The Indian Clerk

by David Leavitt

  2

  “EXCUSE ME, SIR, but she's asking after you.” He wakes to the smell of coffee mixed with chicory, the vision of a face at the door: youthful, pallid, fat.

  “Who?”

  “Your mother.”

  “Oh, yes.” He sits up in bed. This must be Maisie.

  “You weren't here last summer, were you?”

  “No, sir, I started just before Christmas.” A cry issues from downstairs. “Excuse me, sir, but like I said, she's asking after you. She's been ever so grumpy this morning.”

  “Fine, I'll be there in a minute.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “And close the door!”

  “Sorry, sir.” It clicks shut. A house of women. He gets out of bed, puts on his clothes, is just finishing combing his hair when he hears the voice again. “Mr. Hardy—”

  “Yes?”

  “I'm very sorry, sir, but she's got quite ill-tempered. She won't have her breakfast, wants you to go down.”

  “Very well. I'm coming, Mother!” he shouts, and hurries downstairs, his shirt still half-unbuttoned. His dying mother. Why does it all feel like a stage comedy?

  On the bed that has been dragged into the drawing room for her to die on, Mrs. Hardy lies on her back, gazing up at the ceiling. Her gray hair is tied with a bow. Maisie sits at her side, lifting a spoon from a bowl.

  “Well, Mother, I'm here,” he says.

  “Harold,” she says weakly. “Sit down. Sit down next to me.”

  Obligingly Maisie gets up. She hands him the bowl; the spoon. “See if you can get her to eat,” she says, then strides off with the brisk vigor of youth to the kitchen.

  His mother smiles up at him. He smiles back.

  “Well,” he says. “And how about some breakfast?”

  “Dear Harold. I was speaking of you today with your father.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “He was just back for dinner—from the—the boys were …”

  “Where, Mother?”

  “And then we were shelling peas.”

  “But what about father?”

  “Don't bother to ask,” Maisie says, returning with a cup of coffee, which she hands to him. “She'll never follow anything to the end.” And Maisie's right. Mrs. Hardy's conversation, if you can call it that, is all sentences that stroll and meander and collapse into themselves; infinite regresses, like Russell's barber. Things he recognizes from the past are mixed up with references to people he's never heard of, as if she's half slipped into someone else's life.

  “Won't you rub my legs?”

  “Your legs?”

  “They're so sore.”

  “I'll just call Maisie,” he says, but before he can stand, she grabs hold of his wrist. Her grip is stronger than he would have guessed.

  “No, not the girl,” she says. “You.”

  “Mother, I … Maisie!”

  The girl comes in, wiping her wet hands on her apron.

  “Maisie, will you rub her legs?”

  “I'm not rubbing her legs, the last time I tried she nearly bit my hands off. She only lets Miss Hardy do it.”

  “Rub my legs, Harold.”

  “You'd better do it, sir. I'll show you how. There now, Mrs. Hardy, I'm not going to touch you, I'm just lifting up the blankets …”

  “Mother, perhaps you should wait until—”

  “There.” The blankets are lifted back, exposing his mother's fragile torso in its nightdress, the stockinged feet. He remembers Lawrence describing, with horror and relish, the sight of Keynes in his striped pyjamas. “Now I'll just pull back your nightdress—”

  “Don't!”

  “All right, Mrs. Hardy, don't worry!” Maisie backs away. “You do it,” she says to Hardy. “Come on.”

  Hesitantly Hardy bends toward his mother; touches his hands to the hem of the nightdress.

  “How far back?”

  “Halfway above the knees.”

  But halfway to what? Halfway between the knees and what?

  Gingerly he pulls; she lifts her legs obligingly; she's not afraid of him touching her. Almost coquettish, her smile, until the nightdress is partway up, exposing the lined and spotted skin, the pronounced knees, the calves with their mottling of bruises.

  “Maisie, how did she get these bruises?”

  “She bruises easily, sir.”

  “But Mother, it might hurt you if—”

  “Please rub my legs.”

  “All right.” And he touches the skin, which is warm, the consistency of paper. He moves his hands up and down. “Is that all right?”

