Ranjit grinned again, wryly, because the next thing he had said to Gamini was that he was going to find Fermat’s proof for himself. And that was what had started the laughing put-downs and the friendly horseplay that had led directly to what the porter had walked in on. And Ranjit’s mind was so filled with the memories of that time that he never heard his father’s footsteps, and didn’t know his father was there until the old man put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Lost in thought?”
The pressure of Ganesh’s hand kept his son from rising. Ganesh seated himself beside him, methodically studying Ranjit’s face, dress, and body. “You are thin,” he complained.
“So are you,” Ranjit told him, smiling, but a little worried, too, because on his father’s face was a look he had never seen before, a worry and a sorrow that did not befit the usually upbeat old man. He added, “Don’t worry. They feed me well enough at the university.”
His father nodded. “Yes,” he said, acknowledging the accuracy of the statement as well as the fact that he knew quite well just how adequately his son was fed. “Tell me what else they do for you there.”
That might have been taken to be an invitation to say something about a boy’s right to a personal life and some freedom from being spied upon by servants. Ranjit elected to postpone that subject as long as he could. “Mainly,” he said, improvising hastily, “it’s been math that has kept me busy. You know about Fermat’s last theorem—” And then, when the look on Ganesh’s face showed real amusement for the first time, Ranjit said, “Well, of course you do. You’re the one who gave me the Hardy book in the first place, aren’t you? Anyway, there’s this so-called proof of Wiles. It’s an abomination. How does Wiles construct his proof? He goes back to Ken Ribet’s announcement that he had proved a link between Fermat and Taniyama-Shimura. That’s a conjecture that says—”
Ganesh patted his shoulder. “Yes, Ranjit,” he said gently. “You needn’t bother to try to explain this Taniyama-Shimura thing to me.”
“All right.” Ranjit thought for a moment. “Well, I’ll make it simple. The crux of Wiles’s argument lies in two theorems. The first is that a particular elliptical curve is semi-stable but it isn’t modular. The second says that all semi-stable elliptical curves that possess rational coefficients really are modular. That means there is a flat contradiction, and—”
Ganesh sighed fondly. “You are really deeply involved in this, aren’t you?” he observed. “But you know your mathematics is far beyond me, so let’s talk about something else. What about the rest of your studies?”
“Ah,” Ranjit said, faintly puzzled; it was not to talk about his classes, he was quite sure, that his father had brought him to Trincomalee. “Yes. My other classes.” As conversational subjects went, that one was not nearly as bad as the one about what the porter would have passed along. It wasn’t really wonderful, though. Ranjit sighed and bit the bullet. “Really,” he said, “why must I learn French? So I can go to the airport and sell souvenirs to tourists from Madagascar or Quebec?”
His father smiled. “French is a language of culture,” he pointed out. “And also of your hero, Monsieur Fermat.”
“Huh,” Ranjit said, recognizing the debating point but still unconvinced. “All right, but what about history? Who cares? Why do I need to know what the king of Kandy said to the Portuguese? Or whether the Dutch threw the English out of Trinco, or the other way around?”
His father patted him again. “But the university requires those credits of you before they will grant you your degree. After that, in graduate school, you can specialize as much as you like. Isn’t the university teaching you anything you enjoy other than math?”
Ranjit brightened slightly. “Not now, no, but by next year I’ll be through with this really boring biology. Then I can take a different science course, and I’m going to do astronomy.” Reminded, he glanced up at the bright red star, now dominating the eastern horizon.
His father did not disappoint him. “Yes, that’s Mars,” he said, following Ranjit’s line of sight. “It’s unusually bright; there’s good seeing tonight.” He turned his gaze back to his son. “Speaking of the planet Mars, do you remember who Percy Molesworth was? The one whose grave we used to visit?”
Ranjit reached back into his recollections of childhood and was pleased to find a clue. “Oh, right. The astronomer.” They were speaking of Percy Molesworth, the British army captain who had been stationed at Trincomalee around the end of the nineteenth century. “Mars was his specialty, right?” he went on, happy to be talking about something that would please his father. “He was the one who proved that, uh…”
“The canals,” his father assisted.
“Right, the canals! He proved that they weren’t actual canals built by an advanced Martian civilization but just an example of the kind of tricks our eyes can play on us.”
Ganesh gave him an encouraging nod. “He was the astronomer—the very great astronomer—who did most of his work right here in Trinco, and he—”
Then Ganesh stopped midsentence. He turned to peer into Ranjit’s face. Then he sighed. “Do you see what I am doing, Ranjit? I am delaying the inevitable. It was not to talk about astronomers that I asked you to come here tonight. What we must discuss is something a great deal more serious. That is your relationship with Gamini Bandara.”
It had come.
Ranjit took a deep breath before bursting out: “Father, believe me! It is not what you think! We just play at that sort of thing, Gamini and I. It means nothing.”
Unexpectedly, his father looked surprised. “Means nothing? Of course what you were doing means nothing. Did you think I did not know all the ways in which young people like to experiment with kinds of behavior?” He shook his head reproachfully, and then said in a burst, “You must believe me in this, Ranjit. It isn’t the experimenting with sexual behavior that matters. It is the person you were sharing it with.” His voice was stressed again, as though it were hard for these words to come out. “Remember, my son, you are a Tamil. Bandara is Sinhalese.”
Ranjit’s first reaction was that he could not believe what he was hearing from his father’s lips. How could his father, who had always taught him that all men were brothers, say such things now? Ganesh Subramanian had been faithful to his beliefs in spite of the fact that the ethnic riots that began in the 1980s had left scars that would take generations to heal. Ganesh had lost close relatives to rampaging mobs. He himself had narrowly escaped death more than once.
But that was ancient history. Ranjit hadn’t been born yet in those days—even his deceased mother had hardly been born yet—and for years now there had been a well-kept truce. Ranjit raised a hand. “Father,” he begged, “please! This is not like you. Gamini hasn’t murdered anyone.”
Inexorably Ganesh Subramanian repeated the terrible words. “Gamini is Sinhalese.”
“But Father! What about all the things you taught me? About that poem you made me learn by heart, the one from the Purananuru. ‘To us all towns are one, all men our kin, thus we have seen in the visions of the wise.’”
He was clutching at straws. His father was not to be moved by two-thousand-year-old Tamil verses. He didn’t answer, just shook his head, though Ranjit could see from the expression on his face that he was suffering, too.
“All right,” Ranjit said miserably. “What do you want me to do?”
His father’s voice was heavy. “What you must, Ranjit. You cannot remain so close to a Sinhalese.”
“But why? Why now?”
“I have no choice in this,”