ANDExactly thirty years ago I turned forty. At first, however, I had more than one doubt. In fact, it should be known that I’ve always had more than one problem with mathematics. Already in elementary school, when I was faced with multiplication tables, I was assailed by the bewilderment of someone who loses their way back home. I remember that the teacher at the time, on the occasion of a Christmas, he invited me to memorize the nine times table to recite in front of the gathered family instead of the usual little poem guaranteeing me that this would be a surprise that would leave my family stunned. I let myself be convinced, but when it was time to perform all those numbers turned against me, I saw them regain their place in the multiplication table, challenging me to recall them and leaving me speechless and empty of sounds. Among those present there was one who took a photograph of me: you see me standing on a chair with the troubled expression of someone who hasn’t yet understood why nine times zero is zero and not nine.
Later in life and in my studies, my difficulties with mathematics and related subjects grew together with the sizes of trousers and shirts, and it was only thanks to the benevolence of fate, embodied in a classmate who gave me tasks and suggestions for money, that I avoided the deceptions and traps of that dark matter. However, I suspected that sooner or later the moment of reckoning would arrive, a sort of duel to the deathan occasion in which she, mathematics that is, would have brought out her secret weapons, first, second, third degree equations, logarithms and similar tricks I mean, to chain me for life in a school classroom with the prospect of becoming a plaque to my memory.
It was in high schoolwhen the aforementioned difficulties had now taken on the characteristics of real defects that the problem became familiar: if up until then I had gotten by by resorting to the benevolence of teachers willing to close both eyes and to the financed one of my classmates, one could not expect to count on equal compassion from the teachers of that classic school, most of whom were rumored to be descended in the direct line from heroes and demigods of antiquity.
Against mathematics, what to do?
The motto of the institute to which I intended to enroll was clear: Either with this or on this. It’s easy to understand what it meant: either with the task, whatever it was, beautifully resolved or on the same one until the end of days. What to do? In those years there was a sort of relative in the family who for convenience we called uncle. He would come to the house at any time of the day and on a couple of occasions he would even come to the house at night, but only because he needed to hide. Apart from this, the subject in question led a life that seemed enviable to some and execrable to others. Do-nothing, bon vivant, charming, elegant, the aforementioned uncle mastered a colorful gab.
It is the numbers that life gives that establish the direction. Illustration by Fred Benaglia
This last gift, combined with the others, allowed him to live without worries behind his parents, dedicating himself to the sweetness of life, as he defined them: having fun, sleeping without the hassle of alarms, always having lunch and dinner ready and, his specialty, running after skirts. Well, one of his surprise visits occurred while my parents were studying possible alternatives for my benefit, checking a list of all the schools in the Kingdom in order to identify a high school in which mathematics, but also physics, was not present in the study plan. The aforementioned uncle warned them before anything else that the king was no longer in charge of the country but there was now a President of the Republic complete with an attached parliament, a fact that pushed my parents to immediately change the calendar, after which he warned them that their search, even in republican times, would still be in vain. Mathematics is everywhere, he asserted. His own person demonstrated this as he kept precise accounts of the withdrawals he made, alternating them, from mum and dad’s wallets in such a way as to distribute the outgoings equally between the two. There was therefore no way to escape mathematics, the dude concluded, the problem had to be contained.
Just hearing that word, a harbinger of abscissae and ordinates but also of simple divisions, immediately gave me nosebleeds, a trick that I had already devised several times to avoid questions that would have made me nervous. The supposed uncle immediately passed me his handkerchief, soaked in lavender, with which to dry myself and then he slapped me on the neck, promising that he would fix everything. He didn’t respond to my parents’ curiosity: How would he do it? What did he have in mind? Leave it to me, he just said, then walking away.
Thus began days of waiting during which, trusting little in the promise of that gigolo, A general meeting was called in the house in order to draw up a series of jobs that I could undertake if I had to give up school. Miner, garbage collector, sexton, hotel doorman, petrol station attendant; a cousin of mine suggested that I could be a cyclist, at least for a whileanother, who had a disturbing scar on his right cheek, put forward the hypothesis that turning to crime had its advantages. Among the many proposals I threw one out there too, proposing myself as an emulator of that sort of uncle and therefore live the rest of my life on my parents’ shoulders, but it fell miserably on deaf ears. The meeting dissolved without reaching a decision other than that of entrusting the choice of my future job to fate: in a few days a draw would be organized thanks to which among the various jobs proposed, only one would win.
A couple of days later, however, when it was time to sit down at the table, the aforementioned uncle showed up at my house to say that he had completed the mission and his undeclared intention of scrounging for lunch.
It was necessary to invite him because, although he continued to say that everything was fine, he couldn’t bring himself to explain how. Only after having consumed a first course, a second course and a welcome dessert which I had to rush to buy, sipped the coffee and accepted a liqueur, did he reveal the mystery: he had met the mathematics teacher who would be my fate.
Not only known but also lusted after, ensnared and finally bent to his willall in the space of forty-eight hours: in exchange for his promise to remain unfaithful to her forever, he had obtained from her that of considering me promoted “a priori”: he only demanded, as a guarantee, a formal declaration, complete with a notarial seal in the presence of two witnesses, who After finishing high school I didn’t choose a faculty where the need to even do arithmetic was present. And I must say that I was equally faithful to my promise to my uncle that teacher maintained a constant attitude of infidelity.
30 years ago, two plus one equals three
Now, if everything I have said may seem long-winded, I swear that it has the sole purpose of justifying the doubt that occurred to me thirty years ago: was it really the day of my fortieth birthday? I thought the best thing was to check the identity card and then prepare myself for the arduous subtraction. However, while I was trying to concentrate, my wife, who had just come out from under the sheets, entered the kitchen and, distracting me from the task, wished me a happy birthday. You’re forty, she explained, happy birthday. Yes, okay, I replied, I would have figured it out on my own, perhaps. What struck me was to discover that, exactly thirty years ago, I had also gotten married. So she would be my wife? I asked. I confirm it, was the reply, and as such it would be better to address each other on a first-name basis.
I remarked that I would need time to get used to such confidence but my objection sparked a frank laugh from her. And where did the one you had some time ago go?, he then asked, caressing his abdomen. I was stunned. Oh sir!, it then came out. But what happened? Nothing that hasn’t happened since the beginning of the world, he replied, and that will continue to happen unless humanity manages to destroy itself as it is trying to do. We are having a child, he added. I frowned, eyes narrowedI tapped the pencil that was still in my hand and started to take the pad. My wife, however, stopped my gesture. Forget it, he told me.
With him on the way, he specified, pointing to his abdomen, we will stop being two in this house and we will become three. Two plus one, three, don’t you think? And yes!, I admitted, trusting blindly. Then I asked her to leave me alone for a while, I had to collect my thoughts. It wasn’t easy, that morning thirty years ago, to convince myself that I was forty, with a wife I had to address as informal and a child on the way. It’s inexplicable how so many things can happen in a single morning. THEnexplicable: just as nine times zero is zero, they say, and not, in my opinion, nine.
The author
Andrea Vitali, doctor and writer by professionhas transported the atmosphere of his native Bellano into his stories tinged with irony. Award-winning author, his novels, often set in the fascist era, are translated throughout Europe and Japan and will form the basis of fiction A window overlooking the lake broadcast this year by Rai. In the meantime, let’s enjoy the new mystery, The remedies of Doctor Ajax Debouché (Garzanti): the vicissitudes of a pharmacist looking for a solution to an annoying problem of his fellow citizens.