  She closes her eyes.

  “Well, I'll just be getting back to the kitchen,” Maisie says.

  “You know this building used to be a school.”

  “Did it?”

  “The governesses would get very cross. The girls used to cry. The other day in town I ran into … I ran into … Florence Turtle and she … With the loveliest violets …” She seems to be gasping, as much for her thought as for air. “That's what gives it its atmosphere,” she concludes.

  “Well, Mother, and what do you think of Gertrude's new dog?”

  “The dog whelped outside the kitchen … We had to drown the pups … The girls—Margaret said they shouldn't see, but I … and the school.” Suddenly she looks up at him. “You should marry. I fear for you, dear.”

  He looks away. “Mother—”

  “The eye worries you, I know. But you can be discreet. So long as you never let him see you with it out …”

  “Oh, yes.” He keeps rubbing, harder now, so that he feels the bones through the dry flesh. It strikes him that in her ravings (what else is there to call them?) a common theme keeps emerging. She speaks of school. And why not? All her life she has spent in schools. Both she and his father. From Ramanujan's perspective, there must be little difference between him and Littlewood, him and Russell. All are children of affluence to him. And how can he be expected to recognize what separates Hardy from the others? For Littlewood comes from a Cambridge family; Russell is an aristocrat. Whereas Hardy is merely the child of teachers. Not born, as Russell was, with any guarantees. No private income. Easy enough for Russell to declare that if Trinity doesn't want him, he'll simply teach on his own in London. He can afford to. But Hardy is dependent on Trinity, just as his father was dependent on Cranleigh, his mother on the Training College, his sister on St. Catherine's. The only difference is one of prestige. Without the support of munificent institutions, all of them would be lost. He is more like Mercer than Littlewood.

  After she has fallen asleep, and he has tucked her in again, he goes into the sitting room. He wants to have a word with Gertrude—about something, he's not sure what—but of course, the plan is for him to leave before Gertrude returns. And if he's to be on time for his appointment—at the prospect of which he flushes with pleasure and a slight revulsion, to think that these hands, which so lately rubbed his mother's legs, will soon be touching Thayer's; one set old, the other maimed—if he's to be on time, he'll have to leave soon.

  So he leaves. He has his rendezvous with Thayer. He spends the night in London, at the flat. But on Sunday he returns to Cranleigh. Gertrude seems only mildly surprised to see him there.

  “How was your day in town?” he asks.

  “Adequate,” she says. “I treated myself to tea at Fortnum's. Rather a limited spread, given the rationing.”

  “It's even got to Cambridge. At Trinity it's fish and potatoes but no meat on Tuesdays and Fridays, meat but no potatoes the rest of the week. No vegetables to speak of.”

  “One wonders how Ramanujan survives.”

  “One does.” He looks away from her, at the fire, next to which Daisy sleeps. Then he says, “Gertrude, I want to talk to you about Mother.”

  “Oh?”

  “She's got very demanding. The whole time you were gone she insisted that I sit with her and that I rub her legs.”

  “Yes, it seems to soothe her.”

  “My impressio
n is that you coddle her. And then, because you rub her legs, I must rub her legs, else the sky will fall.”

  “An interesting point,” she says. “Given how infrequently you're here, it hasn't seemed much of a problem until now.”

  “Well, but if I am here … in the summer and such …”

  “So I'm to refuse our dying mother's wish that I rub her legs in order that you, on the rare occasions when you happen to visit, won't be burdened? Is that what you mean?”

  “No, it's not what I mean. What I mean is—it can't be good for her.”

  “No, we mustn't spoil the child, else she'll grow up rotten.”

  “Oh, for God's sake, Gertrude. Look, just because you're willing to give up everything—”

  “Yes, I've chosen to do that. I could have chosen differently. I could have just left and then you would have been it.”

  “So I'm to be punished because I have the life I have?”

  He sits down; rests his chin on his hand. How helpless he looks! Helpless enough, Gertrude thinks, to melt anger. To inspire tenderness. And to think that he thinks himself a feminist!

