It was growing dark but night seemed unwilling to fall.
People were lingering on the streets, going in and out of the stores and strolling along in that last light which softened the contours of the houses and held the evening breeze that came every night from afar or from the great woods which were already in dark shadows.
In Mazur’s shop the last clients had just left. Some days, all the stools in front of the counter, five or six, were always taken, especially by couples coming from other parts of the city to ask Mazur about the details of journeys to those far-off Countries where, one day, they would perhaps go.
Mazur’s shop was regarded, in a sense, as a travelling agency.While there were other shops like Mazur’s, in Granville, few shopowners knew how to entertain clients as he did.
He had long blond hair and a wrinkled face,a lthough he was barely forty years old. His slanting eyes were green and bright, and he had a captivating smile, which clients liked as much as his voice.
He would tell them about Jarba, the city where inhabitants moved inside light pools and where no
One ever thought of counting or being precise, and for that reason people only spoke in general terms and would refer to numbers or amounts as some or few or many.
He spoke of Samanda, where rivers flowed towards the mountains and people were convinced that the sun was bad for their health and, so, they reversed the usual order and slept during the day and lived at night.
Cities and Countries varied from shop to shop, but one city was always mentioned: Nimega. It was said that it laid just beyond the great woods and that it was so rich that its inhabitants used cloths with a gold and silver weft, and the water was so blue because, in Nimega, all fountains were lined with Sapphire, a gem of azure colour, so deep as to dazzle the eyes.
Mazur talked, in his deep and caressing voice, and people dreamed.
Perhaps, Hadyn was one of the few people in Granville who did not patronize any shop like Mazur’s, since his mind was always busy with other matters.
One could say that Hadyn was still a boy. He was twenty, but he appeared much younger and his brown eyes were almost as dark as his unruly locks.
Sometimes a gentle and dreamy look appeared on his face. This usually happened while he listened to the music when he was near the banks of the river.
Hayden had started playing when he was a child, and his parents soon realized that he had a special gift, a particular relationship with music. He could repeat by heart any piece he had ever heard. He would play it on his flute which was just a simple bamboo reed with some holes that his parents had given him.
Even now, that he had grown and was playing the violin, he loved to go down to the river and listen to the music produced by the wind as it passed through the bank bamboos.
Actually, the wing seemed to tell the bamboos what he had seen beyond the river.
Hayden grew impassioned when he described the butterflies he had seen and their endless colours, some of themi ridescent in the sunlight. The very thought of those colours and the whispering bamboos modulated his accounts and turned them into music. The resulting symphony, sometimes clear and soft, sometimes sweet and confidential, was not just for entertainment or amusement.
In Granville it was a passion as were all the other arts, none excluded. In addition, schools of music, academies of painting and sculpture had flourished, along with ateliers of calligraphy and institutes of drawing and decoration.
Furthermore, poetry had also grown in popularity and since, as everybody knows, poets like to dream, academies had multiplied, where the young were educated to develop their imagination, their fancy.
The very civilization of Granville was based more on the arts than on its customs.
The scientific sujects had, in a way, been sacrificed when they conflicted with the world of imagination. Mathematics and geometry, however, had always been a subject of studies, analysis and dissertations since, like music, they were considered as absolute harmony, just like colours. Everybody in Granville knew that harmony among colours was not something mysterious: it was similar to the harmony one finds in music, and music harmony was, in turn, an expression of geometry and of architecture, too. As a matter of fact is not architecture just frozen music?
Music was regarded, above all, as imagination. In fact, there was no written music since all pieces were learnt by heart. The most illustrious artists were permitted to interpret some pieces according to their fancy and, maybe, that was why Hadyn, nearly twenty years old, was already considered a violin virtuoso, not only for his interpretation of classical music but also for his cleverness and skill in constantly creating new pieces, all excellent.
In his mind, music mingled with colours. To him, a piece of music was made up of lights and shadows, of green, violet and yellow flashes, of clear and dark tones, with lights running up and down as a rainbow.
At times, Hadyn associated music with flavours: some tasted of goosberry or peaches. He especially enjoyed the green music, the pale green hue, as if he were savouring a melon, a melon as sweet as the eucalyptus honey.
He used to sit on the river bank and listen to the murmurs of water, to the voices of the wind each time different and yet similar, to the chirping of birds and to the timid rustle of the birches. While he watched the clouds racing in the sky, suddenly, as if by magic, the notes of a new symphony formed in his mind, linking one another with a mathematic precision, in perfect harmony.
Afterwards, he would rehearse that synphony again and again until the violin itself told him that, yes, the piece corresponded to the images that had built up in his mind.
