“We apologize. We weren’t aware of that. We do know your son was by far the most brilliant contestant in the last mathematics Olympics.”
“Yeah, well... I already knew that. So what? Has he won another prize?”
“Not yet, sir. If we could just come in for a second...”
“My son is resting at the moment and can’t be disturbed.”
“Oh, of course, sir. I’ll be brief. Your son might be able to help us solve a key problem of national importance.”
“Ah, I see. National importance in the hands of an autistic boy! That’s a good one. With all the geniuses in the world, not to mention the American government, this is the best solution you’ve come up with? I ought to feel relieved. Heaven only knows how you manage to deal with terrorists!”
“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t wish to interrupt your fun here, but it’s an urgent matter.”
“All right, all right. What’s the big issue then?”
“Well... we’d like to show your son several sheets of paper to see whether he can find a solution to the enigma.”
“You won’t be giving my son anything I haven’t looked at first. Those are my terms. Otherwise, turn right around and head back to your car. I don’t think it’ll be hard for you to find the road back to your bosses.”
The two men looked uncertainly at each other. They couldn’t afford to waste any more time and there was no other way of ending the stalemate. The younger man slipped several sheets from a folder and handed them to Paul.
“OK, let’s see what this big problem is that needs the help of a fifteen-year-old autistic boy.”
He leafed through the pages, one by one. Thanks to his son, he had learned to recognize most of the questions set in intelligence tests.
“Now then, let’s have a look. Quantum theories, trigonometry, analyses... just a minute! Not this! No way! If you’re here for prime numbers, you can go right back to where you came from. You’re not going anywhere near my son with that blasted equation that doesn’t exist anyway. Damn it to hell. Nobody can demonstrate a thing like that!”
“Forgive me, but perhaps we can find a solution...”
“You don’t understand. The solution you’re looking for doesn’t exist!”
“We’ve brought something that might convince you.”
They opened a bag brimming with hundred-dollar bills.
“A million, and that’s only the start. Your son almost cracked it once, but maybe you need a small incentive to go all the way.”
“You bastards! You think your money will buy everything, don’t you? You’ve been sent here with one aim in mind and to get it at any cost. But money means as little to me as your pathetic performance. Tell your bosses to try buying the damn solution!”
Paul slammed the door in their faces, putting an end to further discussion.
Chapter 11
Norman sidled up to a figure sitting on a bench. The purple scarf around his neck stood out from all the other colors that autumn had bequeathed.
“Come and sit down. I won’t bite, you know.”
The man’s look was ambiguous. Norman felt as if he had known him for ever. He recognized the man from the bar, the one he had spoken to before he had gone downstairs with the girls.
“It’s you! Damn you!”
He started to lunge toward him, as if he intended to wring his neck, and he couldn’t understand what was preventing him.
“Calm down, my friend. Sit down here next to me.”
He had the same soothing tone of voice that made Norman oblivious to any distress. He couldn’t even hold on to his anger; instead, he felt a wonderful inner peace. He could have fallen asleep and forgotten all his worries, leaving his memories to time, ready to learn the best way of starting a new life.
“Who are you?”
“As I told you before, my name is Luc, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is what I can offer you.”
“What would you have to give me that’s so great? Not more girls to lure me into a state of bliss and then commit suicide right under my nose?”
“Ah. That was a slight hitch in plans. Unfortunately, certain people are adept at double-dealing and their power is so great it confounds even me.”
“So, what happened in that bloody room? Did you know I was almost arrested?”
“You know very well that the only risk you ran was to wallow in seventh heaven, so let’s forget that unpleasant interlude. Let’s talk about what has to be done instead.”
“How the hell can I forget? Who’s Daisy? Why did she kill her friends? How did the Police know what was going on?”
“Cut it out!”
His voice had suddenly turned harsh and made it impossible to reply. Norman’s mind went into a trance; he couldn’t remember why, but the man’s words calmed him and made him forget his anxiety.
“You know why you’re here, don’t you?”
“To find answers.”
“That’s my boy. You see, if you put your mind to it, you can do anything. Now listen carefully. Your life has changed radically over the last few hours. Someone is playing with you. The one thing you must do now is avoid trusting anyone, only yourself and your instincts. When this is all over, you’ll understand that the only thing to do is find the truth and beat the sickness that was eating at you until you came here. I am the light. If you believe in me, you’ll save yourself and everyone you hold dear in this life. All you have to do is find the man who stole what’s yours.”
“O’Neal!”
“Precisely! And when you find him, you know what you’ve got to do, don’t you?”
“What’s in it for you if I get back what’s mine?”
“What I care about most: your life and happiness!”
“How do you know what makes me happy?”
“I know more about you than you think. You only have to search now. When you’ve completed your task, everything will sort itself out and you’ll finally understand it all.”
