The Indian Clerk (19 page)
Authors: David Leavitt
Now Ramanujan relaxes. He speaks of some of the modular routes to
n
that he has come up with, including one that provides a value of
n
to eight decimal places in the very first term. Russell is rapt. If there is one subject that can drag him away from politics,
it's mathematics, and the conversation saves the evening.
Afterward, Hardy and Littlewood walk Ramanujan and Neville back to Chesterton Road. Along the way Ramanujan says little. He
limps from the tight shoes. And if he's exhausted, no wonder! Even if it's the thing he wanted most in the world, or claimed
to want most in the world, it must still be bewildering, to have moved so swiftly from the solitude of his mother's
pial
to the frenzy of the Trinity high table. And all as a result of a letter that Hardy might have thrown away as casually as
did the other men to whom it was sent, in which case Ramanujan would still be in Madras, still working at the Port Trust Office.
Perhaps it's too much for him—as if a sailor, after years spent shipwrecked on a desert island, is finally rescued and told
that, as a reward for his privations, he may now take all his meals at the Savoy. And what happens? Such an abundance of rich
food makes him ill, he whose stomach has become accustomed to leaves and thistles and fish caught with his hands. In the same
way Ramanujan survived, for years, on only the thinnest diet of affirmation. So: have they made a mistake in imagining that
his stomach could match his appetite?
Mrs. Neville is waiting up for them when they arrive at her house. "Hello, darling," Neville says, and kisses her on the cheek.
"I'm afraid we've put poor Ramanujan through it tonight. Questions, questions, questions!"
"It was quite stimulating," Ramanujan says.
"How are your feet?" Alice asks.
"Fine, thank you."
"Well, you're home now." Suddenly Alice looks at Hardy with alarm, as if she's let escape some sentiment of which she would
prefer that he remain unaware. Foolish. He's seen it all along.
Afterward, on the way back to Trinity, he talks the matter over with Littlewood. "I'm having trouble working out what she
feels about him," he says. "On the one hand, her attitude's very maternal. Yet she also seems a little in love with him."
"With women," Littlewood says, "it often comes to the same thing."
"What, mother love and—"
"Exactly. Very common."
"Yet Neville has no idea."
"Of course he does. He's just not particularly interested. You know Neville."
"So you don't believe they're—"
"Oh, they might be. Who knows? And how ironic it would be if they were! Because isn't that what every Indian mother fears
most when her son goes abroad? Seduction by an evil foreign lady? Yet who would have guessed it would be Alice?"
Hardy frowns. He can't tell if Littlewood's joking and he doesn't want to admit that he can't tell.
"Well," he says after a moment, "if you want to know my opinion, they're not. I mean, look at them. Alice with her inexplicable
devotion to Neville, Ramanujan, who seems such a child. And not very interested in women, from what I can see."
"You can never be sure. Whatever the case may be, I hope at least he's having a good time. Because tonight he seemed miserable."
"Crowds frighten him."
"He should move out of the Nevilles' house. Move to Trinity. I've checked, and as soon as term ends, there should be rooms
in Whewell's Court."
How shrewd of Littlewood! To have Ramanujan close at hand, after all, would not only make their collaboration simpler to orchestrate,
but eliminate, once and for all, the complication of Mrs. Neville, her vegetarian cookbook, her dinners.
"Shall we broach the subject tomorrow?" he asks.
"Let's," Littlewood says. "How he answers may tell us everything we need to know."
A
RAINY AFTERNOON on Chesterton Road. The fire crackling. Alice and Ramanujan sit across a table from each other, gazing at
a half-finished jigsaw puzzle, an old one from her childhood. Five hundred pieces. Since they've been working on the puzzle,
an image has begun to emerge against the dark wood grain: two gentlemen in Victorian dress, sitting at a table not unlike
the one at which Alice and Ramanujan are sitting. An Oriental carpet patterned in rich red and yellow hues covering the floor.
A third man, dressed in the garb of an innkeeper, standing to the table's left. Is this a tavern? One of the men may be holding
a glass. Years before, when she was perhaps fourteen, a business acquaintance gave the puzzle to her father, who took no interest
in it, with the result that it eventually migrated to the nursery in which Alice and her sister, Jane, still did their homework.
