The Indian Clerk (20 page)

I hope you will not consider it impertinent of me if I write to you in confidence about a matter with which, on the surface
at least, you and I are not directly concerned. On Mr. Hardy's suggestion, Mr. Ramanujan will shortly be leaving my house,
where he has lived contentedly for six weeks, to move into rooms at Trinity. I cannot emphasize how strongly I feel that this
would be a disastrous course to take. Here Mr. Ramanujan is well cared for. I make sure that he gets all the milk and fruit
that he desires, and remain scrupulously attentive to his needs, dietary and otherwise. In college, how is he supposed to
fare? He cannot stomach the food and says that he will cook for himself on a gas ring.

While I understand Mr. Hardy's desire to have Mr. Ramanujan closer to hand so that they may devote more hours of the day to
mathematics, I fear also that your brother is failing to take into account the necessity of insuring that Mr. Ramanujan has
a life outside mathematics. He has made a very great journey and is adjusting to a world radically different to his own. He
misses his wife and family. Surely it is worth half an hour's walk each morning if as a result he is both healthier and more
contented.

I know that you wield considerable influence with your brother and would ask you to intercede with him on Mr. Ramanujan's
behalf. I also beg you not to mention my name in this connexion or that I have written to you.

"Well, what do you think of that?" Gertrude says, putting down the letter.

"I suppose," Hardy says, "that it merely confirms what we've suspected all along."

"And what's that?"

"That she's in love with him."

"If you want my opinion," Hardy says, "this clinches it. He must move into the college as soon as possible."

"Why such urgency?" Littlewood asks.

"It's obvious. As long as he's under the Nevilles' roof he's also under Mrs. Neville's thumb. He needs his freedom."

"But maybe he's happy there. You saw the pretty domestic scene, Hardy. The fire and the puzzle and the piano. Looked pretty
cozy to me."

"Suffocating's the word I'd use."

"But that's you. And she's right about the food."

"I don't see how. Ramanujan doesn't seem the least anxious about cooking for himself. In fact, I rather got the impression
he's looking forward to it. A respite from those horrific concoctions Mrs. Neville's always dragging out of the George Bernard
Shaw cookbook or whatever it's called."

"Of course I won't disagree on that point."

"I should hope not. You're the one who found him the rooms."

"Still, I can't help but wonder if in the end he might not be better off staying under Neville's roof, being cared for—"

"—by a woman with a morbid erotic obsession."

At this Gertrude laughs. Her laugh surprises Littlewood; it's higher and flutier than he would have expected.

"What's so funny?"

"You two," she says, laughing more.

"Why?" Hardy asks. "Why on earth are we funny?"

In a few moments Neville's older brother will arrive in his Jowett car, the same car in which they fetched Ramanujan when
his ship docked. The brother will stay the weekend. "And to think, that was only—what, Alice, six weeks ago?"

"Seven," Alice says.

"Seven weeks. I must say, Ramanujan, it feels as if you've always been here."

Ramanujan stares at his shoes. His forehead is covered with drops of sweat.

"We'll miss you around here, won't we, ladies?" Neville puts his arm around Alice, who shudders. But to everyone's surprise
it is Ethel, the housemaid, who bursts into tears.

"Now, Ethel, please," Alice says, shutting her eyes.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," Ethel says. "It's just that it won't be quite the same around here without sir to cut up fruit for."

"I can tell you one thing," Neville says, laughing. "I'm expecting a joint of mutton for dinner tonight."

All of them laugh at that. Ethel takes a handkerchief from her pocket and blows her nose.

Then a honking sounds. "There's Eddie," Neville says, opening the door to wave. "Right on time as always!" he shouts, before
turning to Ramanujan. "No, to be perfectly direct about it, we'll miss you around here. All of us will."

"But I won't be so far away," Ramanujan says. "Only at the college."

"Yes, and you can come to dinner whenever you like. Right, Ethel? I promise you, you haven't cooked your last vegetable goose."

"Oh, sir!" Ethel says, covering her face.

Eddie Neville comes inside. He's red-faced and jovial—an older version of Eric. He pats Ramanujan hard on the back, then the
brothers hoist the trunk and carry it out to the car. Ramanujan turns to Alice.

