The Indian Clerk

by David Leavitt

  What happened was this. Early in the fall I received a letter from a childhood friend of his, an engineering student named Subramanian, who told me that he had gone to visit Ramanujan's mother and that she and his blind father and his brothers were in a state of agitation because for months Ramanujan had not written to them. Naturally when Ramanujan came to see me that morning, I told him about the letter. “Is it true,” I asked, “that you are not writing to your people?”

  “They hardly write to me,” he replied.

  “But why is that?”

  Then he told me, for the first time, about Janaki's flight from Kumbakonam to her brother's house in Karachi. “Now I do not even know where she is,” he said. “She has written me only a few very formal letters, asking for money. And my mother—she wrote that she believes I have hidden my wife away in some secret place in India, that I have hidden Janaki away from her and that Janaki is writing to me against my mother, waiting for me to come and join her, in that secret place, without my mother's knowledge, and that I am always listening to her.”

  “But she's your wife. It's natural that you should listen to her.”

  “My mother was offended when Janaki ran away. But what she does not understand is that Janaki offends me too, for she writes me only these formal letters.”

  The mother's jealousy seemed obscene to me. I suggested that perhaps it was her unreasonable attitude that had driven Janaki away, and Ramanujan shook his head no. It was a firm no—not his usual ambivalent waggle. Clearly both fish hooks were smarting.

  In the end, I persuaded him, at least, to write to them and assure them that he was all right. At least I think I did. For just as, at the mention of Subramanian's letter, Ramanujan had suddenly opened himself to me, now that we were back to the question of letter writing, he withdrew. It was fascinating to watch, this withdrawal, like the infolding of one of those flowers that close their petals at night. “You may tell Subramanian that you have got me to promise to write to my people,” he said. A very careful instruction which, you will note, contains no promise. I put it into my reply word for word. Whether he did write to them I have no idea.

  It was now October. For a while he disappeared. He went to a sanatorium called Hill Grove, near Wells, in the Mendip Hills. This institution was run by a Dr. Chowry-Muthu, whom Ramanujan had met when he had come to England from India; it catered mostly to Indian patients suffering from tuberculosis. But Ramanujan did not like it there, and when Chatterjee and Ananda Rao went to visit him, he had only complaints to voice. It seemed that Dr. Chowry-Muthu employed curious treatment methods, one of which was to make his patients wear masklike inhalers containing germicides. He compelled them to take part in singing exercises and to saw wood in a workshop. The “chalets” in which they lived were rustic shacks. Nor had Ramanujan anything good to say about the food or the beds. To make matters worse, he was in a state of great agitation, Ananda Rao told me, because he knew that very soon, at Trinity, it would be decided whether he would be elected to a fellowship. As I mentioned earlier, since the spring of 1916 he had been trying to get me to reassure him that his election would be, as Barnes had foolishly asserted, a fait accompli. But now Barnes was gone, and I was left with the responsibility of trying to put the election through. The trouble was, I suspected—rightly, as it turned out—that, despite what Barnes had said, Ramanujan would not be voted in.

  In retrospect, I see that much of what happened was my own fault. I should not have been the one to put him up for election. To say the least, I was unpopular at Trinity just then, due to my militancy on Russell's behalf. Especially among the old guard, there were men who would have fought any nomination I'd put forward, no matter how worthy. Nor can we underestimate the irrational distrust, even hatred, that the mere sight of dark skin can unleash in white men. Walking with him on the street, I had on occasion heard boys, with perfect equanimity, call Ramanujan a “nigger.” And then, at the meeting to decide the fellowships, Jackson—with the same equanimity—vowed that so long as he was alive, Trinity would have no “nigger fellows.” His was the ranting of a tyrant, and Herman, to his credit, rebuked him. But in the end, when it came down to the vote, Ramanujan lost.

  Now I wonder: did he feel it happening at Hill Grove—a tug on a line that crossed the countryside, crossed valleys and rivers, to connect a sick Indian in a sanatorium to that Trinity chamber in which dons had gathered to decide his fate? In that same chamber, only a few months before, Neville's banishment had been assured. And surely Ramanujan must have been thinking about Neville that afternoon, as he sat on one of Hill Grove's porches, wrapped in blankets, the hated mask over his mouth. He was waiting—hoping—for a telegram. But none came. I could not tell him, as I wanted to, that he was now a fellow, and so I told him nothing.

