Authors: David Leavitt
The Indian Clerk (45 page)
W
HAT THOSE WHO have never experienced it firsthand do not know, Hardy is quickly learning. Illness is boring. For every brief
episode of pain or despair, there are hours
of inertia to be borne, during which fear quiets. Though fear is always present in the room of an invalid, you can't always
hear it. But you feel it. A buzzing or trembling in your veins.
In the wake of Batty Shaw's diagnosis, there is nothing for Hardy and Ramanujan's other friends to do but brace themselves
for the worst. Each day they wait for signs of deterioration to manifest themselves, however, and each day Ramanujan remains,
so far as they can tell, exactly the same. His weight steadies, the nightly fevers keep to their schedule, the pain neither
intensifies nor lessens. During the day he is lucid, if lethargic. Then at night the fevers come and he hallucinates. Ghosts
appear before him, voices shout at him. Some nights he sees his own abdomen floating in the air above his bed. "Like a zeppelin?"
Hardy asks, and he shakes his head.
"No, it takes the form more of a . . . a sort of mathematical appendage, with points attached to it that I have come to think
of, or been told to think of, as 'singularities.' And what define these singularities are precise if mysterious mathematical
surges. For example, when the pain is at its most steady and driving, I know that there is a surge at
x
= 1. And then I have to work to bring the pain down, and when it is half as intense, I know that the surge is now at
x
= —1. All night I work, trying to keep track of the surges, and to alleviate the pain by manipulating the singularities, so
that by the time morning comes, and the fever has lifted, I am exhausted."
"The Riemann hypothesis," Hardy says. "The zeta function zooming off into infinity at 1."
"Yes," Ramanujan says. "Yes, I suppose that is part of it."
"Perhaps," Hardy suggests, "you may find the proof during one of your hallucinations."
"Perhaps," Ramanujan replies. But his voice is distant and disappointed, and he turns and looks out the window: for the moment,
it appears, he is tired of talking.
They haul him back to Batty Shaw. Once again he is examined, once again Hardy (this time accompanied by Mahalanobis) is led
by the nurse into the study with the swimming thing in formaldehyde and the model lung. "Well, you're right," Batty Shaw says,
wiping his tiny spectacles. "There appears to be no change in his condition."
"Does that alter your diagnosis?"
"Perhaps. It may be too soon to tell. Cancer is not my specialty. We shall have to make an appointment for him to see Dr.
Lees, the cancer specialist."
And so, in due course, Ramanujan is taken to see Dr. Lees, the cancer specialist. By now his condition seems actually to have
improved a little; that is to say, he manages the train journey more easily than he did the first time, and seems even to
take some pleasure in being in London. Unfortunately, Dr. Lees proves to be even less helpful than Batty Shaw. While he agrees
that Ramanujan's illness is not following the typical track of liver cancer, he can't say what track it is following. The
liver remains enlarged and tender. His white blood cell count has increased only slightly. "A disease brought back from India?"
he asks, and Hardy remembers the early proposition of an "Oriental germ." This calls for yet another expert, Dr. Frobisher,
specialist in tropical diseases. Unfortunately, so far as Dr. Frobisher can determine, Ramanujan's symptoms do not match the
pathology of any known exotic malady. Swabs for malaria have come back negative. "Tuberculosis?" Dr. Frobisher asks, with
hesitancy and humor in his voice, as if he is making a guess during a game of Charades. So they are back to tuberculosis!
Oh, what a sloppy science is medicine!
It is decided that there is no good reason for Ramanujan to remain at the nursing hostel. From now on he will convalesce in
his own rooms at Trinity. Hardy hopes this news will please him, but he greets it with typical indifference. Once again, he
is put into his clothes; helped into a taxi. They drive the short distance to Trinity, where the porter awaits them. "Very
good to see you again, sir," he says, opening the taxi door and taking Ramanujan's case.
"I am glad to be home," Ramanujan says, and Hardy is struck, even startled, that he should have come to think of Trinity as
home.
Then Hardy helps him through Great Court to Bishop's Hostel, and up the stairs to his rooms. The bedmaker appears to have
cleaned them in his absence. The bed is tightly made. In the kitchen the dishes have been washed and stacked. She hasn't thrown
out the
rasam,
though; it still sits in its pot, a thin veneer of mold on the top. Perhaps she was afraid to touch it.
