Paolo Giordano - The Solitude of Prime Numbers

The silence had become part of the meal and disturbed only Sol, who often thought back to the rowdy meals at her mother's house, when she was still very young and could never have imagined she would end up like this.

Alice hadn't even looked at the cutlet and salad on her plate. She took little sips of water, crossing her eyes as she drank and regarding the glass resting on her lips as seriously as if it held some kind of medicine. She shrugged and flashed a swift smile at Sol.

"Sorry," she said. "I'm not very hungry."

Her father nervously turned the page. Before setting the paper back down he gave it an impetuous shake and couldn't help glancing at his daughter's full plate. He didn't comment and started reading again, beginning a random article in the middle, without grasping its meaning.

"Sol?" asked Alice.

"Yes?"

"How did your husband win you? The first time, I mean. What did he do?"

Soledad stopped chewing. Then she started again, more slowly, to gain some time. The first image that ran through her head wasn't of the day she met her husband. Instead she thought back to that morning when she had gotten up late and wandered barefoot around the house, looking for him. Over the years all the memories of her marriage had become concentrated in those few moments, as if the time spent with her husband had been only the preparation for an ending. That morning she had looked at the previous night's dirty dishes and the cushions in the wrong place on the sofa. Everything was just as they had left it and the sounds in the air were the same as ever. And yet something, in the way things were arranged and the way the light clung to them, had left her frozen in the middle of the sitting room, dismayed. And then, with disconcerting clarity, she had thought he's gone.

Soledad sighed, feigning her usual nostalgia.

"He brought me home from work on his bicycle. Every day he came with his bicycle," she said. "And he gave me some shoes."

"What?"

"Shoes. White ones, high heels."

Soledad smiled and indicated the length of the heels with her thumb and index finger.

"They were very pretty," she said.

Alice's father snorted and shuffled in his chair, as if he found all this intolerable. Alice imagined Sol's husband coming out of the shop with the shoe box under his arm. She knew him from the photograph that Sol kept hung over the head of her bed, with a dry little olive branch slipped between the nail and the hook.

For a moment Alice felt light-headed, but her thoughts immediately turned to Mattia, and stayed there. A week had passed, and he still hadn't called.

I'll go now, she thought.

She slipped a forkful of salad into her mouth, as if to say to her father look I've eaten. The vinegar stung her lips slightly. She was still chewing as she got up from the table.

"I've got to go out," she said.

Her father arched his eyebrows.

"And might we know where you're going at this hour?" he asked.

"Out," said Alice defiantly. Then she added, "To a girlfriend's," to soften the tone.

Her father shook his head, as if to say do what you like. For a moment Alice felt sorry for him, left on his own like that behind his newspaper. She felt a desire to hug him and tell him everything and ask him what she should do, but a moment later the same thought made her shiver. She turned around and headed resolutely for the bathroom.

Her father lowered the newspaper and with two fingers he rubbed his weary eyes. Sol turned the memory of the high-heeled shoes around in her head for a few seconds, then put it back in its place and got up to clear the things away.

On her way to Mattia's house, Alice kept the music turned up, but if when she got there someone had asked her what she was listening to, she wouldn't have been able to say. All of a sudden she was furious and she was sure that she was about to ruin everything, but she no longer had any choice. That evening, getting up from the table, she had crossed the invisible boundary beyond which things start working by themselves. It was like when she was learning to ski, when she would move her center of gravity too far forward by an insignificant couple of millimeters, just enough to end up facedown in the snow.

She had been to Mattia's house only once before, and only as far as the living room. Mattia had disappeared into his room to change and she had had an embarrassing chat with his mother, Mrs. Balossino, who observed her from the sofa with a vaguely worried air, as if Alice's hair were on fire or something, without even offering her a seat.

Alice rang the doorbell and the display beside it lit up red, like a final warning. After a few crackles Mattia's mother answered in a frightened voice.

"Who is it?"

"It's Alice, Mrs. Balossino. I'm sorry about the time, but… is Mattia there?"

From the other end she heard a thoughtful silence. Alice pulled her hair over her right shoulder, having the disagreeable impression of being observed through the lens of the intercom. The door opened with an electrical click. Before coming in, Alice smiled at the camera to say thank you.

In the empty hallway her footsteps echoed with the rhythm of a heartbeat. Her bad leg seemed to have lost all life, as if her heart had forgotten to pump blood into it.

The door to the apartment was ajar, but there was no one to welcome her. Alice pushed it open and said, "Hello?" Mattia emerged from the sitting room and stopped at least two meters away from her.

"Hi," he said, without moving his arms.

"Hi."

They stood looking at each other for a few seconds, as if they didn't know each other at all. Mattia had crossed his big toe over his second one, inside his slipper, and by squashing one over the other and against the floor he hoped he could break them.

"Sorry if I'm-"

"Won't you come in?" Mattia broke in automatically.

Alice turned to close the door and the round brass handle slipped from her sweaty palm. The door slammed, shaking the frame, and a shiver of impatience ran through Mattia.

What's she doing here? he thought.

It was as if the Alice he had been talking to Denis about only a few minutes before wasn't the same one who had just dropped by without warning. He tried to clear his mind of that ridiculous thought, but the irritation remained in his mouth like a kind of nausea.

He thought of the word hunted. Then he thought about when his father used to drag him onto the carpet and imprison him between his enormous arms. He tickled him on his tummy and on his sides and he exploded with laughter; he laughed so hard that he couldn't breathe.

Alice followed him into the sitting room. Mattia's parents stood waiting, like a little welcoming committee.

"Good evening," she said, shrinking back.

"Hi, Alice," replied Adele, without moving.

Pietro, on the other hand, came over and unexpectedly stroked her hair.

"You're getting prettier and prettier," he said. "How's your mother?"

Adele, behind her husband's back, held a paralyzed smile and bit her lip for not having asked the question herself.

Alice blushed.

"Same as usual," she said, so as not to appear overdramatic. "She's getting by."

"Say hello from us," said Pietro.

All four of them stood in silence. Mattia's father seemed to stare right through Alice and she tried to distribute her weight uniformly on her legs, so as not to look crippled. She realized that her mother would never meet Mattia's parents and she was a bit sorry about that, but she was even sorrier to be the only one thinking anything of the kind.

"You two go on," Pietro said at last.

Alice passed beside him with her head lowered after smiling once more at Adele. Mattia was already waiting in his room.

"Shall I close it?" asked Alice once she was inside, pointing to the door. All her courage had deserted her.