  The next day he left the sanatorium. He took a bus from Wells to Bristol, where he caught the train to Paddington. Probably there were delays: the train service was constantly being disrupted just then, as more and more cars were requisitioned for use in the war. But finally he arrived, and from Paddington he went immediately—two stops on the Bakerloo—to Mrs. Peterson's boardinghouse in Maida Vale. This was one of about a dozen more or less identical establishments ranged around a narrow rectangle of garden behind Maida Vale Station. Any of you who have done time in London will be familiar with the layout of such places: the hall with its coat rack and telephone stand, the formal front parlor, the carpeted stairs leading up to the tenants' rooms, the doors marked “Dining Room” and “Private” and “Kitchen.” All that made Mrs. Peterson's boardinghouse unique was that its clientele consisted entirely of Indians. This was nothing she had planned, she explained when I went to see her in 1921; her husband having been killed in a tram accident, she'd had to find a way to make a living, so she'd opened the boardinghouse and, as it happened, the first lodger to knock on her door was an Indian. “Mr. Mukherjee,” she said. “He was studying economics. He still writes to me. From Poona. And he liked the place, so he told his friends, and word got round.”

  It was a rainy April afternoon when Mrs. Peterson told me this. We were sitting in her tragic front parlor, with its stiff little chairs and

  Meissen figurines and floral wallpaper; a room grown stale from its own protection, from its having been reserved, for so long, for some ceremonial occasion that would never take place: a visit from royalty or the viewing of a coffin. Every now and then, I suppose, someone must have come to see her whom she felt obliged to entertain somewhere other than in the kitchen, at which point the curtains would be flung open, the floors mopped, and fresh flowers put on the table, with the result that the room's spirits lifted a little. A fat young woman whom I assumed to be Mrs. Peterson's daughter brought the inevitable tea. Mrs. Peterson herself was not fat; she was a small, elegantly proportioned woman in her mid-sixties who had known much loss: two sons dead in the war, in addition to the husband. “After Mr. Mukherjee there was Mr. Bannerjee, and Mr. Singh, and two Mr. Raos.” I nodded, as an Indian in a checked suit and turban quietly took off his coat in the front hall, hung it on the rack, and padded up the stairs.

  We spoke about Ramanujan. Tears came to Mrs. Peterson's eyes as she told me of his first visits, his shyness with her, the quiet gratitude he expressed when she served him his supper and he saw that the dishes were familiar ones. “For you see, I had to learn to cook Indian, for the sake of my gentlemen,” she said. “Mr. Mukherjee, he taught me how to make the things he liked. He showed me the shops where I could get the ingredients. And since I wanted him to be comfortable, I went along, though the food seemed strange to me at first. I'm a fairly quick learner in the kitchen.” She put down her teacup. “I only ever wanted to make my gentlemen happy. That's the sad part. I was so very fond of Mr. Ramanujan. He seemed so alone in England. Those last times he came to me, when he was visiting the doctors, he looked so unwell. There was a room he preferred, a small room on the top floor, and I tried to always put him in it.”

  I asked if I could see t
he room. “Of course,” Mrs. Peterson said, and led me up the stairs—past the first floor, where the permanent lodgers lived in larger suites, to the attic with its low ceilings and constricting walls. Once, these had been servants' quarters. The room that she showed me was under the eaves, cozy and neat, with a small desk by the window and the bed pushed into a corner beneath the angled wall. The view was of other roofs. The wallpaper, of climbing roses, clashed with the carpet, which was dark brown and patterned with interlocking hexagons. Still, it was an appealing room, a warm room: I would have liked sleeping there myself.

  “Mr. Ramanujan was happy here,” Mrs. Peterson said, as she led me back downstairs. “I know he was happy.” And I thought: yes, you are the sort of person who can know such things. I am not. “That was why it took me so by surprise, what happened. I never expected it. You see, I'm always very careful what I give my gentlemen. I even keep a separate set of pots and pans to cook the meals in, for the ones who don't eat meat. It never occurred to me to look at the label on the Ovaltine tin.”

