The Solitude of Prime Numbers

by Paolo Giordano

  “What?” he asked.

  Alice turned around and her eyes were wide open and bright with something and Crozza couldn’t help smiling, they were so beautiful.

  “I’ve learned how by now, haven’t I?” said Alice, walking over to him. “I can do it. Otherwise I’ll never be able to manage on my own.”

  Crozza looked at her suspiciously. She rested her elbows on the desk, right in front of him, and leaned toward him. She was only a few inches from his nose and that gleam in her eyes begged him to say yes and not to ask for explanations.

  “I don’t know if—”

  “Please,” Alice broke in.

  Crozza stroked his earlobe and was forced to look away.

  “All right, then,” he gave in. He didn’t understand why he was whispering. “But don’t screw it up.”

  “I promise,” Alice said, making her translucent lips disappear into a smile.

  Then she pushed herself forward on her elbows and gave him a kiss, which tickled Crozza’s three-day beard.

  “Go on, go on,” he said, dismissing her with his hand.

  Alice laughed and the sound of it scattered through the air as she left with that sinuous, rhythmic gait of hers.

  That evening Crozza stayed a little longer than usual in the shop, doing nothing. He looked at the things around him and noticed that they had more presence, as they had many years before when they seemed to be asking him to take their picture.

  He took the camera out of the bag, where Alice always put it back after giving all the lenses and mechanisms a good clean. He screwed on the lens and aimed it at the first object that came into view, the umbrella stand by the entrance. He enlarged part of the rounded edge until it looked like something else, like the crater of an extinct volcano. But then he didn’t take the picture.

  He put the camera away, picked up his jacket, turned out the lights, and left. He closed the security gate with the padlock and headed in the opposite direction from his usual one. He couldn’t seem to wipe the stupid smile from his face and he really had no desire to go home.

  The church was decorated with two enormous bouquets of lilies and daisies, arranged on either side of the altar, and with dozens of miniature copies of the same bouquet at the end of each pew. Alice set up the lights and arranged the reflector panel. Then she sat in the first row and waited. A lady was running the vacuum cleaner over the red carpet that Viola would walk down in an hour. Alice thought about when she and Viola used to sit on the railings and talk. She couldn’t remember what they had talked about, only that she had looked at her rapt from a place just behind her eyes, a place full of jumbled thoughts that she had kept to herself even then.

  Over the next half hour all the pews filled up and people accumulated at the back, where they stood fanning themselves with the order of service.

  Alice went outside and waited on the cobblestones for the bride’s car to arrive. High in the sky the sun warmed her hands and its rays seemed to pass right through them. As a little girl she had liked looking at her palms against the light, the red peeking through her closed fingers. Once she had shown it to her father and he had kissed her fingertips, pretending to eat them.

  Viola arrived in a gleaming gray Porsche, and the driver had to help her out and pick up her cumbersome train. Alice madly snapped away, more to hide her face behind the camera than anything else. Then, when the bride passed by, she lowered it deliberately and smiled at her.

  They looked at each other for only a moment and Viola caught her breath. Alice couldn’t study her expression, because the bride had already passed her and was entering the church on her father’s arm. For some reason Alice had always imagined him taller.

  She was careful not to lose so much as a moment. She took various close-ups of the happy couple and their families. She immortalized the exchange of rings, the reading of the promises, the communion, the kiss, and the signing of the register. She was the only one moving in the whole church. It seemed to Alice that Viola’s shoulders stiffened slightly when she was near her. She increased the exposure time still further, to obtain the blurry quality that, according to Crozza, suggested eternity.

  As the couple left the church, Alice walked ahead of them, limping backward, bending slightly so as not to alter her height with a low perspective. Through the lens she became aware that Viola was looking at her with a frightened half-smile, as if she were the only one who could see a ghost. Alice exploded the flash in her face at regular intervals, about fifteen times, until the bride was forced to narrow her eyes.

