Paolo Giordano - The Solitude of Prime Numbers

From the car, on the way back home, he had seen the dredging machines sinking their mechanical arms into the river and pulling out big piles of wet soil, then dropping them heavily on the bank. Mattia had noticed that his mother held her breath every time, until each pile disintegrated on the ground. Michela must have been in that slime, but they didn't find her. They never found her.

"Let's get out of here. Please," repeated Mattia. His tone wasn't pleading. Instead he seemed absorbed, annoyed.

Alice got back into the car.

"Sometimes I don't know whether-"

"That's where I abandoned my twin sister," he cut in with a flat, almost inhuman voice. He lifted his arm and with his right index finger pointed to the trees in the park. Then he left it hanging there in midair, as if he had forgotten about it.

"Twin sister? What are you talking about? You don't have a twin sister…"

Mattia nodded slowly, still staring at the trees.

"She was my identical twin. Completely identical to me," he said.

Then, before Alice even had time to ask, he told her everything. He spilled out the whole story, like a dam collapsing. The worm, the party, the Legos, the river, the bits of glass, the hospital room, the judge, the television appeal, the shrinks, everything, in a way he had never done with anyone. He talked without looking at her, without getting excited. Then he lapsed back into silence. He felt around under the seat with his right hand, but found only blunt shapes. He calmed down, feeling remote again, alien to his own body.

Alice's hand touched his chin and delicately turned his face toward her. All Mattia saw was a shadow moving toward him. He instinctively closed his eyes and then felt Alice's hot mouth on his, her tears on his cheek, or maybe they weren't hers, and finally her hands, so light, holding his head still and catching all his thoughts and imprisoning them there, in the space that no longer existed between them.

They saw each other often over the next month, without ever making a real date but never really by chance. After visiting hours Alice always ended up wandering around Fabio's ward, and he always managed to run into her. They'd stroll around the courtyard, always taking the same route that they had decided by mutual agreement, without discussing it. That outer enclosure marked the confines of their story, carving out a space where there was no need to name that clear and mysterious thing flowing between them.

Fabio seemed to have a precise knowledge of the dynamics of courtship; he knew how to respect rhythms and moderate phrases as if following a set protocol. He sensed Alice's profound suffering, but remained beyond it, as if he were standing on the border. The excesses of the world, whatever form they might assume, didn't really concern him. They collided with his equilibrium and common sense and so he preferred to ignore them, simply pretending that they didn't exist. If an obstacle blocked his path, he walked around it, without altering his own pace in the slightest, and soon forgot it. He never had doubts, or hardly ever.

Nonetheless, he knew how to reach an objective, so he was attentive to Alice's moods in a way that was respectful, though slightly pedantic. If she didn't talk, he asked her if something was wrong, but never twice in a row. He showed interest in her photographs, in how her mother was, and filled the silences with stories from his own day, amusing anecdotes he picked up around the ward.

Alice allowed herself to be carried away by his self-confidence and gradually abandoned herself to it, as she had abandoned herself to the support of the water when as a little girl she played dead in the swimming pool.

They lived the slow and invisible interpenetration of their universes, like two stars gravitating around a common axis, in ever tighter orbits, whose clear destiny is to coalesce at some point in space and time.

Alice's mother's treatment had been suspended. With a nod of the head, her husband had finally given his consent to let her sink into painless sleep, under a heavy blanket of morphine. Alice merely waited for it to come to an end and couldn't bring herself to feel guilty. Her mother already lived within her as a memory, settled like a clump of pollen in a corner of her head, where she would stay for the rest of her life, frozen in the same pile of soundless images.

Fabio hadn't planned to ask her and wasn't the type for impulsive gestures, but that afternoon there was something different about Alice. A kind of nervousness emerged from the way she wove her fingers together and moved her eyes from side to side, always careful not to meet his own. For the first time since meeting her he was hasty and incautious.

"My parents are going to the beach this weekend," he said out of the blue.

Alice seemed not to have heard. At any rate, she let the sentence drop. Her head had been buzzing like a wasps' nest for days. Mattia hadn't called her since his graduation, more than a week before, and yet it clearly was his turn now.

"I thought you could come to dinner at my place," Fabio tossed out.

His confidence faltered for a moment in the middle of those words, but he immediately shook off his uncertainty. He plunged both hands into the pockets of his white coat and prepared to accept any kind of reply with the same kind of lightness. He knew how to build a shelter for himself even before he needed one.

Alice smiled faintly, slightly panic-stricken.

"I don't know," she said gently. "Perhaps it isn't-"

"You're right," Fabio interrupted her. "I shouldn't have asked you. Sorry."

They finished their walk in silence and when they reached Fabio's ward again he murmured okay, long and drawn out, as if speaking to himself.

Neither of them moved. They exchanged a quick glance and immediately lowered their eyes. Fabio started to laugh.

"We never know how to say good-bye to each other, you and me," he said.

"Yeah." Alice smiled at him. She brought a hand to her hair, hooked a lock with her index finger, and tugged on it slightly.

Fabio took a resolute step toward her and the gravel of the path crunched beneath his foot. He kissed her on her left cheek, with affectionate arrogance, and then stepped back.

"Well, at least think about it," he said.

He smiled broadly, with his whole mouth, eyes, and cheeks. Then he turned around and walked confidently toward the entrance.

Now he'll turn around, thought Alice when he went through the glass door.

But Fabio turned the corner and disappeared down the corridor.

The letter was addressed to Mr. Mattia Balossino, B.Sc., and to the touch it was so light and insubstantial it seemed impossible it could contain his whole future. His mother hadn't shown it to him until dinner, perhaps out of embarrassment at having opened it without permission. She hadn't done it on purpose, she hadn't even looked at the name on the envelope: Mattia never got any mail.

"This came," she said, holding the letter over the plates.

Mattia glanced quizzically at his father, who nodded at something vague. Before taking the letter he ran his napkin over his upper lip, which was already clean. Seeing the complicated circular logo, printed in blue next to the address, he had no idea what it might contain. He pressed on both sides of the envelope to take out the folded page inside it. He opened it and began to read, rather impressed by the thought that this letter was specifically for him, Mr. Mattia Balossino, B.Sc.

His parents made more noise than necessary with their silverware and his father repeatedly cleared his throat. After reading it, Mattia refolded the page with the reverse sequence of gestures with which he had opened it, so as to return it to its initial form, and slipped it back into its envelope, which he then set down on Michela's chair.