  She's tempted to touch his shoulder. To help him out of the hole into which he's dug himself. To give him an out. She almost feels kindly enough. But not quite. Not quite.

  3

  IT IS A BURDEN to know the fate of a man who does not know his own fate.

  Across the gloaming of the chamber in which the London Mathematical Society holds its meetings, Hardy looks at Neville. Neville's glasses hang low on his nose. He's staring into his hands, twisting what appears to be a piece of string around his right ring finger. Tightly, so that the flesh bulges. Hardy can make that out, even from a distance, because unlike Neville, he is blessed with superb eyesight, as well as an instinctive capacity to recognize the fiddling stratagems of anxiety. Knuckles cracked, spectacles wiped repeatedly, a loose button worried until it falls off. And though he wishes he could go up to Neville right now, provide him with the relief he craves, tell him, “Your fellowship's been renewed,” the sad fact is, his fellowship has not been renewed, and Hardy knows this already, and Neville does not, though he must suspect. So Hardy says nothing. In Neville's face there is worry shot through still with faint hope. Hope against hope. Neville looks up, and for an instant their eyes meet. He nods. Hardy nods back. But not to give anything away. At the very least he doesn't want to be accused of peddling false hope.

  It takes him about an hour to read the partitions paper. About ten minutes in, Littlewood arrives, in uniform and looking the worse for wear. He sits near the back, then pulls a pencil and what appears to be a postcard from his rucksack and begins taking furious notes. Indeed, every time Hardy looks up, he's taking notes—and always on the same postcard, which he keeps turning, presumably in order to find another cranny he can fill with figures. It's his usual maniacal style—vexing to Hardy, who believes in penmanship, in cream-colored eighty-pound paper, in legibility. Should Hardy make a mistake when he is writing something, he will not cross it out; no, he'll start again with a fresh sheet. Littlewood, by contrast, seems to take a peculiar satisfaction in the very messiness of the page, as if somehow, from amid that morass of symbols and equations and blots, a vision will coalesce.

  Neville takes no notes. He neither blinks nor moves. His hands are coiled on his lap.

  Hardy has very strong opinions about how one should read a paper aloud. Some of his colleagues, when they stand before a group of listeners, become amateur actors; they dash off witticisms, use their pointers as if they were epées, indulge themselves in the crudest flourishes. Hardy, on the other hand, believes that the work should take center stage, and therefore tries to speak, today, in as uninflected a voice as he can manage, with the result that two or three of the older members of the audience fall asleep. When he finishes, the weakest of applause greets him. No one understands the paper's importance. He takes two questions, one from Littlewood, the other from Barnes, both technical, after which the meeting breaks up, and he finds himself surrounded by a group of predatory dons from obscure universities, all with narrow little inquiries to make, the sort of inquiries that seem designed to lead him into a trap, or to catch him out in an error. Such feeble efforts, however, he deflects easily, and his persecutors leave disappointed, unrewarded.

  The circle breaks up, revealing Neville, who takes Hardy's right hand in both of his. “Very well done,” he says. “It does my heart good to see all Ramanujan's managed since he's been here.”

  “Indeed.”

  “A pity he couldn't make it.”

  “Oh, you know Ramanujan, this isn't really his sort of thing.”

  “But you did ask him.”

  “No, I—he hasn't been feeling well.”

  “I'm sorry to hear that.” Then Neville smiles, and gazes into Hardy's eyes, as if searching for clues, for a sign. Something. From this searching Hardy turns away. For he can't bring himself to say, as he'd like to say, Neville, it's as you fear. They're throwing you out, ostensibly because they think you're just a mediocre talent (an assessment with which, by the way, I would be inclined to agree), but really to punish you for your pacifism, for being a member of the U.D.C., for defending Russell… It's horrible, it's unjust, but there it is. You're not famous enough to fight for. You're not Russell. We're casting you loose. And suddenly, just for an instant, he wonders if he should tell Neville, if it might soften the blow to hear it from Hardy instead of Butler. Only it's not his place. He takes on too much as it is.

  “And will you be seeing Alice while you're in town?”

