The Indian Clerk (47 page)
Authors: David Leavitt
"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 blase; 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.
H
ARDY 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 swarms 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.
What a place! Ever fearful of germs, he wipes his seat before sitting down; keeps his coat collar pulled up to his mouth.
He wonders at the strange course his life has taken these last years: that a letter he might easily have ignored, that others
ignored, should have led him from the safety of his rooms in Trinity to this place.
He waits. An hour passes. No one calls his name. To make the time pass, he listens to the tart's monologue, which is oddly
compelling: ornate and subtle and full of references to men and women with whom she assumes everyone else in the room is familiar.
The ingredients are those of a novel: a jealous sister, a cheating husband, a married lover. " 'You keep it to yourself, Jack,'
I tell him, I don't want nothing to do with it.' But will he listen? No. He's just like Annie, always has been, has to have
his own way . . ."
The story is just reaching its climax when the female officer strides in and shouts out a name. "Hold your horses," the tart
says, and, having adjusted her various accoutrements—stockings, handbag, necklaces—she stumbles away on loud heels. And how
quiet the room is suddenly! Aside from the coughing, all he can hear is the muttered monologue of the man who fidgets. And
what is he saying? Hardy strains his ear, catches a single word—"butter"—then his own name. He looks up. "Please come with
me," the female officer says, and he stands and follows her down a long corridor into a windowless office where two chairs
face a desk at which no one sits. "Please wait here," she says. "The inspector will be with you shortly."
She shuts the door behind her. He looks around. The walls are bare except for a calendar and a clock with a loud tick.
(Tick, tic.)
Why didn't he bring something to read? Where is the toilet? It suddenly occurs to her that the officer might have locked the
door, locked him in. He panics at the prospect.
Dear God, let the door be locked so that
the tart will not molest me.
Then he gets up and walks to the door and tries the handle. To his great relief, it opens. He closes it again and sits down.
Ten minutes later two policemen come into the office, both huge and mustached, one in his sixties and the other, at most,
twenty-five. "Sorry to keep you waiting," the older one says. "I'm Inspector Callahan. This is Officer Richards." Hardy shakes
their enormous hands. Then the inspector sits at the desk and the officer takes the third seat, the one next to Hardy's. "Tried
to jump under a train," the inspector says, opening a ledger.
"What?"
"The Indian. Tried to jump under a train at Marble Arch station."
"Oh my God." Hardy shuts his mouth. God is not someone whose name he wants these men to hear him utter. "But why? Jumped?
He didn't fall?"
"There were witnesses. The station was crowded. A woman screamed, 'Don't jump!' and he jumped."
"Is he all right?"
"He's all right," the younger officer says, the one called Richards. "I was the officer called to the scene. From what the
witnesses tell me, sir, the stationmaster, seeing him jump, turned off the switch, and the train came to a stop just a few
feet in front of him. It was a miracle, was what one woman said. I had to climb down onto the tracks and help him up, which
was difficult, as he'd done considerable injury to his legs."
"Where is he? Can I see him?"
"He's in a holding cell," the inspector says. "We had him bandaged up. Normally in a case like this he'd be kept under guard
in a hospital. But there aren't enough beds. Bloody war." The inspector lights a cigarette. "I'll be honest with you, I've no patience with
these suicides. Attention's all they want. They're just like spoilt children. And when you consider all the young men dying at the front.
. . It's a crime, you know, attempted suicide. No magistrate's going to look kindly on it, especially these days."
"But he's not well."
"Has his behavior been at all odd lately?" asks the younger officer.
"I couldn't say. I haven't seen him. He's been at a sanatorium. He's very sick."
"What is he, a mathematics student?"
"He's the greatest mathematician alive today. And an F.R.S.—Fellow of the Royal Society."
What, Hardy will wonder later, made him say that? It is a lie. Ramanujan is
not a
Fellow of the Royal Society. Nor, until that moment, had it occurred to Hardy that perhaps he
ought
to be; that Hardy ought to put him up for membership. Had Hardy thought before he spoke, he might later have claimed that
he was making a gambit, hoping that the inspector would be sufficiently impressed by the idea that Ramanujan was an F.R.S.
that he would let him go. And, as it turned out, the inspector
was
impressed, as was his lieutenant. But that was sheer luck. "An F.R.S.," he said, and you could see it in his face: a stepping
back, in deference to intellectual superiority as sanctioned by a respected body. "I didn't realize. All he told us was he
was at Cambridge. Well, well."