Every year or so they would make a valiant attempt to put it together, only to be distracted by the charming shapes into which
many of the pieces were cut: a head in profile, a dog, a heart, a half-moon. They might get so far as to finish the frame
and a corner of the carpet before Jane would lose patience and blow at the table, gusting the pieces to the floor. For Jane
had tantrums. She was always the impetuous one, whereas Alice was always the one to get down on her knees, scrabble to collect
the detritus of her sister's fury. Perhaps for this reason, when their father died and their mother closed up the house, she
laid claim to the puzzle and brought it with her to Chesterton Road. When Ramanujan arrived, she dug it out. He had never
before seen a jigsaw puzzle. She barely had time to explain to him what it was before he was at work on it.
And now here he sits, staring down at the three Victorian gentlemen, holding in his right hand a piece in the shape of a tiny
pumpkin, patterned in the hues of the carpet. For a moment he studies the carpet—piecemeal still, as if rats have chewed holes
in it—and then, with a sweeping gesture that makes her think of aeroplanes, he fits the piece into place. The pumpkin disappears
as another chunk of carpet realizes itself. This rather disappointed Alice in her youth. After all, putting together the puzzle
meant losing the delightful shapes.
"Have you worked out a method?" she asks Ramanujan, when what she would like to ask him is: "Does Namagiri help you with puzzles,
too?"
"I wouldn't call it a method," he says. "But I do have . . . well, an approach. That is to say, having completed the frame,
I gather the like colors together and work from there."
Alice suppresses a smile. How funny, she thinks, to be sitting across a table from one of the greatest geniuses in the history
of humankind, watching him lose himself in a jigsaw puzzle! Nor is her husband, the Trinity fellow, any better. Indeed, she
knows perfectly well that as soon as he gets home this afternoon, as soon as he's dried off and had some tea, Eric will sit
down and work on the puzzle with Ramanujan until supper. Like children they'll work. Not thinking. And Alice won't mind. Even
so, she'll feel obliged to get up from the table. To leave them alone. And why? She can't say for certain. All told, everything
is nicer when it's just her and Ramanujan. Then she can talk to him in a way that she never can when Eric's there.
He's holding now what appears to be a lobster, or something lobsterlike, in his hands. As always, he's wearing a jacket and
tie. He's not wearing his shoes. Recognizing, early on, the suffering they caused him, Alice bought him a pair of soft slippers,
which, she told him, it was customary in England to put on when one was at home. To make him feel more at ease, she bought
slippers for herself and Eric as well, and now all three of them wear them. Indeed, the only person in the household who doesn't
wear slippers is Ethel.
Still, when Ramanujan leaves the house, he has to put on the dreaded shoes. She knows what a torture it is to him, walking
to Trinity with his toes so constricted, and wishes it was warm enough for him to wear sandals. But then again, would he,
even if he could? On outings in Cambridge, she has noticed other Indians dressed in garb more befitting their origins. She
asked Ramanujan about this once, and he told her that when he made the decision to come to England, Littlehailes, one of his
champions in Madras, rode him in the sidecar of his motorcycle to Spencer's, the city's grand old department store, through
the doors of which Ramanujan had never before set foot. There he was fitted for shirts, suits, trousers. He was taken to an
English barber, who snipped off his
kudimi,
something he would not allow until after his wife and mother had left for Kumbakonam. "How did it make you feel?" Alice asked,
remembering the book she'd seen in his trunk:
The Indian Gentleman's Guide to English Etiquette.
And after a moment, he answered: "I felt merely ridiculous in the clothes. But when the barber cut off my
kudimi,
I wept. It was as if I was losing my soul."
The lobster Ramanujan has been holding lands on the table, and as it does, a sensation of empathy passes through Alice, bringing
her, quite literally, to her feet. Ramanujan looks up. "Oh dear," Alice says, for the mere act of standing has slightly disarranged
some of the puzzle pieces.
"No matter," Ramanujan says, fitting them back into place.
She walks to the piano. It's an old Broadwood upright with lanterns on either side, inherited from her grandfather. Of late
she's taken to playing in Ramanujan's presence—simple pieces, for she's not much of a pianist. "Greensleeves," a Handel minuet,
a few Schubert impromptus. And then yesterday, looking through the music that she inherited with the piano, she happened upon
the score for
The Pirates of Penzance.