Without another word, he got up and faded into the fog that had woven its blanket in the meantime. Norman sat alone, in the most deafening silence he had ever heard. He felt dazed, but at the same time more than ever determined to seek answers. He glanced around. The fog was thinning rapidly, taking with it the sense of peace that had filled him. He was consumed with a hatred he had never felt before. The park was suddenly crowded with people and their shrill voices pierced his eardrums. He didn’t notice the couple next to him until the boy murmured in his girlfriend’s ear those words that expressed the essence of a whole life.
I spoke to a dream and realized it was afraid...
I called to an emotion and it told me to be happy...
I decided to go far away to see how and where infinity ends.
Until I found love, which called me by name and told me I had arrived...
Again, Norman savored the sensation he had felt when he wrote about that beautiful emotion.
He saw the girl’s eyes, brimming with love for the unexpected gesture her boyfriend had made. He was clutching a ring. Those words would probably lead to the fateful question, but he had no time to find out. He saw Julia in his mind’s eye and remembered where she was. He decided to go and talk to her. Everything else could wait, even Mr. O’Neal and his book.
Chapter 12
The spring colors made the light in his eyes even brighter than usual. Norman watched the big boys playing a short distance away, racing after a ball that held far-away dreams. Many wore their idols’ shirts and shouted names that had transformed a simple game into a legend. Even Norman was a fan and had his own champion. But his physical condition and his mother’s warnings prevented him from joining in. Sometimes, he allowed himself the luxury of picturing himself scoring a winning goal in a final. He would have so many girls after him, especially the one he really liked, who said hello to him every morning and held his hand and stayed with him during break. He loved the golden color of her hair and the way her eyes made him lose track of ti
me. He had written some poems for her, but had never had the courage to let her read them.
A warm gust caressed his face, giving substance to his imaginary sprint alongside his friends who surrounded him to congratulate him on his feat. He opened his eyes and saw his father approaching with the look of someone bearing bad news. His eyes were swimming with tears, like his own when he woke up during the night terrified by nightmares.
“What’s up, Dad?”
Jonathan hugged him tightly to show how much he loved him. Then he sat down
next to him and looked him straight in the eye.
“Son, your Mom has gone away.”
“Where’s she gone? Why didn’t she wait for us?”
“She had to go because you needed her help.”
“What help? Couldn’t she give it to me without going away?”
“No, son. She couldn’t. We have to go to the hospital now.”
“No! You know I don’t like hospitals!”
“I know, of course I know. But if you come with me, I promise you won’t have to stand on the sidelines ever again when your friends play soccer. You’ll be able to join in any time you want.”
“Really? How can I do that? Mom always said I mustn’t tire myself out.”
“Mom has left you a present. Before she went, she found a new heart all for you.”
“A new heart? How can I put it in?”
“If you come with me, you’ll find out. Everybody’s waiting for you, but they can’t help you if you don’t come.”
“And Mom? Why isn’t she coming with us?”
“I’ve already told you why. Mom had to go away. She couldn’t give you this present if she stayed here. One day you’ll understand.”
He stood up and took his son’s hand, well aware that Claudia’s gift went far beyond any definition. He didn’t know whether sacrifice counted for redemption, but he firmly believed that his wife’s action greatly exceeded a parent’s love for his or her child. And this, he was certain, could not be ignored by whoever had created love.
“When can I go and play?”
“Soon, son, very soon.”
Norman waved to his friends. They were in the middle of an argument about a goal scored past a distracted keeper, but they saw him and waved back. Norman said nothing about what was going to happen to him. He liked springing surprises. He would just turn up on the field and start running without saying a word, waiting for the right pass so that he could win the match for his team.
He didn’t know why, but that would be a breeze compared with the more difficult game he was about to win: the game of life.
Chapter 13
Paul lowered himself into the armchair by the fire to take away the chill the incident with the two men had left. His son had come into the room now, and he watched him sitting at the table, pouring, as usual, over math problems. He hadn’t noticed a thing. He was such a complex boy that he couldn’t relate to the rest of the world. His disability put him in a category apart, beyond human understanding, catapulting reason into a timeless and colorless space, where very few manage to overcome the desire to walk away. Celine had cracked up sometimes, but she had never given up completely, especially when she saw how happy her son was. Why he had been gifted with such genius remained a mystery to everyone.
They had discovered his talents by chance, on a day like any other when miracles occur. Paul was reading him a fairytale, when all of a sudden the boy had stood up, walked over to the bookcase and pulled out an old university math book. Nothing had been the same afterward. The days passed peacefully and they had found an unhoped-for harmony together.
