Prime numbers are divisible only by 1 and by themselves. They hold their place in the infinite series of natural numbers, squashed, like all numbers, between two others, but one step further than the rest. They are suspicious, solitary numbers, which is why Mattia thought they were wonderful. Sometimes he thought that they had ended up in that sequence by mistake, that they'd been trapped, like pearls strung on a necklace. Other times he suspected that they too would have preferred to be like all the others, just ordinary numbers, but for some reason they couldn't do it. This second thought struck him mostly at night, in the chaotic interweaving of images that comes before sleep, when the mind is too weak to tell itself lies.
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 thought that he and Alice were like that, twin primes, alone and lost, close but not close enough to really touch each other. He had never told her that. When he imagined confessing these things to her, the thin layer of sweat on his hands evaporated completely and for a good ten minutes he was no longer capable of touching anything.
He came home one winter day after having spent the afternoon at her house, where she'd done nothing the whole time but switch from one television channel to another. Mattia had paid no attention to the words or the images. Alice's right foot, resting on the living room coffee table, invaded his field of vision, penetrating it from the left like the head of a snake. Alice flexed her toes with hypnotic regularity. That repeated movement made something solid and worrying grow in his stomach and he struggled to keep his gaze fixed for as long as possible, so that nothing in the frame would change.
At home he took a pile of blank pages from his ring binder, thick enough so that the pen would run softly over them without scratching the stiff surface of the table. He leveled the edges with his hands, first above and below and then at the sides. He chose the fullest pen from the ones on the desk, removed the cap, and slipped it on the end so as not to lose it. Then he began to write in the exact center of the sheet, without needing to count the squares.
2760889966649. He put the lid back on the pen and set it down next to the paper. "Twothousandsevenhundredsixtybillioneighthundredeightyninemillionninehundredsixtysixthousandsixhundredandfortynine," he read out loud. Then he repeated it under his breath, as if to take possession of that tongue twister. He decided that this number would be his. He was sure that no one else in the world, no one else in the whole history of the world, had ever stopped to consider that number. Probably, until then, no one had ever written it down on a piece of paper, let alone spoken it out loud.
After a moment's hesitation he jumped two lines and wrote 2760889966651. This is hers, he thought. In his head the figures assumed the pale color of Alice's foot, standing out against the bluish glare of the television.
They could also be twin primes, Mattia had thought. If they are…
That thought suddenly seized him and he began to search for divisors for both numbers. 3 was easy: it was enough to take the sum of the numbers and see if it was a multiple of 3. 5 was ruled out from the beginning. Perhaps there was a rule for 7 as well, but Mattia couldn't remember it so he started doing the division longhand. Then 11, 13, and so on, in increasingly complicated calculations. He became drowsy for the first time trying 37, the pen slipping down the page. When he got to 47 he stopped. The vortex that had filled his stomach at Alice's house had dispersed, diluted into his muscles like smells in the air, and he was no longer able to notice it. In the room there were only himself and a lot of disordered pages, full of pointless divisions. The clock showed a quarter past three in the morning.
Mattia picked up the first page, the one with the two numbers written in the middle, and felt like an idiot. He tore it in half and then in half again, until the edges were firm enough to pass like a blade beneath the nail of the ring finger of his left hand.
During his four years of university, mathematics had led him into the most remote and fascinating corners of human thought. With meticulous ritualism Mattia copied out the proofs of all the theorems he encountered in his studies. Even on summer afternoons he kept the blinds lowered and worked in artificial light. He removed from his desk everything that might distract his gaze, so as to feel truly alone with the page. He wrote without stopping. If he found himself hesitating too long over a passage or made a mistake when aligning an expression after the equals sign, he shoved the paper to the floor and started all over. When he got to the end of those pages stuffed with symbols, letters, and numbers, he wrote "QED," and for a moment he felt he had put a small piece of the world in order. Then he leaned against the back of the chair and wove his hands together, without letting them rub.
He slowly lost contact with the page. The symbols, which only a moment before flowed from the movement of his wrist, now seemed distant to him, frozen in a place that denied him access. His head, immersed in the darkness of the room, began to fill with dark, disorderly thoughts and Mattia would usually choose a book, open it at random, and begin studying again.
Complex analysis, projective geometry, and tensor calculus had not managed to diminish his initial passion for numbers. Mattia liked to count, starting from 1 and proceeding through complicated progressions, which he often invented on the spur of the moment. He allowed himself to be led by numbers and he seemed to know each one of them. And so, when it came time to choose his thesis topic, he went with no doubts to the office of Professor Niccoli, professor of discrete calculus, with whom he had never even sat an exam and about whom he knew nothing other than his name.
Francesco Niccoli's office was on the fourth floor of the nineteenth-century building that housed the mathematics department. It was a small room, tidy and odorless, dominated by the color white-the walls, shelves, plastic desk, even the cumbersome computer on top of it, were white. Mattia drummed softly on the door and from inside Niccoli wasn't sure if the knocking was for him or for the office next door. He said come in, hoping he had not made a fool of himself.
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 zeta function," 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."
"Have you got your record book with you?"
Mattia nodded. He slid his backpack off, crouched on the floor, and rummaged around in it. Niccoli stretched out his hand to take the book, but Mattia preferred to set it on the edge of the desk.
For some months the professor had been obliged to hold objects at a distance to get them properly into focus. He quickly ran his eyes over the sequence of high grades. Not one flub, not one hesitation, not one try that had gone wrong, perhaps on account of a love story that had ended badly.
He closed the book and looked more carefully at Mattia. He was dressed anonymously and had the posture of someone who doesn't know how to occupy the space of his own body. The professor thought he was another of those who do well in their studies because they are unable to make much headway in life. The ones who, as soon as they find themselves outside the well-trodden paths of the university, always reveal themselves to be good for nothing.
"Don't you think I should be the one to suggest a topic for you?" he asked, speaking slowly.
Mattia shrugged. His black eyes moved right to left, following the edge of the desk.
"I'm interested in prime numbers. I want to work on the Riemann zeta function," he replied.
Niccoli sighed. Then he got up and walked over to the white bookshelf. As he ran his index finger along the spines of the books he snorted rhythmically. He pulled out some typed pages stapled in one corner.
"Fine, fine," he said, handing them to Mattia. "You can come back when you've performed the calculations in this article. All of them."
Mattia took the stack of pages and, without reading the title, slipped it into his backpack, which leaned against his leg, open and slack. He mumbled a thank-you and left the office, pulling the door shut behind him.
Niccoli went and sat back down in his chair and thought about how over dinner he would complain to his wife about this new and unexpected annoyance.
Alice's father had taken this photography business as the whim of a bored little girl. Nonetheless, for his daughter's twenty-third birthday, he gave her a Canon SLR, with case and tripod, and she had thanked him with a beautiful smile, as impossible to grasp as a gust of icy wind. He had also paid for her to take evening classes, which lasted six months, and Alice hadn't missed a single lesson. The agreement was clear if implicit: university came before everything else.
Then, in a precise instant, like the line separating light and shade, Fernanda's illness had gotten worse, dragging all three of them into an increasingly tight spiral of new tasks, drawing them toward an inevitable cycle of apathy and mutual indifference. Alice hadn't set foot in the university again and her father pretended not to notice. A feeling of remorse, the origins of which belonged to another time, kept him from imposing his will on his daughter and almost kept him from talking to her at all. Sometimes he thought it wouldn't take much, all he would have to do was go into her room one evening and tell her… Tell her what? His wife was disappearing from life like a wet mark drying on a shirt and, with her, the thread that still connected him to his daughter was slackening-it was already scraping the ground-leaving her free to decide for herself.