Besides the violin, birds, even the swallows, were telling him that his notes were right by frlying down the lightnings of colour to pause and listen to the music. Swallows? Among all birds, swallows are the ones with such little musical talent: they do not sing, they just utter shrill sounds.
But swallows, being envious of robbins, skylarks, finches, canaries – not to mention nightingales –were actually hoping to learn how to sing by listening to Hadyn’s melodies.
It seemed that the secret of Hadyn’s mastery was the eighth note, the note of pure harmony and, perhaps, he was the only one who knew of it with, of course, some of the birds.
Old Karol, the lute-maker, who had made Hadyn’s violin, explained to him that we are not playing the violin, it is the violin that is playing and we are there, as if by chance: we are just the instrument used in order to play.
“Remember that the violin only plays one symphony, its own. However, any person listening to it, hears something different, just as everyone sees things around him in a different way, even if they are the same.
After all – the lute-maker had said – when we look at any event, we only see its shadow, cast on our real world; by looking at it, we change it. This is true for music too, don’t forget it.”
Hadyn did not forget it and so he always listened to his violin and the violin dictated to him how to play each piece .
Granville was surrounded by a vast woods: the Silent Forest.
Anyone who had tried to get into the Silent Forest had been impressed by the quietness: not a sound; only the wind, coming from who knows where, creeping at night fall through the trees, crossing the meadows silently, would unpredictably start blowing. That breeze, modulated by the trees, turned into a fluctuating, mutable melody, melancholy at times, vibrating at other times.
Although it inspired fear, some of the most fearless Granville’s inhabitants, had tried to pass through that forest, but nobody had managed to do it and very few had come back. Those who had returned had recounted that no trails and no paths were found, but as one went further in, it looked as if the woods became thicker, and then opened to unexpected clearings, some of them close by, others far away.
They said that if you kept walking, then, at the end of every clearing, the woods reappeared, the same and yet different since trees, even if irregularly scattered, were always there, as if surreptitiously waiting for someone to arrive.
The lack of paths, trees seemimgly all identical, and also the very silence, got everyone to wander and wander only to find out, after all, that they were at their starting point, utterly lost. That was the reason why nobody had ever been able to get out of Granville.
What about shops like Mazur’s, then? Just because it was impossible to get out of Granville, its inhabitants enjoyed listening to stories about other Countries and cities that they could only imagine.
The images of those Countries, although everyone pictured them in a different way, allowed each person to take his imagination for a walk in the same way as when one lingers to stare at the stars and never stops being amazed.
Mazur’s success was due to his being among the best to tell stories about those distant worlds: after all, he was selling illusions.
Furthermore, to tell the truth, Granville’s inhabitants were always hoping that, one fine day, someone would arrive from those Countries or, perhaps, would send a message, a sign, something. In that hope, vedettas had been continously scanning the woods all around, from the top of the tower. As years went by, more stories had been added, so that the tower had reached a dizzy height, but in vain.
One day, after a great storm, the sky finally cleared and a big white cloud with silver linings appeared, a cloud which had lagged behind her friends because she had lingered playing with her own shadow.
All of Granville’s inhabitants were there to stare up at the cloud, standing in awe, because they could vaguely distinguish a city or, to be more accurate, a portion of it, hanging upside down from the cloud.
Expansive palaces, extremely tall, came up – actually, they came down – obliquely, crooked, or as if they were twisted, and then disappeared beyond wide roads which rose steeply, then sloped down, vanishing on the other side.
One could catch a glimpse of dome-shaped roofs with green and turquoise tiles of high silvery walls, of extravagant towers of travertine where merlons glittered in the sun as if made of pure gold. Sidewalks ran along the buildings, now opposite one floor, now opposite another one, stretching up and down. Tiny sparkling lights moved along streets and went in and out of green-shuttered windows.
Everywhere, in the streets, fountains could be seen, with water bluer than lapislazuli.
The cloud bearly moving, just waved.
Deep, light blue vapours rose from the cloud, creating an air flicker. Encircled by those vapours, palaces, houses, sidewalks, towers and fountains seemed to be floating: it was an astonishing sight.
The Council of Sages thought that this mirage might be due to the Fairy Morgana. However, in this case, what they were seeing could only be Nimega, the city that all Granville inhabitants had always dreamt of.
A few days afterwards, the Queen’s town criers told the citizens that whoever could reach Nimega would be rewarded by the Queen. There would be enough gold coins to equal the number of swallows who gathered under the beech tree in the town’s main square, when the tower struck twelve; the beech was so big that its foliage shaded not just the square but all the houses around it.
