The Indian Clerk

by David Leavitt

  Thanks to Herman, we had one advantage: we knew what tactics would be brought to bear, and this meant that we could, at the very least, arm ourselves. Accordingly Littlewood obtained certificates from two doctors declaring that Ramanujan's mental state was sound—certificates that, in the end, didn't even have to be read. For the vote, much to my surprise and relief, went in our favor, despite Littlewood's absence from the meeting on the grounds that he was “indisposed.” Or perhaps his absence helped. Herman, as Little-wood's representative, read out a report that he had prepared, detailing Ramanujan's achievements and culminating in his election as an F.R.S. His being an F.R.S. did the trick, I think, not because the title in and of itself impressed the fellows, but because they foresaw the bad publicity that might ensue should an F.R.S. be voted down. Thus Ramanujan became the first Indian to be elected a fellow of Trinity.

  Littlewood brought me the news. Afterward, as I was hurrying to send a telegram to Ramanujan, I ran into McTaggart, creeping as usual along a wall. “It is the thin end of the wedge,” he said; then, before I could answer, he slunk away to where he had parked his tricycle.

  I sent the telegram. The next day a letter arrived from Fitzroy House, asking me to thank Littlewood and Major MacMahon on Ramanujan's behalf. All told, his response was more muted than I might have hoped, and certainly less resonant with joy than it would have been had he been elected a year earlier. “I heard that in some colleges there are two kinds of fellowships,” he wrote, “one lasting for two to three years and the other for five or six years. If that is so in Trinity, is mine the first or the second kind?” As it happened, the fellowship was for six years, as I immediately told him. At the time I assumed that he wanted the assurance because he hoped to stay at Trinity as long as he could, though now I wonder if, already, he was thinking of his family and what might become of them after he died.

  The most interesting part of the letter was mathematical. Rama-nujan, as we suspected, was working again—and working on partitions. He had come up, he said, with some new ideas about what he called “congruences” in the number of partitions for integers ending in 4 and 9. As he explained, if you start with the number 4, the partition number for every 5th integer will be divisible by 5. For instance, p(n) for 4 is 5, p(n) for 9 is 30, and p(n) for 14 is 135. Likewise if you start with 5, p(n) for every 7th integer will be divisible by 7. And though Ramanujan had not considered the case of 11 “due to tediousness,” his hunch was that, if you start with 6, p(n) for every 11th integer thereafter will be divisible by 11. As, indeed, turned out to be the case. The next number to test, of course, would be 7, after which, according to Ramanujan's theory, every 13th integer would be divisible by 13. Unfortunately the theory broke apart at 7, as the partition number for 20 (7 + 13) is 627 and the prime factors of 627 are 19,11, and 3. Once again, mathematics had tantalized us with a pattern, only to snatch it away. Really, it was rather like dealing with God.

  How the story speeds up as it nears its end! Have you noticed the way the first days of a holiday pass so much more slowly than the last? That was how it felt in the autumn of 1918. True, some diehards continued to brood, murmuring of a German plot to unleash a secret weapon, some monstrosity so powerful that none could imagine its destructive potential. Instead the Germans folded. Austria sent a peace note to Woodrow Wilson, Ludendorff resigned, and it was over. I was in Cambridge at the time. I remember hearing, from my rooms, a distant roaring in which I felt I had no right to take part, not only because I had opposed the war from the beginning but also because I did not much feel like roaring. A horrific fire finally put out, a flow of blood finally staunched: are these really things to cheer about? I don't think so. So I stayed in my rooms, and at midnight, when I went to bed, I fell into a sleep so deep it seemed to pass in a minute. By the time I woke, the sun was coming through the curtains, it was ten o'clock in the morning, and for the first time in four years I didn't feel tired.

  That afternoon Miss Chern came to see me. She had heard the news of Ramanujan's fellowship and wondered how she might best congratulate him. I gave her tea, and she showed me her album of newspaper clippings, most of them collected in America, where she had spent much of her girlhood. There was an article from the New York Times—an old one, given her by her father—in which a friend of Philippa Fawcett provided an intimate account of her victory in the Tripos. A second from the New York Times—provided by the Marconi Transatlantic Wireless Telegraph—announced Ramanujan's arrival in Cambridge in April of 1914 and included an interview with me that I had no memory of giving. Two others—from the Washington Post and the Christian Science Monitor—also announced Ramanujan's arrival in England, yet what was curious about these articles was that they laid emphasis less on his work in number theory than on his ability to perform lightning-quick calculations. The first compared him to a Tamil boy named Arumogan of whom I had never heard, and who had been the subject of a specially convened meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society. “Multiply 45,989 by 864,726,” the second began.

  Well, that problem wouldn't flabbergast S. Ramanujan, a young Hindu, who last year left India and entered Cambridge University. It would take him only a few seconds to multiply 45,989 by 864,726. In less time than that he could add 8,396,497,713,826 and 96,268,393. In the time it would take the average schoolboy to divide 31,021 by 12, Ramanujan could find the fifth root of 69,343,957, or give the correct answer to the problem: What weight of water is there in a room flooded 2 feet deep, the room being 18 feet 9 inches by 13 feet 4 inches, and a cubic foot of water weighing 62 ½ pounds?