  She watched them get into the car and Viola darted her a glance from behind the window. She was sure she would immediately start talking to her husband about her, about how strange it was to have come across her there. She would describe her as the class anorexic, the cripple, someone she had never hung out with. She wouldn’t mention the candy or the party or all the rest. Alice smiled at the thought that it might be their first half-truth as a married couple, the first of the tiny cracks that would eventually converge into a gaping hole.

  “Miss, the bride and groom are waiting on the riverbank for you to photograph them,” said a voice behind her.

  Alice turned around and recognized one of the witnesses.

  “Certainly. I’ll be right there,” she replied.

  She quickly went into the church to dismantle her equipment. She was still putting the various pieces of the camera in the rectangular case when she heard someone calling to her.

  “Alice?”

  She turned around, already sure who had been speaking.

  “Yes?”

  Standing in front of her were Giada Savarino and Giulia Mirandi.

  “Hi,” said Giada ostentatiously, approaching Alice to kiss her on both cheeks.

  Giulia stayed where she was, staring at her feet as she had done at school.

  Alice barely brushed Giada’s cheek with her own pursed lips.

  “What on earth are you doing here?” shrieked Giada.

  Alice thought it was a stupid question and couldn’t help smiling.

  “I’m taking photographs,” she replied.

  Giada responded with a smile, showing the same dimples she had had at seventeen.

  It was strange to find them here, still alive, with their shared bits of past that suddenly counted for nothing.

  “Hi, Giulia,” Alice forced herself to say.

  Giulia smiled at her and struggled to speak.

  “We heard about your mother,” she said. “We’re really sorry.”

  Giada nodded repeatedly, to show her agreement.

  “Yeah,” replied Alice. “Thanks.”

  She started hastily putting things away. Giada and Giulia looked at each other.

  “We’ll let you get on with your work,” Giada said, touching her shoulder. “You’re very busy.”

  “Okay.”

  They turned around and walked toward the exit, the crisp click of their heels echoing off the walls of the now empty church.

  The couple was waiting in the shade of a big tree standing some feet apart. Alice parked next to their Porsche and got out with the shoulder bag. It was hot and she felt her hair sticking to the back of her neck.

  “Hi,” she said, walking over.

  “Alice,” said Viola. “I didn’t think—”

  “Neither did I,” Alice cut in.

  They pretended to hug, as if not wanting to rumple their clothes. Viola was even more beautiful than she had been at school. Over the years her features had grown milder, the outlines were softer, and her eyes had lost that imperceptible vibration that made them so terrible. She still had that perfect body.

  “This is Carlo,” said Viola.

  Alice shook his hand and felt how smooth it was.

  “Shall we start?” she asked, cutting her short.

  Viola nodded and sought her husband’s eyes, but he didn’t notice.

  “Where shall we stand?” she asked.

  Alice looked around. The sun was at its zenith a
nd she would have to use the flash to eliminate all the shadows from their faces. She pointed to a bench in full sunlight on the riverbank.

  “Sit down there,” she said.

  She took longer than was necessary to set up the camera. She pretended to busy herself with the flash, mounted one lens and then swapped it for another one. Viola’s husband fanned himself with his tie, while she used her finger to try to stop the little drops of sweat trickling down her forehead.

  Alice left them to stew for a bit longer as she pretended to find the right distance to take the picture.

  Then she started issuing brusque orders. Put your arms around each other, smile, now serious, take her by the hand, rest your head on his shoulder, whisper in her ear, look at each other, closer, toward the river, take your jacket off. Crozza had taught her that you mustn’t let your subjects breathe, you mustn’t give them time to think, because it takes only a minute for the spontaneity to evaporate.

  Viola obeyed, two or three times asking apprehensively is that all right?

  “Okay, now let’s go into the field,” said Alice.

  “More?” asked Viola, startled. The red of her flushed cheeks was starting to show through her foundation. Her eyeliner was already slightly smudged, the edges were getting jagged, making her look tired and slightly shabby.

  “You pretend to run away and let him chase you across the field,” Alice explained.

  “What? You want me to run?”

