The Indian Clerk (16 page)

A more pressing concern is his family. His mother, it seems, objects in the strongest terms possible to her son traveling
to England. On the one hand, her qualms are religious; as an orthodox Brahmin, she shares with Mr. Iyer the belief that if
Mr. Ramanujan crosses the seas, he will be dooming himself to a kind of spiritual damnation. More practically, however—and
in this, Miss Hardy, I cannot help but sympathize with the anxieties of a long-suffering mother—she fears for his well-being
in England, worries as to how he will cope with the English winter, has visions of him being forced to consume meat, and so
on. Perhaps she also fears his being pursued by English women. (I am speculating here, based on Mr. Ramanujan's reluctance
to look me in the eye when he speaks of his mother.)

Then there is the matter of Janaki, his young bride. She has, he told us, expressed to him a desire to accompany him to England;
and though he well understands the impracticality, if not impossibility, of bringing her with him, he does not want to disappoint
the child. Going to England without her, moreover, would mean leaving her alone with his mother, and given that, in traditional
Indian families, the mother-in-law rules over the daughter-in-law with an iron fist, Mr. Ramanujan is naturally worried as
to what friction might erupt between the women in his absence, especially as it seems that little Janaki is something of a
spitfire!

His last qualm—and that it came last seems to me, Miss Hardy, significant—is religious. Yes, he fears, as his mother does,
the consequences, both social and spiritual, of his breaking the rules of his caste and crossing the seas. And yet his anxiety
on this point goes well beyond mere religious scruples.

What follows will no doubt sound strange to you and your brother. I will admit that, at first, it sounded strange to Mr. Neville
and me, and not only because it reveals the great gulf that separates India from England; also because it indicates the depth
of Mr. Ramanujan's religious piety. Nonetheless I ask you to read the next paragraphs with an open mind.

To put the matter quite simply, Mr. Ramanujan attributes his mathematical discoveries not to his own imagination, but to a
deity. Since his birth, he believes, he, along with the other members of his family, has lived under the protection of a Goddess,
Namagiri, whose spirit occupies the temple at Namakkal, near his place of birth. According to Mr. Ramanujan, it is through
the agency of Namagiri that he makes his mathematical discoveries. He does not "come upon" them in the sense that you and
I understand the term, nor do they "come upon" him. Instead they are transmitted to him, usually when he is asleep. As Mr.
Ramanujan described this process, my husband laughed, and said that he, too, had on occasion "dreamed" mathematics. But Mr.
Ramanujan was insistent in distinguishing ordinary dreams from what he called the "visions" supplied to him by Namigiri.
The Goddess, as he put it, "writes the numbers on his tongue." His fear is that, if he comes to England, Namagiri might withdraw
her divine patronage; and while he understands how much Cambridge has to offer him in the way of recognition, encouragement,
and education, he wonders very naturally what use these gains would be to him if, in exchange, he were to lose his access
to the very source of his discoveries.

How did we react to such a revelation? My husband, I admit, at first raised his eyebrows, whether in skepticism or simple
astonishment I could not tell. As for me, I felt a twinge of disappointment that owes, no doubt, to my own anti-religious
disposition. It seemed to me mad that a man of such obvious brilliance should refuse to take credit for his own discoveries.
Indeed, after the meeting drew to a close (with the matter of Mr. Ramanujan's coming to Cambridge, I might add, left in abeyance),
I could not help but mention to my husband that for me, at least, it was difficult to reconcile this attribution of genius
to an outside source with Mr. Ramanujan's obvious pride in his own accomplishments, not to mention his urgent desire to be
recognized and even vindicated in the eyes of the Indian authorities. For if what he claimed was true, then it was Namagiri
to whom any publications that might arise from Mr. Ramanujan's work ought to be credited, Namagiri whose talents ought to
be assessed, Namagiri who should be brought to Cambridge, even if only to Girton or Newnham!

My husband cautioned me not to assume too much. As he reminded me (and he is right in this), we are still strangers here,
as yet unfamiliar with the terms of Mr. Ramanujan's religion. It may be that Mr. Ramanujan is, quite simply, anxious to ensure
that we should understand the depth of his faith. Still, I cannot help but suspect that his fear of displeasing his mother
is tied up intimately with his fear of displeasing the Goddess. I wish I could tell you which, of the two, is the more prominent
or, dare I say, the more real fear.

