The Speed of Light Read online

  'Damn!' said Laura Burns, as she burst into the chorus. 'What worries me isn't that Rodney doesn't know a fucking word of Spanish, but that one of these days he's going to show up here with a Kalashnikov and blow us all away.'

  I still hadn't forgotten this comment, which had been greeted with riotous laughter all round, when the next day I finally met Rodney. That morning, the first of term, I arrived at the department very early, and when I opened the office door the first thing I saw was Rodney sitting at his desk, reading; the second was that he raised his eyes from the book, looked at me, stood up without a word. There was an irrational instant of panic provoked by Laura Burns' sharp remark (which suddenly no longer seemed like a sharp remark and also no longer struck me as funny) and by the size of that big, strong, reportedly unbalanced guy who was advancing towards me; but I didn't run away: I apprehensively shook the hand he held out to me and tried to smile.

  'My name's Rodney Falk,' he said, looking me in the eye with disconcerting intensity and making a noise that sounded like a martial click of the heels. 'And you?'

  I told him my name. Rodney asked me if I was Spanish. I told him I was.

  'I've never been to Spain,' he declared. 'But one day I'd like to see it. Have you read Hemingway?'

  I'd barely read Hemingway, or I'd read him carelessly, and my notion of the American writer fitted into a pitiful snapshot of a washed-up, swaggering, alcoholic old man, friend to flamenco dancers and bull fighters, who spread a postcard image of the oldest and most unbearable stereotypes of Spain through his outmoded works.

  'Yes,' I answered, relieved at that hint of a literary conversation and, since I must have seen another magnificent opportunity to make very clear to my colleagues my unimpeachable cosmopolitan calling, which I'd already thought to proclaim with my homophobic comment about Almodovar's films, I added: 'Frankly, I think he's shit.'

  The reaction of my new officemate was more expeditious than that of Vieri and Solaun a few nights before: without any gesture of disapproval or agreement, as if I'd suddenly disappeared from view, Rodney turned around and left me standing there mid-sentence; then he sat back down, picked up his book and immersed himself in it again.

  That morning there was nothing more and, if we discount the initial surprise or panic and Ernest Hemingway, the ritual of the days that followed came to be more or less identical. Despite always arriving at the office as soon as they opened the Foreign Languages Building, Rodney was always there before me and, after an obligatory greeting that in his case was more like a grunt, our mornings were spent coming and going from classrooms, and also sitting each at his desk, reading and preparing classes (Rodney mostly reading and me mostly preparing classes), but always firmly immured in a silence that I only timidly tried to break on a couple of occasions, until I came to understand that Rodney had absolutely no interest in talking to me. It was during those days that, keeping a surreptitious eye on him from my desk or in the corridors of the department, I began to get used to his presence. At first glance Rodney had the ingenuous, indifferent, anachronistic look of those hippies from the sixties who hadn't wanted or been able or known how to adapt themselves to the cheerful cynicism of the eighties, as if they'd been willingly or forcibly swept aside into a ditch so as not to interfere with the triumphant march of history. His clothing, however, was not out of keeping with the informal egalitarianism that reigned in the university: he always wore running shoes, faded jeans and baggy checked shirts, although in winter —in the polar winter of Urbana — he changed his shoes for military boots and bundled up in thick woollen sweaters, a sheepskin coat and fur cap. He was tall, heavy set and rather ungainly; he always walked with his eyes glued to the floor and sort of lurching, leaning to the right, with one shoulder higher than the other, which endowed his gait with the swaying instability of a pachyderm on the point of collapse. He had long, thick, reddish hair, and a robust, wide face, with slightly ruddy skin and features that seemed sculpted into his cranium: firm chin, prominent cheekbones, steep nose and a mocking or contemptuous mouth, which when open revealed two rows of uneven, almost ochre-coloured, quite deteriorated teeth. One of his eyes was abnormally sensitive to light, which obliged him to protect it from the sun with a black fabric patch held in place by a band around his head, making him look like an ex-combatant, an appearance his lurching walk and broken-down frame did nothing to contradict. Undoubtedly because of this ocular lesion his eyes appeared not to be of the same colour at first glance, although if you looked closely you'd see it was just that one was a slightly lighter brown, almost honey-coloured, and the other a darker brown, almost black. Furthermore, I also soon noticed that Rodney had no friends in the department and that, except for Dan Gleylock — an old linguistics professor in whose office I saw him talking once or twice, coffee in hand — with the rest of the members of the faculty he maintained a relationship that didn't even reach the level of superficial cordiality that simple politeness imposes.

