The Solitude of Prime Numbers

by Paolo Giordano

  She had to let him know. Only by seeing him could she be sure. If his sister was alive, Mattia had the right to know.

  For the first time, she perceived all the space that separated them as a ludicrous distance. She was sure that he was still there, where she had written to him several times, many years before. If he had moved, she would have been aware of it somehow. Because she and Mattia were united by an invisible, elastic thread, buried under a pile of meaningless things, a thread that could exist only between two people like themselves: two people who had acknowledged their own solitude within the other.

  She felt around under the pile of photographs and found a pen. She sat down to write, careful not to smudge the ink with her hand. At last she blew on it to dry it. She looked for an envelope, slipped the photograph inside, and sealed it.

  Maybe he’ll come, she thought.

  A pleasant apprehension gripped her bones and made her smile, as if at that very moment time had begun again.

  43

  Before seeking the runway, the plane on which Mattia was traveling crossed the green patch of the hill, passed the basilica, and flew twice over the center of the city in a circular trajectory. Mattia took the bridge, the older one, as his point of reference and from there followed the road to his parents’ house. It was still the same color as when he had left it.

  He recognized the park nearby, bounded by the two main roads that flowed together into a broad curve bisected by the river. On so clear an afternoon you could see everything from up there: no one could have disappeared into nothingness.

  He leaned farther forward, to look at what the plane was leaving behind it. He followed the winding road that climbed part of the way up the hill and found the Della Roccas’ building, with its white façade and its windows all attached to one another, like an imposing block of ice. A little farther on there was his old school, with the green fire escapes, their surfaces, he remembered, cold and rough to the touch.

  The place where he had spent the first half of his life, the half that was now over, was like an enormous sculpture made of colored cubes and inanimate shapes.

  He took a taxi from the airport. His father had insisted on coming to collect him, but he had said no, I’ll come on my own, in that tone that his parents knew well and that was pointless to resist.

  After the taxi had driven off, he stood on the sidewalk on the other side of the street, looking at his old house. The bag that he carried over his shoulder wasn’t very heavy. It contained clean clothes for two or three days at the most.

  He found the entrance to the apartment block open and climbed to his floor. He rang the bell and heard no sound from inside. Then his father opened the door and, before they were able to say anything, they smiled at each other, each contemplating the passing of time in the changes that had occurred in the other.

  Pietro Balossino was old. It wasn’t just the white hair and the thick veins that stood out too much on the backs of his hands. He was old in the way he stood in front of his son, his whole body trembling almost imperceptibly, and leaned on the door handle, as if his legs were no longer enough on their own.

  They hugged, rather awkwardly. Mattia’s bag rolled off his shoulder and slipped between them. He let it fall to the floor. Their bodies were still the same temperature. Pietro Balossino touched his son’s hair and remembered too many things. Feeling them all at the same time gave him a pain in his chest.

  Mattia looked at his father to ask where’s Mum? and he understood.

  “Your mother’s resting,” he said. “She didn’t feel very well. It must be the heat these past few days.”

  Mattia nodded.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “No. I’d just like a little water.”

  “I’ll go and get you some.”

  His father quickly disappeared into the kitchen, as if looking for an excuse to get away. Mattia thought that that was all that was left, that parental affection resolves itself into small solicitudes, the concerns his parents listed on the telephone every Wednesday: food, heat and cold, tiredness, sometimes money. everything else lay as if submerged at unreachable depths, in a mass of subjects never addressed, excuses to be made and received and memories to be corrected, which would remain unchanged.

  He walked down the corridor to his bedroom. He was sure he would find everything as he had left it, as if that space was immune to the erosion of time, as if all the years of his absence constituted only a parenthesis in that place. He felt an alienating sense of disappointment when he saw that everything was different, like the horrible feeling of ceasing to exist. The walls that had once been pale blue had been covered with cream- colored wallpaper, which made the room look brighter. Where his bed had been was the sofa that had been in the sitting room for years. His desk was still at the window, but on it there was no longer anything of his, just a pile of newspapers and a sewing machine. There were no photographs, of him or of Michela.

  He stood in the doorway as if he needed permission to enter. His father came over with the glass of water and seemed to read his thoughts.

  “Your mother wanted to learn to sew,” he said, as if by way of justification. “But she soon got fed up with it.”

  Mattia drank the water down in one gulp. He rested his bag against the wall, where it wasn’t in the way.

  “I have to go now,” he said.

  “Already? But you’ve only just got here.”

  “There’s someone I have to see.”

  He walked past his father, avoiding his eyes and sliding his back against the wall. Their bodies were too similar and bulky and adult to be so close to each other. He took the glass through to the kitchen, rinsed it, and set it upside down on the draining board.

  “I’ll be back this evening,” he said.

  He nodded good- bye to his father, who was standing in the middle of the living room, at the same spot where in another life he was hugging his mother, talking about him. It wasn’t true that Alice was waiting for him, he didn’t even know where to find her, but he had to get out of there as quickly as possible.