This is where things stand as I write. Tomorrow Mr. Neville will meet, once more, alone, with Mr. Ramanujan. We had hoped
to see him sooner, but two days ago we received a message that he had been obliged to make an impromptu journey to his home
in the company of his mother. I gather that he is scheduled to return to Madras early next week.

I am sorry not to be able to forward more conclusive news. Please rest assured—and please tell your brother to rest assured—that
as soon as we have obtained a definitive answer from Mr. Ramanujan, we will communicate it by cable.

Mr. Neville sends his warmest salutations, and asks me to convey to Mr. Hardy his gratitude at having been assigned the role
of "emissary." Likewise we both send our best wishes to your mother and hope that she is feeling better. As for me, I remain,
dear Miss Hardy,

Dear Hardy,

Finally, a question: one of his (many) worries about coming to Cambridge is that he might be forced to take exams. I told
him I'd ask you for assurance that he wouldn't, even though I'm sure that with a little coaching he'd ride roughshod over
the tripos. Imagine if, in the old days, he'd been senior wrangler!

Regards to your sister, of whom my wife has become inordinately fond.

Gertrude looks up at him from her knitting. "Somehow I suspected that would be the first thing you'd land on," she says. "Well,
does he have to take it?"

"Of course he doesn't have to take it. It's just a shame that he's wasting his time even worrying about it."

"Then all you need to do is write to Neville and ask him to tell Ramanujan he doesn't have to take it."

"But it shouldn't have even come up in the first place. Neville should have told him, point blank, that he didn't have to
take it."

"He might not have known. Or he might not have wanted to give the wrong answer."

"Then he should have cabled me. It's all intentional, I think. You know he was second wrangler the last year of the old system.
He's probably needling me."

Gertrude resumes her knitting. It's a cold Saturday afternoon in late January. At present they're sitting across a table from
each other in the kitchen of the rather shabby flat on St. George's Square, in Pimlico, that they let together. Hardy stays
here when he's got business with the London Mathematical Society, and sometimes loans the place out to friends. Gertrude uses
the flat to escape, now and then, the demands of their mother, who is lapsing into senility. Once in a while they meet up
for a weekend in London, as they're doing now, only the bad weather has discouraged them from going out to a play or the British
Museum. Instead they've spent the day gazing out the window at the sleet falling from the sky, and reading newspapers and
letters, including the two from Eric and Alice Neville. Which, if truth be told, is something they enjoy far more than the
British Museum.

"You don't like Neville much, do you?" Gertrude asks after a moment.

She puts the end of one of her needles in her mouth. "He and Alice certainly seem to have hit it off with the Indian," she
says.

"Yes, well, let's just hope they don't hit it off with him so well they end up telling him he should stay home to avoid
a spiritual crisis."

"Oh, that reminds me, what do you think of the Namagiri business?"

"He's saying what he has to say. To please his mother. To please the priests."

"Are there priests in Hinduism?"

"Or some equivalent thereof."

"Alice's description of him certainly was striking. 'Robust,' she says. I don't know that I've ever seen a fat Indian."

"What he looks like is of no consequence to me."

"Of course not."

"Anyway, you certainly seem to have hit it off with Alice Neville. What's that all about?"

"She's got what my students might call a crush on me."

"Is it lust?"

"Harold, really! Sex doesn't come into it. She's simply . . . enamored of my cleverness."

"And how's this Israel, or whatever it is?"

"Chopin, eh?"

"Yes, this temple's like Chopin, the Taj Mahal's like Chopin. Rather odd, considering it's India."

"Well, as Mrs. Neville takes such pains to point out," Hardy says, "I wouldn't know anything about Chopin, being a musical
ignoramus. Oh, what nasty weather!" He walks the short distance to the sitting room, which is sparsely furnished and very
cold. Outside the misted window, the trees on St. George's Square are stark in the winter light. Motor cars and carriages
pass by, and men shield women with their umbrellas as they rush for the doors of houses.

After a few minutes he goes back to the kitchen, where he finds that Gertrude hasn't moved. A half-empty cup of tea sits on
the table next to the pile of newspapers. Coiled in her chair with her knitting, she snores a little. She looks feline and
content.

