The Solitude of Prime Numbers

by Paolo Giordano

  But over time, the wound of adolescence gradually healed. The edges of skin met in imperceptible but continuous movements. The scab peeled off with each fresh abrasion, but then stubbornly reformed, darker and thicker. Finally a new layer of skin, smooth and elastic, had replaced the missing one. The scar slowly turned from red to white, and ended up merging with all the others.

  Now they were lying on Alice’s bed, their heads at opposite ends, their legs bent unnaturally to avoid any contact between their bodies. Alice thought if she turned around she could make her toes touch Mattia’s back but pretend not to notice. But she was sure he would immediately pull away and decided to spare herself that little disappointment.

  Neither one of them had suggested putting on some music. Their only plans were to stay there and wait for Sunday afternoon to wear itself out all by itself and it would once again be time to do something necessary, like eating, sleeping, or starting yet another week. The yellow light of September came in through the open window, dragging with it the intermittent rustle of the street.

  Alice stood up on the bed, making the mattress ripple very slightly under Mattia’s head. She held her clenched fists by her sides and stared at him from above. Her hair fell over her face, concealing her serious expression.

  “Stay right there,” she said. “Don’t move.”

  She stepped over him and jumped down from the bed, her good leg dragging the other one behind it like something that had been attached to her by mistake. Mattia bent his chin to his chest to follow her movements around the room. He saw her opening a cube-shaped box that sat in the middle of her desk, and which he hadn’t noticed until that moment.

  Alice turned around with one eye closed and the other hidden behind an old camera. Mattia started to pull himself up.

  “Down,” she commanded. “I told you not to move.”

  Click. The Polaroid spat out a thin white tongue and Alice waved it in the air to bring out the color.

  “Where did you get that from?” Mattia asked.

  “The cellar. It was my father’s. He bought it God knows when but never used it.”

  Mattia sat up on the bed. Alice dropped the photograph on the carpet and snapped another one.

  “Come on, stop,” he protested. “I look stupid in photographs.”

  “You always look stupid.”

  She snapped again.

  “I think I want to be a photographer,” Alice said. “I’ve made up my mind.”

  “What about university?”

  Alice shrugged.

  “Only my father cares about that,” she said. “He can go, then.”

  “You’re going to quit?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You can’t just wake up one day, decide you want to be a photographer, and throw away a year’s work. It doesn’t work like that,” said Mattia sharply.

  “Oh, right, I forgot you’re just like him,” Alice said ironically. “You always know what to do. You knew you wanted to be a mathematician when you were five. You’re all so boring. Old and boring.”

  Then she turned toward the window and snapped a picture at random. She dropped it on the carpet as well, near the other two, and stomped on them with both feet, as if she were treading grapes.

  Mattia thought about saying something to make amends, but nothing came out. He bent over and slid the first photograph out from under Alice’s foot. The outline of his arms, crossed behind his head, was gradually emerging from the white. He wondered what extraordinary reaction was happening on that shiny surface and decided to look it up in the encyclopedia as soon as he got home.

  “There’s something else I want to show you,” Alice said.

  She tossed the camera onto the bed, like a little girl who’s grown tired of a toy because she’s spotted another, more inviting one, and left the room.

  She was gone for a good ten minutes. Mattia started reading the titles of the books leaning crookedly on the shelf above the desk. Always the same ones. He combined the first letters of all the titles, but couldn’t come up with a sensible word. He would have liked to identify a logical order in the sequence. He would probably have arranged them according to the color of their spines, copying the electromagnetic spectrum maybe, from red to violet, or according to height, in decreasing order.

  “Ta- daaaa.” Alice’s voice distracted him.

  Mattia turned and saw her standing in the doorway, gripping the frame as if afraid she might fall. She was wearing a wedding dress, which must have been dazzlingly white once, but which time had turned yellow at the hem, as if some disease were slowly devouring it. The years spent in a box had made it dry and stiff. The bodice fell limply over Alice’s nonexistent bosom. It wasn’t especially low-cut, just enough for one of the straps to slip a few inches down her arm. In that position Alice’s collarbone looked more pronounced; it broke the soft line of her neck and formed a little hollow, like the basin of a dried- up lake. Mattia wondered what it might be like, eyes closed, to trace its outline with the tip of his finger. The lace at the end of the sleeves was crumpled and on the left arm it stood up slightly. The long train continued out of sight down the hall. Alice was still wearing her red slippers, which peeked out from under the full skirt, creating a curious dissonance.

  “Well? Aren’t you going to say something?” she said without looking at him. She smoothed the outer layer of tulle on the skirt. It felt cheap, synthetic.

  “Whose is it?” asked Mattia.

  “Mine, obviously.”

  “Come on, seriously.”

  “Whose do you think it is? It’s my mother’s.”

  Mattia nodded and imagined Fernanda in that dress. He pictured her wearing the only expression she ever gave him when, before going home, he would stick his head in the living room where she’d be watching television: an expression of tenderness and profound commiseration, like the one usually bestowed upon the sick when people visit them in the hospital. A ridiculous expression, as she was the sick one, sick with an illness that was slowly crumbling her whole body.

