Paolo Giordano - The Solitude of Prime Numbers

No matter how hard she tried, from all those years spent with Fabio she couldn't extract so much as one image that crushed her heart so powerfully, that had the same impetuous violence in its colors and which she could still feel on her skin and in the roots of her hair and between her legs. True, there had been that one time at dinner with Riccardo and his wife, when they'd laughed and drunk a lot. She'd been helping Alessandra wash the dishes and had cut the tip of her thumb on a glass that had shattered in her hands. And as she dropped it she had said ouch, not loudly-she had barely whispered it-but Fabio had heard and come running. He had examined her thumb under the light; leaning forward he had brought it to his lips and sucked a little of the blood, to make it stop, as if it had been his. With her thumb in his mouth he had looked up at her, with those disarming eyes that Alice couldn't resist. Then he had closed the wound in his hand and kissed Alice on the mouth. She had tasted her own blood in his saliva and imagined that it had circulated throughout her husband's body and come back to her cleaned, as though through dialysis.

There had been that time and there had been an infinite number of others, which Alice no longer remembered, because the love of those we don't love in return settles on the surface and from there quickly evaporates. What was left now was a faint red patch, almost invisible on her drawn skin, the spot where Fabio had kicked her.

Sometimes, particularly in the evening, she remembered what he had said. I can't do this anymore. She stroked her belly and tried to imagine what it would have been like to have someone in there, swimming in her cold liquid. Tell me what it is. But there was nothing to explain. There was no reason, or not only one. There was no beginning. There was her and that was that and she didn't want anyone in her belly.

Perhaps I should tell him that, she thought.

Then she picked up her cell phone and ran through her contact list till she got to F. She rubbed the keyboard with her thumb, as if hoping to activate the call by mistake. Then she pressed the red button. To see Fabio, talk to him, rebuild: it all seemed like an inhuman effort and she preferred to stay there, watching the furniture in the sitting room being covered with a layer of dust that was getting thicker by the day.

He hardly ever looked at the students. When he met their clear eyes directed at the blackboard and at him, he felt naked. Mattia wrote out his calculations and made precise comments, as if he were explaining them to himself as well as to everyone else. The classroom was too big for the dozen fourth-year students who were taking his course in algebraic topology. They arranged themselves in the first three rows, more or less always in the same places and leaving an empty seat between one and the next, as he himself had done in his university days, but in none of the students could he spot anything that reminded him of himself.

In the silence he heard the door at the back of the classroom close but he didn't turn around until the end of the proof. He turned a page in his notes, which he didn't really need, realigned the pages, and only then noticed a new figure in the topmost margin of his field of vision. He looked up and saw it was Nadia. She had taken a seat in the back row; dressed in white, she sat with her legs crossed and didn't greet him.

Mattia tried to conceal his panic, and moved on to the next theorem. He almost lost his thread, said I'm sorry, and tried to find the step in his notes, but was unable to concentrate. A barely perceptible murmur ran through the students; the teacher had never once hesitated since the beginning of the course.

He started over and made it to the end, writing quickly, his writing sloping more and more toward the bottom as it shrank toward the right-hand edge of the blackboard. He crammed the last two steps into a top corner because he had run out of space. Some of the students leaned forward to make out the exponents and subscripts that had gotten jumbled up with the formulas around them. There was still a quarter of an hour to go before the end of the lesson when Mattia said okay, I'll see you tomorrow.

He set down the chalk and watched the students get up, slightly puzzled, and give him a little wave before leaving the classroom. Nadia was still sitting there, in the same position, and no one seemed to notice her.

They were alone. They seemed very far apart. Nadia got up in the same instant as he stepped toward her. They met more or less halfway across the lecture hall and stayed a good meter apart.

"Hi," said Mattia. "I didn't think-"

"Listen," she broke in, looking resolutely into his eyes. "We don't even know each other. I'm sorry I just turned up like this."

"No, don't-" he tried to say, but Nadia didn't let him speak.

"I woke up and didn't find you, you could at least have…"

She stopped for a second. Mattia was forced to lower his gaze because his eyes stung, as if he hadn't blinked for more than a minute.

"But it doesn't matter," Nadia went on. "I don't chase after anybody. I don't feel like it anymore."

She held out a piece of paper and he took it.

"That's my number. But if you decide to use it don't wait too long."

They both looked at the floor. Nadia was about to lean forward, and wobbled slightly on her heels, but then suddenly turned around.

"Bye," she said.

Mattia cleared his throat instead of responding. He thought that it would take a finite amount of time for her to reach the door. Not enough time to make a decision, to articulate a thought.

Nadia stopped in the doorway.

"I don't know what's wrong with you," she said. "But whatever it is, I think I like it."

Then she left. Mattia looked at the piece of paper, on which there was merely a name and a sequence of numbers, mostly odd numbers. He picked up his papers from the desk, but waited for the hour to finish before leaving.

In the office Alberto was on the phone, the receiver pinched between his chin and his cheek, so he could gesticulate with both arms. He raised an eyebrow to Mattia in greeting.

When he hung up he leaned back into his chair and stretched his legs. He gave him a complicit smile.

"So?" he asked. "Were we up late last night?"

Mattia deliberately avoided his gaze. He shrugged. Alberto got up and went and stood behind Mattia's chair, massaging his shoulders like a trainer with his boxer. Mattia didn't like to be touched.

"I understand, you don't feel like talking about it. All right, then, let's change the subject. I've jotted down a draft for the article. Feel like casting your eye over it?"

Mattia nodded. He drummed gently with his index finger on the 0 of the computer, waiting for Alberto to take his hands off his shoulders. Some images from the previous night, always the same ones, ran through his head like faint flashes of light.

Alberto went back to his desk and slumped heavily into his chair. He started looking for the article amid a shapeless pile of papers.

"Ah," he said. "This came for you."

He tossed an envelope on Mattia's desk. Mattia looked at it without touching it. His name and the address of the university were written in thick blue ink, which must have soaked through to the other side of the paper. The M of Mattia started with a straight line, then, slightly detached from it, a soft, concave curve set off, continuing into the right-hand vertical. The two t' s were held together by a single horizontal line and all the letters were slightly sloped, piled up as if they had fallen on top of one another. There was a mistake in the address, a c too many. He would have needed only one letter, or nothing but the asymmetry between the two potbellied loops of the B in Balossino, to recognize Alice's handwriting straightaway.