  Nothing suggested my case would be any different. In fact, it's almost certain the relationship between Rodney and me would never have overcome the phase of autism we'd mutually confined ourselves to had it not been for the involuntary collaboration of John Borgheson. The first Friday after the beginning of classes Borgheson invited me to lunch along with a young Italian with the languid air of a dandy, called Giuseppe Rota, who was a visiting professor at the university that semester. The lunch was in two parts. During the first, Rota spoke non-stop, while Borgheson remained immersed in a meditative or embarrassed silence; during the second they swapped roles —Borgheson spoke and Rota remained silent, as if what was being aired there had nothing whatsoever to do with him —and only then did I understand the reason for the invitation. Borgheson explained that Rota had been contracted by the university to give an introductory course in Catalan literature; up to that moment, however, only three people had enrolled, which was a serious problem since university regulations obliged the department to cancel any course with less than a minimum of four students registered to take it. When he got to this point, the tone of Borgheson's speech went from explanatory to vehement, as if he was trying to mask with emphasis the embarrassment he felt at having to discuss the matter. Because what Borgheson was begging of me, with the silent consent of Rota — and, to be on the safe side, flattering my vanity with the argument that, given my knowledge of the material and the requisite elementary level of the course, it wouldn't be very useful for me — was that I enroll in it, with the implication that he'd consider this small sacrifice a personal favour and also that the course wouldn't require of me any more effort than attending the lectures. Of course, I immediately agreed to Borgheson's request, thrilled to be able to return a small portion of the kindness he'd shown me, but what I could never have foreseen — nor could Borgheson have warned me — was quite what that trivial decision would entail.

  I began to suspect the following Tuesday, late in the afternoon, when I walked into the room where the first Catalan literature class was to take place and saw the three who were soon to be my classmates sitting around a table. One was a sinister-looking guy, dressed entirely in black, with his red dyed hair in a mohican; the second was a small, gaunt, fidgety Chinese guy; the third was Rodney. The three of them smiled at me in silence and, after making sure I hadn't mistaken the room, I said hello and sat down; a moment later Rota showed up and the class began. Well, began in a manner of speaking. Actually, that class never finished beginning, simply because it was an unfeasible class. The reason is that, as we immediately realized to our astonishment, there was no common language among the five of us in the class: Rota, who spoke both Spanish and Catalan well, didn't speak a word of English, and the sinister-looking American, who soon told us that he wanted to learn Catalan because he was studying Romance languages, only spoke broken French, like Rodney, who also spoke Spanish; as for the Chinese guy, whose name was Wong and who was studying directing in the Department of Theatre, aside from Chinese he only knew English (much later I f
ound out that his desire to learn Catalan stemmed from the fact that he had a Catalan boyfriend). It didn't take us long to realize that, given the circumstances, I was the only possible instrument of communication among the members of that improvised ecumenical assembly, so after Rota, sweating and upset, had tried in vain to make himself understood by all the means within his grasp, including hand signals, I offered to translate his words from Catalan into English, which was the only language all the interested parties understood, except for Rota himself. As well as being ridiculous, the procedure was exasperatingly slow, though somehow or other, it allowed us to ride out not just that introductory class, but, as incredible as it might seem, the whole semester, though not without large doses of generous hypocrisy and smiles on everyone's part. But naturally, that first day we all came out depressed and dumbfounded, so at first I could only interpret Rodney's comment as sarcasm when, after leaving the classroom together and walking in silence through the corridors of the Foreign Languages Building, we were on the point of separating at the door.

