The Solitude of Prime Numbers

by Paolo Giordano

  Before the elevator doors closed, Alice and Mattia exchanged a good-bye that meant nothing at all.

  28

  Mattia’s parents were watching television. His mother sat with her knees curled up under her nightdress; his father with his legs stretched out, crossed on the coffee table in front of the sofa, the remote control resting on one thigh. Alice hadn’t responded to their good-bye, she didn’t even seem to have noticed that they were there.

  Mattia spoke from behind the back of the sofa.

  “I’ve decided to accept,” he said.

  Adele brought a hand to her cheek and, bewildered, sought her husband’s eyes. Mattia’s father turned slightly and looked at his son as one looks at a grown-up son.

  “Fine,” he said.

  Mattia went back to his room. He picked up the sheet of paper from the bed and sat down at the desk. He perceived the universe expanding; he could feel it accelerating under his feet and for a moment he hoped that its stretching fabric would burst and let him come crashing down.

  He groped around for the light switch and turned it on. He chose the longest of the four pencils lined up side by side, dangerously close to the edge of the desk. From the second drawer he took the sharpener and bent down to sharpen it into the wastepaper basket. He blew away the thin sawdust that was left on the tip of the pencil. There was already a blank sheet in front of him.

  He placed his left hand on the paper, palm down and fingers spread wide. He ran the very sharp graphite tip over his skin. He lingered for a second, ready to plunge it into the confluence of the two big veins at the base of his middle finger. Then, slowly, he removed it, and took a deep breath.

  On the sheet he wrote To the kind attention of the Dean.

  29

  Fabio was waiting for her by the front door, with the lights of the landing, the door, and the sitting room all on. As he took the plastic bag with the tub of ice cream from her hands, he linked his fingers with hers and kissed her on one cheek, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He said that dress really suits you and he meant it, and then he went back to the stove to get on with cooking dinner, but without taking his eyes off her.

  From the stereo came music that Alice didn’t recognize, but it wasn’t there to be listened to, just to complete a perfect scenario; there was nothing casual about it. Two candles were lit, the wine was already open, and the table was tidily set for two, with the blades of the knives turned inward, which meant that the guest was welcome, as her mother had taught her when she was little. There was a white tablecloth with no wrinkles and the napkins were folded into triangles with the edges perfectly aligned.

  Alice sat down at the table and counted the empty plates stacked on top of one another to work out how much there would be to eat. That evening, before leaving the house, she had spent a long time locked in the bathroom staring at the towels that Soledad changed every Friday. In the marbled-topped chest of drawers she had found her mother’s makeup and used it. She had made herself up in the semidarkness, and before running the lipstick over her lips, she had sniffed the tip. The smell hadn’t reminded her of anything.

  She had allowed herself the ritual of trying on four different dresses, even though it was obvious from the outset, if not from the previous day, that she had already decided on the one she had worn to the Ronconi boy’s confirmation, the one that her father had said was the most inappropriate because it left her back uncovered to below the ribs and her arms completely bare.

  Still barefoot and wearing the little blue dress whose neckline against her pale skin looked like a smile of satisfaction, Alice had gone down to Sol in the kitchen and asked her apprehensively for an opinion. You look wonderful, Sol had said. She kissed her on the forehead and Alice had been worried about smudging her makeup.

  In the kitchen Fabio moved with great agility and at the same time with the excessive care of someone who knows he’s being watched. Alice sipped the white wine that he had poured and the alcohol produced little explosions in her stomach, which had been empty for at least twenty hours. The heat spread along her arteries, then rose slowly to her head and swept away the thought of Mattia, like the evening tide when it reclaims the beach.

  Sitting at the table, Alice carefully assessed Fabio’s silhouette, the clear line that separated his chestnut hair from his neck, his pelvis, which was not especially slender, and his shoulders, somewhat inflated under his shirt. She found herself thinking of how it would feel to be safely trapped in his arms, with no more possibility to choose.

  She had accepted his invitation because she had told Mattia about him and because—she was sure of it now—what she could find here was more like love than anything else she would ever have.

  Fabio opened the fridge and from a stick of butter cut a slice that Alice thought was at least 80 or 90 grams. He threw it into the pan to thicken the risotto and it melted, giving up all its saturated and animal fats. He turned off the flame and stirred the risotto with a wooden spoon for another few minutes.

  “Dinner’s ready,” he said.

  He dried his hands on a dishcloth hanging over a chair and turned toward the table, holding the frying pan.

  Alice darted a terrified glance at the contents.

  “Just a little for me,” she said, gesturing a pinch with her fingers, right before he poured a hypercaloric ladleful onto her plate.

  “You don’t like it?”

  “It’s not that,” lied Alice. “It’s just that I’m allergic to mushrooms. But I’ll try it.”

  Fabio looked disappointed and stood there with the frying pan in midair. He actually lost a little color from his face.

  “Damn, I’m really sorry. I had no idea.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Really.” Alice smiled at him.

  “If you want I can—” he went on.

  Alice hushed him by taking his hand. Fabio looked at her as a child looks at a present.

  “I can try it, though,” said Alice.

  Fabio resolutely shook his head.