Almost immediately upon entering the room Ramanujan starts to undress. This surprises Hardy, who always assumed him to be
a modest man. Or perhaps the hospital stay was enough to abolish all modesty, for now he throws off his clothes with a recklessness
to match Littlewood's. Hardy turns away—but only after catching a glimpse of Ramanujan's light brown body, the distended stomach
sloping down toward the genitals, which are small and dark, deeply withdrawn between the legs. He cannot make out a scar in
those shadows. And what a vulnerable thing, he thinks, is the male organ of procreation, especially when it is put before
a doctor to squeeze or slice into! Most of the day it lies placid in its nest, a tiny, wretched thing, like a baby bird or
a baby kangaroo. Then stimuli arouse it, it engorges with blood, doubles or trebles in size, and becomes the great thruster,
the great, greedy, penetrating sword of pornography. Only to see it at rest, you would never believe it possible.
In any case, Ramanujan is naked just a few seconds. Soon he has pulled on his pyjamas, loosened the sheets, and climbed into
the bed.
Who, now, is to care for him? Had this happened a year earlier, Hardy could have counted on the Nevilles to help. But now
the Nevilles are in London, their house on Chesterton Road to let, so the responsibility falls to Hardy himself. The first
week, Mahalanobis, Chatterjee, and Ananda Rao take it in turn to sit with the invalid, to inquire about his pain and to make
sure he eats. Ananda Rao, to the best of his ability, prepares the meals. Unfortunately, this rotation proves tenable only
until the term begins, at which point they are all far too busy, and Hardy must hire a nurse to look in on Ramanujan. Three
times a week, she takes his temperature, monitors his stomach, listens to his chest and heart, then sends reports back to
Dr. Wingate. Ananda Rao continues to make Ramanujan's lunch and dinner. Mrs. Bixby takes charge of the sheets, which, due
to the night sweats, have to be changed every morning.
For months he has hardly spoken about mathematics. At first this vexed Hardy; then he realized that he had no choice but to
rein in his disappointment and focus his attention on work outside the purview of partitions. Since then he has written several
papers on his own, and two with Littlewood, who, in his own way, is proving to be a less than reliable collaborator. For Littlewood,
by his own account, is as depressed as Ramanujan. He despises his work at Woolwich. He longs to be in Treen with Mrs. Chase,
and at the same time he cannot bear the thought of being in Treen with Mrs. Chase, because Mrs. Chase is raising her daughter
to believe that Chase, not Littlewood, is her father. Whenever he and Hardy see each other in London, Littlewood wants to
go to a pub. He drinks too much—beer and, less often, whiskey. Nor is he willing to do much in the way of work on the papers
they are writing together. "I leave the gas to you," he tells Hardy—"gas" being their code word for the rhetorical flourishes,
the elegantizing, that every good paper requires. Yet he is equally unwilling to do his share of the technical grunt work
that every good paper requires just as much as it requires "gas." Grunt work bores him, he says. Ballistics bores him. Too
much boredom, and he will break down.
So it is for the time being. Of Hardy's two collaborators, one is ill, the other morose. Neither can be counted on.
As often as he can, he goes to see Ramanujan in the afternoons. He sits with him and tries to persuade him to eat, but just
as at the nursing home Ramanujan complained that the cook did not prepare the dishes he required properly, now he complains
that Ananda Rao's
rasam
is not to his taste. "It is not sour enough," he says. "I'm sure he is using lemons instead of tamarind."
"Even so, you must eat."
"Did you know," Ramanujan says suddenly, "that I made an important breakthrough in the partitions function while making
rasam?"
"Did you now?"
"Yes. I was counting lentils. I started dividing them into groups."
It seems an opening, if only a narrow one. "MacMahon and
I continue our investigations, of course," Hardy says. "He asked after you the other day."
"Did he? How is he?"
"As well as any of us, under the circumstances. He sends you his best wishes."
"That is kind of him."
"Of course it goes much more slowly without you."
"Yes, I am afraid I left off the work on partitions when I became ill. I apologize for that."
"You need not apologize."
"And what progress have you and the major made?"
Inadvertently Hardy smiles. Whatever hope he might be feeling right now he knows better than to indulge, as experience has
taught him that hope cannot be relied on. And he is right: whatever curiosity he may have sparked in Ramanujan will dissipate
within the hour. And yet, for the moment, the hope is real, and he grabs at it. The war has taught him to do this, to grab
at what you can while it lasts. He tells Ramanujan what he has been thinking. Ramanujan waggles his head. Hardy takes a pen
and some paper from his pocket, and for about half an hour, while Ananda Rao's inadequate
rasam
cools in its pot, they do what they have not done since spring. They work.