With photography Alice liked the actions more than the results. She liked opening the back of the camera and unrolling the new film a couple of inches, just enough to catch it in the runner, and thinking that this empty film would soon become something and not knowing what, taking the first few snaps into the void, aiming, focusing, checking her balance, deciding whether to include or exclude pieces of reality as she saw fit, enlarging, distorting.
Every time she heard the click of the shutter, followed by that faint rustle, she remembered when she used to catch grasshoppers in the garden of their house in the mountains when she was a little girl, trapping them between her cupped hands. She thought that it was the same with photographs, only now she seized time and fixed it on celluloid, capturing it halfway through its jump toward the next moment.
During the course she had been taught that the strap of the camera is to be wrapped around the wrist twice. That way, if someone tries to steal it they're forced to tear your whole arm off along with it. Alice ran no such risk in the corridor of Our Lady's Hospital, where her mother was being cared for, but she was used to carrying her Canon like that anyway.
As she walked she grazed along the two-tone wall, brushing it with her right shoulder from time to time to avoid touching anyone. Lunchtime visiting hour had just begun and people were pouring into the hospital like a liquid mass.
Aluminum-and-plywood doors opened onto the wards, each with its own particular smell. Oncology smelled of disinfectant and gauze soaked in methylated spirits.
Alice entered her mother's room, which was the second to last. She was sleeping a sleep that wasn't her own and the gadgets to which she was connected didn't make a sound. The light was faint and drowsy. On the bedside table red flowers were arranged in a vase: Soledad had brought them the day before.
Alice rested her hands and the camera on the edge of the bed, where the sheet, lifted in the middle by her mother's outline, flattened out again.
She came every day to do nothing. The nurses already took care of everything. Her role was to talk to her mother, she imagined. Lots of people do that, acting as if the patients were capable of hearing their thoughts, able to understand who was standing there beside them, and conversing with them inside their own heads, as if illness could open up a different channel of perception between people.
It was not something that Alice believed in. She felt alone in that room and that was that. Usually she would just sit there, waiting for half an hour to pass, and then leave. If she met a doctor she asked for news, which was always the same anyway. Their words and raised eyebrows meant we're only waiting for something to go wrong.
That morning, however, she had brought a hairbrush. She took it out of her bag and delicately, making sure not to scratch her face, combed her mother's hair; at least the hair that wasn't squashed against the pillow. She was as inert and as submissive as a doll.
She arranged her mother's arms on top of the sheet, extended and parallel, in a relaxed pose. Another drop of the saline solution in the drip ran down the tube and disappeared into Fernanda's veins.
Alice moved to the end of the bed, resting the Canon on the aluminum bar. She shut her left eye and pressed the other to the viewfinder. She had never photographed her mother before. She pressed the shutter and then leaned a little farther forward, without losing the frame.
A rustling sound startled her and the room suddenly filled with light.
"Better?" said a male voice behind her.
Alice turned around. Beside the window a doctor was busying himself with the cord of the venetian blinds. He was young.
"Yes, thanks," said Alice, a little intimidated.
The doctor stuck his hands in the pockets of his white coat and went on looking at her, as if waiting for her to continue. She leaned forward and snapped again, more or less randomly, as if to please him.
He must think I'm crazy, she said to herself.
Instead the doctor came casually over to her mother's bed. He took a glance at her chart, narrowing his eyes as he read, reducing them to slits. He went over to the drip and moved a wheel with his thumb. The drops started to come down more quickly and he watched them with satisfaction. Alice thought there was something reassuring about his movements.
The doctor came over to her and grasped the bed rail.
"The nurses are obsessed," he remarked to himself. "They want darkness everywhere. As if it weren't already hard enough in here to tell day from night."
He turned and smiled.
"Are you the daughter?"
"Yes."
He nodded, without condescension.
"I'm Dr. Rovelli," he said. "Fabio," he added, as if he'd been thinking about it.
Alice shook his hand and introduced herself. For a few seconds they stared at the sleeping Fernanda, without exchanging a word.
Then the doctor tapped twice on the metal bed, which sounded hollow, and walked away. As he passed by Alice he leaned slightly toward her ear.
"Don't say it was me," he whispered, winking and pointing at the light-filled windows.
When visiting hours were over Alice descended the two flights of stairs, crossed the entrance hall, and left through the automatic glass doors.
She crossed the courtyard and stopped at the kiosk for a bottle of fizzy water. She was hungry, but was used to keeping the impulse in check until she had erased it almost entirely. Fizzy drinks were one of her tricks. They were enough to fill her stomach, at least long enough to overcome the critical moment of lunch.
She looked for her wallet in her purse, hampered slightly by the camera that hung from her wrist.
"It's on me," said someone behind her.
Fabio, the doctor whom she had met just half an hour before, held out a bill to the man in the kiosk. He smiled at Alice in a way that stripped her of her wish to protest. Instead of the white coat he wore a blue short-sleeved T-shirt and a strong aftershave that she hadn't noticed before.
"And a Coke," he added, turning to the man.
"Thanks," said Alice.
She tried to open the bottle, but the top slipped through her fingers without moving.
"May I?" said Fabio.
He took the bottle from her hand and opened it using only his thumb and index finger. Alice thought there was nothing special in the gesture, that she could have done it herself, like anyone else, if only her hands hadn't been so sweaty. And yet she found it strangely fascinating, like a small heroic feat performed specially for her.
Fabio gave her back the water and they drank, each from their own bottle, glancing stealthily at each other as if contemplating what to say next. Fabio's hair was short, with chestnut curls that shaded into red where the sun struck them directly. Alice had a sense that he was aware of the way the light played on his hair; that in some way he was aware of everything he was, and all the things around him.
They moved a few feet away from the kiosk, together, as if by common agreement. Alice didn't know how to say good-bye. She felt indebted to him, partly because he had given her the water and partly because he had helped her to open it. She wasn't even sure she wanted to go so quickly.
Fabio understood.
"Can I walk you to wherever you're going?" he asked cheekily.
Alice blushed.
"I'm going to the car."
"To the car, then."
She didn't say yes or no, but smiled, looking in another direction. Fabio made an obsequious gesture with his hand that meant after you.
They crossed the main road and turned into a smaller one, where the sidewalk was no longer sheltered by trees.
It was from Alice's shadow, as they walked side by side, that the doctor noticed the asymmetry of her gait. Her right shoulder, weighed down by the camera, acted as a counterpoint to the line of her left leg, which was as hard as a stick. Alice's unsettling grace was exacerbated in her oblong shadow, making it look one-dimensional, a dark segment branching out into two proportional and equal mechanical prostheses.
"Have you hurt your leg?" he asked.
"What?" said Alice, alarmed.
"I asked if you'd hurt yourself," he repeated. "I saw you were limping."
Alice felt her good leg contracting too. She tried to correct her walk, leaning on her faulty leg as much as she could, until it really hurt. She thought of the cruelty and precision of the word lame.
"I had an accident," she said. Then, as if by way of apology, she added, "A long time ago."
"Car?"
"No, skiing."
"I love skiing," Fabio said enthusiastically, sure that he had found an opportunity for a conversation.
"I hate it," Alice replied crisply.
"That's too bad."
"Yes, too bad."
They walked side by side not saying anything more. The young doctor was surrounded by an aura of tranquillity, a solid and transparent sphere of security. His lips were pursed in a smile even when he wasn't smiling. He looked at ease, as if he met a girl in a hospital room every day and chatted to her as he walked her back to her car. Alice, on the other hand, felt like a piece of wood. Her tendons were on the alert, she was aware of the creaking of her joints, the stiff muscles sticking to her bones.