  Neville laughs. “No,” he says. “She's far too busy with her translating to see me. I'm going back to Cambridge right after this. Alice will come down tomorrow.” He lowers his voice. “Funny thing, her staying in your flat. If I didn't know you so well, I'd say, ‘Hands off the wife!’”

  With a laugh, Neville punches him softly on the shoulder.

  “Well, there's nothing to be concerned about on that front,” Hardy says, “because the fact is, I never see her. I don't use the flat during the week, only on weekends.”

  “I know. I'm just joking. Hello, Littlewood.”

  “Neville,” Littlewood says. “Hardy.”

  “Littlewood.” Hardy can smell beer on his breath.

  “Well, I must be off,” Neville says. But he hesitates. “Hardy—” No response. “Well, it's nothing. See you.”

  With a wave, he disappears through the great dark doors.

  Littlewood gazes after him. “Poor devil,” he says.

  “I know.”

  “I wonder what Ramanujan will think.”

  “Littlewood, should I have asked Ramanujan to come up today?”

  “I assumed you did.”

  “No, I—that is, I assumed that even if I did ask him, he wouldn't come.”

  “It might have been a kind gesture. After all, he's the coauthor. Oh dear, looks like we're being given the heave-ho,” he says, for by now the room has emptied out, and a char stands by the doors, impatient to tidy up. He and Hardy move toward the doors. “Sorry to have kept you, darling,” Littlewood says, winking at the char, so that she smiles at them.

  They stroll out into the corridor, down the stairs, into the dusk light on Piccadilly.

  “Shall we walk a bit?”

  “As you like. Where are you heading?”

  “Back to bloody Woolwich. The end of a very short leave, the bulk of which I spent, I'm sorry to say, engaging in activities of a most insalubrious nature.”

  With or without Mrs. Chase? Hardy wonders. But he doesn't ask— not, as before, because he knows not to, but because he doesn't know how.

  “And have you seen Ramanujan's friend Winnie lately?”

  “I haven't been by the zoo in ages.” They stop in front of Hatchards, gaze through the window at a display of novels all of which advertise their capacity to take readers far from London, far from the war. “I say, Hardy,” Littlewood says, “you wouldn't be willing to let me use the bath at
your flat, would you? I'm filthy, and the chances of my getting a decent bath at Woolwich are close to nil this late in the day.”

  “A bath?” Hardy focuses his attention on one of the novels: One Tuscan Summer. A bath! But Littlewood's never even been to his flat, on top of which there's the matter of Alice Neville, on top of which … yet how can he refuse a bath to an old friend when it's so obvious how badly he could use one? And a shave. Not to mention some sleep. For though in Littlewood's face he can recognize still—if just barely—the youth who used to stride naked to the Cam each morning, layers of worry and fatigue seem to smother him.

  “Of course you can have a bath,” Hardy says. “We'll take the tube, shall we?”

  “Thanks.” And they descend. From the ticket hall, a moving stairway carries them down, effortlessly, into the earth. Hardy hears the rumble of the mechanism; looks at the tired faces of the men and women on the other side of the partition, rising as he and Littlewood fall.

  “You know I saw you once climbing a tree?” Hardy says.

  “What? When?”

  “Just before you took the tripos. I remember that it struck me as particularly odd, that you should be climbing a tree when all the other would-be wranglers were off practicing problems against the clock.”

  “I have no memory of ever engaging in any such activity. That said, I did try to maintain a lighthearted attitude toward the tripos. I took things as they came.”

  “Unlike Mercer.”

  “Poor Mercer. He took it all very seriously. Too seriously.”

  They step onto the platform just as the train pulls in. The station smells of bakeries. The carriage is crowded. Not far off from where they stand, holding straps to keep their balance, a woman tries to quiet a weeping baby. When Littlewood looks at her, his face breaks a little, and Hardy, to avoid a scene, says, “If these air raids don't let up, I expect we'll all be living in the Underground.”

  “I'd feel safer,” says the woman with the baby.

  “But they have let up lately,” Littlewood says.

  “Men in the sky in big balloons,” the woman says. “It isn't natural. It isn't meant to be.”