingredients for his rasam, he started counting lentils, and that got him thinking about partitions.

  This is not the first time they have talked about partitions. Indeed, partition theory has been on their minds, albeit in a rather scattershot way, ever since Hardy received Ramanujan's first letter, and encountered a statement about a theta series the very inaccuracy of which opened up a startling new angle on the question. Calculating p (n)— the partition number of a number—is easy when n is 5 or 7; the problem is, as you climb up the number line, p(n) increases at an astounding rate. For instance, the partition number of 7 is 15, while the partition number of 15 is 176. So what's the partition number of 176?

  476,715,857,290.

  What, then, would be the partition number of 476,715,857,290?

  “And where have the lentils led you?”

  “I have an idea for a formula for calculating the partition number of a number. Even a very large number.” He stands. “May I?”

  “Of course.” Hardy wipes the blackboard clean, and Ramanujan steps up to it. He starts to draw diagrams: little dots representing lentils. Then he writes out the theta series from his original letter. Then Hardy mentions a generating function that Euler came up with, leading to the power series

  And they're lost. On the blackboard the first crude terms of the formula emerge. What they're trying to build one might think of as a sort of machine into which you insert a ball emblazoned with an integer—n—only to see it emerge, a few seconds later, emblazoned with a second integer—p(n). Yet what permutations the ball must be put through in the course of its journey! And what unexpected elements must go into the building of the machine! Imaginary numbers, π, trigonometric functions. Once again, a simple question is proving to require a very complicated answer.

  By noon, Hardy is exhausted, elated. He wants to break for lunch, then immediately get back to work, only Ramanujan demurs. “I have some other business to attend to,” he says.

  “Oh, very well,” Hardy says, his voice thick with impatience. “But try to get here early tomorrow. This is most exciting. We're really on to something here.”

  The next morning Ramanujan arrives late, disheveled, and smelling peculiarly sour.

  “I was preparing the rasam,” he says by way of excuse.

  “But I thought you made it the night before.”

  “I meant to, but the lentils—”

  “I don't see why this particular rasam is turning out to be such a production,” Hardy says, wiping the blackboard clean.

  “But this is no ordinary rasam. It is a very refined rasam. With tomatoes. And I must make it in quantity.”

  “Let's leave off cookery for the moment and move on to more important matters, shall we?” And Hardy starts to write. He wants to talk about Cauchy's theorem, and some ideas he's had concerning the unit circle on the complex plane that, though at first glance they don't seem to bear on partitions at all, may in fact illuminate the route they're looking for. He talks, and though Ramanujan seems to take everything in, he says almost nothing. The dinner, it seems, has obsessed him. When, later, Hardy asks him what he's planning to prepare, he won't answer. Clearly, though, esoteric supplies are needed, for the next morning he disappears—leaving only the briefest of notes—only to return that afternoon (the porter reports this to Hardy) bearing three bulging paper bags. Has he been to London, then? And who else, besides Chatterjee and his fiancée, is he planning to invite?

  “Miss Chattopadhyaya will be there,” Ramanujan says. “She is studying ethics at Newnham and is the sister of a distinguished poetess. Also Mahalanobis.”

  “What about Ananda Rao?”

  “I thought of asking him, but he is too immature.”

  “And the Nevilles?”

  Ramanujan hesitates. “I do not think that this would be the sort of occasion that Mrs. Neville would enjoy.”

  “Really? I suspect she'd enjoy it thoroughly.”

  “No, she would not. I am sure.”

  Hardy decides to leave that one alone.

