Paolo Giordano - The Solitude of Prime Numbers

"We can't escape it," said Mattia. "We've convinced ourselves that it exists. But I may have found a way to get something interesting out of it."

Alberto came closer. He didn't interrupt Mattia until he had finished his explanation, because he knew that Mattia didn't talk much, but when he did it was worth shutting up and listening.

The weight of consequences had collapsed on her all at once one evening a few years before, when Fabio, as he pushed inside her, had whispered I want to have a baby. His face was so close to Alice's that she had felt his breath sliding along her cheeks and dispersing among the sheets.

She had pulled him to her, guiding his head into the hollow between her neck and shoulder. Once, before they were married, he had told her it was the perfect fit, that his head was made to slip into that space.

So what do you think? Fabio had asked her, his voice muffled by the pillow. Alice hadn't replied, but had held him a bit tighter. She hadn't had the breath to speak.

She'd heard him closing the drawer with the condoms in it and had bent her right knee a little more to make room for him. Rhythmically she stroked his hair, her eyes wide open.

That secret had crept after her since her school days, but it had never taken hold of her mind for more than a few seconds. Alice had set it aside, like something she would think about later on. Now, all of a sudden, there it was, like an abyss cut into the black ceiling of the room, monstrous and irrepressible. Alice wanted to say to Fabio stop for a moment, wait, there's something I haven't told you, but he moved with disarming trust and he certainly wouldn't have understood.

She felt him come inside her, for the first time, and imagined that sticky liquid full of promise that he deposited in her dry body, where it too would dry.

She didn't want a baby, or maybe she did. She hadn't ever really thought about it. The question didn't arise and that was that. Her menstrual cycle had stopped around the last time she had eaten a whole chocolate pudding. The truth was that Fabio wanted a baby and she had to give him one. She had to, because when they made love he didn't ask her to turn the light on, not since the first time at his house. Because when it was over he lay on top of her and the weight of his body canceled out all her fears and he didn't speak, just breathed, and anyway he was there. She had to, because she didn't love him, but his love was enough for both of them, enough to keep them safe.

From then on sex had assumed a new guise. It bore within itself a precise purpose, which had soon led them to abandon everything that wasn't strictly necessary.

For weeks and then months nothing had happened. Fabio had himself examined and his sperm count was good. That evening he told Alice, being very careful to hold her tightly in his arms as he spoke. He immediately added you don't have to worry, it's not your fault. She pulled away and went into the other room before bursting into tears, and Fabio hated himself because he thought-in fact he knew-that it was his wife's fault.

Alice started feeling spied on. She kept a fictitious count of days, drawing little lines on the calendar beside the phone. She bought tampons and then threw them away unused. On the right days she pushed Fabio away in the dark, telling him we can't today.

He kept the same count, without telling her. Alice's secret, slimy and transparent, wormed its way between them, forcing them further and further apart. Every time he hinted at doctors, treatments, or the cause of the problem, Alice's face darkened and he was sure that it wouldn't be long before she found a pretext for an argument, any random nonsense.

Exhaustion slowly defeated them. They stopped talking about it and, along with the conversations, sex too had grown less frequent, until it was reduced to a laborious Friday night ritual. They took turns washing, before and after doing it. Fabio would come back from the bathroom, the skin of his face still gleaming with soap, wearing fresh underwear. In the meantime Alice would already have slipped on her T-shirt and would ask can I go now? When she came back into the room she would find him already asleep, or at least with his eyes closed, facing the wall and with his whole body on his side of the bed.

There was nothing very different about that Friday, at least at first. Alice joined him in bed just after one, having spent the whole evening shut up in the darkroom that Fabio had given her as a third anniversary present. He lowered the magazine he was reading and watched his wife's bare feet walk toward him, sticking to the wooden floor.

Alice slipped between the sheets and pressed herself against his side. Fabio let the magazine fall to the floor and turned out the bedside light. He did everything he could to not make it look like a habit, a duty, but the truth was clear to both of them.

They followed a series of movements that had become consolidated into a routine over time, and which made everything simpler, then Fabio entered her, with the help of his fingers.

Alice wasn't sure that he was really crying, because he held his head tilted to one side to avoid contact with her skin, but she noticed that there was something different in his way of moving. He was thrusting more violently and more urgently than usual, then he would stop suddenly, his breath heavy, and start again, as though torn between the desire to penetrate more deeply and the desire to slip away from her and from the room. She heard him sniffing as he panted.

When he finished he quickly withdrew, got out of bed, and went and shut himself in the bathroom, without even turning on the light.

He stayed there for longer than usual. Alice moved toward the middle of the bed, where the sheets were still cool. She put a hand on her stomach, in which nothing was happening, and, for the first time, thought she no longer had anyone to blame, that all these mistakes were hers alone.

Fabio crossed the room in the semidarkness, climbed into bed, and turned his back to her. It was Alice's turn, but she didn't move. She felt that something was about to happen, the air was full of it.

It took him another minute, or perhaps two, before he spoke.

"Ali," he said.

"Yes?"

He hesitated again.

"I can't do this anymore," he said softly.

Alice felt his words gripping her belly, like climbing plants sprouting suddenly from the bed. She didn't reply. She let him go on.

"I know what it is," Fabio went on. His voice grew clearer. As it struck the walls it assumed a slight metallic echo. "You don't want to let me in, you don't even want me to talk about it. But this…"

He stopped. Alice's eyes were open. They were accustomed to the dark. She followed the outlines of the furniture: the armchair, the wardrobe, the chest of drawers and on top of it the mirror that didn't reflect anything. All those objects sitting there, motionless and terribly insistent.

Alice thought of her parents' room. She thought how similar they were, that all bedrooms in the world were similar. She wondered what she was afraid of, losing him or losing those things: the curtains, the paintings, the carpet, all that security folded carefully away in the drawers.

"You barely ate two zucchinis this evening," Fabio went on.

"I wasn't hungry," she replied automatically.

Here we go, she thought.

"The same yesterday. You didn't even touch the meat. You cut it up into little pieces and then hid it in your napkin. Do you really think I'm that stupid?"

Alice clenched the sheets. How could she have thought he would never notice? She saw again the hundreds, thousands of times in which the same scene had repeated itself before her husband's eyes. She was furious about all the things he must have thought in silence.