  “Absolutely not. What if it makes you ill?”

  He took the pan away and Alice couldn’t help smiling. For a good half hour they sat talking over the empty plates and Fabio had to open another bottle of white.

  Alice had the pleasant sensation of losing part of herself with each sip. She was aware of the insubstantiality of her own body and at the same time of the massive bulk of Fabio’s, sitting in front of her with his elbows resting on the table and his shirtsleeves rolled halfway up his forearms. The thought of Mattia, so incessant over the past few weeks, vibrated faintly in the air like a slightly slackened violin string, a dissonant note lost in the middle of an orchestra.

  “Well, we can console ourselves with the main course,” said Fabio.

  Alice thought she was going to faint. She had hoped it was going to end there. Instead Fabio rose from the table and took from the oven a baking dish with two tomatoes, two eggplants, and two yellow peppers, stuffed with something that looked like ground beef mixed with bread crumbs. The composition of colors was cheerful, but Alice immediately thought of the exorbitant dimensions of those vegetables and imagined them, completely whole as they were now, in the middle of her stomach, like rocks at the bottom of a pond.

  “You choose,” Fabio said invitingly.

  Alice bit her lip. Then she timidly pointed at the tomato and he transferred it onto her plate, using a knife and fork as pincers.

  “And?”

  “That’s enough,” said Alice.

  “Impossible. You haven’t eaten a thing. And with all that you’ve drunk!”

  Alice looked at him and for a moment she hated him deeply, as much as she hated her father, her mother, Sol, and anyone else who had ever counted the things on her plate.

  “That one,” she said, giving in, pointing at the eggplant.

  Fabio served himself one of each vegetable, and before attacking them he looked at them with satisfaction. Alice tried the stuffing, barely touching it with the ti
p of her fork. Apart from the meat she immediately recognized eggs, ricotta, and Parmesan and hastily calculated that a whole day of fasting wouldn’t be enough to compensate.

  “How is it?” Fabio asked, smiling, with his mouth half full.

  “Delicious,” she replied.

  She summoned up the courage to bite into a mouthful of eggplant. She gulped back her nausea and went on, one bite after another, without saying a word. She finished the whole eggplant, and as soon as she had set her fork down next to her plate, she was assailed by a sudden urge to vomit. Fabio was talking and pouring more wine. Alice nodded and with each movement she felt the eggplant dancing up and down in her stomach.

  Fabio had already shoveled everything down, while on Alice’s plate there still lay the tomato, red and filled with that nauseating mixture. If she cut it into tiny pieces and hid it in her napkin he would notice immediately because there was nothing to hide her apart from the candles, which had already burned halfway down.

  Then, like a blessing, the second bottle of wine was finished and Fabio struggled from the table to get a third. He held his head in his hands and said out loud to her stop, please stop. Alice laughed. Fabio looked in the fridge and opened all the cupboards, but he couldn’t find another bottle.

  “I think my parents must have finished all the wine,” he said. “I’ll have to go to the cellar.”

  He exploded with laughter for no reason and Alice laughed with him, even though it hurt her stomach.

  “Don’t you move from there,” he commanded, pointing a finger at his forehead.

  “Okay,” Alice replied and the idea came to her straightaway.

  As soon as Fabio was gone, she picked up the greasy tomato with two fingers and carried it to the bathroom, holding it at arm’s length to avoid the smell. She locked herself in, lifted the seat, and the toilet smiled at her as if saying leave it to me.

  Alice studied the tomato. It was big, perhaps it needed to be cut up into little pieces, but it was also soft, and she said to herself who cares and threw it in as it was. It dropped in with a plop, and a splash of water nearly stained her blue dress. The tomato settled on the bottom and disappeared halfway down the drain.

  She flushed and the water came down like healing rain, but instead of disappearing down the hole, it started filling the bowl and a less than reassuring gurgle rose from the bottom.

  Alice drew back in horror and her bad leg wobbled so much that she almost ended up on the floor. She watched the water level rise and rise and then suddenly stop.

  The sound of the siphon kicked in. The bowl was full to the brim. The surface of the transparent water quivered slightly and there at the bottom, motionless, was the tomato, trapped in the same spot as before.

  Alice stood and looked at it for at least a minute, frozen with panic and at the same time strangely curious. She was reawakened by the sound of the key turning in the front door. She took the toilet brush and plunged it into the water, her face contorted into a grimace of disgust. The tomato just wouldn’t move.

  “What do I do now?” she whispered to herself.

  Then, almost unconsciously, she flushed again, and this time the water began to spill out and spread over the floor in a thin layer, until it licked at Alice’s elegant shoes. She tried to flush again, but the water kept flowing and pouring out, and if Alice hadn’t put the rug over it, it would have reached the door and from there the other room.

  After a few seconds the water stopped again. The tomato was still down there, intact. The lake on the floor had ceased spreading. Mattia had once explained to her that there’s a precise point at which water stops spreading, when the surface tension has become strong enough to hold it together, like a film.

