Paolo Giordano - The Solitude of Prime Numbers

They walked arm in arm, very composed. That evening Ernesto had shared his umbrella with her, allowing his head and coat to get soaked so as to shelter her better from the rain. He had complimented her on her Italian, which was getting better week by week, and Soledad had laughed, pretending to be embarrassed.

It was thanks to a certain clumsiness, a lack of coordination, that instead of saying good-bye to each other as friends, with two chaste kisses on the cheek, their mouths had met on the front step of the Della Rocca house. Ernesto apologized, but then he bent over her lips again and Soledad felt all the dust that had settled in her heart whirl up and get in her eyes.

She was the one to invite him in. Ernesto had to stay hidden in her room for a few hours, just long enough for her to give Alice something to eat and send her to bed. The Della Roccas would be going out soon and wouldn't be back till late.

Ernesto thanked someone up above for the fact that such things could still happen at his age. They entered the house furtively, Soledad leading her lover by the hand, like a teenager, and with her finger to her mouth she told him not to make a sound. Then she hastily made dinner for Alice, watched her eat it too slowly, and said you look tired, you should go to bed. Alice protested that she wanted to watch television and Soledad gave in, just to get rid of her, as long as she watched it up in the den. Alice went upstairs, taking advantage of her father's absence to drag her feet as she walked.

Soledad returned to her lover. They kissed for a long time, sitting side by side, not knowing what to do with their own hands, clumsy and out of practice. Then Ernesto plucked up the courage to pull her to him.

As he fiddled with the devilish hooks that fastened her bra, apologizing under his breath for being so clumsy, she felt young and beautiful and uninhibited. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again she saw Alice, standing in the doorway.

"Cono , " she blurted out. "?Que haces aqu'?"

She slipped away from Ernesto and covered her bosom with one arm. Alice tilted her head to one side and observed them without surprise, as if they were animals in a zoo.

"I can't get to sleep," she said.

By some mysterious coincidence Soledad was remembering that very moment when, turning around, she saw Alice standing in the study doorway. Soledad was dusting the library. Three at a time she pulled the lawyer's encyclopedia, the heavy volumes with dark green binding and gilded spines, off the shelf. While she held them with her left arm, which was already beginning to ache, with her right she dusted the mahogany surfaces, even in the most hidden corners, because the lawyer had once complained that she only pushed the dust around.

It was years since Alice had entered her father's study. An invisible barrier of hostility kept her frozen in the doorway. She was sure that if she placed so much as a toe on the regular, hypnotic geometry of the parquet, the wood would crack under her weight and send her plunging into a black abyss.

The whole room was saturated with her father's intense smell. It had seeped into the papers stacked neatly on the desk, and drenched the thick, cream-colored curtains. When she was little, Alice would tiptoe in and call her father for dinner. She always hesitated for a moment before speaking, enchanted by her father's posture as he loomed over his desk studying complicated documents from behind his silver-framed glasses. When the lawyer realized his daughter was there, he slowly lifted up his head and frowned, as if to ask what she was doing there. Then he nodded and gave her a hint of a smile. I'm coming, he said.

Alice was sure that she could hear those words echoing against the wallpaper in the study, trapped forever in these four walls and inside her head.

"Hola, mi amorcito," said Soledad. She still called her that, even though the pencil-thin girl standing in front of her was a far cry from the sleepy child she used to dress and walk to school every morning.

"Hi," replied Alice.

Soledad looked at her for a few seconds, waiting for her to say something, but Alice glanced away nervously. Soledad returned to her shelves.

"Sol," Alice said at last.

"Yes?"

"I have to ask you something."

Soledad set the books down on the desk and walked over to Alice.

"What is it, mi amorcito ?"

"I need a favor."

"What sort of favor? Of course, tell me."

Alice rolled the elastic of her trousers around her index finger.

"On Saturday I have to go to a party. At my friend Viola's house."

"Oh, how lovely," said Soledad, smiling.

"I'd like to bring a dessert. I'd like to make it myself. Would you help me?"

"Of course, darling. What sort of dessert?"

"I don't know. A cake. Or a tiramisu. Or that one that you make with cinnamon."

"My mother's recipe," said Soledad with a hint of pride. "I'll teach you."

Alice looked at her pleadingly.

"So we'll go shopping together on Saturday? Even though it's your day off?"

"Of course, dear," said Soledad. For a moment she felt important, and she recognized in Alice's insecurity the little girl she had raised.

"Could you take me somewhere else as well?" Alice ventured.

"Where?"

Alice hesitated for a moment.

"To get a tattoo," she said hastily.

"Oh, mi amorcito ." Soledad sighed, vaguely disappointed. "You know your father doesn't want you to."

"We won't tell him. He'll never see it," Alice insisted with a whine.

Soledad shook her head.

"Come on, Sol, please," she begged. "I can't get it done on my own. I need my parents' permission."

"So what can I do?"

"You can pretend to be my mother. You'll only have to sign a piece of paper, you won't have to say anything."

"But I can't, my dear, I can't. Your father would fire me."

Alice suddenly grew more serious. She looked Soledad straight in the eyes.

"It'll be our secret, Sol." She paused. "After all, the two of us already have a secret, don't we?"

Soledad looked at her, puzzled. At first she didn't understand.

"I know how to keep secrets," Alice continued slowly. She felt as strong and ruthless as Viola. "Otherwise he'd have fired you ages ago."

Soledad was suddenly unable to breathe.

"But-" she said.

"So you'll do it?" Alice cut in.

Soledad looked at the floor.

"Okay," she said quietly. Then she turned her back on Alice and arranged the books on the shelf while her eyes filled with two fat tears.

Mattia deliberately made all his movements as silently as he could. He knew that the chaos of the world would only increase, that the background noise would grow until it covered every coherent signal, but he was convinced that by carefully measuring his every gesture he would be less guilty of that slow ruin.

He had learned to set down first his toe and then his heel, keeping his weight toward the outside of the sole to minimize the amount of surface area in contact with the ground. He had perfected this technique years before, when he would get up in the night and stealthily roam about the house, the skin of his hands having become so dry that the only way to know they were still his was to pass a knife over them. Over time that strange, circumspect gait had become his normal way of walking.

His parents would often find themselves suddenly face-to-face with him, like a hologram projected from the floor, a frown on his face and his mouth always tightly shut. Once his mother dropped a plate with fright. Mattia bent down to pick up the bits, but resisted the temptation of those sharp edges. His mother, embarrassed, thanked him, and when he left she sat on the floor and stayed there for a quarter of an hour, defeated.