GIORDANO, Paolo

The Solitude of Prime Numbers

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In his first year at university, Mattia had learned that, among prime numbers, there are some that are even more special. Mathematicians call them twin primes: pairs of prime numbers that are close to each other, almost neighbors, but between them there is always an even number that prevents them from truly touching. Numbers like 11 and 13, like 17 and 19, 41 and 43. If you have the patience to go on counting, you discover that these pairs gradually become rarer. You encounter increasingly isolated primes, lost in that silent, measured space made only of ciphers, and you develop a distressing presentiment that the pairs encountered up until that point were accidental, that solitude is the true destiny. Then, just when you're about to surrender, when you no longer have the desire to go on counting, you come across another pair of twins, clutching each other tightly. There is a common conviction among mathematicians that however far you go, there will always be another two, even if no one can say where exactly, until they are discovered.

…..
Mattia became aware of Alice’s presence when she rested a hand on the table: the tension broke and a thin layer of liquid spilled over the rim and settled around the base in a dark ring.

He instinctively looked up and met her gaze.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

Mattia nodded. “Fine,” he said.

“Do you like the party?”

“Mmm.”

“Music this loud gives me a headache.”

Alice waited for Mattia to say something. She looked at him and it seemed to her that he wasn’t breathing. His eyes were meek and pain-stricken. Like the first time, she suddenly wanted to draw those eyes toward her, to take Mattia’s head in her hands and tell him everything would be okay.

“Will you come into the other room with me?” she ventured.

Mattia looked at the floor, as if he had been waiting for those very words.

“Okay,” he said.

Alice headed down the hall and he followed a short distance behind. Mattia, as always, kept his head down and looked in front of him. He noticed that Alice’s right leg bent gracefully at the knee, like every other leg in the world, and her foot brushed the floor without a sound. Her left leg, on the other hand, remained stiff. To push it forward she had to make it do a little arc outward. For a fraction of a second her pelvis was unbalanced, as if she were about to topple sideways. At last her left foot touched the ground as well, heavily, like a crutch.

Mattia concentrated on that gyroscopic rhythm, and without realizing it he synchronized his steps with hers.

When they got to Viola’s room, Alice sidled up next to him and, with a daring that startled even her, closed the door. They were standing, he on the rug and she just off it.

Why doesn’t he say anything? Alice wondered. For a moment she wanted to drop the whole thing, to open the door again and leave, to breathe normally.

But what would I tell Viola? she thought.

“It’s better in here, isn’t it?” she said.

“Yeah,” Mattia agreed, nodding. His arms dangled at his sides like a ventriloquist’s dummy. With his right index finger he was folding a short, hard bit of skin that stuck out from beside his thumbnail. It was almost like piercing himself with a needle and the sting distracted him for a moment from the charged air in the room.

Alice sat on Viola’s bed, balancing on the edge. The mattress didn’t dip beneath her weight. She looked around, searching for something.

“Why don’t you sit down here?” she asked Mattia at last.

He obeyed, sitting down carefully, about a foot away from her. The music in the living room sounded like the heavy, panting breath of the walls. Alice noticed Mattia’s hands, clenched into fists.

“Is your hand better?” she asked.

“Nearly,” he said.

“How did you do it?”

“I cut myself. In the biology lab. By accident.”

“Can I see?”

Mattia tightened his fists still further. Then he slowly opened his left hand. A furrow, light in shade and perfectly straight, cut it diagonally.

Around it, Alice made out scars that were shorter and paler, almost white. They filled the whole of his palm, intersecting like the branches of a leafless tree seen against the light.

“I’ve got one too, you know,” she said.

Mattia clenched his fist again and trapped his hand between his legs, as if to hide it. Alice stood up, lifted her sweatshirt slightly, and unbuttoned her jeans. He was seized by panic. He turned his eyes to the floor, but still managed to see Alice’s hands folding back the edge of her trousers, revealing a piece of white gauze framed by Scotch tape and, just below it, the top of a pair of pale gray underpants.

Alice lowered the elastic band a couple of inches and Mattia held his breath.

“Look,” she said.