  “Don’t stand there gawking like that. Come on, take a picture of me.”

  Mattia picked the camera off the bed. He turned it around in his hands to work out which button to press. Alice rocked from side to side in the doorway, as if moved by a breeze that only she could feel. When Mattia brought the camera to his eye, she stiffened her back and assumed a serious, almost provocative expression.

  “There,” said Mattia.

  “Now one of us together.”

  He shook his head.

  “Come on, don’t be your usual pain in the ass. And for once I want to see you dressed properly. Not in that mangy sweatshirt that you’ve been wearing for a month.”

  Mattia looked down. The wrists of his blue sweater looked as if they’d been devoured by moths. He had a habit of rubbing them with his thumbnail to keep his fingers busy and to keep from scratching the hollow between his index and middle fingers.

  “And besides, you wouldn’t want to ruin my wedding day, would you?” added Alice with a pout.

  She knew it was only a joke, a silly game to pass the time, just a bit of nonsense like so many other things they did. And yet, when she opened the closet door and the mirror inside framed her in that white dress next to Mattia, for a moment the panic took her breath away.

  “Nothing in here will work,” she said hastily. “Come with me.”

  Resigned, Mattia followed her. When Alice got like this his legs would itch and he was seized by a desire to leave. There was something in her way of behaving, something in the violence with which his friend satisfied her childish whims, that he found unbearable. It felt as if she had tied him to a chair and then called hundreds of people, showing him off like a possession of hers, some kind of funny pet. Most of the time he said nothing and allowed his impatience to emerge through gestures, until Alice tired of his apathy and gave up, saying you always make me feel like an idiot.

  Mattia followed the train of Alice’s dress all the way
to her parents’ room. He had never been in there before. The blinds were down almost entirely and the light entered in parallel lines, so clearly that they seemed drawn on the wooden floor. The air was more dense and tired here than in the rest of the house. Against the wall was a double bed, much higher than the one that belonged to Mattia’s parents, and two matching bedside tables.

  Alice opened the closet and ran her finger along her father’s suits, all hanging in an orderly fashion, each one protected by its cellophane covering. She took out a black one and threw it on the bed.

  “Put that one on,” she ordered Mattia.

  “Have you gone mad? Your father will notice, you know.”

  “My father never notices anything.”

  For a moment Alice seemed absorbed in thought, as if reflecting on the words that she had just spoken, or looking at something through that wall of dark clothes.

  “Now I’m going to find you a shirt and tie,” she added.

  Mattia stood still, uncertain what to do. She noticed.

  “Will you get a move on? Don’t tell me you’re ashamed to get changed here!”

  As she said that her empty stomach flipped over. For a second she felt dishonest. Her words had been a subtle form of blackmail.

  Mattia huffed, then sat down on the bed and started untying his shoes.

  Alice kept her back turned, pretending to choose a shirt that she had already chosen. when she heard the metallic jingle of his belt buckle, she counted to three and then turned around. Mattia was taking off his jeans. Underneath he had on a pair of soft gray boxers, not the close-fitting ones she had imagined.

  Alice thought that she’d already seen him in shorts dozens of times, it’s not like there was much of a difference with underwear, and yet she still felt herself tremble slightly under the four white layers of her wedding dress. He tugged at the bottom of his undershirt to cover himself better and quickly slipped on the elegant trousers. The fabric was soft and light. As it ran over the hairs of his legs it gave them an electric charge, making them stand up like cat’s fur.

  Alice came over and handed him the shirt. He took it without looking up. He was annoyed and fed up with this pointless playacting. He was ashamed of showing his thin legs and the sparse hairs on his chest and around his navel. Alice thought he was doing everything possible to make the scene embarrassing, as usual. Then she thought that, for him, she was the one to blame, and she felt her throat tighten. even though she didn’t want to, she looked away and let him take off his undershirt without her watching him.

  “And now?” Mattia called to her.

  She turned around. Seeing him in her father’s clothes, she had trouble breathing. The jacket was a little big, his shoulders weren’t quite wide enough to fill it out, but she couldn’t help thinking that he was incredibly handsome.

  “All you need is the tie,” she said to him after a moment.

  Mattia took the bordeaux-colored tie from Alice’s hands and instinctively ran a thumb over the shiny fabric. A shiver ran down his arm and spine. He felt that the palm of his hand was as dry as sand. He quickly brought it to his mouth and breathed on it, to moisten it with his breath. He couldn’t resist the temptation to bite one of the joints of his fingers, trying not to be seen by Alice, who noticed anyway.

  “I don’t know how to tie it,” he said, dragging out his words.

  “Mmm, you really are hopeless.”

  The truth was that Alice already knew that. She couldn’t wait to show him that she could tie it. Her father had taught her when she was little. In the morning he would leave a tie on her bed and then, before going out, he’d stop by her room and ask is my tie ready? Alice would run to him, with the knot already made. Her father would lower his head, his hands joined together behind his back, as if he were bowing before a queen. She would put the tie around his neck, and then would tighten it and adjust it slightly. Parfait, he would say. One morning after the accident, Alice’s father found the tie still on the bed, just as he had left it. From then on he always tied it himself and that little ritual passed away, like so many other things.