  “Rest assured, no one imagines that you meant any harm,” I said. “And Ramanujan was—shall we say, rather highly strung at that point.”

  “Still, I regret it. I remember it as if it was yesterday—him sitting at the table in the kitchen and me stirring the glass. I thought it would be a treat for him before retiring. ‘Have a glass of this Ovaltine, Mr. Ramanujan,’ says I, ‘it's a flavoring for milk,’ and he takes the glass and drinks it down. ‘Did you like that, Mr. Ramanujan?’ says I. ‘I do indeed, Mrs. Peterson,’ says he. ‘Well, here's the tin so you can write down the name,’ says I, ‘then you can buy some for yourself for when you're in Cambridge.’ ‘Thank you,’ says he, and starts to read the label …”

  She quieted. Tears again sprang to her eyes. “You needn't go on,” I said, for I knew the next part of the story already from Ramanujan's friends: how, upon examining the tin, he happened to glance at the list of ingredients, and saw that one of them was powdered egg. Eggs, of course, were forbidden to him. To eat eggs was as polluting as to eat meat.

  Then, I think, he must have gone a little mad. Springing to his feet, he cried out, “Eggs, eggs!” and threw the tin at Mrs. Peterson as if he couldn't bear even to touch it. When she read the word egg, she was aghast. “I chased after him,” she told me, “I said I wouldn't have dreamt of giving him egg, and I was ever so sorry, but he wouldn't listen to me. To tell the truth, I don't know that he heard me. He went up to his room, and whilst I stood there at the door apologizing and trying to calm him, he packed his case. I followed him down the stairs. He tried to give me money, but I wouldn't take it. ‘Mr. Ramanujan!’ I called from the front door as he went down the path—he was running, which can't have been good for him—‘Mr. Ramanujan, where will you go?’ You see, it was nine in the evening by then. But he didn't answer.” She wiped her eyes. “That was the last I saw of him.”

  Mrs. Peterson put down her cup. She looked over my head, at the mantelpiece with its careful arrangement of figurines. “It's not your fault,” I said. “Remember, he was very ill, and probably a bit off his head.” To which I might have added: given so many months of illness, and his not having been elected to a fellowship, and the war, and his troubles at home, who could blame him? A man from whom dozens of hooks hung, like a great fish that has escaped capture again and again, careering across Baker Street with poison on his lips. Where was he heading? Liverpool Street Station, he told me later. He wanted to get back to Cambridge. It was the night of October 19th, 1917, and London was calm. It had been so long since there had been an air raid that when the fleet of zeppelins wafted across the channel and started dropping their cargo, no one was prepared. The response was strangely blasé; at two theaters, performances were interrupted, the audience were told they could leave if they wished, but once the raid was over, the plays would go on. Meanwhile bombs crashed down onto roadways, windows shattered, some people were killed outside Swan & Edgar's. But as so often seemed to be the case in those days, most of the dead were poor children, asleep in workmen's cottages.

  And what of Ramanujan? From what he told me later, he was just coming out of the tube when he heard the explosions. Because he knew that Liverpool Street had been a favored target of the Germans in the past, he did not go into the station. Instead he ran in the opposite direction. He looked up, but could not see the zeppelins. They were too high and obscured by smoke. Had it been me, I would have wondered what the pilot was thinking, as he looked down from that immense floating tablet upon the abstract flames. What does carnage sound like from on high? What does it look like? Soon he would turn around, he would churn across the quiet channel, peacefully aloft among the stars, only to be shot down himself over France. But Ramanujan was not thinking about the pilot. He had only one thought in his mind: the powdered egg. The taint on his tongue. He had done the unforgivable, and now the gods were unleashing their punishment. The air raid was not meant for London: it was meant for him. And so he ducked, and wept, and begged for mercy, if not in this life, then in the next.

  This, at least, is what he claimed. Later he wrote a letter to Mrs. Peterson describing what had happened. She showed me the letter. As I read it, I wondered how much I should believe. For I had tired the poor lady out quite enough for one day; nor did I see any point in interrogating her on the matter of Ramanujan's religious scruples. Instead I rose and bid her goodbye, and just as, a few years before, she had watched Ramanujan hurry away, now she watched me walk toward the tube station. When I looked over my shoulder she was on the doorstep still. The sun was setting. Another Indian came up the path, and she made room for him to pass, before she turned and shut the door behind her.