A
T THE TIME, he did not take it very seriously. Or did he? He remembers the gales that day, the small boat docked at the pier
in Esbjerg. Does he remember fear? No. It is curious—and perhaps something to be grateful for—that fear, like pain, doesn't
last in memory. That is to say, though Hardy can remember, at various times, experiencing fear and pain, he cannot remember
feeling fear and pain. Phrases such as "shortness of breath" or "constriction of the stomach" do not in and of themselves
bring on shortness of breath or constriction of the stomach, perhaps because the very fact that you are now able to remember
means that whatever provoked the fear or pain has been got past. Has been survived. The gales, the waves, the small boat rising
and falling. Water splashing on the deck. The postbox nearby.
He was visiting Bohr in Copenhagen. Before the war, he often went to visit Bohr in Copenhagen. Bohr was younger than Hardy—in
his mid-twenties—and had been on the Danish national football team when it placed second in the world in 1908. He wasn't exactly
handsome: his brown hair, which he kept long, had a tendency to fly straight up, while the thick, downward slanting brows
over his large eyes made Hardy think of the
accent grave
and the
accent aigu
in French. Still, there was something distinguished and memorable about his face. He had a lean, upright body. Like Littlewood,
he was passionate about women, and noticed them, and took no notice of men.
The visits were always the same. Bohr would welcome Hardy at his apartment on the Stockholmsgade, then lead him straight through
the sitting room and into the kitchen, where they would work out an agenda for the visit. The first item was always the same:
"Prove the Riemann hypothesis." Then they would take a walk along the moats and bridges of the Østre Aenlag Park, even if
it was winter, even if the trees were dusted with fine snow and the paths treacherous. Sometimes men and women would run up
to Bohr and ask for his autograph, which he would provide with some embarrassment. For it wasn't the mathematician whose autograph
they wanted; it was the football player's. It seemed that it was Bohr's fate always to come in second—later to his physicist
brother, Neils; in those early days, to himself.
Once they got back to Bohr's kitchen, they would go to work. Usually they drank coffee. Sometimes they drank beer. It pleased
Hardy to gaze across the table at Bohr as he scribbled on a pad, the stein of beer partially blocking his view of the thick
hair sprouting from the top of his head.
Yet another brilliant man with hard legs who loved women.
Usually Hardy stayed three days. They never proved the Riemann hypothesis. Bohr always saw him to the station, where he caught
the train to Esbjerg; walked to the dock and watched for the boat that was to carry him home. A small boat this time, rocking
on big waves. Was it safe? The weather looked grim, a gray, thunderous sky and swooping winds. He sought out the captain and
asked if it was safe, and the captain laughed, and pointed at the stormy sky as if it were nothing.
It was then that Hardy noticed the postbox. He thought of God. Later, he would tell himself that he did it only in order to
have a good story to tell at Hall. And in fact he dined out on the story for years. Yet at the moment—he will admit it now—he
felt real fear. He suffered shortness of breath, constriction of the stomach. He saw the boat capsizing, the passengers flailing
in cold waters.
There was a little shop off the dock that sold picture postcards of Esbjerg. He bought a handful of them. He can't remember
how many. And on each he wrote, "I have proven the Riemann hypothesis. G. H. Hardy." And then he bought stamps, and carried
them to the postbox, and dropped them in.
To whom did he send them? Littlewood, certainly—he remembers Littlewood ragging him about it later on. Possibly Russell. Certainly
Bohr himself. And Gertrude. Or was it his mother? Or both? Perhaps he sent the postcard to his mother because he knew she
would keep it, even if she didn't understand it. In any case, someone told the vicar.
For the idea, once again, was to outwit God. Were the ferry to sink, and Hardy to die, then the postcards would arrive after
his death, and people would believe that he had proven the Riemann hypothesis, and that his proof had gone down with the ship,
just as Riemann's proof had been fed to the flames. Hardy would then be remembered as the second man to have proven the Riemann
hypothesis and lost his proof—and this God would not stand for. Or so Hardy believed. In order not to be bested by Hardy,
God would make sure that he did not die. He would see the ship safely to its destination, and thereby insure that Hardy be
denied any undue glory.
Afterward it was a little embarrassing, having to make his explanations. He had an urgent telegram from Bohr which he had
to answer. Later Bohr laughed over it. And Littlewood, once he got over the initial shock, laughed too. Perhaps they were
disappointed, perhaps relieved. Because at least the Riemann hypothesis remained unproven, which meant that either of them
might be the man to prove it. It was still fair game.