It was a simplified score, intended to assist in home performances. She played "Poor Wandering One" but didn't sing.
Now she opens the score to the Major General's song. She tests out the melody. And then some unsuspected vein of audacity
announces itself in her, and, really without preparation, she sings:
I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the kings of England,
and I quote the fights historical,
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical.
Ramanujan looks over from the table.
"Mr. Ramanujan, come and join me at the piano," Alice says. "I rather suspect you'll enjoy this song."
Hesitantly he gets up. Alice makes room for him on the bench and he sits, close enough so that she can feel the heat of his
body, not so close so that their clothes actually touch. "This song is from a famous comic opera called
The Pirates of Penzance.
The singer is a gentleman officer trying to impress some pirates. But really, the point is that he's rather full of himself.
Listen."
I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical, I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical, About binomial
theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.
"Of course," Alice continues, "when it's done properly, it's sung much faster than I've sung it. And by a man."
Ramanujan is looking at the score. "Binomial theorem," he says, in a tone that might mean amusement, might mean disdain.
"That's why I thought you might enjoy it," Alice says. "Now come along, let's sing together."
"Sing? I can't sing."
"How do you know? Haven't you sung in the temple?"
"Yes, but . . . I've never sung an English song."
"Well, I can't sing either, and who'll hear us? Just Ethel. So we'll do it together. At the count of three. One, two, three
. . ."
She sings, and, quite to her delight, Ramanujan joins in:
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus;
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous;
In short, in matters
vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
"There, you did very well."
"Did I?"
"You've got a lovely tenor voice. And better yet, a very good ear. You might have perfect pitch."
Ramanujan looks at his lap. He is breathing hard. Sweat beads on his forehead, as it always does when he's happy.
"Now come on," Alice commands. "Let's keep going. We'll finish the song, and then we'll sing the whole thing together."
Ramanujan takes a deep breath.
"One, two, three—"
I know our mythic history, King Arthur's and Sir Caradoc's,
I answer hard acrostics, I've a pretty taste for paradox,
I quote
in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus,
In conies I can floor peculiarities parabolous.
"Peculiarities parabolous!" Alice repeats. And they both start laughing. They laugh like children. Outside, the rain pours
down. On the table, the puzzle sits placid, immobile, seemingly content in its half-finished state. Comfortable in their slippers,
Alice's toes wiggle, as, she supposes, do Ramanujan's.
And then, quite unexpectedly, the door opens. They both stand, embarrassed, as if they're being caught in the midst of some
impropriety. "Hello, darling," Neville says, walking through, his footsteps preceding other footsteps. Hardy's and Littlewood's.
"Hello," Alice says, and drifts over to accept her husband's kiss.
"I've brought Hardy and Littlewood for tea. Hope you don't mind."
"Of course not."
"What have you two been doing? The puzzle, I see. They're hard at work on a jigsaw, Hardy. And what's this? The piano open!
Have you been teaching Ramanujan to play?"
"No, to sing." Alice rings a bell for Ethel as Neville walks over to the piano to inspect the score.
"The Major General's Song," he says. "I say, Ramanujan, have you been doing Gilbert and Sullivan?"
Ramanujan says nothing. He sits stiffly on the settee.
"Mrs. Neville, you never cease to amaze me," Littlewood says. "What a service you're doing us, introducing Ramanujan to everything
English! Whereas we only ever talk mathematics to him."
Alice sits across from Ramanujan, in one of the spinster chairs. "So what brings you home so early?" she asks, as Ethel brings
in the tea things.
"Marvelous news. Littlewood's found rooms for Ramanujan in the college. On Whewell's Court. He can move next week."
What does her face say? Nothing, she hopes. Not that her husband would notice even if her face did show something. Behind
his kindness, she knows, lie obliviousness and self-absorption.
Hardy would, though. That's what frightens her. That he should see something in her face, and tell Gertrude.
And Ramanujan? Does
he
notice anything? Ethel hands him his tea and he stares into the cup. Takes the milk and stirs it in.
Alice smiles. Later, she will draw pride from that. But for that moment it's as if a furious girl has just filled her cheeks
with air and blown the little shapes that make up the world all over the floor.
She takes her tea. "What wonderful news," she says. "Not having to do all that walking. It will be so much better, Mr. Ramanujan,
for your feet."