She pointed to a parked blue Seicento, as if to say that's it, and Fabio spread out his arms. A car passed along the road behind them. From nothing, its noise grew and then faded away again, until it finally disappeared.
"So, are you a photographer?" said the doctor, to buy some time as much as anything else.
"Yes," Alice replied instinctively. She immediately regretted it. For the moment she was a girl who had quit university and was wandering around the streets snapping photographs more or less at random. She wondered whether that was enough to make her a photographer; what was the boundary between being and not being someone?
She bit her thin lip. "More or less," she added.
"May I?" the doctor said, opening his hand for the camera.
"Of course."
Alice unwound the strap from her wrist and held it out to him. He turned it around in his hands. He took off the lens cap and aimed the lens first in front of him and then upward, toward the sky.
"Wow," he observed. "It looks professional."
She blushed and the doctor made as if to give her back the camera.
"You can take a picture if you like," said Alice.
"No, no, please. I don't know how. You do it."
"Of what?"
Fabio looked around. He turned his head from side to side, dubiously. Then he shrugged.
"Of me," he replied.
Alice looked at him suspiciously.
"Why should I?" she asked him, with a slightly malicious inflection that escaped from her involuntarily.
"Because then you'd have to see me again, at least to show it to me."
Alice hesitated for a moment. She looked into Fabio's eyes, carefully for the first time, and couldn't hold their gaze for more than a second. They were blue and shadowless, as clear as the sky behind him, and she felt lost inside them, as if she were naked in a huge empty room.
He's handsome, thought Alice. He's handsome in the way a boy should be handsome.
She aimed the viewfinder at the middle of his face. He smiled, without a hint of embarrassment. He didn't even tilt his head, as people often do in front of the lens. Alice adjusted the focus and then pressed down with her index finger. The air was shattered by a click.
Mattia presented himself in Niccoli's office a week after their first meeting. The professor recognized his knock, a fact that curiously disturbed him. Seeing Mattia come in, he took a deep breath, ready to fly into a fury as soon as the boy said something along the lines of there are things I don't understand or I wanted to ask you if you could explain a few passages to me. If I'm forceful enough, Niccoli thought, I might be able to get rid of him.
Mattia asked may I, and, without looking the professor in the face, set down on the edge of his desk the article that he had given him to study. Niccoli picked it up and a little stack of pages slid out, numbered and neatly written, appended to the stapled ones. He quickly gathered them up and realized they were the calculations of the article, perfectly executed and with precise reference to the text. He quickly flipped through them but didn't need to examine them thoroughly to determine that they were correct: the order of the pages was enough to reveal their exactness.
He was a little disappointed, his fit of fury stuck halfway down his throat, like a sneeze that refused to come. He kept nodding as he reviewed Mattia's work, trying in vain to suppress a jolt of envy for this boy who seemed so unfit for existence but was doubtless gifted in this subject, something he himself had never really felt.
"Very good," he said at last, more to himself than with the intention of paying a genuine compliment. Then, with apparent boredom, "A problem is raised in the final paragraphs. It concerns the moments of the zeta function to-"
"I've done it," Mattia cut in. "I think I've solved it."
Niccoli looked at him with suspicion and then with deliberate disdain.
"Oh, really?"
"In the last page of my notes."
The professor licked his index finger and flipped through to the end. Frowning, he quickly read Mattia's demonstration, not understanding much of it, but not finding anything to object to either. Then he started from the beginning, more slowly, and this time the reasoning struck him as clear, quite rigorous, in fact, although marred here and there by amateur pedantry. As he followed the steps, his forehead relaxed and he unconsciously began stroking his lower lip. He forgot about Mattia, who was still frozen in the same position since he first arrived, looking at his feet and repeating in his head let it be right, let it be right, as if the rest of his life depended on the professor's verdict. As he said that to himself he didn't imagine, however, that it really would be.
Niccoli rested the pages on the table again, carefully, and dropped back into his chair, once again crossing his hands behind his head, his favorite position.
"Well, I'd say you're all set," he said.
He was to graduate at the end of May. Mattia asked his parents not to come. What? was all his mother could say. He shook his head, looking toward the window. The glass gave onto a wall of darkness and reflected the image of the three of them sitting around a foursided table. In the reflection Mattia saw his father taking his mother's arm and gesturing to her to let it go. Then he saw the reflection of her getting up from the table with her hand over her mouth and turning on the tap to wash the dishes, even though they hadn't finished dinner yet.
Graduation day arrived just like any other, and Mattia got up before the alarm. His phantasms, which had filled his mind with scribbled sheets of paper during the night, took a few minutes to dissolve. No one was in the living room, just an elegant blue suit, brand-new, laid out beside a perfectly ironed pale pink shirt. On the shirt was a note with the words To our graduate and signed Mom and Dad, but in Dad's handwriting alone. Mattia put the clothes on and left the house without even looking at himself in the mirror.
He defended his thesis, looking the members of the committee straight in the eyes, devoting an equal amount of time to each of them and with a steady voice. Niccoli, sitting in the first row, nodded gravely and noted the growing amazement on the faces of his colleagues.
When the moment of the announcement came, Mattia arranged himself in a line with the other candidates. They were the only ones standing in the oversized space of the great hall. Mattia felt the eyes of the audience tingle on his back. He tried to distract himself by estimating the volume of the room, taking as his scale the height of the dean, but the tingle climbed up his neck and split in two directions, wrapping around to his temples. He imagined thousands of little insects pouring into his ears; thousands of hungry moths tunneling into his brain.
The words that the dean repeated identically for each candidate seemed longer each time, and were drowned out by a growing noise in his head, so loud that he couldn't make out his own name when the moment came. Something solid, like an ice cube, obstructed his throat. He shook the dean's hand and it was so dry to the touch that he instinctively sought the metal buckle of the belt that he wasn't wearing. The whole audience rose to its feet with the sound of a rising tide. Niccoli came over and clapped him twice on the shoulder, saying congratulations. Before the applause ended Mattia was out of the hall and walking hastily down the corridor, forgetting to put his toe down first to keep his footsteps from echoing on the way out.
I've done it, I've done it, he silently repeated to himself. But the closer he got to the door the more aware he became of an abyss opening up in his stomach. Outside, the sunlight overwhelmed him, along with the heat and the noise of the traffic. He staggered, as if from fear of falling from the concrete step. There was a group of people on the pavement; Mattia counted sixteen with a single glance. Many of them were holding flowers, almost certainly waiting for his fellow students. For a moment Mattia wished someone was there for him. He felt the need to abandon his own weight onto someone else's body, as if the contents of his head had suddenly become more than his two legs alone could bear. He looked for his parents, he looked for Alice and Denis, but there were only strangers looking nervously at their watches, fanning themselves with sheets of paper they'd picked up who knows where, smoking, talking loudly, and noticing nothing.
He looked at the degree that he held rolled up in his hand, on which was written in beautiful cursive script that Mattia Balossino was a graduate, a professional, an adult, that it was time for Mr. Balossino, B.Sc., to face up to life, and that this meant he had reached the end of the track that he had blindly followed from the first year of primary school to graduation. He was still only half breathing, as if the air didn't have enough momentum to accomplish the complete cycle.
What now? he wondered out loud.