  Alice looked at the mess she had made. She closed the lid of the toilet, as if surrendering to disaster, and sat down on it. She brought her hands to her closed eyes and began to cry. She cried for Mattia, for her mother, for her father, for all that water, but mostly for herself. Under her breath she called Mattia, as if seeking his help, but his name remained on her lips, sticky and insubstantial.

  Fabio knocked at the bathroom door but she didn’t move.

  “Ali, everything okay?”

  Alice could see his outline through the frosted glass of the door. She sniffed quietly and cleared her throat to disguise her tears.

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  She looked around, lost, as if she really didn’t know how she’d ended up in that bathroom. The water from the toilet bowl dripped onto the floor in at least three different places and Alice hoped, for a moment, that she could drown in those few millimeters of water.

  GETTING THINGS IN FOCUS

  2003

  30

  She had turned up at Marcello Crozza’s studio at ten o’clock one morning and, feigning a determination that had cost her three walks around the block, had said I want to learn the trade, could you take me on as an apprentice? Crozza, who was sitting by the automatic developer, had nodded. Then he had turned around and, looking her straight in the eyes, had said I can’t pay you. He hadn’t wanted to say forget it, because he’d done the same thing himself many years before and the memory of the courage it had taken him was all that was left of his passion for photography. In spite of all his disappointments, he wouldn’t have denied anyone that sensation.

  They were mostly vacation photos. Families of three or four people, by the sea or in tourist destinations, hugging in the middle of St. Mark’s Square or under the eiffel Tower, with their feet cut off and always in the same pose. Photographs taken with automatic cameras, overexposed or out of focus. Alice didn’t even look at them anymore: she developed them and then slipped them all into the paper envelope with the yellow and red Kodak logo.

  It was mostly a matter of being in the shop, receiving rolls of twenty-four or thirty-six shots, shut away in their little plastic containers, of marking the customer’s name on the slip and telling them they’ll be ready tomorrow, of printing out receipts and saying thank you, good-bye.

  Sometimes, on Saturdays, there were weddings. Crozza picked her up from home at a quarter to nine, always in the same suit and without his tie, because in the end he was the photographer, not a guest.

  In church they had to set up the two lights, and on one of the first occasions Alice had dropped one and it had smashed on the steps of the altar and she had looked at Crozza in terror. He had pulled a face as if one of the pieces of glass had gotten stuck in his leg, but then he had said never mind, just clean it up.

  He was fond of her and didn’t know why. Perhaps because he had no children, or because since Alice had been working there he was able to go to the bar at eleven o’clock and check his lottery numbers and when he came back to the shop she smiled at him and asked him so, are we rich? Perhaps because she had that bad leg and lacked a mother as he lacked a wife and all lacks are pretty much the same. Or because he was sure that she would soon get tired of him and in the evening he would pull down the security gate on his own again and set off for home where no one was waiting, with his head empty and yet so very heavy.

  Instead, after a year and a half, Alice was still there. Now that she had the keys she arrived before him in the morning and Crozza found her on the sidewalk in front of the shop, chatting with the lady from the grocer’s next door, with whom he had never exchanged more than a “Good morning.” He paid her under the table, five hundred euros a month. If they did weddings together he would drop her outside the door of the Della Rocca house and, with the engine of his Lancia still running, take out his wallet and hand her an extra fifty, saying see you Monday.

  Sometimes she brought him her own snapshots and asked his opinion, even though it was clear to both of them that he had nothing more to teach her. They sat down at the desk and Crozza looked at the photographs, holding them up to the light, and gave her some advice about exposure time, or how best to use the shutter. He let her use his Nikon whenever she wanted and had secretly deci
ded that he would give it to her as a present the day she left.

  “We’re getting married on Saturday,” said Crozza. It was his way of saying they had a job.

  Alice was putting on her denim jacket. Fabio would be there to pick her up at any moment.

  “Okay,” she said. “Where?”

  “At the Gran Madre. Then there’s a reception in a private villa in the hills. Rich folks’ stuff,” commented Crozza with a touch of disdain, immediately regretting it because he knew that Alice came from that world too.

  “Hmm,” she murmured. “Do you know who they are?”

  “They sent the invitation. I’ve put it over there somewhere,” said Crozza, pointing to the shelf under the cash register.

  Alice looked in her bag for a rubber band and pulled back her hair. Crozza watched from across the shop. Once he had masturbated thinking about her, kneeling in the gloom after they’d lowered the security gate, but then he had felt so dreadful that he hadn’t eaten and the next day he had sent her home saying you’ve got the day off today, I don’t want anyone underfoot.

  Alice rummaged among the sheets of paper stacked under the counter, more to fill the time while waiting than out of genuine interest. She found the envelope with the invitation, stiff and imposingly large. She opened it and the name leaped off the page in a gilded cursive, full of flourishes.

  Ferruccio Carlo Bai and Maria Luisa Bai are delighted to announce the marriage of their daughter Viola . . .

  Her eyes darkened before she went any further. A metallic taste flooded her mouth. She swallowed and it was like gulping down that fruit candy from the locker room all over again. She closed the envelope and waved it in the air for a moment, thinking.

  “Can I go alone?” she ventured at last, her back still turned to Crozza.

  He shut the drawer of the cash register with a rattle and a ding.