Paolo Giordano - The Solitude of Prime Numbers

He exploded with laughter for no reason and Alice laughed with him, even though it hurt her stomach.

"Don't you move from there," he commanded, pointing a finger at his forehead.

"Okay," Alice replied and the idea came to her straightaway.

As soon as Fabio was gone, she picked up the greasy tomato with two fingers and carried it to the bathroom, holding it at arm's length to avoid the smell. She locked herself in, lifted the seat, and the toilet smiled at her as if saying leave it to me.

Alice studied the tomato. It was big, perhaps it needed to be cut up into little pieces, but it was also soft, and she said to herself who cares and threw it in as it was. It dropped in with a plop, and a splash of water nearly stained her blue dress. The tomato settled on the bottom and disappeared halfway down the drain.

She flushed and the water came down like healing rain, but instead of disappearing down the hole, it started filling the bowl and a less than reassuring gurgle rose from the bottom.

Alice drew back in horror and her bad leg wobbled so much that she almost ended up on the floor. She watched the water level rise and rise and then suddenly stop.

The sound of the siphon kicked in. The bowl was full to the brim. The surface of the transparent water quivered slightly and there at the bottom, motionless, was the tomato, trapped in the same spot as before.

Alice stood and looked at it for at least a minute, frozen with panic and at the same time strangely curious. She was reawakened by the sound of the key turning in the front door. She took the toilet brush and plunged it into the water, her face contorted into a grimace of disgust. The tomato just wouldn't move.

"What do I do now?" she whispered to herself.

Then, almost unconsciously, she flushed again, and this time the water began to spill out and spread over the floor in a thin layer, until it licked at Alice's elegant shoes. She tried to flush again, but the water kept flowing and pouring out, and if Alice hadn't put the rug over it, it would have reached the door and from there the other room.

After a few seconds the water stopped again. The tomato was still down there, intact. The lake on the floor had ceased spreading. Mattia had once explained to her that there's a precise point at which water stops spreading, when the surface tension has become strong enough to hold it together, like a film.

Alice looked at the mess she had made. She closed the lid of the toilet, as if surrendering to disaster, and sat down on it. She brought her hands to her closed eyes and began to cry. She cried for Mattia, for her mother, for her father, for all that water, but mostly for herself. Under her breath she called Mattia, as if seeking his help, but his name remained on her lips, sticky and insubstantial.

Fabio knocked at the bathroom door but she didn't move.

"Ali, everything okay?"

Alice could see his outline through the frosted glass of the door. She sniffed quietly and cleared her throat to disguise her tears.

"Sure," she said. "I'll be there in a minute."

She looked around, lost, as if she really didn't know how she'd ended up in that bathroom. The water from the toilet bowl dripped onto the floor in at least three different places and Alice hoped, for a moment, that she could drown in those few millimeters of water.

She had turned up at Marcello Crozza's studio at ten o'clock one morning and, feigning a determination that had cost her three walks around the block, had said I want to learn the trade, could you take me on as an apprentice? Crozza, who was sitting by the automatic developer, had nodded. Then he had turned around and, looking her straight in the eyes, had said I can't pay you. He hadn't wanted to say forget it, because he'd done the same thing himself many years before and the memory of the courage it had taken him was all that was left of his passion for photography. In spite of all his disappointments, he wouldn't have denied anyone that sensation.

They were mostly vacation photos. Families of three or four people, by the sea or in tourist destinations, hugging in the middle of St. Mark's Square or under the Eiffel Tower, with their feet cut off and always in the same pose. Photographs taken with automatic cameras, overexposed or out of focus. Alice didn't even look at them anymore: she developed them and then slipped them all into the paper envelope with the yellow and red Kodak logo.

It was mostly a matter of being in the shop, receiving rolls of twenty-four or thirty-six shots, shut away in their little plastic containers, of marking the customer's name on the slip and telling them they'll be ready tomorrow, of printing out receipts and saying thank you, good-bye.

Sometimes, on Saturdays, there were weddings. Crozza picked her up from home at a quarter to nine, always in the same suit and without his tie, because in the end he was the photographer, not a guest.

In church they had to set up the two lights, and on one of the first occasions Alice had dropped one and it had smashed on the steps of the altar and she had looked at Crozza in terror. He had pulled a face as if one of the pieces of glass had gotten stuck in his leg, but then he had said never mind, just clean it up.

He was fond of her and didn't know why. Perhaps because he had no children, or because since Alice had been working there he was able to go to the bar at eleven o'clock and check his lottery numbers and when he came back to the shop she smiled at him and asked him so, are we rich? Perhaps because she had that bad leg and lacked a mother as he lacked a wife and all lacks are pretty much the same. Or because he was sure that she would soon get tired of him and in the evening he would pull down the security gate on his own again and set off for home where no one was waiting, with his head empty and yet so very heavy.

Instead, after a year and a half, Alice was still there. Now that she had the keys she arrived before him in the morning and Crozza found her on the sidewalk in front of the shop, chatting with the lady from the grocer's next door, with whom he had never exchanged more than a "Good morning." He paid her under the table, five hundred euros a month. If they did weddings together he would drop her outside the door of the Della Rocca house and, with the engine of his Lancia still running, take out his wallet and hand her an extra fifty, saying see you Monday.

Sometimes she brought him her own snapshots and asked his opinion, even though it was clear to both of them that he had nothing more to teach her. They sat down at the desk and Crozza looked at the photographs, holding them up to the light, and gave her some advice about exposure time, or how best to use the shutter. He let her use his Nikon whenever she wanted and had secretly decided that he would give it to her as a present the day she left.

"We're getting married on Saturday," said Crozza. It was his way of saying they had a job.

Alice was putting on her denim jacket. Fabio would be there to pick her up at any moment.

"Okay," she said. "Where?"

"At the Gran Madre. Then there's a reception in a private villa in the hills. Rich folks' stuff," commented Crozza with a touch of disdain, immediately regretting it because he knew that Alice came from that world too.

"Hmm," she murmured. "Do you know who they are?"

"They sent the invitation. I've put it over there somewhere," said Crozza, pointing to the shelf under the cash register.

Alice looked in her bag for a rubber band and pulled back her hair. Crozza watched from across the shop. Once he had masturbated thinking about her, kneeling in the gloom after they'd lowered the security gate, but then he had felt so dreadful that he hadn't eaten and the next day he had sent her home saying you've got the day off today, I don't want anyone underfoot.