A short, panting woman said excuse me, please, and he stepped aside to let her in. He followed her inside, not even she could lead him to the right answer, and walked reluctantly down the corridor and climbed the stairs to the second floor. He stepped into the library and went and sat down at his usual place, beside the window. He set his degree down on the empty seat beside him and stretched his hands out on the table. He concentrated on his own breathing, which was still stuck in some backwash between his throat and the bottom of his lungs. It had happened to him before, but never for such a long time.
You can't forget how to do it, he said to himself. It's something you simply can't forget and that's that.
He exhaled all the air and was in a state of apnea for several seconds. Then he opened his mouth wide and inhaled as hard as he could, so much that the muscles in his chest hurt. This time his breath went all the way to the bottom of his lungs and Mattia thought he could see the molecules of oxygen, round and white, scattering around his arteries and beginning to swirl toward his heart once more.
He stayed in the same position for an indefinite amount of time, without thinking, without noticing the students coming in and out, in an absentminded state of numbness and agitation.
Then something flashed in front of his eyes, a red patch, and Mattia gave a start. He focused his eyes upon a rose wrapped in cellophane, which someone had slapped rudely onto the desk. Following the stem he recognized Alice's hand with its protruding knuckles, slightly reddened compared to her white fingers, and rounded nails cut down to the edge of the fingertip.
"You're a real jerk."
Mattia looked at her as one looks at a hallucination. He felt as if he were approaching the scene from a long way away, from a blurry place that he was already unable to remember well. When he was close enough, he made out on Alice's face a deep and unfamiliar sadness.
"Why didn't you tell me?" she went on. "You should have told me. You should have."
Alice slipped into the seat opposite Mattia, exhausted. She looked outside, toward the street, shaking her head.
"How did you…?" Mattia began.
"Your parents. I found out from your parents." Alice turned and stared at him, her blue eyes boiling with rage. "Do you think that's right?"
Mattia hesitated and then shook his head, a dim and distorted outline moving with him over the wrinkled surface of the cellophane.
"I'd always imagined being there. I'd imagined it so many times. While you…"
Alice paused, the rest of the sentence trapped between her teeth. Mattia reflected once more on how that moment had suddenly become so real. He tried to remember where he had been until a few seconds before, but couldn't.
"You never did," Alice finished. "Never."
He felt his head sinking between his shoulders, felt the moths swarming inside his skull again.
"It wasn't important," he whispered. "I didn't want-"
"Shut up," she interrupted him abruptly. Someone at another desk said shhh and the silence of the next few seconds preserved the memory of that hiss.
"You're pale," said Alice. She looked at Mattia suspiciously. "Are you okay?"
"I don't know. I feel a bit dizzy."
Alice got to her feet. She brushed her hair from her forehead, along with a tangle of unpleasant thoughts. Then she bent over Mattia and gave him a kiss on the cheek, silent and light, which in a breath swept away all the insects.
"I'm sure you did brilliantly," she whispered into his ear. "I know you did."
Mattia felt her hair tickling his neck. He felt the soft hollow of air that separated them filling with her warmth and pressing lightly on his skin, like cotton wool. He became aware of an urge to pull her to him, but his hands remained motionless, as if asleep.
Alice straightened up, then she picked up his diploma from the chair, unrolled it, and smiled, reading it under her breath.
"Wow," she said at last. Her voice assumed a radiant tone. "We've got to celebrate. Come on, Mr. B.Sc., on your feet," she commanded.
She held out her hand to Mattia. He took it, rather uncertainly at first. He allowed himself to be led out of the library, with the same disarmed trust with which years before he had been dragged into the girls' bathroom. Over time the proportions between their hands had changed. Now his fingers wrapped completely around Alice's, like the rough halves of a seashell.
"Where are we going?" he asked her.
"For a drive. The sun's out. And you need to get some sun."
They left the building and this time Mattia wasn't afraid of the light, the traffic, and the people gathered around the entrance.
In the car they kept the windows lowered. Alice drove with both hands on the wheel and sang to "Pictures of You," imitating the sound of the words that she didn't know. Mattia felt his muscles gradually relaxing, adapting to the shape of the seat. He felt as if the car were leaving a dark and sticky trail in its wake, a trail of his past and all his worries. He gradually began to feel lighter, like a jar being emptied. He closed his eyes, and for a few seconds floated on the air that fanned his face, and on Alice's voice.
When he opened them again they were on the road leading to his house. He wondered if they might have organized a surprise party for him and prayed that it wasn't so.
"Come on, where are we going?" he asked again.
"Don't you worry," murmured Alice. "If you ever take me for a drive you'll have the right to choose."
For the first time Mattia was ashamed to be twenty-two and not have gotten his driver's license. It was another of the things he had left behind, another obvious step in a boy's life that he had decided not to take, so as to stay as far as possible from the machinery of life. Like eating popcorn at the movies, like sitting on the back of a bench, like not respecting your parents' curfew, like playing football with a ball of tinfoil, like standing naked in front of a girl. He thought that from this precise moment things would be different. He decided he would get his license as soon as possible. He would do it for her, to take her for a drive. Even though he was afraid to admit it, when he was with her it seemed it was worth doing all those normal things that normal people do.
Now that they were close to Mattia's house, Alice turned in another direction. She pulled onto the main road and parked the car a hundred yards down, opposite the park.
"Voila," she said. She unfastened her seat belt and got out of the car.
Mattia stayed frozen in his seat, his eyes fixed on the park.
"Well? Are you getting out?"
"Not here," he said.
"Come on, don't be stupid."
Mattia shook his head.
"Let's go somewhere else," he said.
Alice looked around.
"What's the problem?" she insisted. "We're just going to take a walk."
She came over to the window on Mattia's side. He was stiff, as if someone were sticking a knife in his back. His hand gripped the handle of the door, which was half open. He stared at the trees a hundred yards away. The wide, green leaves covered their knotty skeletons and the fractal structure of the branches, hiding their horrible secret.
He had never been back here. The last time was with the police, that day that his father had told him give your mother your hand and she had pulled hers away and stuck it in her pocket. That day he had still had both his arms bandaged, from his fingers to his elbow, with a thick dressing rolled in so many layers that it took a saw blade to remove it. He had shown the policemen where Michela had been sitting. They had wanted to know the exact spot and had taken pictures, first from far away and then from close up.
From the car, on the way back home, he had seen the dredging machines sinking their mechanical arms into the river and pulling out big piles of wet soil, then dropping them heavily on the bank. Mattia had noticed that his mother held her breath every time, until each pile disintegrated on the ground. Michela must have been in that slime, but they didn't find her. They never found her.
"Let's get out of here. Please," repeated Mattia. His tone wasn't pleading. Instead he seemed absorbed, annoyed.
Alice got back into the car.
"Sometimes I don't know whether-"
"That's where I abandoned my twin sister," he cut in with a flat, almost inhuman voice. He lifted his arm and with his right index finger pointed to the trees in the park. Then he left it hanging there in midair, as if he had forgotten about it.
"Twin sister? What are you talking about? You don't have a twin sister…"
Mattia nodded slowly, still staring at the trees.
"She was my identical twin. Completely identical to me," he said.
Then, before Alice even had time to ask, he told her everything. He spilled out the whole story, like a dam collapsing. The worm, the party, the Legos, the river, the bits of glass, the hospital room, the judge, the television appeal, the shrinks, everything, in a way he had never done with anyone. He talked without looking at her, without getting excited. Then he lapsed back into silence. He felt around under the seat with his right hand, but found only blunt shapes. He calmed down, feeling remote again, alien to his own body.
Alice's hand touched his chin and delicately turned his face toward her. All Mattia saw was a shadow moving toward him. He instinctively closed his eyes and then felt Alice's hot mouth on his, her tears on his cheek, or maybe they weren't hers, and finally her hands, so light, holding his head still and catching all his thoughts and imprisoning them there, in the space that no longer existed between them.
