The Indian Clerk (24 page)

Alice looks up. So far, she has managed to evade Gertrude's gaze. Now, however, she meets those alarming eyes. The right one
is peering at her assessingly, while the left one . . . how to say it? It floats.

And suddenly, without even thinking to ask, she asks, "How did it happen?"

"What?"

"How did you lose your eye?"

Gertrude seems to rear up in her chair. Like a cat. Good. Ever since she's arrived, Alice has wanted to get the upper hand.
To make Gertrude flinch. Good.

"I hope you don't mind my asking."

"Do you imagine you're the first to ask?"

"Well—"

"You're not. People ask all the time. Women especially."

To Alice's surprise, she uncrosses her arms.

"If you must know, it was when I was nine. Harold hit me in the face with a cricket bat. An accident. I was knocked out cold.
And then, when I woke, I was in the hospital, and it was gone. The eye was gone. That's all."

"But that's terrible."

"I suppose so. I was so young I hardly remember what it was like—before. Of course, afterwards, the important thing was to
protect Harold."

"Why?"

"Because it was an accident, wasn't it, and he was so terribly fond of cricket, he shouldn't be made to feel any sense of
responsibility or guilt. And so I was told never to speak of it."

"By your father?"

"My mother."

"Did you mind?"

"Only at first. But then I realized that she was being quite sensible, really. You see, she was determined that no one be
steered off course. Even then, we knew Harold was a genius. The last thing we wanted was that this should hinder his progress.
And it helped me, too. Having to act, from the start, as if nothing had happened—it made it possible for me to make that my
. . . modus operandi."

"Let me see it."

"What?"

"The eye. Take it out. Let me see it."

Gertrude laughs.

"Why is this funny?" Alice asks.

"Because everyone who's ever wanted to see it thinks she's the first to ask to see it."

"Is it always women?"

"Always. Anyway, happy to oblige. Only please look away while I take it out."

Alice looks away. She hears, or imagines she hears, a sort of unscrewing, a plop and a pop, and then Gertrude says, "All right.
You may turn now."

Alice turns around. Gertrude has her back to her. She holds her right hand behind her back, the fingers curled around . .
. something.

The thing is passed from Gertrude's palm into Alice's. Alice examines it. The eye is white and globular and heavier than she
would have thought—the size of a large marble, with the iris and the lens slightly raised. And what a piece of craftsmanship
it is, the brown a perfect match for Gertrude's real eye, the white etched with tiny red lines, to suggest veins!

"May I have it back now?"

"How does it work? How do you insert it?"

"You just pull back the lid and pop it in. The socket closes right around it."

"Is it uncomfortable?"

"Does it dry out? Do you have to keep it lubricated?"

"The tear glands weren't affected. May I have it back now?"

Once again, Gertrude reaches her arm behind her back. Alice deposits the eye in her palm.

"Don't look."

Alice closes her own eyes. Then Gertrude says, "It's all right now," and when Alice looks again, Gertrude's face is across the table. An expression of warmth, even affection, seems to have suffused
it.

"Well," she says. "Are you satisfied?"

"Quite, thank you."

"Good, I'm glad we got past that." She looks toward the kitchen window. "It's becoming a lovely day, isn't it? What would
you say to going to the zoo?"

"The zoo?"

"Yes, why not?"

"I'd say it's a wonderful idea," Alice says. And she stands, in the process knocking her chair, once more, into the already
bruised wall.

"I wish you hadn't done it."

"I thought of not doing it. But then I thought, look, it's not like we're going to have much choice in the matter for long.
Conscription's coming, I promise you. Churchill's already putting in for it."

"How do you know?"

"Hardy. Churchill's secretary is one of his Apostles."

Anne lights a cigarette. Across the pathway, the tiger lies down and licks its huge paw. Like Hardy's cat, only it gives off
a muskier smell. What Littlewood thinks impatience must smell like. And now a child approaches with her nurse to gaze at the
tiger. She clings to the nurse's hand. Keeping a safe distance.

"When will we see each other?"