  “Yes, run.”

  “But . . .” Viola began to protest. She looked at her husband and he shrugged.

  She snorted, then lifted up her skirt and began running. Her heels sank a few millimeters into the ground, and kicked up little clumps that dirtied the inside of her white dress. Her husband ran after her.

  “You’re going too slowly,” he said.

  Viola turned around all of a sudden with a look that reduced him to ashes, a look that Alice remembered all too well. She let them run after each other for two or three minutes, until Viola freed herself clumsily from her husband’s clutches, saying that’s enough.

  Her hair had come undone on one side and a lock fell down her cheek.

  “Yes,” said Alice. “Just a few more shots.”

  She took them to the ice-cream stand and bought two lemon ice pops, which she paid for herself.

  “Hold these,” she said, extending them to the couple.

  They seemed not to understand, and unwrapped them suspiciously. Viola was careful not to get the sticky syrup all over her hands.

  They had to pretend to eat them, arms crossed, and then offer the other a lick. Viola’s smile was becoming increasingly tense.

  When Alice told her to hold on to the street lamp and use it as a pivot to spin around, Viola exploded.

  “This is ridiculous,” she said.

  Her husband looked at her, slightly intimidated, and then looked at Alice, as if to apologize.

  Alice smiled. “It’s part of the classic album,” she explained. “That’s what you asked for. But we can skip that sequence.”

  She forced herself to sound sincere. She felt her tattoo pulsating, as if it wanted to jump out of her skin. Viola stared at her furiously and Alice held her gaze until her eyes burned.

  “Have we finished?” said Viola.

  Alice nodded.

  “Let’s go, then,” the bride said to her husband.

  Before letting himself be dragged away, he came over to Alice and shook her hand politely once more.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “My pleasure.”

  Alice watched them climb back up the slight slope to the parking lot. Around her were the usual sounds of Saturday, the laughter of children on the swings and the voices of the mothers looking after them. There was music in the distance and the rush of cars on the road, like a carpet of sound.

  She wanted to tell Mattia, because he would have understood. But he was far away now. She thought that Crozza would be furious, but he would forgive her in the end. She was sure of it.

  She smiled. She opened the back of the camera, took out the film, and unrolled it completely under the white light of the sun.

  WHAT REMAINS

  2007

  31

  His father phoned on Wednesday evenings, between eight and a quarter past. They had seen each other rarely over the last nine years and it had been a long time since the last visit, but the phone call in Mattia’s two-room apartment had become a ritual. In the long pauses between words the same old silence arose between the two of them: there were no televisions or radios on, never any guests rattling their cutlery.

  Mattia could imagine his mother listening to the phone call from her armchair without changing her expression, with both arms on the armrests, as when he and Michela were in primary school and she sat there listening to them recite poetry by heart and Mattia always knew it while Michela said nothing, incapable of doing anything.

  Every Wednesday, after hanging up, Mattia found himself wondering whether the orange floral pattern of that armchair was still the same or whether they’d replaced it, since it had been threadbare even back then. He wondered whether his parents had grown old. Of course they had, he heard it in his father’s voice, which was slower and wearier, more like an attack of breathlessness.

  His mother came to the phone infrequently and her questions were a matter of form, always the same. Is it cold? Have you had your dinner yet? How are your classes going? We eat dinner at seven over here, Mattia had explained the first few times. Now he merely said yes.

  “Hello?” he said, speaking in Italian.

  There was no reason to answer the phone in English. Only about ten people had his home number and none of them would have dreamed of calling him at that time of day.

  “It’s Dad.”

  The delay in his reply was only just perceptible. Mattia meant to get a stopwatch to measure it, to calculate how much the signal deviated from the straight line of more than 1,000 kilometers that connected him and his father, but he forgot every time.

  “Hi. Are you well?” said Mattia.

  “Yes. And you?”

  “Fine. . . . And Mom?”

  “She’s right here.”

  The first silence always fell at that point, like a mouthful of air after swimming a lap underwater.