  44

  They wrote to each other during the first year. As with everything else that concerned them, it was Alice who had started it. She had sent him a photograph of a cake with a rather clumsy Happy Birthday written with strawberries cut in half. She had signed the back only with an A—and nothing more. She had made the cake for Mattia’s birthday, and then had thrown the whole thing into the trash. Mattia had replied in a letter of four closely written pages, in which he told her how hard it was to start over in a new place without knowing the language, and in which he apologized for leaving. or at least that was how it seemed to Alice. He hadn’t asked her anything about Fabio, either in that letter or in the ones that followed, and she hadn’t talked about him. Both of them were aware, however, of his strange and menacing presence, just beyond the edge of the page. Partly for that reason they soon began to reply to each other’s letters coldly and at increasingly longer intervals, until their correspondence faded away entirely.

  A few years later Mattia had received another card. It was an invitation to Alice and Fabio’s wedding. He had stuck it on the fridge with a piece of tape, as if, hanging there, it would inevitably remind him of something. Each morning and each evening he found himself standing in front of it and each time it seemed to hurt him a little less. A week before the ceremony he had managed to send a telegram that said Thank you for invitation must decline due to professional obligations. Congratulations, Mattia Balossino. In a shop in the city center he had spent a whole morning choosing a crystal vase that he had sent to the couple at their new address.

  It was not to this address that he went when he left his parents’ house. Instead he headed for the hill, to the Della Roccas’, where he and Alice had spent their afternoons together. He was sure he wouldn’t find her there, but he wanted to pretend that nothing had changed.

  He hesitated for a long time before pressing the buzzer. A woman replied, probably
Soledad.

  “Who is it?”

  “I’m looking for Alice,” he said.

  “Alice doesn’t live here anymore.”

  Yes, it was Soledad. He recognized her Spanish accent, still quite noticeable.

  “Who is looking for her?” asked the housekeeper.

  “It’s Mattia.”

  There was an extended silence. Sol tried to remember.

  “I can give you her new address.”

  “That’s okay. I’ve got it, thanks,” he said.

  “Good-bye, then,” said Sol, after another, shorter silence.

  Mattia walked off without turning to look up. He was sure that Sol would be standing at one of the windows watching him, recognizing him only now and wondering what had become of him in all those years and what it was he had come back in search of. The truth was that even he didn’t know.

  45

  Alice hadn’t expected him so soon. She had sent the card only five days before and it was possible that Mattia hadn’t even read it yet. At any rate she was sure that he would call first, that they would arrange to meet, perhaps in a bar, where she would prepare him calmly for the news.

  Her days were filled with waiting for some kind of signal. At work she was distracted but cheerful and Crozza hadn’t dared to ask her why, but in his heart he felt he deserved some credit for it. The void left by Fabio’s departure had made way for an almost adolescent frenzy. Alice assembled and dismantled the image of the moment when she and Mattia would meet; she studied the scene from different angles and adjusted every detail. She wore away at the thought until it seemed not so much a projection as a memory.

  She had also been to the local library. She had had to get a card, because she had never set foot in it before that day. She had looked for the newspapers that reported on Michela’s disappearance. They were upsetting to read, as if all that horror were happening again, not far from where she was. Her confidence had wavered at the sight of a photograph of Michela on the front page, in which she was looking lost and staring at a point above the lens, perhaps the forehead of whoever was taking the picture. That image had instantly undermined the memory of the girl at the hospital, superimposing itself over her too precisely to seem believable. For the first time Alice had wondered if it might not all be a mistake, a hallucination that had lasted too long. Then she had covered the photograph with one hand and gone on reading, resolutely dispelling that doubt.

  Michela’s body had never been found. Not so much as an item of clothing, not a trace. The child had simply vanished. For months the line of a kidnapping had been pursued, but to no avail. No suspects were ever named. The news had gradually moved to the margins of the inside pages before finally disappearing altogether.

  When the bell rang, Alice was drying her hair. She opened the door distractedly, without even asking who’s there, as she arranged the towel on her head. She was barefoot and the first thing Mattia saw of her was her bare feet, the second toe slightly longer than the big one, as if pushing its way forward, and the fourth bent underneath, hidden away. They were details he knew well, which had survived in his mind longer than words and situations.

  “Hi,” he said, looking up.

  Alice took a step back and instinctively closed both sides of her bathrobe, as if her heart might burst out of her chest. Then she focused on Mattia, took in his presence. She hugged him, pressing her inadequate weight against him. He circled her waist with his right arm, but kept his fingers raised, as if out of prudence.

  “I’ll be right there. I’ll just be a moment,” she said, rushing her words. She went back inside and closed the door, leaving him standing outside. She needed a few minutes on her own to get dressed and put on her makeup and dry her eyes before he noticed.