  3

  FOR THE NEXT several days, Ramanujan frets about the dinner. He cannot focus on anything else. This frustrates Hardy no end. After all, the phase of imaginative ferment in which he now finds himself—who knows how long it will last? Such episodes are notoriously capricious. One day you wake up ready to do the best work of your life, the next, for no clear reason, you discover that both your inspiration and your energy have withered away. He wishes Ramanujan could understand this. Yet he also knows that, were it Littlewood he was dealing with, he'd give him a wider berth. Indeed, the success of his collaboration with Littlewood owes, to a great degree, to their willingness to give each other latitude. So why, with Ramanujan, does this feeling always creep in that somehow Ramanujan owes him, as recompense for his having brought him to Cambridge in the first place, the full and constant benefit of his genius? To make such a demand, he knows, is completely unreasonable. After all, as everyone is always reminding him, Ramanujan has needs of his own. And some of them have nothing to do with mathematics.

  At last Tuesday arrives. Not surprisingly, Hardy doesn't see Ramanujan at all that morning. He works alone, then does the puzzles in the new issue of the Strand. After lunch, which he takes in Hall, he meets up with Neville and Russell to discuss the burgeoning crisis of the U.D.C. Neville says nothing about the dinner. Is it possible he hasn't heard about it?

  Dusk descends. Hardy bathes, shaves, polishes his shoes, and puts on his tie and jacket. He is just about to leave when he remembers that he's neglected to fill Hermione's water dish—and then he remembers that Hermione is dead. The dish is now on the mantel, next to Gaye's bust, which seems, tonight, to glare at him with more fury than usual. “Well, what can I do?” he asks. “I'm not ready for another cat— though Mrs. Bixby's sister …” But he's tired of conversing with the dead. So he descends the staircase, steps into the cold air of New Court, makes the one-minute walk to Bishop's Hostel, and climbs the nearly identical staircase that leads to Ramanujan's rooms. On the other side of the door, voices murmur in an unrecognizable language. He knocks, and Ramanujan—his face scrubbed shiny, his jacket straining at the buttons, stretched tightly across his torso—lets him in.

  Instantly all conversation ceases. Hardy looks around in amazement. The armchair and desk have been pushed to the side to make room for a long dining table covered with a white cloth, no doubt borrowed for the occasion from the college. Chairs from Hall and place settings and place cards have been laid out. The table is so big, and the room so small, that there's hardly anywhere to stand. Ramanujan's guests are backed into corners or up against the wall. And they are absolutely silent.

  Ramanujan leads Hardy to one of them, a dark-skinned woman in her late twenties, elegantly dressed in a green and blu
e sari shot through with gold thread.

  “May I present Miss Chattopadhyaya?” he says.

  Miss Chattopadhyaya reaches out her hand. “How do you do?” she says.

  “Very well, thank you,” Hardy says. “And you?”

  “Very well, thank you.”

  Such niceties! Rather than reaching out his hand, the turbaned Mahalanobis bows; still, the exchange is virtually identical to the one that Hardy has just had with Miss Chattopadhyaya. By contrast Chatterjee, who must come from a more sophisticated background, greets him with the casualness of a public school man: a slap on the back, an old-chummy salute, after which he introduces his fiancée, Miss Rudra (what names these Indians have!), who has a young, fresh mouth to which she chronically lifts her hand, as if to hold back a fit of giggling. She is a student, Chatterjee announces proudly, at the local teachers' college. They will be married at the end of the month. It is difficult, their families are so far away … At the mention of the families Miss Rudra puts her hand to her mouth, while Chatterjee, his lean musculature barely discernible beneath the layers of jacket and dress shirt, places his hand on her back.

  Ramanujan, in the meantime, has gone into the gyp room, from which a complexity of aromas emanates: sourness, smoke, the prickle of cumin and the musty sweetness of coriander powder. Hardy follows him in. The little table is crowded with food: not only the rasam in its silvered pot, but steamed white cakes (of rice?), and triangles of stuffed dough, and yogurt with cucumber and tomatoes, and fried potatoes, and a red stew.

  “And you managed to prepare all this on a single gas ring?”

  Ramanujan nods his head.

  “No wonder you've been working so hard.” Hardy rubs his hands together. “Well, it all smells delicious. You've done a remarkable job, my friend.” He pats Ramanujan on the back, and Ramanujan jumps. “Easy! No need to be nervous. You're among friends.”