They saw each other often over the next month, without ever making a real date but never really by chance. After visiting hours Alice always ended up wandering around Fabio's ward, and he always managed to run into her. They'd stroll around the courtyard, always taking the same route that they had decided by mutual agreement, without discussing it. That outer enclosure marked the confines of their story, carving out a space where there was no need to name that clear and mysterious thing flowing between them.
Fabio seemed to have a precise knowledge of the dynamics of courtship; he knew how to respect rhythms and moderate phrases as if following a set protocol. He sensed Alice's profound suffering, but remained beyond it, as if he were standing on the border. The excesses of the world, whatever form they might assume, didn't really concern him. They collided with his equilibrium and common sense and so he preferred to ignore them, simply pretending that they didn't exist. If an obstacle blocked his path, he walked around it, without altering his own pace in the slightest, and soon forgot it. He never had doubts, or hardly ever.
Nonetheless, he knew how to reach an objective, so he was attentive to Alice's moods in a way that was respectful, though slightly pedantic. If she didn't talk, he asked her if something was wrong, but never twice in a row. He showed interest in her photographs, in how her mother was, and filled the silences with stories from his own day, amusing anecdotes he picked up around the ward.
Alice allowed herself to be carried away by his self-confidence and gradually abandoned herself to it, as she had abandoned herself to the support of the water when as a little girl she played dead in the swimming pool.
They lived the slow and invisible interpenetration of their universes, like two stars gravitating around a common axis, in ever tighter orbits, whose clear destiny is to coalesce at some point in space and time.
Alice's mother's treatment had been suspended. With a nod of the head, her husband had finally given his consent to let her sink into painless sleep, under a heavy blanket of morphine. Alice merely waited for it to come to an end and couldn't bring herself to feel guilty. Her mother already lived within her as a memory, settled like a clump of pollen in a corner of her head, where she would stay for the rest of her life, frozen in the same pile of soundless images.
Fabio hadn't planned to ask her and wasn't the type for impulsive gestures, but that afternoon there was something different about Alice. A kind of nervousness emerged from the way she wove her fingers together and moved her eyes from side to side, always careful not to meet his own. For the first time since meeting her he was hasty and incautious.
"My parents are going to the beach this weekend," he said out of the blue.
Alice seemed not to have heard. At any rate, she let the sentence drop. Her head had been buzzing like a wasps' nest for days. Mattia hadn't called her since his graduation, more than a week before, and yet it clearly was his turn now.
"I thought you could come to dinner at my place," Fabio tossed out.
His confidence faltered for a moment in the middle of those words, but he immediately shook off his uncertainty. He plunged both hands into the pockets of his white coat and prepared to accept any kind of reply with the same kind of lightness. He knew how to build a shelter for himself even before he needed one.
Alice smiled faintly, slightly panic-stricken.
"I don't know," she said gently. "Perhaps it isn't-"
"You're right," Fabio interrupted her. "I shouldn't have asked you. Sorry."
They finished their walk in silence and when they reached Fabio's ward again he murmured okay, long and drawn out, as if speaking to himself.
Neither of them moved. They exchanged a quick glance and immediately lowered their eyes. Fabio started to laugh.
"We never know how to say good-bye to each other, you and me," he said.
"Yeah." Alice smiled at him. She brought a hand to her hair, hooked a lock with her index finger, and tugged on it slightly.
Fabio took a resolute step toward her and the gravel of the path crunched beneath his foot. He kissed her on her left cheek, with affectionate arrogance, and then stepped back.
"Well, at least think about it," he said.
He smiled broadly, with his whole mouth, eyes, and cheeks. Then he turned around and walked confidently toward the entrance.
Now he'll turn around, thought Alice when he went through the glass door.
But Fabio turned the corner and disappeared down the corridor.
The letter was addressed to Mr. Mattia Balossino, B.Sc., and to the touch it was so light and insubstantial it seemed impossible it could contain his whole future. His mother hadn't shown it to him until dinner, perhaps out of embarrassment at having opened it without permission. She hadn't done it on purpose, she hadn't even looked at the name on the envelope: Mattia never got any mail.
"This came," she said, holding the letter over the plates.
Mattia glanced quizzically at his father, who nodded at something vague. Before taking the letter he ran his napkin over his upper lip, which was already clean. Seeing the complicated circular logo, printed in blue next to the address, he had no idea what it might contain. He pressed on both sides of the envelope to take out the folded page inside it. He opened it and began to read, rather impressed by the thought that this letter was specifically for him, Mr. Mattia Balossino, B.Sc.
His parents made more noise than necessary with their silverware and his father repeatedly cleared his throat. After reading it, Mattia refolded the page with the reverse sequence of gestures with which he had opened it, so as to return it to its initial form, and slipped it back into its envelope, which he then set down on Michela's chair.
He picked up his fork again, but was momentarily bewildered at the sight of the sliced zucchini on the plate, as if someone had made them appear there by surprise.
"It sounds like a wonderful opportunity," said Adele.
"Yeah."
"Do you want to go?"
As she spoke, Mattia's mother felt heat flashing in her face. She was aware that it had nothing to do with the fear of losing him. On the contrary, she hoped with all her might that he would accept, that he would leave this house and the place that he occupied opposite her every evening at dinner, his black head dangling over his plate and that contagious air of tragedy surrounding him.
"I don't know," Mattia replied to his plate.
"It's a wonderful opportunity," his mother repeated.
"Yeah."
Mattia's father broke the silence that followed with random thoughts about the efficiency of northern Europeans, about how clean their streets were, putting it all down to the severe climate and the lack of light for much of the year, which limited distractions. He had never been anywhere of the kind, but from what he had heard that was clearly how it was.
When, at the end of dinner, Mattia began stacking up the dishes, collecting them in the same order as he did every evening, his father put a hand on his shoulder and said under his breath go on, I'll finish up. Mattia picked up the envelope from the chair and went to his room.
He sat down on the bed and began turning the letter around in his hands. He folded it backward and forward a few times, making the thin paper of the envelope crack. Then he examined the logo beside the address more carefully. A bird of prey, probably an eagle, held its wings open and its head turned to one side so as to show its pointed beak in profile. Its wing tips and claws were inscribed in a circle, which a printing error had turned slightly oval. Another circle, larger and concentric with the preceding one, contained the name of the university that was offering Mattia a place. The Gothic characters, all those k's and h's in the name and the o's with a diagonal line running through them, which in mathematics indicated a null set, made Mattia imagine a tall, dark building, with echoing corridors and high ceilings, surrounded by lawns with grass cut to a few millimeters from the ground, as silent and deserted as a cathedral at the end of the world.
In that unknown and far-off place lay his future as a mathematician. There was a promise of salvation, an uncontaminated place where nothing was yet compromised. Here, on the other hand, there was Alice, just Alice, and all around her a swamp.
It happened as it had on the day he graduated. Once again his breath caught halfway down his throat, where it acted as a stopper. He gasped as if the air in his room had suddenly liquefied. The days had grown longer, and the dusk was blue and wearying. Mattia would wait for the last trace of light to fade, his mind wandering along corridors that he hadn't yet seen, now and then bumping into Alice, who would look at him without a word, without so much as a smile.
You've just got to decide, he thought. Go or don't go. 1 or 0, like a binary code.
But the more he tried to simplify things, the more confused he became.
Someone knocked on the door of his room. The sound reached him as if from the bottom of a well.