"With any luck I'll be in London in a few months. Or nearby. Woolwich, probably."

"But will you be able to get down to Treen?"

"Not as often as I do now, I'm afraid."

She takes his hand. She is holding back tears. Suddenly the tiger bounds up, giving an ill-tempered roar, which frightens
the child, who starts to cry. The nurse leads her away, toward the elephants.

"What will become of you?" Anne asks, weeping.

"Darling, there's no need for this. I'll be fine."

"But what if they send you into battle? I've read the reports."

"But that's the whole point, they won't send me into battle. They don't send men like me into battle. We're too valuable behind
the scenes."

"I'm sorry." She takes a handkerchief from her handbag; wipes her eyes. "I feel so foolish. Maybe it's the children. They
ask, you know. This is just—it's so awful. I can't believe I have to explain this to my children."

"I'm so sorry that you have to."

"He may volunteer still. I know he's thinking about it."

"Then why can't you do as he does? Wait?"

"Because if I put it off, I may not get such a safe position."

"But with all his connections, couldn't Hardy make sure you did?"

"His influence doesn't extend that far, I'm afraid. I'm not part of that circle. He can protect himself, probably."

"And he says he can't work without you!"

"Don't blame him."

"Why not? I have to blame somebody."

"Blame Kitchener, then. Blame Churchill. You've never even met Hardy."

"Only because you never—"

"Ssh. That's his sister."

Anne looks up. Two women are strolling down the path, toward the tiger's cage.

Without thinking she pulls her hand out of Littlewood's. He stands.

"Miss Hardy, Mrs. Neville. What a lovely surprise."

Gertrude gives Anne an assessing glance. "Hello, Mr. Littlewood," she says. "And what brings you to the zoo?"

"Simply—a lovely afternoon. And you?"

"It's a little ritual of ours," Alice says. "Whenever I happen to be in London."

"Oh, may I introduce Mrs. Chase?"

Anne gets up too now. She has to shake Gertrude's hand with her left hand, because the handkerchief is balled up in the right.

"And may I offer you ladies some tea?" Littlewood asks, ever the gallant, ever able to adjust to what confronts him.

"Oh no," Alice says. "We wouldn't want to interrupt."

"You're not interrupting."

"Well, if you're sure . . ."

"No, we must be going," Gertrude says firmly, and takes Alice by the arm. "A pleasure to see you, Mr. Littlewood. And a pleasure
to meet you, Mrs . . ."

"Chase."

"Chase. Good day."

They move on. A few feet along the path they stop before the elephants, at which they peer with academic earnestness. They
don't seem to be talking.

He and Anne sit down again, and all at once Anne begins to laugh. She laughs so hard she has to wipe her eyes again.

"What on earth's the matter now?"

"It's nothing, it just seems so funny . . . Well, I mean, who cares anymore? If they guess everything."

"I hate to tell you, darling, but we're hardly a state secret."

"I know. That's why I'm laughing."

"Why didn't you want to stop for tea?"

"Because they were obviously having a row. Or something."

"But who is she?"

"Can't you see?"

"Well, how do you expect Russell would introduce Ottoline Morrell?"

They are approaching the bat house. Gertrude's expression is one of wicked amusement, but for Alice, it's as if a new idea
has entered the world. Russell and Mrs. Morrell. Littlewood and Mrs. Chase.

Well, why not?

She resolves, then, that she will meet Mrs. Chase again. She will seek her out. That woman with the brown hair and the sun-darkened
skin and that look of—well—radiance, Alice would call it—even in tears, a kind of radiance—this is a woman she can talk to.
This is the kind of woman she might, if she's lucky, end up learning how to be.

The Hindu's fate in the afterlife, on the other hand, hinges entirely on how he behaves. If he heeds the rules, he will be
reincarnated as a member of higher caste. If he breaks the rules, he will return as a beetle or an untouchable or a weed or
some such thing. It does not matter what he believes. And so when the Hindu adheres to certain prohibitions and strictures
for the sake of propriety and decorum, rather than because he accepts the doctrines of his religion as literally true, he
is not acting as a hypocrite in the way, say, that I would be if I were to attend chapel, or participate in a mass, or thank
the Lord for my supper.