  This article concluded by comparing Ramanujan to an American “boy calculator” known as “Marvelous Griffith.” “Could Ramanujan really perform those calculations?” Miss Chern asked, and I laughed. It seemed to me unlikely; more to the point, it seemed to me beside the point. And I wondered, not for the last time, if this was how my friend would end up being remembered: not as a genius of the first rank, but as a circus sideshow attraction, the freak at whom members of the audience throw numbers like fish for him to gobble, only to watch as, without recourse to pen and paper, he spits out the sums.

  I was not getting into London very often. Still, we wrote to each other at least twice weekly. It seemed that Ramanujan had entered into another one of those spells of productivity that punctuated his list-lessness, and was working on a dozen things at once: partitions, Waring's problem for fourth powers, theta functions. Once again he raised the possibility of his returning to India—as the war was over, there was no longer any risk (at least any non-spiritual risk) in crossing the ocean—and with his permission I wrote to Madras on his behalf. As I saw it, there was no reason for him to stay if he wanted to leave. His fellowship did not require him to be in residence at Trinity, nor did it bind him to any particular obligations. And while he continued to refer to the impending trip as “a visit,” I think I knew, even then, that he was going to die.

  He gained a little weight. The fevers, he said, had ceased to be irregular. He no longer suffered rheumatic pains. Perhaps for this reason, in November he left Fitzroy House and moved into a nursing hostel called Colinette House in Putney. This was an altogether more modest (and cheaper) affair than Fitzroy—a stalwart brick house with eight bedrooms, fully detached and indistinguishable from most of the others that lined Colinette Road until you stepped inside and saw the array of medical equipment piled in the sitting room. An impressive staircase led to the first floor, and to Ramanujan's room, which had a bow window and overlooked the front garden. The ceilings were high and the moldings elaborate. At the time of his stay, he was one of only three residents, the others being a retired colonel whose dementia led him to believe that he was still in Mangalore and an elderly widow named Mrs. Featherstonehaugh who took a curious liking to Ramanujan and amused him when she explained that her name was pronounced “Fanshawe.”

  Because I could get there quickly from Pimlico, I visited Ramanujan more often at Colinette House than I had at Fitzroy Square. Usually I took a tax
i. His health had stabilized by then, if only into an unvarying routine of sickness; much as during the months he'd spent on Thompson's Lane, feverish nights gave way to peaceful, tired days. And yet he was less irritable and obstinate than he had been at Matlock. Every morning he ate eggs for breakfast, and when one morning I interrupted him in the middle of his meal—I had come to help him sort through some financial details—he looked up at me from his plate and waggled his head in the old way, as if to say: yes, I have given up. It doesn't matter so much anymore. Eggs no longer matter.

  Then his health, with the onset of the cold weather, started to decline. At least he was allowed a fire. When I arrived one morning in January, I was surprised to find him still in bed. He greeted me with a wave, and told me that he had received a letter from the University of Madras—the same university that had once shut its doors in his face—offering him an income of £250 per annum upon his return to India—this on top of the same sum from Trinity. “But Ramanujan, that's marvelous!” I said, taking my coat off and sitting down. “Five hundred pounds a year will be a fortune in India. You'll be a rich man.”

  “Yes, that is the trouble,” he replied.

  “How so?” I said.

  “I don't know what I will do with so much money. It is too much.”

  “But you need not spend it all on yourself. You may have children. And whatever's left over you can give to charities.”

  “Yes, that is exactly what I was thinking,” he said. “Tell me, Hardy, would you mind writing out a letter for me? I feel too weak to hold a pencil.”

  “Of course.” I took some stationery from the table. “To whom is the letter to be addressed?”

  “To Dewsbury, the registrar at Madras.”

  “Ramanujan, you're not going to—”

  “Please, will you write it?”

  “But you'd be a fool to tell them to lower the offer—”

  “Please do as I ask.”

  I heaved a sigh—loud enough, I hoped, to signal my disapproval. Then I said, “All right,” and took out a pencil. “I'm ready. Go.”

  “Dear Mr. Dewsbury,” he dictated, “I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of 9th December 1918, and gratefully accept the very generous help which the University offers me.”

  “Very good,” I said.

  “I feel, however, that after my return to India, which I expect to happen as soon as arrangements can be made, the total amount of money to which I shall be entitled will be much more than I shall require. I should hope that, after my expenses in England have been paid, £50 a year will be paid to my parents and that the surplus, after my necessary expenses are met, should be used for some educational purpose, such in particular as the reduction of school fees for poor boys and orphans and provision of books in school.”

  “Very generous, but wouldn't you like to control how the money is disbursed?”

  “No doubt it will be possible to make an arrangement about this after my return. I feel very sorry that, as I have not been well, I have not been able to do so much mathematics during the last two years as before. I hope that I shall soon be able to do more and will certainly do my best to deserve the help that has been given me. I beg to remain, sir, your most obedient servant, etc., etc.”

