A passion for numbers

"The Indian Clerk"

by David Leavitt

Bloomsbury, 485 pp., $24.95

One of the pleasures of reading current fiction comes from appreciating how a particular story reflects current fears and values. A case in point is David Leavitt's latest novel, "The Indian Clerk."

On its surface, this lengthy, equation-dotted novel is about the relationship between two real-life mathematicians who worked together during World War I. Leavitt, a fine writer, has captured not just the complex nature of their partnership, but also a sense of the context: In his telling, England at the turn of the 20th century fits the phrase he uses to describe a particular boarding house, as "a room grown stale from its own protection." But beneath the surface of this story lurk issues that feel as fresh as today's news. Most importantly, the novel addresses the clash of cultures as Britain's empire-building came home to roost. For all their smarts, England's intelligentsia were as ill-prepared as more common folk to embrace those from backgrounds different from their own.

The two main characters in Leavitt's morality play are G.H. Hardy, a Cambridge don, and his protégé, a self-taught math genius from India. Hardy, a closeted homosexual by Leavitt's account (more about this later), is the kind of man who has put his emotions in a bottle while he pursues the life of the mind. Srinivasa Ramanujan is the self-taught math whiz who writes to him from India appealing for the esteemed scholar's feedback.

Although hardly the type to stick his neck out for a stranger, much less a friend or colleague, Hardy immediately recognizes that Ramanujan is no ordinary numbers-cruncher. Through his efforts the Indian is brought to England, where initially he appears the perfect British gentleman — except, of course, for his dark skin.

Only belatedly does Hardy realize that his new compatriot is merely giving "department store replies," and that his genius with proofs and theorems is not matched with the coping skills he needs to survive.

Alienated from both his homeland and his strange new surroundings, Ramanujan is also caught between the forces of his ambition and a pure love for numbers. To his credit, Leavitt gives us no single reason for Ramanujan's downhill slide: Life is like that, a mystical combination of events and our reactions to them.

And yet, Hardy is left with a heavy conscience about the young man's fate — and the unwelcome realization that his enduring reputation is inextricably linked to his discovery of the gifted "Indian clerk" — also dubbed the "Hindoo calculator" — who gives the book its title.

"The Indian Clerk," however, is less about its title character than about Hardy, a conflicted fellow and a stand-in, perhaps, for the social rigidity of his empire. He is the book's narrator, telling the story with wistful sadness decades after Ramanujan is gone.

Leavitt suggests several reasons Hardy was such a cold fish. First was his passion for numbers instead of people: As the fictional Hardy observes, "Mathematicians live in abstract realms for a reason." But his closeted homosexuality plays a big part, too. Leavitt — a gay writer who often concerns himself with gay themes — seems to suggest that, because Hardy had a secret life and unapproved longings, he was unprepared for his role as Ramanujan's mentor.

And yet, this is where Leavitt's version of the story falls down. For starters, if Hardy was closeted, then who's to say he was gay? Leavitt, writing out of his own imagination, introduces gratuitous elements that seem to have little to do with Ramanujan, because there's not even a hint that he and Hardy had a sexual relationship.

It's true that Hardy belonged to the Apostles, an elite Cambridge University circle known in Hardy's time for its sexual experimentation (Lytton Strachey and John Maynard Keynes were members). But Leavitt's scenes of the all-male group's Saturday-night meetings as opportunities to hit on each other seem exaggerated, and Hardy's tryst with a young soldier is an unnecessary detour.

With these digressions, the novel loses sight of Ramanujan, the lonely figure who speaks to Hardy's folly and England's arrogance of power. It loses its focus on an otherwise convincing portrayal of the closed rooms and closed minds of an aging imperial prerogative.

Ellen Emry Heltzel is a Portland writer.

She can be found on the Web at www.thebookbabes.com