The Exams

Lucio Carbone opens a small door, I slip in behind him and I climb, in the dark, up a short flight of steps. I emerge into a classroom of a shape I have never seen before, narrow and long. It looks like an alley sloping downhill. There are still the old benches where students, teachers, and curious people attended Caccioppoli’s lessons and above all the exam ceremony. His lessons last no more than 25 minutes. The reason is that “only a very few could follow them for longer.” Sometimes he teaches them in Neapolitan, because “Mathematics,” he says, “is poetry.”