"I thank you very deeply for your kindness," he says. "And not only that, my mother thanks you."

"Does she?"

"Yes, she wrote so in a letter and asked me to tell you."

"And Janaki?"

"Janaki I have not received a letter from. But I am certain that she too would thank you."

They shake hands, then. All very innocent and amiable. And, as Alice reminds herself, it's not as if he doesn't want to go.
He could have refused.

After the men have left, the house seems very quiet. Ethel disappears into the kitchen, no doubt to begin preparing the requested
joint. Nor can Alice deny that her own mouth waters a little, at the prospect of meat again after such a long hiatus.

She walks across the sitting room, toward the piano; notices, for an instant, the puzzle on the table . . . and takes in her
breath. Is it possible?

Yes. He has finished it. He must have stayed up most of the night. There they are: the quaint-looking guests, the innkeeper.
A glass and the top hat rest on the table. Floorboards lead up to the tufted edge of the carpet. And yet—she leans over the
table, being careful not to let out her breath. Yes, there is something wrong. A piece is missing. In the lower left-hand
corner, where the rug ends and the floorboards begin, the wood grain of the table shows through. Indeed, the real wood and
the wood in the picture are so similar in tone that if you didn't look carefully, you wouldn't notice it. But Alice does notice,
and as she does, she remembers her sister's tremendous gusts of rage, her own scrabbling on the floor afterward. Of course
it makes sense that a piece should have gone missing. Indeed, it's a miracle that more weren't lost.

With her finger she traces the shape of the gap. She thinks of the old nursery, the settee and the faded floral curtains.
Somehow, the last time she swept the pieces back into their box, one, brown with black stripes, must have remained behind.
Its absence is what she cups now in her hands, and so she opens them, letting it free into the room: the shape of a butterfly.

We had not stayed in touch, though I had heard, through Littlewood, that the Nevilles had had a child, a boy, and that the
boy had died before he was a year old. Littlewood and I were then publishing several papers a year together, written through
an exchange of letters. We saw each other at most once every few months.

I should say that she did not just waltz into my rooms at New College unannounced. She sent a note first, explaining that
she and Neville were to be in Oxford for a day as he was giving a lecture at one of the other colleges. Neville himself would
be very busy but she had time at her disposal and was hoping that she might call. I replied that of course she would be welcome.

I instructed my scout to arrange tea and sandwiches with the kitchen—for those of you unfamiliar with such arcana, what we
call a "gyp" at Cambridge we call a "scout" at Oxford—and in due course, the polite five minutes after the appointed meeting
time, Mrs. Neville arrived, a bit stouter than she had been in her youth, but still with that rather humid look, as if she
had just emerged from the bath. The various pins and stays with which it was studded still could not contain her hair, which
was still red. Her perfume—of Parma violets—was the same as before, the same one my mother had worn.

She sat down across from me, and, after a few minutes of the most tedious and polite exchange (I did not mention the dead
child), she got down to business, explaining that a few weeks previously, an Indian mathematician had come to see her. His
name was Ranganathan, and he had recently come to study the workings of the Reading library. Like Ramanujan, this Ranganathan
was from Madras, and so, upon learning that Neville was in Reading, he had asked if he could come to talk to them about Ramanujan,
who, it seems, in the years since his death, had become something of a myth to the Madrasi mathematicians. Indeed, Ranganathan
had it in mind to write Ramanujan's biography.

Being the woman she is, Mrs. Neville prepared for the visit by brewing Indian coffee and making some sort of Indian sweet,
a recipe for which she had found in one of her cookbooks. She made a point of this to me, which, I realize now, I should have
recognized as a sign of the outburst to come; back in Cambridge she'd always tried to undermine my friendship with Ramanujan
by pointing out how much better she "understood" him. And in the case of Ranganathan, the ploy must have paid off, for he
was very confidential with her. He arrived in due course at their house, she said, and he was wearing a turban. This simply
astonished her, she said, because, back in Cambridge, Ramanujan had often complained to her that he found it a torture to
wear a hat. Wouldn't he have been more comfortable wearing a turban? she asked.