Hadyn too had heard the Queen’s announcement and the idea of trying had crossed his mind. There was something, however, that perplexed him, and so he decided that he would first talk about it to his friend Yuma, the tightrope walker.
Yuma had dreamed of being able to walk on a rope since he had seen an acrobat performing this feat in the main square. He was still a child when he pulled a cord taut between two trees, in his garden, a few inches above the ground and tried to walk on it. By falling he understood what balance means, and then managed to tighten the rope higher and higher, until it became a part of himself.
He had learned that, in order not to fall, it was necessary never to look down and to go on walking step after step, forgetful of his own fear and just listening to his heartbeats. However, since Yuma was fond of numerology and mathematics, he had wondered, years ago, wether it would be possible to regard the art of tightrope walking as a mathematical problem, where some data were known, such as the arc, the weight of a person and the distance to cover. Should he succeed in solving the problem, then he would know how many steps to take, at what speed to proceed, and how to move.
But later on he realized that calculations, even the most complex ones, cannot solve all problems, and that there are some things, in this world, which fall within the domain of emotions, of imagination, of dreams. In other words, there are some questions men cannot answer.
Hadyn turned to Yuma:
“I would like to talk with you regarding something I have doubts about. When I go to the river and play my violin, I can hear the wind turning into a symphony as it passes through the bamboos. Someone said that, in the woods, something similar happens. Could there be a link? Could that symphony, somehow, have a meaning?”
Yuma had listened with great attention, pondering Hadyn’s words. A few minutes went by when, suddenly, something flashed through his mind. It was a mere conjecture, not even an assumption and, therefore, he debated wether or not to speak. Hadyn was a good friend of his and he, somehow, sensed that he could express any hypothesis, any opinion, and be certain that his friend would understand.
He was afraid that what he had guessed could disappear from his mind, and that’s why he hastened to turn to Hadyn to ask him:
“Do you know what prime numbers are?” and without waiting for an answer he went on: “they are the numbers that can be diveded by one or by themselves, as for instance, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 37, 59, 61, 109 or even 10079, as well as many others. How many? Goodness knows. Euclide, three hundred years before Christ, said that they are infinite, and most probably he was right.”
“Mathematicians, however – Yuma resumed – got lost in them since they have never been able to understand wether or not there is a sequence; in other words how do they come up? With a rhythm? In fact they wonder if there is a rule. Mathematicians have been unable to find that rule. It is their impression that prime numbers appear at random, in an unpredictable way, and this fact makes them nervous.”
“But why are mathematicians obsessed by this problem?” Hadyn asked.
“Because prime numbers are extremely important, they are the basis of mathematics. They are the bricks with which mathematics are made. Perhaps to find that rule one should think of a sequence as if it were a symphony and the notes are just the prime numbers.
“Well, you know what I think? – Yuma added, because that was the idea that had flashed through his mind – I think that the woods that sorround our city are made up, only apparently, by trees: the trees could be prime numbers, arranged in an exact harmony. Until now, nobody has been able to pass through the woods because nobody has discovered that harmony.
If you want to cross the woods you should go there when it’s beginning to get dark and pay attention to the sound of the wind as it creeps through the trees.
If you succeed in identifying the note on which that harmony is based, the eighth note, then you will find out the music that controls the prime numbers sequence. By following that symphony you will not loose your way and you will get to Nimega.”
Hadyn came back to Granville when nobody thought to ever see him again.
The proof that he had been to Nimega was because he was wearing a cloak with silver and gold threads which glittered the same way the moon does when it gleams on the see on summer nights.
The Queen gave notice that in three days, at noon, the ceremony to deliver the gold coins would be held as promised.
Hadyn, with his violin under his arm, arrived on time. A few minutes before the tower clock struck twelve, he started to play and, as if obeying a call, swallows gave up drawing arabesques in the sky and rushed by the thousand to alight on the beech: there were so many that it would have been impossible to count them. And it would have been impossible for the Queen to fulfill her promise since there were not, in the kingdom coffers, enough gold coins to do so.
When he finished playing, Hadyn bowed and said:
“I gladly give up all the gold: it would not help me find happiness. It’s enough for me to think that, from now on, the doors of our city are flung open. We will know new Countries, meet with new people, experience new customs, and that will make all of us richer.”
“Then no one will ever go to Mazur’s?” Asked Yuma.
“On the contrary – answered old Karol, the lute-maker – since other Countries and new worlds, probably like prime numbers, never end. Listening to stories about other Countries and new worlds nourish one’s imagination, stimulate one’s curiosity, widens one’ knowledge and helps all of us to grow. In this sense it makes us richer.”
Paolo Altamura