He sits down across from her. At home, at his parents' house, they more or less lived in the kitchen. All told, they are creatures
of kitchens, he and his sister, which is probably why they chose this flat, which has a tiny sitting room and even tinier
bedrooms but a kitchen you can actually fit a table into. And so to London they come, one or two weekends a month; to London
they come so they can . . . sit in a kitchen. Hardy's life in Cambridge is busy, full of friends and pupils and meals and
meetings. For him, these weekends are a respite. For Gertrude, he suspects, they are also a respite, but not from activity;
from boredom. It's not that she despises St. Catherine's. From their parents, she has inherited the pedagogical impulse. Still,
he knows that she chafes at having to make a life out of showing young girls how to draw and sculpt from clay. Such labors
can hardly satisfy a woman of her intellect—or so Hardy sometimes reflects, with a certain detachment, during his morning
strolls through the Trinity grounds.

What else might she do? Early on she showed a talent for mathematics, which she never bothered to cultivate. She writes verse,
trivial in character. Once he discovered half a novel she had written in a drawer at his parents' house. He read the first
few pages, which he thought quite good, but then, when he told her he'd happened upon it and offered what he thought to be
some useful criticisms, she blushed, tore the manuscript from his hands, and disappeared into her bedroom. The novel has never
been mentioned (or seen) since.

Before he saw her flirt with Littlewood, he wondered if she was a Sapphist. How else to explain her failure to marry? True,
exiled as she is in a rural enclave of females, she has little opportunity to meet men. At the same time, she could teach
elsewhere. Nor is Bramley entirely lacking in men. There are male teachers at St. Catherine's, and a host of them at Cranleigh,
of which St. Catherine's is the female twin. And one or two of those men might even be normal.

"Stop!" Gaye says, suddenly stepping forward from a broom closet. "Enough of this. You're obviously jealous. Ramanujan's your
discovery, and so you can't bear it that the Nevilles are encroaching on your territory."

"That's ridiculous."

"I didn't have the time."

"Don't forget who's talking to you, Harold. You could have made the time. Only you're as afraid as you are eager. That's why
you sent Littlewood to the India Office, and Neville to Madras."

"I didn't send him. He was going anyway."

"It comes to the same thing."

Hardy looks away. Gaye's perspicacity, after his death, irritates him almost as much as it did when he was alive. "Oh, go
back to your broom closet," he says, but when he turns around, the shade has already vanished.

He looks at Gertrude. She has woken and resumed her knitting.

"Well, I suppose now we just wait," he says.

"For what?"

"Word from the Nevilles."

"Oh, sorry, I didn't realize we were still on that subject."

"What's odd is that the decision's very possibly been made already. Everyone over there may know. And we're just waiting for
a letter."

"Didn't he say he'd cable?"

"Would he cable if it was bad news?"

"Monday may bring something."

"Yes," Hardy says. What he does not say is: But how am I supposed to get by until Monday?

My Dear Miss Hardy,

No doubt the cable that my husband sent has already arrived, therefore you have heard the happy news. After a prolonged sojourn
in the region of his childhood home, Mr. Ramanujan has returned to Madras and informed my husband that he will, indeed, come
to Cambridge. While I am not entirely clear on the details, I gather that he spent several days at the temple of Namakkal,
praying to the Goddess Namagiri for guidance. Yet the strongest impediment to his making a decision in the affirmative was
unquestionably his mother, and it was only after that good lady announced that she had had a favorable dream that he was able
at last to reconcile his desires with his conscience. In this dream, his mother said, she saw Mr. Ramanujan in the company
of white people and heard the voice of Namagiri commanding her to withdraw her objections and give the journey her blessing;
in the case of Mr. Ramanujan, Namagiri is reported to have said, the prohibition against crossing the seas could be lifted,
as traveling to Europe was necessary to the fulfillment of his destiny.

I cannot tell you with what gratitude and happiness Mr. Neville and I learned of this fortuitous chain of events. Now Mr.
Neville says that we must focus our attention on making sure that sufficient funds are available, both in Madras and Cambridge,
to pay for Mr. Ramanujan's passage and to make sure that his needs will be met during the period he spends at Trinity.

We depart in a few weeks, and perhaps Mr. Ramanujan will sail with us. Let me reiterate, Miss Hardy, how much my husband and
I look forward to greeting you and your brother upon our return. In the meantime, I remain