  “I have burned the pongal.”

  “It doesn't matter. No one will mind.”

  “But I labored over the pongal. Only one shop in London had the green gram. Mrs. Peterson found it for me.”

  “It doesn't matter.”

  “And the rice is overcooked.”

  “I tell you, it doesn't matter. The important thing is the company.”

  “Well, it cannot be helped. We must go on.” Then he leaves the gyp room, with Hardy in tow. “The meal is prepared,” he says, almost grievously. “Shall we sit?”

  Once again, all conversation ceases. The guests take their places. Ramanujan carries in the pot of rasam; ladles the soup—what was it he said the English called it? Pepper water?—into bowls.

  Hardy tastes. The liquid in his spoon is thin, reddish brown, and seems to distill a dozen flavors, none of which he can name. There is tartness, and sweetness, and fire, and a certain muddiness; what he imagines dirt would taste like. “My compliments,” Miss Chattopad-hyaya says. Miss Rudra waggles her head. Chatterjee eats fast and recklessly, Mahalanobis with a gentility verging on indifference. Ramanujan doesn't eat at all.

  Suddenly he bounds up. “Oh, but I have forgotten the pappadum!” he says. And he rushes into the gyp room, only to return a few seconds later bearing a basket of crisp wafers. “Now they are cold.”

  “Never mind,” Hardy says, breaking his into pieces. He has finished his bowl of soup. They have all finished their bowls of soup, except for Miss Rudra, who eats extremely slowly. It's not that she eats little— she empties her bowl—but rather that she manages to keep each spoonful in her mouth for longer than any human being Hardy has ever known. What a trial of a wife she will make!

  Second servings of the rasam are ladled out. The talk turns to cricket, a subject at which Mahalanobis proves to be surprisingly conversant. That Chatterjee knows his cricket, of course, comes as no surprise. He speaks of the game's history in India, the great players he admired as a boy, Calcutta's Maidan. All the while the women listen, Miss Rudra, for once, with her mouth uncovered. The bowls are empty now. “And who would care for a third helping?” Ramanujan asks.

  “I wouldn't say no,” Hardy says.

  “That is most gracious of you, Mr. Ramanujan,” says Miss Chat-topadhyaya, “but I must decline.”

  “Miss Rudra?”

  She covers her mouth with her hands; shakes her head no.

  “I see. Very well.”

  Ramanujan returns to the gyp room. Hardy starts naming his favorite cricket players, including Levison-Gower, of whom Chatterjee proves to be less admiring than he ought to be. A friendly argument starts up. The ladies smile. Then Hardy hears, or thinks he hears, a door clicking shut.

  For a few seconds, no one says anything. The conversation dissipates. Cautiously Hardy looks over his shoulder, into the gyp room.

  “Has he gone out?” Mahalanobis asks.

  “Perhaps he needed something from the college kitchen,” Chatterjee says.

  They wait. Finally Hardy gets up and opens the door to the corridor.

  “No sign of him,” he says.

  An uneasy silence falls. There are certain possibilities that none of the men wants to bring up in front of the ladies, and so Hardy is rather surprised to hear Miss Chattopadhyaya say, “Shouldn't someone go downstairs to the toilets? He might need help.”

  “I'll go,” Chatterjee says.

  “I'll go with him,” Mahalanobis says. And they march out the door, only to return, a few minutes later, alone.

  “He is not in the toilet,” Chatterjee says.

  “What could have happened?” asks Miss Chattopadhyaya.

  Another expedition is organized. Leaving the ladies behind, the three men walk briskly to the college kitchens. No, Mr. Ramanujan has not passed by, the chef reports. So they go to the porter's lodge.

  “He left fifteen minutes ago,” the porter says.

  “Where was he going?”

  “He didn't speak to me. But I must say, it struck me as odd, seeing as he didn't have his overcoat on.”

  “Which direction was he heading?”

  “Towards King's Parade.”