No, Mrs. Neville, it was not because he believed. He remained vegetarian, first of all, because vegetarianism was second nature
to him. He had never in his life eaten meat and found the idea of doing so repellent. Also he worried that, if word got back
to his mother that he was adopting Western ways, she would make things very difficult for him when he returned to Madras.
For Komalatammal, as she was called, was hardly the devout and devoted figure whom her son's Indian admirers have portrayed.
This must be put on the table once and for all. On the contrary, she was what my old bedmaker, Mrs. Bixby, would have called
a "right piece of work." She was clever, possessive, and exploitative. It would not surprise me to learn that she employed
other Indian students in Cambridge as spies in order to insure that her son did not stray from the path of righteousness.
She might also have hounded him, or threatened to hound him, through occult means.

An admirer of Ramanujan's recently sent me her picture. In it, a very short woman sits in a very tall chair, so tall that
her bare feet barely touch the ground. She has a low, mean face, not stupid in the way, say, that a sheep's face is stupid:
no, in this face there is the gleam of a primitive intelligence. She stares boldly into the camera as if to challenge its
potency, or mesmerize the viewer, by drawing him into the black dot painted between her eyes. No, it is not a picture that
I can look at for long.

Let me give a brief account of her life. She came from a poor but cultured Brahmin family. Her father was some sort of petty
court official and, as is the usual thing in India, her parents arranged her marriage for her. From what I have gathered,
for the first few years after she was married she could not get pregnant, and so her father and grandparents decided to intercede
by praying to the goddess Namagiri. Reportedly the grandmother already had an established relationship with Namagiri, occasionally
going into trances during which the goddess would speak through her, and on one of these occasions she had announced that
if Komalatammal bore a son, she would speak through him, too. So they got on their knees and prayed to the goddess to grant
Komalatammal fertility and, lo and behold, nine months later she gave birth to a boy.

From then on, whenever she spoke of her son's conception, Komalatammal invoked the name of the goddess. She never mentioned
her husband, Kuppuswamy, even though he must have had something to do with the business. Nor did Kuppuswamy protest. From
what I have been told, he was a meek, ineffectual person, who recognized early on the advantages of keeping out of his wife's
ferocious path. For Komalatammal was nothing if not ambitious. Early on, it is said, she read her son's horoscope and deduced
from it that he would either become famous all over the world and die young or remain obscure and live to a ripe old age.
Reputedly she was quite proficient at matters both astrological and numerological. She must have decided that if there was
a chance that he was going to die young, she should take advantage of his talents while she could. Accordingly, from the moment
when he first showed signs of mathematical precocity, from when he was three or four, she enlisted his assistance in the various
numerological manipulations in which she indulged toward the end of interpreting her own future and insuring that harm should
come to her enemies. With the father simpering in the background, mother and son labored together, their bond in many ways
more intimate than that of husband and wife.

Two examples, taken from letters sent to me by Ramanujan's Indian acquaintances, will suffice.

In the first, Mr. M. Anantharaman writes to say that once, in the Kumbakonam of their childhood, his older brother described
a dream he had had to Ramanujan. Ramanujan then interpreted the dream to mean that there would soon be a death in the street
behind their house—and, lo and behold, a few days thereafter, an old lady who lived in that street died.

Let us look at the case closely. Ramanujan had lived in Kumbakonam nearly all his life. He would have known most of the townspeople,
and, through his mother, been up to date on their financial misfortunes, the conditions of their marriages, and the various
ailments from which they suffered. Imagine, then, that Ramanujan's mother informs him one day that old lady X, who lives in
the street behind the brothers Anantharaman, is at death's door. The next day he is asked to interpret a dream. It would require
no psychic talent to foresee—and announce—this old lady's imminent demise.