"Yes?" he said.
The door opened slowly and his father poked his head in.
"Can I come in?" he asked.
"Uh-huh."
"Why are you sitting in the dark?"
Without waiting for an answer, Pietro flipped the switch and 100 watts of light exploded in Mattia's dilated pupils, which contracted with a pleasant pain.
His father sat down on the bed next to him. They had the same way of crossing their legs, the left calf balanced on the right heel, but neither of them had ever noticed.
"What's the name of that thing you studied?" Pietro asked after a while.
"What thing?"
"That thing you wrote your dissertation on. I can never remember what it's called."
"The Riemann zeta function."
"Right. The Riemann zeta function."
Mattia rubbed his thumbnail under the nail of his little finger, but the skin there had become so hard and calloused that he didn't feel a thing. His nails slipped noisily over each other.
"I wish I'd had your mind," Pietro went on. "But I never understand a thing about math. It just wasn't for me. You have to have a special sort of brain for some things."
Mattia thought there was nothing good about having his mind. That he would happily have unscrewed it and replaced it with a different one, or even with a package of biscotti, provided it was empty and light. He opened his mouth to reply that feeling special is the worst kind of cage that a person can build for himself, but he didn't say anything. He thought about the time his teacher had sat him in the middle of the classroom, with everyone else staring at him like some exotic beast, and it occurred to him that it was as if he'd never moved from there in all those years.
"Did Mom tell you to come?" he asked his father.
The muscles in Pietro's neck stiffened. He sucked in his lips and then nodded.
"Your future is the most important thing," he said in a vaguely embarrassed voice. "You need to think about yourself now. If you decide to go we'll support you. We haven't got a lot of money, but enough if you need it."
There was another lengthy silence, in which Mattia thought about Alice, and about the share of money that he had stolen from Michela.
"Dad?" he said at last.
"Yes?"
"Could you leave, please? I have to make a phone call."
Pietro gave a long sigh that also contained a certain amount of relief.
"Of course," he said.
He got up, and before turning around he stretched a hand toward Mattia's face. He was about to caress his cheek, but stopped a few inches from the unruly tufts of his son's beard. He redirected his hand to his hair, which he barely touched. After all, it had been quite a while since they had done such things.
Denis's love for Mattia had burned itself out, like a forgotten candle in an empty room, leaving behind a ravenous discontent. When he was nineteen, Denis found an advertisement for a gay bar on the last page of a local newspaper and tore it out, keeping the scrap of paper in his wallet for two whole months. From time to time he unrolled it and reread the address, even though he already knew it by heart.
All around him, guys his age were going out with girls and by now they were used to sex, so much so that they'd stopped talking about it all the time. Denis felt that his only escape route lay in that piece of newspaper; in that address that had faded from the sweat of his fingertips.
He went one rainy evening, without really having made his mind up to go. He put on the first thing he pulled out of his closet and headed out, giving a quick shout to his parents in the other room. I'm going to the movies, he said.
He walked past the bar two or three times, circling the block every time. Finally he went in with his hands in his pockets and a confidential wink to the bouncer. He sat down at the bar, ordered a lager, and sipped it slowly, staring at the bottles lined up along the wall, waiting.
A guy came over to him a moment later and Denis decided he'd be okay, even before he looked him properly in the face. The man started talking about himself, or maybe about some film that Denis hadn't seen. He shouted in his ear but Denis didn't listen to a word. He brusquely interrupted him saying let's go to the toilet. The other guy was struck dumb and then he smiled, revealing bad teeth. Denis thought he was horrible, that his eyebrows almost joined up and he was old, too old, but it didn't matter.
In the toilet the guy pulled his T-shirt up over his belly and bent forward to kiss him, but Denis pulled away. Instead he knelt down and unbuttoned the other man's pants. Damn, he said, you're in a hurry. But then he let him get on with it. Denis shut his eyes and tried to finish as quickly as possible.
He didn't get a result with his mouth and felt completely hopeless. Then he used his hands, both of them, insistently. As the guy came he came too, in his pants. He almost ran from the toilet, without giving the stranger time to get his clothes back on. The same old sense of guilt took hold of him as soon as he was past the toilet door, and drenched him like a bucket of icy water.
Outside the bar he wandered about for half an hour in search of a fountain to wash the smell off him.
He went back to the bar on other occasions. Every time he talked to someone different and he always found an excuse not to give his real name. He never hooked up with anyone else. He collected the stories of people like himself, mostly keeping silent and listening. He slowly discovered that the stories were similar, that there was a process, and that the process involved immersion, putting your whole head under until you touched the bottom and only then coming up for air.
Every one of them had a love that had rotted alone in their heart, as his love for Mattia had done. Each of them had been afraid and many of them still were, but not when they were here, among others who could understand, protected by the "scene," as they put it. When he talked to those strangers Denis felt less alone and wondered when his moment would come, the day when he would touch bottom, resurface, and finally be able to breathe.
One evening someone told him about "the cemetery lamps." That's what they called the little path up behind the graveyard, where the only light, faint and trembling, was from the tombstone lamps filtering between the bars of the big cemetery gate. They would grope about there, it was the perfect place to empty themselves of desire without seeing or being seen, merely putting their bodies at the disposal of the dark.
It was at the lamps that Denis had touched bottom. He slammed into it with his face, chest, and knees, as though diving into shallow water. Afterward he never went back to the bar, locking himself away, more stubbornly than before, in his own denial.
Then, in his junior year at university, he went to study in Spain. There, far from the probing eyes of his family and friends, far from all the streets whose names he knew, love found him. His name was Valerio and he was Italian like him; young and scared to death like him. The months they spent together, in a little apartment a few blocks from the Ramblas, were quick and intense and they removed the useless cloak of suffering, as on the first clear evening after days of pouring rain.
Back in Italy they lost sight of each other, but Denis didn't suffer. With a completely new confidence, which he would never lose, he moved on to other affairs, which seemed to have been waiting for him for all that time, lined up in an orderly fashion just around the corner. The only old friendship he maintained was with Mattia. They spoke only rarely, mostly on the phone, and were capable of being silent for minutes at a time, each lost in his own thoughts, punctuated by the other's reassuring, rhythmical breathing at the other end of the line.
Denis was brushing his teeth when the call came. At his house they always answered after the second ring, the time it took to get to the nearest telephone from anywhere in the apartment.
His mother called Denis it's for you, and he took his time answering. He rinsed his mouth out well, passed the towel over it, and glanced once more at his two upper front incisors. Over the past few days he had had a sense that they were overlapping, because of his wisdom teeth pushing in from the sides.
"Hello?"
"Hi."
Mattia never introduced himself. He knew that his voice was unmistakable to his friend and anyway he didn't like saying his name.
"So, Mr. Graduate, how are you?" Denis said cheerfully. He wasn't upset about the graduation business. He had learned to respect the chasm that Mattia had dug around himself. Years previously he had tried to jump over that chasm, and had fallen into it. Now he contented himself with sitting on the edge, his legs dangling into the void. Mattia's voice no longer stirred anything in his stomach, but he was aware of the idea of him and always would be, as the only true benchmark for everything that had come afterward.
"Did I disturb you?" asked Mattia.
"No. Did I disturb you?" Denis teased.
"I was the one who called you."
"Of course, so tell me: I can tell from your voice that something's up."
Mattia remained silent. Something was up, it was there on the tip of his tongue.
"Well?" Denis pressed. "And this something would be?"
Mattia exhaled loudly into the receiver and Denis became aware that he was having difficulty breathing. He picked up a pen beside the telephone and started playing with it, passing it between the fingers of his right hand. Then he dropped it and he didn't bend down to pick it up. Mattia still wasn't speaking.
