The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt Page A

Chatterjee—the real Chatterjee, decked out in his
     Corpus Christi robes—comes marching down Trinity Street, his heels beating out a rhythmic tap against the pavement. As he
     nears, his features merge into focus: ski-slope nose, lips turned up in a subtle smile, eyebrows that nearly join, but not
     quite. He passes so close that Hardy can feel the rushing of his robes, breathe in their smell of wardrobes. Then he's gone.
     He doesn't even meet Hardy's eye. The fact is, Chatterjee has no idea who he is.
    It is at this instant that the porter arrives. Thinking them two undergraduates out after hours, he starts to give them a
     tongue-lashing—until he recognizes Hardy. "Good evening, sir," he says, holding the gate open, his face a bit red, if truth
     be told. "A pleasant night out?"
    "Pleasant enough, thank you. Goodnight."
    "Goodnight, sir. Goodnight, Mr. Norton."
    "Goodnight."
    Great Court is empty at this hour, vast as a ballroom, the lawn gleaming in the moonlight. Sometimes Hardy thinks of his Cambridge
     life as being divided into quadrants, much like the lawn of Great Court. One quadrant is mathematics, and Littlewood, and
     Bohr. The second is the Apostles. The third is cricket. The fourth . . . In truth, this is the quadrant he is most reluctant
     to define, not from squeamishness—on the contrary, he has little patience for the attempts that Moore and others make to dress
     the matter up in philosophical vestments—but because he doesn't know what words to use. When McTaggart speaks of the higher
     sodomy, he tries to draw a veil over the physical, about which Hardy feels no shame. No, the bother is when the quadrants
     touch—as they are touching now, Norton at his side, the two of them heading toward New Court surreptitiously even though there
     is nothing outwardly suspect in his inviting a friend to his room for a cup of tea that he knows will never be brewed.
    They climb the stairs and he opens the door. Rising from Gaye's blue ottoman, Hermione arches her back, raises her tail in
     greeting. "Hello, puss," Norton says, bending over to stroke Hermione, as Hardy presses his fingers against his neck, trying
     to remember the last time he stroked human skin, and not a cat's fur. He tries to remember, and he can't.

8
    W HEN LITTLEWOOD disappears from Cambridge, which he frequently does, it is usually to go down to Treen, in Cornwall, where
     he stays with the Chase family,or, more precisely, with Mrs. Chase and her children. Their father—Bertie Russell's doctor—lives in London, coming down to
     Treen once a month or so. About the understandings Littlewood has come to with Mrs. Chase, or Dr. Chase, or both, Hardy knows
     better than to enquire. Certainly such arrangements are not unheard of: Russell himself appears to have arrived at one with
     Philip Morrell, with whose wife, Ottoline, he is having an affair he can never quite keep secret. Indeed, the only sufferer
     in that situation appears to be Russell's own wife.
    Littlewood has no wife. Both of them are fated to die bachelors, Hardy suspects: Littlewood because Mrs. Chase will never
     leave her husband, Hardy for rather more obvious reasons. This, he thinks, is why they can work with each other so much more
     easily than either can work, say, with Bohr, who is married. It isn't only a question of the occasional, unannounced, late-night
     visit; they also know when to leave each other alone. The married, he has noticed, are forever trying to persuade Hardy to
     join their fellowship. They live to advertise that brand of conjugal domesticity to which they have pledged themselves. It
     wouldn't be possible to collaborate with a married man, because a married man would always be noticing—questioning—that Hardy
     himself isn't married.
    Littlewood never questions Hardy. Nor does he mention Gaye. He is a man who has little patience with those rules that delimit
     what one is and isn't supposed to talk about. Even so, he has to admit that he's just