The Solitude of Prime Numbers

by Paolo Giordano

  She bit her thin lip. “More or less,” she added.

  “May I?” the doctor said, opening his hand for the camera.

  “Of course.”

  Alice unwound the strap from her wrist and held it out to him. He turned it around in his hands. He took off the lens cap and aimed the lens first in front of him and then upward, toward the sky.

  “Wow,” he observed. “It looks professional.”

  She blushed and the doctor made as if to give her back the camera.

  “You can take a picture if you like,” said Alice.

  “No, no, please. I don’t know how. You do it.”

  “Of what?”

  Fabio looked around. He turned his head from side to side, dubiously. Then he shrugged.

  “Of me,” he replied.

  Alice looked at him suspiciously.

  “Why should I?” she asked him, with a slightly malicious inflection that escaped from her involuntarily.

  “Because then you’d have to see me again, at least to show it to me.”

  Alice hesitated for a moment. She looked into Fabio’s eyes, carefully for the first time, and couldn’t hold their gaze for more than a second. They were blue and shadowless, as clear as the sky behind him, and she felt lost inside them, as if she were naked in a huge empty room.

  He’s handsome, thought Alice. He’s handsome in the way a boy should be handsome.

  She aimed the viewfinder at the middle of his face. He smiled, without a hint of embarrassment. He didn’t even tilt his head, as people often do in front of the lens. Alice adjusted the focus and then pressed down with her index finger. The air was shattered by a click.

  23

  Mattia presented himself in niccoli’s office a week after their first meeting. The professor recognized his knock, a fact that curiously disturbed him. Seeing Mattia come in, he took a deep breath, ready to fly into a fury as soon as the boy said something along the lines of there are things I don’t understand or I wanted to ask you if you could explain a few passages to me. If I’m forceful enough, niccoli thought, I might be able to get rid of him.

  Mattia asked may I, and, without looking the professor in the face, set down on the edge of his desk the article that he had given him to study. Niccoli picked it up and a little stack of pages slid out, numbered and neatly written, appended to the stapled ones. He quickly gathered them up and realized they were the calculations of the article, perfectly executed and with precise reference to the text. He quickly flipped through them but didn’t need to examine them thoroughly to determine that they were correct: the order of the pages was enough to reveal their exactness.

  He was a little disappointed, his fit of fury stuck halfway down his throat, like a sneeze that refused to come. He kept nodding as he reviewed Mattia’s work, trying in vain to suppress a jolt of envy for this boy who seemed so unfit for existence but was doubtless gifted in this subject, something he himself had never really felt.

  “Very good,” he said at last, more to himself than with the intention of paying a genuine compliment. Then, with apparent boredom, “A problem is raised in the final paragraphs. It concerns the moments of the zeta function to—”

  “I’ve done it,” Mattia cut in. “I think I’ve solved it.”

  Niccoli looked at him with suspicion and then with deliberate disdain.

  “Oh, really?”

  “In the last page of my notes.”

  The professor licked his index finger and flipped through to the end. Frowning, he quickly read Mattia’s demonstration, not understanding much of it, but not finding anything to object to either. Then he started from the beginning, more slowly, and this time the reasoning struck him as clear, quite rigorous, in fact, although marred here and there by amateur pedantry. As he followed the steps, his forehead relaxed and he unconsciously began stroking his lower lip. He forgot about Mattia, who was still frozen in the same position since he first arrived, looking at his feet and repeating in his head let it be right, let it be right, as if the rest of his life depended on the professor’s verdict. As he said that to himself he didn’t imagine, however, that it really would be.

  Niccoli rested the pages on the table again, carefully, and dropped back into his chair, once again crossing his hands behind his head, his favorite position.

  “Well, I’d say you’re all set,” he said.

  He was to graduate at the end of May. Mattia asked his parents not to come. What? was all his mother could say. He shook his head, looking toward the window. The glass gave onto a wall of darkness and reflected the image of the three of them sitting around a foursided table. In the reflection Mattia saw his father taking his mother’s arm and gesturing to her to let it go. Then he saw the reflection of her getting up from the table with her hand over her mouth and turning on the tap to wash the dishes, even though they hadn’t finished dinner yet.

  Graduation day arrived just like any other, and Mattia got up before the alarm. His phantasms, which had filled his mind with scribbled sheets of paper during the night, took a few minutes to dissolve. no one was in the living room, just an elegant blue suit, brand-new, laid out beside a perfectly ironed pale pink shirt. on the shirt was a note with the words To our graduate and signed Mom and Dad, but in Dad’s handwriting alone. Mattia put the clothes on and left the house without even looking at himself in the mirror.

  He defended his thesis, looking the members of the committee straight in the eyes, devoting an equal amount of time to each of them and with a steady voice. Niccoli, sitting in the first row, nodded gravely and noted the growing amazement on the faces of his colleagues.

  When the moment of the announcement came, Mattia arranged himself in a line with the other candidates. They were the only ones standing in the oversized space of the great hall. Mattia felt the eyes of the audience tingle on his back. He tried to distract himself by estimating the volume of the room, taking as his scale the height of the dean, but the tingle climbed up his neck and split in two directions, wrapping around to his temples. He imagined thousands of little insects pouring into his ears; thousands of hungry moths tunneling into his brain.

