Neel Mukherjee - The Lives of Others

He limps to the bookcase, opens one of its doors, picks out a thick, battered volume, all the while muttering to himself, ‘Nine twenty, nine twenty, nine twenty, infinity of primes’. He bends down towards the smoky light and locates what he is searching for. ‘Here it is, here it is, look, look here: nine twenty, book nine, proposition twenty, Elements , Euclid’s Elements , have you heard of it, the foundation stone of mathematics; here, look, the proof of the infinity of primes. Shall I explain it to you? It’s very simple, you can see it in front of you as I speak, they’ll appear in front of your eyes, the logical steps, shall I? Shall I?’

Before Sona has had a chance to leaf through the pages of this legendary book — his hands are a-quiver at the touch of Euclid — Ashish Roy has begun, falling over himself in his enthusiasm and child-like excitement.

‘Let us assume that there is not an infinity of primes. So the series A, let’s say, of primes goes 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17 and ends with X. Are you following me?’ he asks, then, without waiting for an answer, not because he does not care, but because something in the boy’s wide-open eyes and half-open mouth, something approaching a trance-like state, tells him, this man who once upon a time made a living teaching and could work out by taking one brief look at a student’s face whether he was with him or not, that the boy intuitively knows from this point on, from the finite set of A = {2, 3, 5, 7, . X} he has posited, that he will be able to construct the proof himself, so without waiting for a response to his rhetorical question, he continues, ‘Now let us suppose, on the basis of our hypothesis, that there is a number Y, which is defined by the formula Y = {2, 3, 5, 7, . X} + 1.’

Sona lets out an exultant cry, part one-note laugh, part shout — his magic number, his old friend, his saviour on the winged horse: one. Here too, in the proof, as in the geography of his mind, it is the key that will unlock, the hand that will guide him safely through the path in the dense, jumbly woods. His joy is at recognising his unfailing friend again. Yes, he knows how the proof will advance.

Ashish Roy has not been interrupted by Sona’s ejaculation; if anything, it has spurred him on, because he has now received a sign that the boy’s mind is flying along the beautiful arc of the proof, the mind at one with the path, indivisible. ‘It is obvious that Y is not divisible by any of the numbers in the set A because it leaves the remainder’ — in his excitement, not only at the elegant parsimony of the proof, but also at his certainty of the boy’s innate understanding of the steps to come, he trips over his words — ‘onewhendividedbyanynumberbelongingtothesetAbutifitisnotaprimeitmustbedivisiblebysomeprimeandthereforethereisaprimenumbergreater-thananyofthenumbers. .’

Sona cannot sit still. He leaps up and shouts, ‘That contradicts our hypothesis.’

Ashish Roy gives out his signature cackle, then the boy and man sing out in inseparable unison, ‘So the hypothesis is false and so there are an infinity of primes.’

Then both of them simultaneously fall to a delighted laughing. It is the laughter, one imagines, of child-angels; the purest distillate of joy while contemplating some kind of immanent perfection. The shadows in the room, nearly totally in the dark, are tremulous. The hurricane-light flame, one side markedly higher than the other, is turning the glass blacker by the minute.

Ashish Roy says, ‘Do you know what kind of a proof this is? It’s a reductio ad absurdum , Latin, meaning, literally, to reduce to the point of absurdity, to the point of absurdity. Euclid loved this method. It is one of the finest weapons in the mathematician’s drawer, one of the finest, the finest.’

Sona sees the glint of a thread of drool at the corner of the man’s mouth catching the yellow light of the lamp and turning briefly golden.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it? What do you say, eh?’ Mad Ashu asks.

Sona, still enmeshed in magic, can only nod.

‘“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”,’ the man says, losing Sona for a moment by this sudden switch to non-mathematical English. ‘Have you heard this? “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.” Keats, John Keats. English poet, great English poet. Now do you understand how right he was?’

Because these are not numbers but words instead, with a fractious and slippery attachment to the meanings behind them, unlike numbers, Sona takes a while to work out the relation between the words of the great English poet and the reality they describe. He nods hesitantly, late with his reaction.

It is far too early to get hopeful, but Ashish Roy, after what seems like an entire geological era in which he has been crushed and atomised and obliterated, after that oblivion and erasure, feels an unforgettable tug, an imprisoned tiger glimpsing, for the briefest dart of thought, a chink showing the wide open, before it closes again. Or rather, he sees himself as the tiger that has a flash of its freedom; it comes to him with shocking visualness, the black-streaked yellow, the white between the nose and mouth, even the suffocating odour of the big cat. Then it is gone. The dust settles, a heavier patina than before. He does not know how to feel after this — what was it? unexpected vision? intimation? of what could be potential renewal? Pain that it could be a teasing, lying illusion? Hope that it may be real and true? Dread that it could be, as so many times before, true for a while, then turn out to be a cul-de-sac? That pendulum-swing between the two extremities had ruined him. So why is he being tortured with it again? He is finished, he has nothing to give, nothing can be extracted from him any more. But this lanky, underfed, big-eyed boy. .

‘You come here when you can, and talk mathematics with me. How does that sound?’ he offers with utmost tentativeness, his voice disappearing as it progresses.

Sona nods avidly again.

Encouraged, Ashish Roy continues, ‘Nowadays I have no one to talk to. There were many in the past, many. My world was full of talk of mathematics, was full of it, loud with it. Now. . all gone. All finished. There was a time when I was even forbidden to talk or think about numbers.’

A long pause. Sona is mystified, but does not ask any questions. He has been trained not to ask anything unless it is in a mathematics lesson, only to listen and watch. Listen, watch and keep oneself invisible, absent. Pagla Ashu, mad Ashu, is rambling.

‘I couldn’t do it myself. I thought I came close, several times came close, but the next morning, or the next week, I’d discover a mistake, a mistake, a mistake. Everything would come crashing down. Jah, all over, all over!’

Another long silence. A cockroach flies from the space between the almirah and the bookcase and lands whirringly next to the calendar. Sona flinches. The pervasive slippage in the professor’s speech, mannerisms, physical demeanour, as if all were sliding away between intention and its correct manifestation, may be the effects of some illness, but it is not madness, Sona decides. Maybe the higher reaches of mathematics have curdled his mind. The dividing line between genius and madman is hair-thin, he has always been told. Turned mad while walking around in the world of numbers — Sona cannot imagine a greater pleasure. With the fingers of his mind he caresses the reductio ad absurdum proof again and again.

A middle-aged woman enters the room. Dishrag of a block-printed sari, burdened looks as if she were a pack animal not a long way off from the knackers’ yard. She adds to the shadows in the room.

In a tight voice that people adopt when they do not want their words to be overheard she says, ‘Again? Again? You’ve brought someone back again? How many times have you been asked not to do it? How many times?’ The fury in her words belies the partially hushed delivery. Sona fears that she is going to explode any minute, but the low hiss continues. ‘You clearly haven’t learned your lesson. How much lower do you want to pull us? You may not have any shame, any repentance, but you could think of us. Or is that too much to ask? To replace some numbers with humans? Mathematics has eaten not just you, but is devouring us alive too.’