A long scar ran along her protruding pelvis bone. It was thick and in relief, and wider than Mattia’s. The marks from the stitches, which intersected it perpendicularly and at regular intervals, made it look like the kind of scar children draw on their faces when they dress up as pirates.

Mattia couldn’t think what to say. Alice buttoned up her jeans and tucked her undershirt inside them. Then she sat down again, a little closer to him.

The silence was almost unbearable for both of them, the empty space between their faces overflowing with expectation and embarrassment.

“Do you like your new school?” Alice asked, for the sake of saying something.

“Yes.”

“They say you’re a genius.”

Mattia sucked in his cheeks and bit into them till he felt the metallic taste of blood filling his mouth.

“Do you really like studying?”

Mattia nodded.

“Why?”

“It’s the only thing I know how to do,” he said shortly. He wanted to tell her that he liked studying because you can do it alone, because all the things you study are already dead, cold, and chewed over. He wanted to tell her that the pages of the schoolbooks were all the same temperature, that they left you time to choose, that they never hurt you and you couldn’t hurt them either. But he said nothing.

“And do you like me?” Alice went for it. Her voice came out rather shrilly and her face exploded with heat.

“I don’t know,” Mattia answered hastily, looking at the floor.

…..
Soledad returned to her lover. They kissed for a long time, sitting side by side, not knowing what to do with their own hands, clumsy and out of practice. Then Ernesto plucked up the courage to pull her to him.

As he fiddled with the devilish hooks that fastened her bra, apologizing under his breath for being so clumsy, she felt young and beautiful and uninhibited. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again she saw Alice, standing in the doorway. “Coño,” she blurted out. “¿Qué haces aqui’?” She slipped away from Ernesto and covered her bosom with one arm. Alice tilted her head to one side and observed them without surprise, as if they were animals in a zoo. “I can’t get to sleep,” she said.
…..
Two rooms away, the girls had sat Alice down on Viola’s sister’s bed to instruct her about what to do. “No blow jobs. Not even if he asks you, understand?” advised Giada Savarino. “The first time the max you can do is a hand job.” Alice laughed nervously and couldn’t work out whether Giada was being serious. “Now, you go back in there and start talking to him,” explained Viola, who had a plan in mind and a very clear one. “Then you come up with an excuse to take him to my room, okay? ”“And what excuse am I supposed to come up with?”

…..
Mattia opened the door and stepped into the office.“Hello,” he said.“Hello,” replied Niccoli. Mattia’s eye caught sight of a photograph hanging behind the professor, which showed him, much younger and beardless, holding a silver plate and shaking hands with an important-looking stranger. Mattia narrowed his eyes, but couldn’t read what was written on the plate. “Well, then?” Niccoli urged, studying him with a frown. “I’d like to write a dissertation on the zeros of the Riemann zetafunction,” said Mattia, staring at the professor’s right shoulder where a dusting of dandruff looked like a little starry sky. Niccoli made a face, an ironic smile. “Excuse me, but who are you?” he asked without concealing his disdain and locking his hands behind his head as if wanting to enjoy a moment of fun. “My name is Mattia Balossino. I’ve finished my exams and I’d like to graduate within the year.

…..
There was an enormous list of things to say floating over their heads and both of them tried to ignore it by looking at the floor. Alice slid her back along the wardrobe and sat down on the ground with her working knee against her chest. She forced a smile .“So, how does it feel to have graduated?” Mattia shrugged and smiled very slightly. “Exactly the same as before.” “You really don’t know how to be happy, do you?” “Apparently not.”

…..
With a certain awkwardness they rolled onto one side and Mattia ended up underneath. One of his legs was dangled off the sofa and the other was extended straight, blocked by her weight. He thought of the circular movement of his own tongue, its periodic motion, but soon he lost concentration, as if Nadia’s face squashed against his own had managed to obstruct the complicated mechanism of his thought, like that time with Alice. He slid his hands under Nadia’s top and contact with her skin didn’t repel him. They got undressed slowly, without pulling apart or opening their eyes. There was too much light in the room and any interruption would have made them stop. As he busied himself with the unfastening of her bra Mattia thought it happens. In the end it happens, in some way you couldn’t imagine befor

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