The second example comes from Mr. K. Narasimha Iyengar, who also hails from Kumbakonam and, for a time, shared lodgings with
Ramanujan in Madras. In his letter, this gentleman describes preparing for an examination at Madras Christian College, the
mathematics portion of which he feared he would fail. As he recalls, on the day of the examination, Ramanujan "instinctively
felt" that they should meet, and, when they did, provided him with "prophetic tips" as a result of which he was able to pass
the mathematics exam with the required minimum score of 35 percent. Without Ramanujan's intervention, Mr. Iyengar says, he
would have failed.

This is, of course, a more subtle case. What Mr. Iyengar is implying is that the "tips" for the exam were provided to Ramanujan
by an outside force. Perhaps they were written on his tongue. In fact, though, as a mathematician and a longtime victim of
the Indian educational system, Ramanujan would have known exactly what types of problems Mr. Iyengar was likely to encounter
on such an exam. By explaining these problems patiently, and then crediting his insight to spiritual intervention, he was
able to reduce the youth's anxiety and instill in him the confidence he needed to score better. For he was above all else—and
this is often forgotten—a kindly man.

I offer these examples because I want to emphasize that Ramanujan, though he may have acted the role of the devout Hindu,
and even claimed supernatural capacities, was in fact not remotely susceptible to the vagaries of the so-called religious
sentiment. He was, instead, at heart and soul a rationalist. This may sound like an oxymoron. In my view it describes him
perfectly. If, on occasion, he practiced economies of truth, he did so because he had weighed the pros and the cons and concluded
that in certain cases it was necessary, if not to lie, then to allow certain false impressions to linger. For instance, you
will recall that, when it came to traveling to Europe, a very convenient "dream" made it possible for him to sidestep the
Brahminic injunction against crossing the ocean. His mother had this dream. She, too, I suspect, is far from the reverent
creature she has been portrayed as being. On the contrary, she understood the advantage to herself of his going to England,
and, just as she had exploited his talents in his childhood by compelling him to assist her in her numerological enterprises,
she tried to leech from him not just a certain measure of fame, as the saintly mother of the "Hindoo calculator," but, after
his death, a certain quantity of cash.

Yes, Mrs. Neville, I hear you. You protest. I am judging the poor woman too harshly. She sacrificed much for her son, labored
hard to pay for his schooling and to care for him, never wavered in her faith in his genius even when all doors were shut
in his face. All of this is true. And still she was a grasping, self-interested woman.

Nowhere is this more evident than in her dealings with his child-bride, Janaki.

Of Janaki herself, I have an uncertain impression. Ramanujan seemed to feel very fondly toward her. He called her "my house."
When, after a long time in Cambridge, he still had not received a single letter from her, he told Chatterjee, the cricketer,
"My house has not written to me." "Houses don't wrote," Chatterjee replied cheerfully—perhaps an ungentle witticism, for in
fact the failure of the expected letters to arrive was a source of great pain to Ramanujan, though whether this was because
he missed the girl, or feared that his mother had killed her, I cannot say. According to Mr. Anantharaman, Ramanujan knew
"no conjugal happiness" with Janaki, as she was, in his words, "most unfortunate." Yet Mr. Anantharaman also reminds me that
shortly before his marriage, Ramanujan was operated on for a hydrocele—a swelling of the scrotum due to the build-up of serous
fluids—after which he was unable to engage in sexual activity for more than a year. Other sources imply that Komalatammal
refused to let the couple sleep together, using the hydrocele as an excuse. Probably she wanted Ramanujan all to herself.
I cannot tell you whether Ramanujan regarded this enforced abstinence, whatever its cause, as a curse or a blessing.

It was an intolerable situation—and Ramanujan, even from a great distance, felt its repercussions. Later, his mother let it
drop that her resentment toward Janaki owed to certain peculiarities in the girl's horoscope that her family had deliberately
camouflaged before the wedding. Apparently the horoscope, when properly read, revealed that marriage to Janaki would hasten
Ramanujan's death. Her parents, knowing this would imperil the chances of their none-too-desirable daughter finding a husband,
resorted to fraud in order to be rid of her. Though, as it happened, they weren't rid of her for long.