Before I could answer, she was back to her tale. Having absorbed the turban, it seemed that she asked Ranganathan if his wearing
it had ever caused him any trouble in England, and he had replied that only on two occasions had anyone even remarked upon
his headwear. Once was in Hyde Park, at Speakers' Corner, when a speaker advocating Irish independence pointed to him from
his platform and said something to the effect that this "friend from India" should surely understand the persecution by England
of a slave nation. The other was when Ranganathan was riding a train to Croydon, a train moving slowly due to some repairs
on the track, and the gang coolies stared at him through the window and called him "Mr. A.," which was what the newspapers
were then calling an Indian prince involved in a lawsuit. Neither incident, Ranganathan said, upset him in the least—which
led Mrs. Neville to ask him why, then, poor Ramanujan had not been allowed to wear his turban. Ranganathan replied that perhaps
at the time, in Madras, it was assumed that a man walking down the streets of an English city wearing a turban would be laughed
at or even stoned. Few of Ramanujan's Indian champions, after all, had ever been to England, while his English champions had
been away for many years.

Please bear in mind that, so far, to this putative "conversation," I had contributed not so much as a word. Mrs. Neville had
not given me the chance. Now, though, she was wiping her eyes, and I took advantage of this brief caesura in her harangue
to say, "I agree with you completely. No doubt Ramanujan would have been much happier had he allowed himself these concessions."

She looked at me in surprise. "Allowed himself!" she said. "Are you supposing he had any choice in the matter?"

I said, "There have been Indians at Cambridge for many years. He had Indian friends. Some wore turbans. He could have followed
their example. At Trinity, anyway, he wore slippers most of the time, not shoes."

"I gave him those slippers," she said, almost jealously.

"That was kind of you," I said.

She strangled her handkerchief. "It was a terrible mistake, his moving into the college. I'm sure that, had he stayed under
my roof, he would never have become ill. He might be alive today."

In any case, having now made her point, she pulled back. She became, suddenly, very bright, very friendly, as if the strained
intercourse of the past half hour hadn't even taken place. What a pleasure it was to see me again. Was I happier in Oxford
than in Cambridge? Eric had asked her to pass on his regards and to say how sorry he was that he would not have a chance to
call.

And then she left. Her odor of Parma violets remained behind. It is a great and painful irony that even accusations of the
most unjust and ludicrous sort still leave a sting—of what? Guilt? No, not exactly. Doubt. For now she had put into my head
the idea that by moving Ramanujan into the college, I had brought about or at least hastened his death. Such an idea, of course,
was madness. What, after all, could where he lived have had to do with his illness? And yet, perhaps, had he been kept away
from such a mass of men as was passing through Trinity through the war years, had he not taken to cooking his own food . .
. Do you see? Once the splinter of doubt is under the skin, there is no teasing it out. She had done her job admirably.

But I have moved ahead of myself; I have moved not only into but beyond the years of Ramanujan's illness, when what I wanted
to tell you about were those first happy weeks before the war started, weeks distilled, for me, into the image of him waddling
across New Court wearing a pair of slippers. And now I see that it was the slippers that made me remember Mrs. Neville's visit
today. Because, as she so bitterly reminded me, she had given them to him.

In any case, as I'm sure you've heard a thousand times before, that was an extraordinarily beautiful summer, that last summer
before the war; never before had so many trees so fragrantly shed their blossoms, and so on. As it happened, it was the height
of May week when he moved into his rooms, delivered to Whewell's Court by Neville's brother in that terrible motor of his.
That same day, the tripos results were posted, the names now in a plain vertical row. Littlewood and I took Ramanujan to see
them, and he studied them scrupulously. All a far cry from the old days when a crowd would fill the Senate House to hear the
reading of the Honors List . . . I had put a stop to that, I told him, an achievement in which I took what I considered to
be a justified pride. And Ramanujan, I think, understood that pride, he whom exams had so betrayed and cornered.

And then, the coffee finished, we set to work. In those early days I was still trying to hammer home to him the importance
of writing proofs—a futile effort, I see now. Such values must be imparted early to a mathematician; in Ramanujan's case,
I realize, it was already too late. Still, I tried.