  Hardy strides out the college gates; looks up and down the street, in both directions. No sign of Ramanujan.

  “He's gone,” Chatterjee says, with more surprise than distress in his voice.

  “What else is there to do?” ask Mahalanobis.

  “Nothing,” Hardy says. And they head back to Ramanujan's rooms, where the ladies await them.

  Now the dilemma is what to do with all the food. Should they wrap it up? No one is sure.

  In the end they leave it. No doubt Ramanujan will return later. Were they to pack up the food, or throw it away, he might be offended.

  It goes without saying that they will not continue eating.

  At the foot of the stairs the members of the perplexed party bid each other farewell, and head their separate ways.

  Hardy—still hungry—wishes he had had the third bowl of rasam.

  4

  THE NEXT MORNING Ramanujan fails to show up at Hardy's rooms. “Curious,” Hardy says to no one. But he goes about his business anyway. He reads the papers; works, as best he can, on the partitions formula; finding that he cannot concentrate, picks up the Cambridge Magazine, and then throws it aside. How vexing! The moment of ferment is fading—he can feel it. Important work may be lost, and it will all be Ramanujan's fault. But there's no point in dwelling on that, so he retrieves the Cambridge Magazine from where he's dropped it. Since a few months ago, Mrs. Buxton, wife of Charles Buxton, who was to have spoken at the ill-fated meeting of the U.D.C., has been editing a section entitled “Notes from the Foreign Press,” which consists of excerpts of articles from dozens of foreign papers, including enemy papers, which she has managed to obtain permission to import from Scandinavia, translated into English. Neue Freie Presse (chief Vienna daily), National Tidende (Copenhagen, conservative), Vorwärts (German, Social Democratic) … How varied are the responses to the war, how right every side believes itself to be! His eyes wander to the adverts. Under t
he Red Robe is playing at the Victoria Cinema, accompanied by His Soul Reclaimed (“a very Dramatic Episode of the Staircase Life”) and footage of “20,000 German prisoners captured in Champagne.” Chivers' Olde English Marmalade, Officers' Uniforms at Joshua Taylor & Co., “Health Über Alles” at Le Strange Arms and Gold Links Hotel, Hunstanton. Hunstanton? … Outside his window, the sun has come out. Why not a walk? So he puts on his coat, heads downstairs, happens to stroll by Bishop's Hostel.

  On Ramanujan's landing, he encounters a bedmaker. “No sign of him, sir,” she says. “And all that food going to waste.”

  “Why don't you eat it?”

  She blushes. “Oh, sir, it's rather strange food what he eats. I'd be afraid.”

  “Well, let me know when he comes back, would you? Or tell Mrs. Bixby.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  That night, at Hall, Russell asks what's happened. “I suspect he's gone to London,” Hardy says. “Nothing to be concerned about.” But afterward, when he gets back to New Court, he finds young Ananda Rao waiting at the foot of his stairs in his gown and mortarboard.

  “He is not in London,” Ananda Rao says. “I telegraphed Mrs. Peterson. He is not at her boardinghouse.”

  “I wouldn't worry. I'm sure he'll be fine.”

  Ananda Rao doesn't move. Is he hoping that Hardy will invite him upstairs? Should Hardy invite him upstairs?

  “Well, goodnight,” he says finally.

  “Goodnight, sir,” Ananda Rao says. And he turns away. Is there a look of regret on his face as he walks toward the archway?

  Hardy closes the door. A missed opportunity perhaps. If so, one better not taken up. After all, he is a student. And, as Ramanujan himself said, “immature.”

  5

  FOUR DAYS PASS, and not a sign of him. Finally Hardy tells Mrs. Bixby to give Ramanujan's bedmaker permission to throw away the food from the dinner party, which is starting to stink. He sends a note to Chatterjee, asking if he's heard any news. “I have not,” Chatterjee replies. “But I am told by some who know Rama-nujan better than I that such disappearances are not out of character for him. He has done the same thing before.” Then another note arrives, from Mrs. Neville.