"Shall I start asking questions?" said Denis. "We could do it so that you-"
"I've been offered a position abroad," Mattia interrupted. "At a university. An important one."
"Wow," Denis observed, not surprised in the least. "That sounds fantastic. Are you going?"
"I don't know. Should I?"
Denis pretended to laugh.
"You're asking me that when I haven't even finished university? I'd go in a second. A change of air always does one good."
He thought of adding and what is there to keep you here? But he didn't say it.
"It's because something happened, the other day," Mattia ventured. "The day I graduated."
"Mmm."
"Alice was there and…"
"And?"
Mattia hesitated for a moment.
"Well, we kissed," he said at last.
Denis's fingers stiffened around the receiver. He was surprised by his reaction. He was no longer jealous of Alice, there was no point, but at that moment it was as if an undigested bit of the past had come back up his throat. For a moment he saw Mattia and Alice hand in hand in Viola's kitchen, and he felt Giulia Mirandi's invasive tongue forcing its way into his mouth like a rolled-up towel.
"Hallelujah," he remarked, trying to sound happy. "You two have finally done it."
"Yeah."
In the pause that followed both of them wanted to hang up.
"And now you don't know what to do," Denis struggled to say.
"Yeah."
"But you and she are now, what would you say…?"
"I don't know. I haven't seen her since."
"Ah."
Denis ran the nail of his index finger along the curled wire of the telephone. At the other end Mattia did the same and as always he thought of a DNA helix, missing its twin.
"Numbers are everywhere," said Denis. "They're always the same, aren't they?"
"Yes."
"But Alice is only here."
"Yes."
"So you've already made up your mind."
Denis heard his friend's breath easing and becoming more regular.
"Thank you," said Mattia.
"For what?"
Mattia hung up. Denis spent another few seconds with the receiver pressed to his ear, listening to the silence inside it. Something within him went out, like one last ember that had stayed lit for too long under the ashes.
I said the right thing, he thought.
The busy signal sounded. Denis hung up and went back into the bathroom to check on those wretched wisdom teeth.
"?Que pasa, mi amorcito?" Soledad asked Alice, tilting her head slightly to catch her eye. Ever since Fernanda had been in the hospital she had eaten at the dinner table with them, because father and daughter facing each other, alone, was unbearable for both of them.
Alice's father had developed the habit of not changing when he came home from work. He had dinner in his jacket and tie, slightly loosened, as if he were merely passing through. He held a newspaper open on the table and looked up only to make sure that his daughter was gulping down at least the occasional mouthful.
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.
"Uh-huh."
Mattia sat on the bed, with his hands crossed on his knees. Alice looked around the room. The things that filled it seemed not to have been touched by anyone; they looked like articles that had been carefully and calculatedly displayed in a shopwindow. There was nothing useless, not a photograph on the wall or a stuffed animal from childhood, nothing that gave off that smell of familiarity and affection that teenagers' rooms usually have. With all the chaos that filled her body and her head, Alice felt out of place.
"Nice room," she said, without really meaning it.
"Thanks," said Mattia.
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."
Alice let an affectionate mmm slip through her closed lips and thought that this embarrassment between them made no sense and yet it was there, solid and ineradicable.
"But things have been happening to you lately," she said.
"Yes."
Alice thought about whether to say it or not. Then she said it, not a drop of saliva left in her mouth.
"Something nice, no?"
Mattia drew in his legs.
Here we go, he thought.
"Yes, actually," he said.
He knew exactly what he was supposed to do. He was supposed to get up and go and sit next to her. He was supposed to smile, look into her eyes, and kiss her. It was that simple. It was mere mechanics, a banal sequence of vectors that would bring his mouth to meet hers. He could do it even if at that moment he didn't feel like it; he could trust the precision of his movements.
He made as if to get up, but somehow the mattress kept him where he was, like a sticky morass.
Once again Alice acted in his place.
"Can I sit next to you?" she asked.
He nodded and, even though there was no need to, moved slightly to one side.
Alice pulled herself to her feet, with the help of her hands.
On the bed, in the space that Mattia had left free, there was a piece of paper, typed and folded in three like an accordion. Alice picked it up to move it and noticed that it was written in English.
"What's this?" she asked.
"It came today. It's a letter from a university."
Alice read the name of the city, written in bold in the top left-hand corner, and the letters dimmed under her eyes.
"What does it say?"
"I've been offered a grant."
Alice felt dizzy and panic turned her face white.
"Wow," she lied. "For how long?"
"Four years."
She gulped. She was still standing up.
"And are you going?" she asked under her breath.
"I don't know yet," said Mattia, almost apologizing. "What do you think?"
Alice remained silent, with the sheet of paper in her hands and her gaze lost somewhere on the wall.
"What do you think?" Mattia repeated, as if she really hadn't heard him.
"What do I think about what?" Alice's voice had suddenly hardened, so much that Mattia gave a start. For some reason she thought about her mother in the hospital, dazed with drugs. She looked expressionlessly at the sheet of paper and wanted to tear it up.
Instead she put it back down on the bed, where she had been about to sit down.
"It would be important for my career," Mattia said by way of self-justification.
Alice nodded seriously, with her chin thrust out as if she had a golf ball in her mouth.
"Fine. So what are you waiting for? Off you go. Besides, it doesn't seem to me that there's anything to keep you here," she said between clenched teeth.
Mattia felt the veins in his neck swelling. Perhaps he was about to cry. Ever since that afternoon in the park the tears were always there, like a lump that was hard to swallow, as if that day his tear ducts, clogged for so long, had finally opened and all that accumulated stuff had finally begun to force its way out.
"But if I went away," he began in a slightly quivering voice, "would you…?" He stopped.
"Me?" Alice stared at him from above, as though he were a stain on the bedcover. "I'd imagined the next four years differently," she said. "I'm twenty-three and my mother's about to die. I…" She shook her head. "But none of that matters to you. Go ahead and worry about your career."
It was the first time she had used her mother's illness to wound someone, and she didn't particularly regret it. She saw Mattia shrink in front of her eyes.
He didn't reply and in his mind ran through the instructions for breathing.
"But don't you worry," Alice went on. "I've found someone it does matter to. In fact that's what I came here to tell you." She paused, her mind blank. Once again things were taking a course of their own; once again she was tumbling down the slope and forgetting to stick in her ski poles to brake. "His name's Fabio, he's a doctor. I didn't want you to… you know."
She uttered the phrase like a little actress, in a voice that wasn't hers. She felt the words scratching her tongue like sand. As she uttered them, she studied Mattia's expression, to pick up a hint of disappointment that she could cling to, but his eyes were too dark for her to make out any spark in them. She was sure none of it mattered to him and her stomach crumpled like a plastic bag.
"I'll be off," she said quietly, exhausted.
Mattia nodded, looking toward the closed window to eliminate Alice completely from his field of vision. That name, Fabio, had pierced his head like a splinter and he just wanted Alice to leave.
He saw that outside the evening was clear and he sensed a warm wind was about to blow through. The opaque pollen of the poplars, swarming under the beam from the streetlights, looked like big leg-less insects.
Alice opened the door and he got to his feet. He walked her to the front door, following a few steps behind. She distractedly checked in her bag that she had everything, to gain another moment. Then she murmured okay and left.
Before the elevator doors closed, Alice and Mattia exchanged a good-bye that meant nothing at all.