"As I said, he's not been well lately. And geniuses do tend to be . . . temperamental."
"Of course, if he's put before a magistrate, charges will be brought."
"Is that absolutely necessary? It would be highly embarrassing . . . not just to him but to the college. And it could be disastrous
for his future. A criminal record." Hardy leans in confidentially. "I'll ask you to keep this between us, because it's not
something we want to get round—the newspapers and such—but Mr. Ramanujan is on the brink of making what most would agree is
the single most important breakthrough in the history of mathematics."
"Is he now? Well, let's see what's to be done. I'll need to speak to the chief, of course."
The inspector leaves, slamming the door behind him.
"Would you care for a cup of tea?" Richards asks.
"Thank you, yes," Hardy says.
"I'll just ask Florence to fetch some for us. Florence!" And he shouts through the open door for the female officer with whom
Hardy first spoke. She slinks in, looking resentful in her bowlerish hat, her long black skirt and thin tie. An officer of
the law, requisitioned for tea-making.
"Fetch us some tea, will you, darling?"
She says nothing; disappears down the corridor. Richards pushes the door half shut. It's the first time Hardy's had the chance
to get a good look at him. The mustache is a pity, in that it conceals his lips, which are thin and wet. His brown eyes are
open and curious beneath narrow brows and a block of dark, thick hair. Smiling, he takes his seat; says to Hardy, "This breakthrough
you mentioned—I wouldn't half mind knowing what it is. I've always been keen on science. And you can trust me to keep quiet
about it."
Hardy leans in for a confidence. And really, he thinks, Richards is young. So why isn't he in France? An injury? Good connections?
Or is he just lucky—kept out of the war to patrol the streets of London?
"Mr. Ramanujan is on the brink of proving the Riemann hypothesis," Hardy says.
"The Riemann . . ."
"It has to do with the prime numbers. You see, for hundreds of years, mathematicians have wondered about the mystery of the
primes and their distribution." Like the lecture he gave to the girls at St. Catherine's. Only Richards listens more carefully
than the girls did. He gets irritated when Florence interrupts with the tea, stops Hardy intermittently to ask questions,
and seems just on the brink of grasping the essentials when the inspector's voice booms again in the corridor.
Instantly, at the first click of the door handle, Richards pulls back, as if to put a safe distance between himself and Hardy.
And how immense, ungainly, interruptive is the inspector's presence! His, Hardy recognizes dimly, was the barking voice on
the telephone. "Well, I've had a talk with the chief," he says, taking his place at the desk, "and he is of the opinion, as
am I, that attempted suicide is a very serious offense. Mind you, if he did it once, he might do it again. There's a reason
it's a crime in this country, you know, and that's to protect the public and protect a man from himself who's liable to off
himself at any moment." The inspector rubs his nose, so that his mustache quivers. "Still, the chief appreciates the delicacy
of the situation, and so, given the gentleman's reputation and his status as an F.R.S. and so forth, we are willing to forego
bringing criminal charges
provided
he enters a hospital straightaway and stays there for at least a year. You say he's not well, he's been in a sanatorium."
"Yes. Tuberculosis."
"Well, get him back to the sanatorium. And make sure he doesn't run off. Because if we catch him walking the streets of London
or standing on the edge of platforms in tube stations, there'll be no leniency."
"I understand. May I see him now?"
"Richards, go and fetch him."
"Yes, sir." Richards hops up and leaves.
"Cigar, Mr. Hardy?" the inspector asks. Hardy declines. "Well, I don't mind if I do myself." And he lights the cigar, stretching
his legs out in front of him under the desk. "So, a mathematician," he says.
"That's right."
"Myself, I was bloody awful at maths. As a lad I could barely add two and two. Still can't. My wife won't even let me near
the accounts book." He laughs. "Of course I suppose you could tot up fifty figures in your head in half a minute."
"No, like most professional mathematicians, I am abysmally bad at what you call 'totting up.' But Ramanujan could."
"Could he now?"
"He's well known for his feats of mental arithmetic. We had a contest once, between him and a Major MacMahon, to see which
one could break down a prime number in the shortest time."