All of this, of course, happened long before Ramanujan. It is only an anecdote, and, like most anecdotes, it has lost its
power through too much telling. Hardy no longer dined out on it.
And then the vicar brought it up.
What was troubling to Hardy was that the vicar seemed to think he'd gained an advantage over him; discovered a chink in the
armature of his atheism. And who was to say he hadn't? For Hardy knew he would sound like an idiot if he pretended it was
all just a joke. The anti-God battery—sweaters, papers, Gertrude's immense umbrella—he preserves still, and still puts to
use from time to time, just as he still finds himself, sometimes half-consciously, offering up prayers for the opposite of
what he wants.
Back in Cranleigh, he watches Gertrude carefully. Far from embracing her newfound freedom, every day she roots herself deeper
in the life of the village. Yes, she has entrenched herself, exactly like a soldier, joining the board of several charitable
organizations and taking on, in addition to her regular teaching, some private pupils. One of these is with her when Hardy
arrives one afternoon in the fall—a churlish, sour-faced girl of fourteen, to whom Gertrude is attempting to explain the conjugation
of the French verb
prendre.
This time two fox terriers lie by the fire. Two? Yes, she has acquired another one, a male. Epee. She hopes that he and Daisy
will breed.
"Je prends, tu prends, il prend, vous prendez—"
"Vous
prenez."
"Vous prenez, nous prendons—"
Hardy slinks to his bedroom. It is all very odd. When they have supper that night, she tells him that she has been working
with the vicar on a plan to raise money for the restoration of some stained glass in the church. Working with the vicar! So
perhaps Gertrude is the source of the leak. And is she planning to marry the vicar? It seems mad, impossible. In any case,
she's playing her cards close to her chest. She cuts her meat furtively, and will not meet his eye. The dogs sit at her feet,
hoping for scraps, never going anywhere near Hardy, as if they know better than to try, though in truth he would be more likely
to give them his food than Gertrude. Indeed the prospect of undermining her efforts to instill discipline in them rather delights
him.
They do not talk about the house. As has been the case every time he's visited since their mother's death, he has arrived
determined to bring the subject up, and then lost courage. The dogs themselves seem to bar mention of the subject, sitting
as they do on either side of her, like sentries. They sleep in the kitchen, where Hardy, waking in the middle of the night,
feeds them leftover slices of cold beef. With satisfaction that he is breaking one of Gertrude's rules, he watches them swallow
the beef in single gulps, all the while gazing up at him, nervous tongues licking black lips.
Before he returns to Cambridge, he pays a call on the vicar, who sits before him in his study with his hands clasped on his
lap. For some reason the vicar's hands repel Hardy more than any other part of him: more than his clean-shaven jowls, or his
smug lips, or his spreading breasts, over which the cross droops. The hands are fat and glossy. There is a ring on one of
the fingers. He leans back and smiles at Hardy, content in his minor authority and the good lunch he has just eaten. When
Hardy starts to speak, he burps. The fingers woven. "Excuse me," he says.
"I want to speak to you about that postcard," Hardy says. "I am assuming, of course, that you're not at liberty to tell me
who shared it with you?"
The vicar says nothing; merely smiles.
"In any case, I thought it important to explain to you my rationale."
"I understand your rationale. You assumed that God would save you out of spite. So that you would not die a famous man."
"I've thought it over very carefully. I believe it was a psychological tactic, a means of contending with the arbitrariness
of nature and the universe. I call this arbitrariness God, and I make it into an adversary."
"You mean that this God whom you claim to be your enemy—you don't believe in Him?"
"God is simply a name I give to something . . . without meaning."
"Then why choose the name God?"
"To amuse myself."
"And are you amused?"
Hardy looks away. "I am a rationalist. I told you years ago, when I was a child. A kite cannot fly in a fog."
"Did the boat that day encounter fog? Or only wind?"
"Rain. Heavy wind."
"You feared for your life."
"Yes. Though I felt protected because of the postcards."
"So God protected you."
"No, not God . . ."
"Then what?"
"A talisman. A means to avert fear until we reached England."
"God protected you. He saved you. Perhaps He intends for you to solve the Raymond hypothesis."
"Riemann."
"Excuse me. I am no mathematician."
Hardy leans forward in his chair. "Who told you? It can't have been Mother. She wouldn't have understood so much. It must
have been Gertrude."
Again, the vicar does not answer. His smile widens.
"Why would she tell you?"
"Why have you come here?"
"To make sure you know that you haven't won. I still don't believe in God."
"Whether or not you believe in God is one question," the vicar says. "The other is whether God believes in you."