  The words that the dean repeated identically for each candidate seemed longer each time, and were drowned out by a growing noise in his head, so loud that he couldn’t make out his own name when the moment came. Something solid, like an ice cube, obstructed his throat. He shook the dean’s hand and it was so dry to the touch that he instinctively sought the metal buckle of the belt that he wasn’t wearing. The whole audience rose to its feet with the sound of a rising tide. niccoli came over and clapped him twice on the shoulder, saying congratulations. Before the applause ended Mattia was out of the hall and walking hastily down the corridor, forgetting to put his toe down first to keep his footsteps from echoing on the way out.

  I’ve done it, I’ve done it, he silently repeated to himself. But the closer he got to the door the more aware he became of an abyss opening up in his stomach. outside, the sunlight overwhelmed him, along with the heat and the noise of the traffic. He staggered, as if from fear of falling from the concrete step. There was a group of people on the pavement; Mattia counted sixteen with a single glance. Many of them were holding flowers, almost certainly waiting for his fellow students. For a moment Mattia wished someone was there for him. He felt the need to abandon his own weight onto someone else’s body, as if the contents of his head had suddenly become more than his two legs alone could bear. He looked for his parents, he looked for Alice and Denis, but there were only strangers looking nervously at their watches, fanning themselves with sheets of paper they’d picked up who knows where, smoking, talking loudly, and noticing nothing.

  He looked at the degree that he held rolled up in his hand, on which was written in beautiful cursive script that Mattia Balossino was a graduate, a professional, an adult, that it was time for Mr. Balossino, B.Sc., to face up to life, and that this meant he had reached the end of the track that he had blindly followed from the first year of primary
school to graduation. He was still only half breathing, as if the air didn’t have enough momentum to accomplish the complete cycle.

  What now? he wondered out loud.

  A short, panting woman said excuse me, please, and he stepped aside to let her in. He followed her inside, not even she could lead him to the right answer, and walked reluctantly down the corridor and climbed the stairs to the second floor. He stepped into the library and went and sat down at his usual place, beside the window. He set his degree down on the empty seat beside him and stretched his hands out on the table. He concentrated on his own breathing, which was still stuck in some backwash between his throat and the bottom of his lungs. It had happened to him before, but never for such a long time.

  You can’t forget how to do it, he said to himself. It’s something you simply can’t forget and that’s that.

  He exhaled all the air and was in a state of apnea for several seconds. Then he opened his mouth wide and inhaled as hard as he could, so much that the muscles in his chest hurt. This time his breath went all the way to the bottom of his lungs and Mattia thought he could see the molecules of oxygen, round and white, scattering around his arteries and beginning to swirl toward his heart once more.

  He stayed in the same position for an indefinite amount of time, without thinking, without noticing the students coming in and out, in an absentminded state of numbness and agitation.

  Then something flashed in front of his eyes, a red patch, and Mattia gave a start. He focused his eyes upon a rose wrapped in cellophane, which someone had slapped rudely onto the desk. Following the stem he recognized Alice’s hand with its protruding knuckles, slightly reddened compared to her white fingers, and rounded nails cut down to the edge of the fingertip.

  “You’re a real jerk.”

  Mattia looked at her as one looks at a hallucination. He felt as if he were approaching the scene from a long way away, from a blurry place that he was already unable to remember well. when he was close enough, he made out on Alice’s face a deep and unfamiliar sadness.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she went on. “You should have told me. You should have.”

  Alice slipped into the seat opposite Mattia, exhausted. She looked outside, toward the street, shaking her head.

  “How did you . . . ?” Mattia began.

  “Your parents. I found out from your parents.” Alice turned and stared at him, her blue eyes boiling with rage. “Do you think that’s right?”

  Mattia hesitated and then shook his head, a dim and distorted outline moving with him over the wrinkled surface of the cellophane.

  “I’d always imagined being there. I’d imagined it so many times. While you . . .”

  Alice paused, the rest of the sentence trapped between her teeth. Mattia reflected once more on how that moment had suddenly become so real. He tried to remember where he had been until a few seconds before, but couldn’t.

  “You never did,” Alice finished. “Never.”

  He felt his head sinking between his shoulders, felt the moths swarming inside his skull again.

  “It wasn’t important,” he whispered. “I didn’t want—”

  “Shut up,” she interrupted him abruptly. Someone at another desk said shhh and the silence of the next few seconds preserved the memory of that hiss.

  “You’re pale,” said Alice. She looked at Mattia suspiciously. “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know. I feel a bit dizzy.”

  Alice got to her feet. She brushed her hair from her forehead, along with a tangle of unpleasant thoughts. Then she bent over Mattia and gave him a kiss on the cheek, silent and light, which in a breath swept away all the insects.

  “I’m sure you did brilliantly,” she whispered into his ear. “I know you did.”

  Mattia felt her hair tickling his neck. He felt the soft hollow of air that separated them filling with her warmth and pressing lightly on his skin, like cotton wool. He became aware of an urge to pull her to him, but his hands remained motionless, as if asleep.