  Alice prepared the knot, fluttering her skeletal fingers more than necessary. Mattia followed her gestures, which struck him as complicated. He let her adjust the tie around his neck.

  “Wow, you look almost respectable. Do you want to see yourself in the mirror?”

  “No,” said Mattia. He just wanted to leave, wearing his own clothes.

  “Photograph,” said Alice, clapping once.

  Mattia followed her back into her room. She picked up the camera.

  “It hasn’t got a self-timer,” she said. “We’ll just have to guess.”

  She pulled Mattia to her, by the waist. He stiffened and she clicked. The photograph slipped out with a hiss.

  Alice fell onto the bed, just like a bride after hours of celebration, and fanned herself with the picture.

  Mattia stayed right where he was, feeling those clothes that weren’t his, but with the pleasant sensation of disappearing into them. The light in the room suddenly changed. It turned from yellow to a uniform blue as the last sliver of light disappeared behind the building opposite.

  “Can I get changed now?”

  He said it on purpose, to make her understand that he had had enough of her game. Alice seemed absorbed in thought; she arched her eyebrows slightly.

  “There’s one last thing,” she said, getting up again. “The groom carries the bride in his arms over the threshold.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You’ve got to take me in your arms. And carry me over there.” Alice pointed to the hall. “Then you’re free.”

  Mattia shook his head. She came over to him and held out her arms like a child.

  “Come on, my hero,” she said, teasing him.

  Mattia slumped his shoulders even farther, defeated. He bent awkwardly in order to pick her up. He had never carried anyone like that. He put one arm behind her knees and the other behind her back, and when he picked her up he was startled by how light she was.

  He stumbled toward the hall. He felt Alice’s breath penetrate the fine weave of his shirt, definitely too close, and heard the train rustling on the floor. when they crossed the threshold, the sound of a prolonged, dry rip made him stop short.

  “Damn,” he said.

  He hastily set Alice down. The skirt had gotten caught on the door frame. The rip was about six inches long and looked like a sneering mouth. They both stopped and stared at it, slightly dazed.

  Mattia waited for Alice to say something, to give up and lose her temper with him. He felt as if he ought to apologize, but she was the one who had been so insistent on this foolishness. She’d been asking for trouble.

  Alice stared expressionlessly at the rip.

  “Who cares?” she said at last. “It’s not like anyone’s going to use it anymore.”

  IN AND OUT OF THE WATER

  1998

  21

  Prime numbers are divisible only by 1 and by themselves. They hold their place in the infinite series of natural numbers, squashed, like all numbers, between two others, but one step further than the rest. They are suspicious, solitary numbers, which is why Mattia thought they were wonderful. Sometimes he thought that they had ended up in that sequence by mistake, that they’d been trapped, like pearls strung on a necklace. Other times he suspected that they too would have preferred to be like all the others, just ordinary numbers, but for some reason they couldn’t do it. This second thought struck him mostly at night, in the chaotic interweaving of images that comes before sleep, when the mind is too weak to tell itself lies.

  In his first year at university, Mattia had learned that, among prime numbers, there are some that are even more special. Mathematicians call them twin primes: pairs of prime numbers that are close to each other, almost neighbors, but between them there is always an even number that prevents them from truly touching. Numbers like 11 and 13, like 17 and 19, 41 and 43. If you have the patience to go on co
unting, you discover that these pairs gradually become rarer. You encounter increasingly isolated primes, lost in that silent, measured space made only of ciphers, and you develop a distressing presentiment that the pairs encountered up until that point were accidental, that solitude is the true destiny. Then, just when you’re about to surrender, when you no longer have the desire to go on counting, you come across another pair of twins, clutching each other tightly. There is a common conviction among mathematicians that however far you go, there will always be another two, even if no one can say where exactly, until they are discovered.

  Mattia thought that he and Alice were like that, twin primes, alone and lost, close but not close enough to really touch each other. He had never told her that. When he imagined confessing these things to her, the thin layer of sweat on his hands evaporated completely and for a good ten minutes he was no longer capable of touching anything.

  He came home one winter day after having spent the afternoon at her house, where she’d done nothing the whole time but switch from one television channel to another. Mattia had paid no attention to the words or the images. Alice’s right foot, resting on the living room coffee table, invaded his field of vision, penetrating it from the left like the head of a snake. Alice flexed her toes with hypnotic regularity. That repeated movement made something solid and worrying grow in his stomach and he struggled to keep his gaze fixed for as long as possible, so that nothing in the frame would change.

  At home he took a pile of blank pages from his ring binder, thick enough so that the pen would run softly over them without scratching the stiff surface of the table. He leveled the edges with his hands, first above and below and then at the sides. He chose the fullest pen from the ones on the desk, removed the cap, and slipped it on the end so as not to lose it. Then he began to write in the exact center of the sheet, without needing to count the squares.