IT'S ONLY ONCE they're in the taxi, moving the wrong way along Victoria Embankment, that Hardy realizes he has nowhere to take Ramanujan except to his own flat. It's too late to catch a train to Cambridge. Nor, under the circumstances, can Hardy quite imagine dropping Ramanujan off at Mrs. Peterson's boardinghouse.
The whole journey, Ramanujan is silent. The snow has started to stick a little more. Hardy watches it as it falls on women in bus conductor's uniforms and macintoshes, on businessmen in bowler hats, on soldiers on leave and the tart who was in the waiting room at Scotland Yard, now sheltered by an umbrella held up by a shadowy keeper. These days London is especially frantic at dusk, its citizens scrambling to get home before the lights go out, and it becomes a different world. "Once I was in Venice," he says, and Ramanujan turns; looks at him dimly. "Yes, and it was quite terrifying. You see, the city's so lively during the day, and then at night—not a soul. I got lost trying to get back to my hotel. It was like walking through a city of the dead."
Is this the wrong thing to say? Probably. For how is Ramanujan, who has never been to Venice, supposed to respond? And what is Hardy supposed to say to him next, as the cab ride attenuates, the traffic thickening and thinning, like soup that needs to be stirred? If only St. George's Square would arrive, then at least Hardy could busy himself with making arrangements for the night! And then he looks at Ramanujan, heaped in his corner of the cab, and he realizes that it makes no difference. Ramanujan is not requiring talk of him. On the contrary, he seems to want silence.
At last the cab pulls up to the curb. Hardy helps Ramanujan out, and is mildly surprised that he makes no effort to run away, until he looks down and sees, once again, the bandaged legs, and realizes that, even if he wanted to, Ramanujan couldn't. Not now. "You've banged yourself up pretty well," he says, as he eases Ramanujan through the door and up the stairs.
"I fell onto the rails," Ramanujan says. "They tore the flesh of my legs."
"That must have hurt."
"There were no broken bones, though." Is there disappointment in his voice?
One landing, then another. "Here we are then." And they step inside the flat. The light is still on from when Hardy left, the book he was reading flung open on the chair, the receiver of the telephone dangling to the floor of the corridor. He returns it to its cradle. "Do sit down." Ramanujan sits gingerly, breathes out very loudly. "You've never been here before, have you? My flat."
"No."
"Or rather, I should say, the flat I share with my sister. Miss Hardy."
"Yes."
"So there's a spare room. My sister's room. You can sleep there tonight and tomorrow we'll take the train to Cambridge."
"What is to become of me? Am I to be sent back to Hill Grove?"
"I don't see why not, assuming you were happy there."
"I was not happy there. I could not bear the place. I left four days ago."
"So you came to London?"
Ramanujan nods. He has picked up English habits of certainty. "At first I stayed at Mrs. Peterson's but then there was . . . an incident. I left, and was caught up in the bombing raid. I could not get a train back to Cambridge so I found a hotel. I stayed there until I had no money left." He grows suddenly quiet. And how is Hardy supposed to nudge him on? Is he supposed to nudge him on? So far as the human psyche is concerned—he would be the first to admit it—he is as inept a student as has ever been born. Mathematicians live in abstract realms for a reason. But Ramanujan, too, is a mathematician. That was what brought them together. So why shouldn't they be able to speak to each other?
"Of course you don't have to talk about this if you don't want to,"
Hardy says, "but. . . well, needless to say, I was very alarmed when the inspector told me . . . Is it true that you jumped?"
Ramanujan gazes into his lap for several seconds. Then he says, "It does not matter."
"Why?"
"I shall die soon anyway."
"You don't know that."
"At Hill Grove there was an old man in the next hut. They called it a chalet but it was a hut. This old man came from a village not far from my own. Not far from Kumbakonam. He had bathed in the river every day, as I did, before he came to England. For many years he had a restaurant in Notting Hill, and then his sons took over the restaurant. They quarreled, and it was sold. He was made sick from their quarreling, and they sent him to Hill Grove. And every day he coughed up blood, and in the end the noise coming from his hut was frightful."
"I'm sorry."
"It does not matter. His fate is mine, only in my case it will come sooner. Since I was a child I have known I would die young. It doesn't matter how."
"But that's nonsense. There's no reason you can't live to be eighty. And you've so much left to achieve! We've work to do, Ramanujan, the partitions theorem, the Riemann hypothesis still to prove."
He smiles thinly. "Yes, I have been thinking, a little, about the Riemann hypothesis."
"Have you? Tell me."
"But I am very tired."
"Of course you are. I'm sorry." Hardy stands, then walks into the corridor off which the bedroom doors open. He opens the door to Gertrude's room. "You should find everything you need here," he says. "I'm afraid the bed hasn't been slept in for a while, though. The sheets may be musty."
"I don't mind."
"Oh, but I haven't offered you anything. Wouldn't you like something to eat? Or to drink? Some tea?"
"No. I only want sleep."
"Fine, then. You don't want to bathe?"
Another distinct shake of the head: no. And then he shuffles through the door to Gertrude's room; pulls off his clothes until he is wearing just his drawers. Only then does Hardy see how badly he's been hurt. The bandages cover his legs from the ankles to just above the knees, and are bloody in places.
"Those will have to be changed."
"Tomorrow." Ramanujan climbs into the bed. "You see?" he says, pulling the blankets to his chin. "I've learned. When I first arrived, I didn't understand your beds. I slept on top of the covers, and piled myself with sweaters and overcoats to keep away cold. Then Chatterjee explained . . . you had to get into the bed, like a letter into an envelope." He laughs. "To think I was so ignorant!"
"But how long was it before you learned?"
"Oh, months. At least until November of that first year."
"But that's terrible. You must have been frozen!" And without thinking, Hardy laughs, too. They laugh together.
"It was long ago."
"Of course. Well, I'll leave you then. Goodnight." And he moves to shut the door. But Ramanujan says, "Wait."
"What?"
"Would you mind leaving the door open?"
"Of course. Of course I'll leave the door open."
"And the door to your bedroom . . . Would you leave that open, too?"
"Of course. Well, sleep tight."
"Sleep tight?"
"An expression. Goodnight again."
"Goodnight again."
Hardy turns, and is halfway across the corridor, halfway to his own room, when a thought comes into his head, and he stops.
"Ramanujan."
"Yes?"
"You're not going to try it again, are you?"
"No."
"Good. Well, goodnight yet again."
"Goodnight yet again."
Outside the window, the city is dark. He pads into his own bedroom, being careful to leave the door ajar; takes off his clothes; lingers, for a moment, naked in the dark, before starting to put on his pyjamas. Then he flings them away. Now currents of air connect him to Ramanujan, over which any sound would carry, the groans of intimacy as much as of pain; the thrashings of loneliness; his own snoring. Sleep claims the sufferer, the same oblivion that will elude, tonight, his putative savior. Hardy hears rumblings in the distance, and revels in the unfamiliar sensation of the draft from the corridor brushing against his bare skin.