  Alice straightened up, then she picked up his diploma from the chair, unrolled it, and smiled, reading it under her breath.

  “Wow,” she said at last. Her voice assumed a radiant tone. “We’ve got to celebrate. Come on, Mr. B.Sc., on your feet,” she commanded.

  She held out her hand to Mattia. He took it, rather uncertainly at first. He allowed himself to be led out of the library, with the same disarmed trust with which years before he had been dragged into the girls’ bathroom. Over time the proportions between their hands had changed. Now his fingers wrapped completely around Alice’s, like the rough halves of a seashell.

  “Where are we going?” he asked her.

  “For a drive. The sun’s out. And you need to get some sun.”

  They left the building and this time Mattia wasn’t afraid of the light, the traffic, and the people gathered around the entrance.

  In the car they kept the windows lowered. Alice drove with both hands on the wheel and sang to “Pictures of You,” imitating the sound of the words that she didn’t know. Mattia felt his muscles gradually relaxing, adapting to the shape of the seat. He felt as if the car were leaving a dark and sticky trail in its wake, a trail of his past and all his worries. He gradually began to feel lighter, like a jar being emptied. He closed his eyes, and for a few seconds floated on the air that fanned his face, and on Alice’s voice.

  When he opened them again they were on the road leading to his house. He wondered if they might have organized a surprise party for him and prayed that it wasn’t so.

  “Come on, where are we going?” he asked again.

  “Don’t you worry,” murmured Alice. “If you ever take me for a drive you’ll have the right to choose.”

  For the first time Mattia was ashamed to be twenty- two and not have gotten his driver’s license. It was another of the things he had left behind, another obvious step in a boy’s life that he had decided not to take, so as to stay as far as possible from the machinery of life. Like eating popcorn at the movies, like sitting on the back of a bench, like not respecting your parents’ curfew, like playing football with a ball of tinfoil, like standing naked in front of a girl. He thought that from this precise moment things would be different. He decided he would get his license as soon as possible. He would do it for her, to take her for a drive. Even though he was afraid to admit it, when he was with her it seemed it was worth doing all those normal things that normal people do.

  Now that they were close to Mattia’s house, Alice turned in another direction. She pulled onto the main road and parked the car a hundred yards down, opposite the park.

  “Voilà,” she said. She unfastened her seat belt and got out of the car.

  Mattia stayed frozen in his seat, his eyes fixed on the park.

  “Well? Are you getting out?”

  “Not here,” he said.

  “Come on, don’t be stupid.”

  Mattia shook his head.

  “Let’s go somewhere else,” he said.

  Alice looked around.

  “What’s the problem?” she insisted. “We’re just going to take a walk.”

  She came over to the window on Mattia’s side. He was stiff, as if someone were sticking a knife in his back. His hand gripped the handle of the door, which was half open. He stared at the trees a hundred yards away. The wide, green leaves covered their knotty skeletons and the fractal structure of the branches, hiding their horrible secret.

  He had never been back here. The last time was with the police, that day that his father had told him give your mother your hand and she had pulled hers away and stuck it in her pocket. That day he had still had both his arms bandaged, from his fingers to his elbow, with a thick dressing rolled in so many layers that it took a saw blade to remove it. He had shown the policemen where Michela had been sitting. They had wanted to know the exact spot and had taken pictures, first from far away and then from close up.

  From the car, on the way back home, he ha
d seen the dredging machines sinking their mechanical arms into the river and pulling out big piles of wet soil, then dropping them heavily on the bank. Mattia had noticed that his mother held her breath every time, until each pile disintegrated on the ground. Michela must have been in that slime, but they didn’t find her. They never found her.

  “Let’s get out of here. Please,” repeated Mattia. His tone wasn’t pleading. Instead he seemed absorbed, annoyed.

  Alice got back into the car.

  “Sometimes I don’t know whether—”

  “That’s where I abandoned my twin sister,” he cut in with a flat, almost inhuman voice. He lifted his arm and with his right index finger pointed to the trees in the park. Then he left it hanging there in midair, as if he had forgotten about it.

  “Twin sister? What are you talking about? You don’t have a twin sister. . . .”

  Mattia nodded slowly, still staring at the trees.

  “She was my identical twin. Completely identical to me,” he said.

  Then, before Alice even had time to ask, he told her everything. He spilled out the whole story, like a dam collapsing. The worm, the party, the legos, the river, the bits of glass, the hospital room, the judge, the television appeal, the shrinks, everything, in a way he had never done with anyone. He talked without looking at her, without getting excited. Then he lapsed back into silence. He felt around under the seat with his right hand, but found only blunt shapes. He calmed down, feeling remote again, alien to his own body.

  Alice’s hand touched his chin and delicately turned his face toward her. All Mattia saw was a shadow moving toward him. He instinctively closed his eyes and then felt Alice’s hot mouth on his, her tears on his cheek, or maybe they weren’t hers, and finally her hands, so light, holding his head still and catching all his thoughts and imprisoning them there, in the space that no longer existed between them.