  Mattia ran his index finger along the scratch in the pale wood of the round table, a few inches from the middle. He couldn’t even remember whether he had scratched it or whether it had been the old tenants. Just under the enameled surface it was compressed chipboard, which got under his fingernail without hurting him. Each Wednesday he dug that furrow a few fractions of a millimeter deeper, but a lifetime wouldn’t be enough for him to break through to the other side.

  “So you saw the sunrise?” his father asked.

  Mattia smiled. It was a joke they had between them, perhaps the only one. About a year before, somewhere in a newspaper Pietro had read that watching the dawn over the North Sea is an unforgettable experience, and in the evening he had read his son the clipping over the phone. You absolutely have to go, he had advised. Since that day he asked from time to time so have you seen it? Mattia always answered no. His alarm was set to seventeen minutes past eight and the shortest way to the university was not along the seafront.

  “No, no dawn yet,” he replied.

  “Well, it’s not going anywhere,” said Pietro.

  They had already run out of things to say, but they lingered for a few seconds, the receivers pressed to their ears. They both breathed in a little of the affection that still survived between them, diluted along hundreds of miles of coaxial cables and nourished by something whose name they didn’t know and which perhaps, if they thought too carefully about it, no longer existed.

  “I’ll say good-bye, then,” Pietro said at last.

  “Sure.”

  “And try to keep well.”

  “Okay. Say hi to Mum.”

  They hung up.

  For Mattia it was the
end of the day. He walked around the table. He looked distractedly at the papers stacked up on one side, the work he’d brought back from the office. He was still stuck on the same step. no matter where they began the proof, he and Alberto always ended up banging their heads against it sooner or later. He was sure that the solution lay just beyond that final obstacle, and that once past it getting to the end would be easy, like rolling down a grassy slope with his eyes closed.

  But he was too tired to go back to work. He went into the kitchen and filled a pan with water from the tap. He put it on the stove and lit the gas. He spent so much time on his own that a normal person would have gone crazy in a month.

  He sat down on the folding plastic chair, without completely relaxing. He looked up toward the unlit bulb dangling in the middle of the ceiling. It had blown just a month after he’d arrived, and he’d never bothered to replace it. He ate with the light turned on in the other room.

  If he had simply upped and left the apartment that very evening and not come back, no one would have found any sign of his presence, apart from those incomprehensible pages stacked on the table. Mattia had put nothing of himself into the place. He had kept the anonymous pale oak furniture and the yellowed wallpaper that had been stuck to the walls since the building was constructed.

  He got to his feet. He poured boiling water into a cup and immersed a tea bag in it. He watched the water turn dark. The methane flame was still lit and in the gloom it was violently blue. He lowered the flame until it was almost out and the hiss faded. He held his hand over the burner. The heat exerted a faint pressure on his devastated palm. Mattia brought it down slowly, and closed it around the flame.

  He had spent hundreds and thousands of identical days at the university, and consumed innumerable cafeteria lunches in the little low building on the edge of the campus, but even now he remembered the very first day when he had walked in and copied the sequence of gestures of the other people. He had joined the line and, taking small steps, had reached the pile of plastic imitation-wood trays. He had picked one up, set the paper napkin on it, and helped himself to cutlery and a glass. Then, once he was in front of the uniformed woman who served up the portions, he had pointed to one of the three aluminum tubs, at random, without knowing what was in them. The cook had asked him something, in her own language or perhaps in English, and he hadn’t understood. He had pointed to the tub again and she had repeated the question, exactly the same as before. Mattia shook his head. I don’t understand, he had said in English in a loud and nervy voice. She had raised her eyes to the sky and waved the empty plate in the air. She’s asking you if you want sauce on that muck, said the young man next to him in Italian. Mattia had spun around, disoriented, and shook his head. The young man had turned toward the dinner lady and simply said no. She had smiled at him and finally filled Mattia’s dish and handed it to him. The young man had chosen the same and had brought it up to his nose and sniffed it with disgust. This stuff is revolting, he had observed.