When he had enrolled his son, almost as a joke, in a mathematical games competition, the change was complete. There had followed a string of incredible successes that were often reported in world-famous scientific journals. Paul and Celine became affluent enough to stop working and devote themselves to looking after what they considered their sheet anchor, without which their lives would probably have been merely a series of ups and downs, devoid of the pure, unconditional love that is given simply because it is truly felt. Then, breaking all its promises as only fate can, one autumn morning a stranger had presented himself at their door and produced a fresh enigma for the boy who was considered the new Einstein. The child had stared at the seemingly infinite sequence of numbers on the sheet. His slow response was unusual. Then, he had suddenly begun to scream and burst into a flood of tears. Paul and Celine had tried in vain to calm him. It was the first time he had failed to solve a problem and the first time he had had such a bad fit. He had fainted and fallen into a deep coma that had lasted for a whole month with no sign of recovery.
Later, his parents discovered that this particular unsolved problem had haunted the world for eons and involved prime numbers. Everybody knew that a prime number is only divisible by itself and one, and few could calculate numbers with twelve or more digits. No one anywhere had wormed out the secret and none had been able to write an equation to uncover it. No applied formula had succeeded in finding, for instance, the billionth prime number, but everyone was convinced it existed, on the premise that primes belong to an infinite whole, like natural numbers. The man who had been allowed into the life of an autistic boy had almost killed him with those accursed numbers. The necessary formula had to be so complex that even the mind of a genius failed to understand even a small part of it.
Paul and Celine had watched over their son for thirty days and thirty long nights, until, out of the blue, as if nothing untoward had happened, he woke up as though he had simply been sleeping after a tiring day, just as he awoke every single morning. His parents had stared at him in amazement when he asked for his breakfast, just as he always did on wakening. Afterward, he had stood up from the table and, before going about his life as if there had been no interruption, had taken a sheet of paper and jotted down a few notes that his father had always refused to verify. He had sat on his chair in the living-room and begun his usual daily routine, letting his mind travel to a world of numbers where his soul found the peace it needed to communicate with the world of other human beings.
As he watched his son reading and writing, Paul felt a pang in his heart. Of all the trials and tribulations the boy had been through, the worst had been caused by the prime numbers. Paul had never seen him in such a state and his brain’s reaction had seemed like an electric shock passing through his veins. He had sworn that no one would ever give him that problem again and he would never let anyone fry his brain again. The gift that mitigated his disability had to be protected, not exploited. Although... Paul remembered what his brain had always lacked the courage to control; his eyes, however, could not suppress the curiosity that is ingrained in human beings’ psyches to help them bear an otherwise mundane life. His son’s notes had hurriedly been thrust into a drawer, along with their curse and tables of numbers, to mingle in a jumbled language that was incomprehensible to most people.
He made a move to pull himself out of the chair and go and make peace with the past in a way that would reconcile curiosity and allow him to set aside all ugly memories. But before he could stand up, the same man he had thrown out earlier walked up to him and presented him with the bill that defying power adds up to, with all of the relevant surcharges. Paul only managed to think that his son would understand none of the attentions foisted on him if he wasn’t there to filter them. Then darkness blanked his mind, mocking the mere idea of being conscious.
Chapter 14
When he arrived at the hotel, Norman saw that nothing had changed, not even the din of the cars crawling along the streets like ants. Little more than an hour and forty-five minutes had passed. He thought back to the last phone call with the man he had just met. “Julia won’t be coming out for a couple of hours; there’ll be time enough for you to go back and wait for her.” He was curious to know whether that would prove true. Almost as if his mind had become an open book for all to read, the woman walked out of the hotel at that precise moment
. He was so befuddled for a second that he missed his chance to block her. He shouted, but couldn’t make himself heard. He chased after her, but not quickly enough to stop her from climbing into a waiting taxi. He hailed another cab, got in and told the driver to follow her.
“What’s all the rush to follow that car?”
“If you don’t mind, it’s none of your business.”
“Oh, begging your pardon, but you know how it is, we cab drivers aren’t ones to hold our tongues.”
“Right. Well, I’ve had a rough day so far. The last thing I want is another chat with a total stranger who’ll forget I exist the minute he drops me off.”
“Allow me to disagree. I never forget an interesting conversation. Especially with someone like you.”
“And what’s someone like me like? Let’s hear it. Don’t lose that taxi though, OK?”
“If you want to know where Julia’s going, don’t worry about it, I can tell you, no problem.”
Norman jerked as if he had been tasered. Only the glass partition prevented him from leaping into the front seat.
“How do you know who I’m following? How do you all know so much about me? Who’s been having a riot reading my life? It’s a joke, right?”
“Relax, sir. It’s no joke. Why don’t you tell me what you’re going to say to stop her?”
Strangely enough, his anger and fit of temper faded as if projected into another dimension, exactly the same as before. He felt enveloped by an unexpected sense of tranquility. All at once, his vision blurred, but he found the wits to check that he was still awake.
“How do you know who I am? Who are you?”
“I’m just a guy trying to show the way to whoever’s looking for it.”
“And what would I be looking for?”
“Something you know very well. Something you’ve lost that you miss more than air itself.”
“What I’m looking for is a long way from here.”
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