  Mattia sat down on the front step, his back to the door. He studied the little garden, the almost perfect symmetry of the low hedge that ran along both sides of the path and the undulating shape that broke off halfway through a sine curve. When he heard the click of the lock he turned around and for a moment everything seemed as it had been: he waiting outside for Alice and she coming out, well dressed and smiling, then walking down the street together without having decided where they were going.

  Alice bent forward and kissed him on the cheek. To sit down next to him she had to hold on to his shoulder, because of her stiff leg. He moved over. They had nothing to rest their backs against, so they both sat leaning slightly forward.

  “You were quick,” said Alice.

  “Your card arrived yesterday morning.”

  “So that place isn’t so far away after all.”

  Mattia looked at the ground. Alice took his right hand and opened it palm side up. He didn’t resist, because with her he had no need to be ashamed of the marks.

  There were new ones, recognizable as darker lines in the middle of that tangle of white scars. None of them seemed all that recent, apart from one circular halo, like a burn. Alice followed its outline with the tip of her index finger and he was barely aware of her touch through all the layers of hardened skin. He calmly let her look, because his hand told much more than he could in words.

  “It seemed important,” said Mattia.

  “It is.”

  He turned to look at her, to ask her to go on.

  “Not yet,” said Alice. “First let’s get away from here.”

  Mattia got up first, then held out his hand to help her, just as they had always done. They walked toward the street. It was difficult to talk and think at the same time, as if the two actions canceled each other out.

  “Here,” said Alice.

  She turned off the alarm of a dark green station wagon and Mattia thought it was too big for her alone.

  “Do you want to drive?” Alice asked him with a smile.

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Are you joking?”

  He shrugged. They looked at each other over the roof of the car. The sun sparkled on the bodywork between them.

  “I don’t need to drive there,” he said by way of justification.

  Alice tapped her chin with the key, thoughtfully.

  “I know where we have to go, then,” she said, with the same playfulness with which she announced her ideas as a girl.

  They got into the car. There was nothing on the dashboard in front of Mattia, apart from two compact discs, one on top of the other with their spines facing him: Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and a collection of Schubert sonatas.

  “So you’ve become a fan of classical music?”

  Alice darted a quick glance at the CDs. She wrinkled up her nose.

  “No way. They’re his. All they do is put me to sleep.”

  Mattia writhed against the seat belt. It scratched his shoulder because it was set for someone shorter, Alice probably, who sat there while her husband drove. They listened to classical music together. He tried to imagine it, then he allowed himself to be distracted by the words printed on the side- view mirror: Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

  “Fabio, right?” he asked. He already knew the answer, but he wanted to untie that knot, dissolve that awkward, silent presence that seemed to be studying them from the backseat. He knew that otherwise the conversation between them would stall right there, like a boat run aground on the rocks.

  Alice nodded, as if making an effort. If she explained everything all at once, about the baby, the quarrel, and the rice that was still stuck in the corners of the kitchen, he would think that was the reason she had called him. He wouldn’t believe the story about Michela, he would think of her as a woman having a crisis with her husband, trying to reestablish old relationships to keep from feeling so alone. For a moment she wondered whether that was actually the case.

  “Do you have children?”

  “No, none.”

  “But why—”

  “Drop it,” Alice cut in.

  Mattia fell silent, but didn’t apologize.

  “What about you?” she asked after a while. Sh
e had hesitated to ask, for fear of his answer. Then her voice had come out all by itself, almost startling her.

  “No,” Mattia replied.

  “No children?”

  “I don’t have . . .” He wanted to say anyone. “I’m not married.”

  Alice nodded.

  “Still playing hard to get, then?” she said, turning to smile at him.

  Mattia shook his head with embarrassment, and understood what she meant.

  They had reached a large, deserted parking lot near the truck terminal, surrounded by huge prefabricated buildings, one after another. No one lived there. Three stacks of wooden pallets wrapped in plastic leaned against a gray wall, next to a lowered security gate. Higher up, on the roof, was a neon sign that must have shone bright orange at night.

  Alice stopped the car in the middle of the parking lot and turned off the engine.

  “Your turn,” she said, opening the door.

  “What?”

  “Now you drive.”

  “No, no,” said Mattia. “Forget it.”

  She stared at him carefully, with her eyes half closed and her lips pursed as if she were only now rediscovering a kind of affection that she had forgotten about.

  “So you haven’t changed that much,” she said. It wasn’t a reproach; in fact she seemed relieved.

  “Neither have you,” he said.

  She shrugged.

  “Okay, then,” he said. “Let’s give it a go.”

  Alice laughed. They got out of the car to switch seats and Mattia walked with his arms dangling exaggeratedly to demonstrate his total resignation. For the first time they each found themselves in the role of the other, each showing the other what they thought was their true profile.

  “I don’t know where to start,” said Mattia, with his arms high on the steering wheel, as if he really didn’t know where to put them.

  “Nothing at all? You’ve never driven, not even once?”

  “Practically never.”

  “So we’re in a bit of a fix.”