Mattia's parents were watching television. His mother sat with her knees curled up under her nightdress; his father with his legs stretched out, crossed on the coffee table in front of the sofa, the remote control resting on one thigh. Alice hadn't responded to their good-bye, she didn't even seem to have noticed that they were there.
Mattia spoke from behind the back of the sofa.
"I've decided to accept," he said.
Adele brought a hand to her cheek and, bewildered, sought her husband's eyes. Mattia's father turned slightly and looked at his son as one looks at a grown-up son.
"Fine," he said.
Mattia went back to his room. He picked up the sheet of paper from the bed and sat down at the desk. He perceived the universe expanding; he could feel it accelerating under his feet and for a moment he hoped that its stretching fabric would burst and let him come crashing down.
He groped around for the light switch and turned it on. He chose the longest of the four pencils lined up side by side, dangerously close to the edge of the desk. From the second drawer he took the sharpener and bent down to sharpen it into the wastepaper basket. He blew away the thin sawdust that was left on the tip of the pencil. There was already a blank sheet in front of him.
He placed his left hand on the paper, palm down and fingers spread wide. He ran the very sharp graphite tip over his skin. He lingered for a second, ready to plunge it into the confluence of the two big veins at the base of his middle finger. Then, slowly, he removed it, and took a deep breath.
On the sheet he wrote To the kind attention of the Dean.
Fabio was waiting for her by the front door, with the lights of the landing, the door, and the sitting room all on. As he took the plastic bag with the tub of ice cream from her hands, he linked his fingers with hers and kissed her on one cheek, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He said that dress really suits you and he meant it, and then he went back to the stove to get on with cooking dinner, but without taking his eyes off her.
From the stereo came music that Alice didn't recognize, but it wasn't there to be listened to, just to complete a perfect scenario; there was nothing casual about it. Two candles were lit, the wine was already open, and the table was tidily set for two, with the blades of the knives turned inward, which meant that the guest was welcome, as her mother had taught her when she was little. There was a white tablecloth with no wrinkles and the napkins were folded into triangles with the edges perfectly aligned.
Alice sat down at the table and counted the empty plates stacked on top of one another to work out how much there would be to eat. That evening, before leaving the house, she had spent a long time locked in the bathroom staring at the towels that Soledad changed every Friday. In the marbled-topped chest of drawers she had found her mother's makeup and used it. She had made herself up in the semidarkness, and before running the lipstick over her lips, she had sniffed the tip. The smell hadn't reminded her of anything.
She had allowed herself the ritual of trying on four different dresses, even though it was obvious from the outset, if not from the previous day, that she had already decided on the one she had worn to the Ronconi boy's confirmation, the one that her father had said was the most inappropriate because it left her back uncovered to below the ribs and her arms completely bare.
Still barefoot and wearing the little blue dress whose neckline against her pale skin looked like a smile of satisfaction, Alice had gone down to Sol in the kitchen and asked her apprehensively for an opinion. You look wonderful, Sol had said. She kissed her on the forehead and Alice had been worried about smudging her makeup.
In the kitchen Fabio moved with great agility and at the same time with the excessive care of someone who knows he's being watched. Alice sipped the white wine that he had poured and the alcohol produced little explosions in her stomach, which had been empty for at least twenty hours. The heat spread along her arteries, then rose slowly to her head and swept away the thought of Mattia, like the evening tide when it reclaims the beach.
Sitting at the table, Alice carefully assessed Fabio's silhouette, the clear line that separated his chestnut hair from his neck, his pelvis, which was not especially slender, and his shoulders, somewhat inflated under his shirt. She found herself thinking of how it would feel to be safely trapped in his arms, with no more possibility to choose.
She had accepted his invitation because she had told Mattia about him and because-she was sure of it now-what she could find here was more like love than anything else she would ever have.
Fabio opened the fridge and from a stick of butter cut a slice that Alice thought was at least 80 or 90 grams. He threw it into the pan to thicken the risotto and it melted, giving up all its saturated and animal fats. He turned off the flame and stirred the risotto with a wooden spoon for another few minutes.
"Dinner's ready," he said.
He dried his hands on a dishcloth hanging over a chair and turned toward the table, holding the frying pan.
Alice darted a terrified glance at the contents.
"Just a little for me," she said, gesturing a pinch with her fingers, right before he poured a hypercaloric ladleful onto her plate.
"You don't like it?"
"It's not that," lied Alice. "It's just that I'm allergic to mushrooms. But I'll try it."
Fabio looked disappointed and stood there with the frying pan in midair. He actually lost a little color from his face.
"Damn, I'm really sorry. I had no idea."
"It doesn't matter. Really." Alice smiled at him.
"If you want I can-" he went on.
Alice hushed him by taking his hand. Fabio looked at her as a child looks at a present.
"I can try it, though," said Alice.
Fabio resolutely shook his head.
"Absolutely not. What if it makes you ill?"
He took the pan away and Alice couldn't help smiling. For a good half hour they sat talking over the empty plates and Fabio had to open another bottle of white.
Alice had the pleasant sensation of losing part of herself with each sip. She was aware of the insubstantiality of her own body and at the same time of the massive bulk of Fabio's, sitting in front of her with his elbows resting on the table and his shirtsleeves rolled halfway up his forearms. The thought of Mattia, so incessant over the past few weeks, vibrated faintly in the air like a slightly slackened violin string, a dissonant note lost in the middle of an orchestra.
"Well, we can console ourselves with the main course," said Fabio.
Alice thought she was going to faint. She had hoped it was going to end there. Instead Fabio rose from the table and took from the oven a baking dish with two tomatoes, two eggplants, and two yellow peppers, stuffed with something that looked like ground beef mixed with bread crumbs. The composition of colors was cheerful, but Alice immediately thought of the exorbitant dimensions of those vegetables and imagined them, completely whole as they were now, in the middle of her stomach, like rocks at the bottom of a pond.
"You choose," Fabio said invitingly.
Alice bit her lip. Then she timidly pointed at the tomato and he transferred it onto her plate, using a knife and fork as pincers.
"And?"
"That's enough," said Alice.
"Impossible. You haven't eaten a thing. And with all that you've drunk!"
Alice looked at him and for a moment she hated him deeply, as much as she hated her father, her mother, Sol, and anyone else who had ever counted the things on her plate.
"That one," she said, giving in, pointing at the eggplant.
Fabio served himself one of each vegetable, and before attacking them he looked at them with satisfaction. Alice tried the stuffing, barely touching it with the tip of her fork. Apart from the meat she immediately recognized eggs, ricotta, and Parmesan and hastily calculated that a whole day of fasting wouldn't be enough to compensate.
"How is it?" Fabio asked, smiling, with his mouth half full.
"Delicious," she replied.
She summoned up the courage to bite into a mouthful of eggplant. She gulped back her nausea and went on, one bite after another, without saying a word. She finished the whole eggplant, and as soon as she had set her fork down next to her plate, she was assailed by a sudden urge to vomit. Fabio was talking and pouring more wine. Alice nodded and with each movement she felt the eggplant dancing up and down in her stomach.
Fabio had already shoveled everything down, while on Alice's plate there still lay the tomato, red and filled with that nauseating mixture. If she cut it into tiny pieces and hid it in her napkin he would notice immediately because there was nothing to hide her apart from the candles, which had already burned halfway down.
Then, like a blessing, the second bottle of wine was finished and Fabio struggled from the table to get a third. He held his head in his hands and said out loud to her stop, please stop. Alice laughed. Fabio looked in the fridge and opened all the cupboards, but he couldn't find another bottle.
"I think my parents must have finished all the wine," he said. "I'll have to go to the cellar."
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.