  'I've never learned so many things in a single class,' was Rodney's comment. As I said: at first I thought he was joking; then I thought he wasn't referring to what I thought he was referring to and I looked him in the eye and thought he wasn't joking; then I thought he was joking again and then I didn't know what to think. Rodney added, 'I didn't know you spoke Catalan.

  ''I live in Catalonia.

  ''Does everyone who lives in Catalonia speak Catalan?'

  'Not everyone, no.'

  Rodney stopped, looked at me with a mixture of interest and wariness, asked, 'Have you read Merce Rodoreda?'

  I said yes.

  'Do you like her?'

  As I'd learned my lesson by now and wanted to get along with the person I had to share an office with, I said yes. Rodney gestured in a strange way that I didn't know how to interpret, and for a moment I thought of Almodovar and Hemingway and I thought I'd made another mistake, that maybe admirers of Hemingway could only detest Rodoreda just as admirers of Rodoreda could do nothing but detest Hemingway. Before I could qualify or retract the lie I'd just inflicted on him, Rodney reassured me.

  'I love her stuff,' he said. 'I've read her in Spanish translation, of course, but I want to learn Catalan so I can read her in the original.'

  'Well, you've come to the right place,' I couldn't help but say.

  'What?'

  'Nothing.'

  I was about to say goodbye when Rodney unexpectedly said, 'Do you want to go get a Coke?'

  We went to Treno's, a bar on the corner of Goodwin and West Oregon, halfway between my house and the faculty. It was a place staffed by students, with wooden tables and walls panelled with wood too, with a big unlit fireplace and a big picture window looking out onto Goodwin. We sat beside the fireplace and ordered a Coke for Rodney, a beer for me and a bowl of popcorn to share. We talked. Rodney told me he lived in Rantoul, a small city near Urbana, and that this was the third year he'd taught Spanish at the university.

  'I like it,' he added.

  'Really?' I asked.

  'Yeah,' he answered. 'I like teaching, I like my colleagues in the department, I like the university.' He must have seen something strange in my expression, because he asked, 'Does that surprise you?'

  'No,' I lied.

  Rodney offered me a light and as I lit my cigarette I looked at his Zippo: it was old and must once have been silver-plated, but now it was a rusty yellow; on the upper part, in capital letters, was the word Vietnam, and underneath some numbers (68—69) and two words: Chu Lai; on the lower part there was a dog sitting and smiling and under him a phrase: 'Fuck it. I got my orders.' Rodney noticed me looking at the lighter, because as he put it away he said, 'It's the only good thing I brought back from that fucking war.'

  I was going to ask him to tell me about Vietnam when he abruptly asked me to tell him about myself. I did. I talked, I think, about Gerona, Barcelona, my first impressions of Urbana, and he interrupted me to ask me how I'd ended up there. This time I didn't lie, but I didn't tell him the truth either, at least, not the whole truth.

  'Urbana is a good place to live,' Rodney declared sententiously when I'd finished speaking; then, mysteriously, he added: 'It's like nothing.'

  I asked him what that meant.

  'It means it's a good place to work,' is all he answered.

  While I thought of the reasons Marcelo Cuartero had given me to go to Urbana, Rodney started talking about Merce Rodoreda. He'd read two of her novels(La Plafa delDiamantandBroken Mirror);I'd only read the second, but I assured him with the aplomb of an infallible reader that the two books he'd read were the best things Rodoreda had written. Then Rodney made a suggestion: he said that every Tuesday and every Thursday, after Rota's class (or after Rota's class translated by me), we could go to Treno's so I could teach him to speak Catalan; in exchange he was ready to pay me whatever we agreed. He said it in a very serious tone of voice, but strangely I felt like he'd just told me a slightly macabre joke that I hadn't been able to figure out or (stranger still) as if he were challenging me to a duel. I could not yet have known that this was Rodney's normal tone of voice, so, although I wasn't even sure if I could teach someone Catalan, more out of pride than curiosity, I answered, 'I'll settle for you paying for my beers.'