  “Etc., etc.,” I repeated, handing him the letter to sign.

  “Are you sure about this?” I asked, putting it into the envelope.

  “I am sure,” he said.

  Obviously he was determined to keep the money out of his parents' hands.

  I suppose now I might as well tell the anecdote. I don't much like to tell it these days. It's been told too much; it feels as if it no longer belongs to me.

  Any speculation, mathematical or otherwise, as to what might have lain behind Ramanujan's answer I leave to you to ferret out.

  I had gone to see him in Putney. I suppose this must have been in February, a month or so before he boarded the ship for home. And he must have been feeling poorly, because the curtains were drawn, and he only kept the curtains drawn on bad days.

  He was in bed, and I sat in the chair up next to his bed. He said nothing, and I had nothing particular to tell him. No special motive lay behind my visit. Still, I felt the need to break the silence. So I said, “The taxi I took from Pimlico today had the number 1729. It seemed to me a rather dull number.”

  Then Ramanujan smiled. “No, Hardy,” he said. “It is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.”

  You may do the maths now if you like. You will see that he is right. 1729 can be written as 123 + 13. But it can also be written as 103 + 93.

  If only the Christian Science Monitor had been present!

  Here Ramanujan's story ceases to be mine. Of what remained of his life—a little over a year—I can tell you almost nothing, because he lived these months out in India, while I remained in England.

  What I know I picked up secondhand. It seems that instead of getting better upon his return to India, as he was supposed to, he got worse. The university authorities put him up in great luxury, in a series of splendid villas loaned to him for the duration, with a break in the summer during which he was whisked away from the city to the banks of the River Cauvery, on which he had played as a child. Thence back to Madras. What Komalatammal, used to living in a shack with mud walls, must have made of the splendid Raj villa in which her son spent his final months I cannot guess. I have seen a picture of the place. The stairway, its banister carved from teak, descends to a vast sitting room with carved moldings and a granite floor. “Gometra,” the house is called, in the suburb of Chetput, which Ramanujan called “Chetpat”: in Tamil, “It will happen soon.”

  Soon enough Janaki arrived with her brother. It will not surprise you to learn that Komalatammal was not remotely glad to see her. She even tried to bar Janaki from the house, but Ramanujan insisted that his wife stay with him, and in deference to his condition, I suppose, his mother demurred, or at the very least made a show of having reached an accord with her daughter-in-law. (With what rancid remarks she showered the girl in private I can but guess.) All told, the situation was fraught with tension, and Ramanujan must have felt the unease ricocheting between the two women as they competed for the coveted spot by his bedside. No doubt concern as to who would benefit most from his legacy intensified this frantic contest to see which of the women he would allow to nurse him, to change his sweat-soaked pyjamas, to feed him milk from a spoon.

  Now there were no longer those spells of improved health that in England punctuated the long torpor of his sickness. The atlas of his life centered on a mattress low down on the cool granite floor, from which he rose only when the sheets had to be changed. And yet, despite his declining health, he still had intermittent bursts of productivity. During one of these he came up with an idea that I suspect will prove to be among his most fruitful, that of the “mock theta function.” This was the subject of his last letter to me, a letter that he wrote in bed, and that consisted entirely of mathematics.

  I am told that upon his return, India greeted him as a hero, and that India wept at the news of his demise. Quite an ending to a story that began so modestly, and would in all likelihood still be going on, modestly, had I not intervened.

  Had Ramanujan stayed in India—had he survived—he would now be on the brink of fifty. Instead he died at thirty-three.

  Tuberculosis was given as the cause.

  And what of the others?

  With the conclusion of the war, Littlewood reconciled with Mrs. Chase. Another child has been born. I assume it is his.

  My sister, dear devoted Gertrude, remains on the faculty of St. Catherine's School to this day.

  Daisy and Epée have given rise to several generations of fox terriers.

  The Nevilles are in Reading.

  Miss Chern is a tutor at Newnham.

  Russell was reinstated at Trinity.

  True to my word, in 1920 I left Cambridge for Oxford, taught
there happily until 1931, then returned, drawn like the proverbial moth to the flame that will singe his wings, to the college where I had begun my career, the college that had perpetually betrayed and bullied me, the college on whose grounds I am fated to end my days.

  I still collaborate with Littlewood.

  The hospital on the cricket grounds was dismantled.

  Thayer I never saw or heard of again.

  There is only one story left to share.

  Earlier this year—it was April, I believe—I was taking a stroll through Piccadilly Circus. It was late afternoon, a light rain was falling, and as I stepped off the curb onto Coventry Street, a motorcycle hit me.

  Let me admit right now that the accident was entirely my own fault, and not the cyclist's. I wasn't looking where I was going. No doubt my mind, as it is so often these days, was on the Riemann hypothesis.

  The next thing I remember I was lying on the pavement a full thirty feet from where I'd been walking. The motorcycle had dragged me that far. And now the cyclist, a fair-haired youth, was gazing anxiously into my eyes. “Are you all right, sir?” he asked. And then his face was gone, replaced by that of a bobby. “Are you all right, sir?” the bobby asked.