  PART NINE

  Twilight

  1

  HARDY DESPISES TELEPHONES. He always has. For the first year that they shared the flat in Pimlico, he and Gertrude did not have a telephone. But then their mother became ill and Gertrude insisted on putting one in so that the servant could find her in an emergency. Nor, after their mother died, did she have the thing removed, even though there was no longer any good reason to keep it. Now it sits in the hall on its own little table— ridiculous, Hardy thinks, that a piece of furniture should have been invented purely for the purpose of supporting such an apparatus. Although it never rings, it seems forever eager to do so. He has given the number to no one except Thayer, who has never used it.

  And so when the black mechanism suddenly starts shrilling at him that Tuesday afternoon in October, Hardy's first thought is that some sort of siren or alarm is sounding: perhaps an air raid is about to take place. Once he identifies the source of the noise, it occurs to him that until this moment no one has ever rung him up in the flat. He's never before heard the thing's terrible little voice, so frantic in its urgency. Hurrying into the hall, he regards the machine. It is impassioned as a cat in heat. It vibrates. If for no other reason than to shut it up, he picks up the receiver.

  The voice on the other end is male, hoarse, shouting. Hardy can barely understand what's being said. Whole words fail to come through. “Professor Hardy? This is (inaudible) Scotland Yard.” But why should Scotland Yard be calling him? “(Inaudible) your sister.”

  “My sister?”

  “Trinity College (inaudible) your sister and your sister gave us this number. I'm sorry to say (inaudible) in custody.”

  “What?”

  The voice repeats the mangled word. He repeats it again. Only after he has repeated it a third time does Hardy realize what the voice is saying, or trying to say: “Ramanujan.”

  “In custody. Why?”

  “I'm not (inaudible) over the telephone, sir. Very respectfully I must request that you come to Scotland Yard as (inaudible) has given your name and (inaudible).”

  “Has he been arrested?”

  Hardy cannot make out the reply. He drops the receiver, pulls on his coat and hat, and heads downstairs to hail a cab. What on earth can have happened? he wonders, as the cab carries him past the swa
rms hurrying into Victoria Station. The last he heard, Ramanujan was in a sanatorium in the countryside. So what is he doing in London? And what could he have done to get himself picked up by the police? Importuning—that's the first thought that enters Hardy's mind. Suddenly he imagines Ramanujan in one of the notorious public toilets near Piccadilly Circus, the ones Norton has told him about, but which he's never dared visit. Is it only because his own longing has drawn him, time and again, to walk past those urinals that he sees Ramanujan standing at one, reaching out his hand to touch the trousers of a plainclothes officer? But no. That's the wrong plot. So what else might it have been? Ramanujan has run away before, most notably after the dinner party in his rooms. Could the sanatorium have sent out a bulletin? Is he a fugitive? Do laws forbid flight from such places? Or perhaps he left of his own accord, ran out of money, and was picked up for vagrancy. Or got in a fight—over what? Highly composite numbers?

  He glances out the window. A light snow has started falling. On Parliament Square, a woman takes off her hat and turns her face to it. She smiles at him—he smiles back—and then she is gone, the cab turning onto Bridge Street, then Victoria Embankment, where it pulls up in front of the headquarters of Scotland Yard. It is really too warm for snow; the featherlike flakes melt as soon as they hit the ground. Still, he pulls his collar up, and having paid the driver, hurries inside the brick fortification with its turrets and medieval fripperies. The corridors are wide and echoing and ablaze with electric light. He tells a female officer why he's there, and she points him toward an enormous waiting room. Here he sees a rouged tart and a drunken soldier. There are men who fidget and men who stare silently into their laps. There are upright, proud women who look like the servants of his childhood, wives and mothers no doubt summoned to fetch wastrel husbands and sons. One of the fidgeting men talks to himself. The rouged tart talks to everyone. The air smells of beer and rotten fruit, and in the distance he can hear someone coughing.