  That's how Rodney and I became friends. That very Thursday we went back to Treno's, and from the following week on, as we'd agreed, we got together every Tuesday and every Thursday, at the end of the official Catalan class. We'd get there just after six, we'd sit at the table by the fireplace, we'd order Coke (for him), beer (for me) and popcorn (for both of us) and keep talking until they closed the place around nine. Especially during the first weeks, we tried to devote as much of the time as possible to my instructing Rodney in the rudiments of Catalan, but little by little laziness or boredom overcame us and the duty of learning gave way to the pleasure of conversation. Not that we didn't also talk in the free time we had in the office, but we did so in a distracted or discontinuous way, in between the hustle and bustle of other activities, as if that was not the place to continue the conversations we had in Treno's; at least maybe that's how Rodney saw it; or maybe for some reason he wanted to keep people in the department from finding out about our friendship. The thing is that as soon as I began to have dealings with him outside the office I guessed that, despite the fact that they both shared a similar battered physical appearance and the same lost air, as if they'd just been woken up and their eyes were still veiled with the cobwebs of sleep, there was a fundamental discrepancy, although indefinable to me, between the Rodney I knew and the one my colleagues in the department knew, but what I couldn't in any way have guessed at that time is that the discrepancy was linked to the very essence of Rodney's personality, to a neurological centre that he kept hidden and to which no one then — in a certain sense not even he — had access.

  I don't have an accurate recollection of those evenings in Treno's, but some memories from them are extremely vivid. I remember, for example, the increasingly charged atmosphere of the bar as the evening wore on and the place filled with students reading or writing or talking. I remember the young, round, smiling face of the waitress who usually served us, and a bad copy of a Modigliani portrait that hung on a wall, just to the right of the bar. I remember Rodney smoothing down his messy hair every once in a while and leaning back uncomfortably in his chair, and stretching his legs, which barely fitted beneath the table, out towards the fireplace. I remember the music that came out of the speakers, very faint, almost like a distorted echo of other music, and I remember that music making me feel as if I weren't in a bar in a city in the Midwest at the end of the eighties but rather at the end of the seventies in a bar in Gerona, because it was the music of the bars of my teenage years in Gerona (like Led Zeppelin, ZZ Top, Frank Zappa). I remember a strange detail very well: the last song they played every night, like a discreet warning to the regulars that the bar was going to close, was 'It's Alright, Ma (I'm O
nly Bleeding)', an old Bob Dylan song that Rodney loved because, just as ZZ Top brought back the limitless despair of my adolescence, it brought back the joy of his hippy youth, it brought it back even though it was such a sad song that spoke of disillusioned words like bullets barked and of graveyards stuffed with false gods and lonely people who cry and fear and live in a vault knowing everything's a lie and who've understood they know too soon there is no sense in even trying to understand, brought back that joy perhaps because it contained a line that I haven't been able to forget either: 'That he not busy being born is busy dying.' I remember other things too. I remember Rodney spoke with a strange icy passion, smoking constantly and gesturing a lot and animated by a kind of permanent euphoria, and that although he never (or almost never) laughed, he never gave the impression of being entirely serious. I remember that we never (or almost never) spoke of the university and that, despite the fact that Rodney never (or almost never) spoke of personal things, he never (or almost never) gave the impression he was talking about anything other than himself, and I'm sure I did not even once hear him pronounce the word Vietnam. On more than one occasion, though, we talked about politics; or, more precisely, it was Rodney who talked about politics. But it wasn't until well into the autumn that I understood that, if we didn't talk about politics more often, it wasn't because it wasn't of interest to Rodney, but rather because I didn't understand a single thing about politics (and much less about US politics, which for Rodney was the only real, or at least the only relevant politics), which, to tell the truth, didn't seem to matter that much to my friend either. Every time the subject came up he gave me the impression of talking more to himself or to an abstract interlocutor than to me; one might say he was driven by a sort of furious impulse to vent, by a resentful and hopeless vehemence against the politicians of his country - whom he considered without exception a pack of liars and filibusterers — against the big corporations that held the real political power and against the media, which according to him spread the lies of politicians and corporations with impunity.