The Speed of Light Page 5

  While listening to Rodney I inevitably remembered my friend Marcos and our dreams of triumph and the masterpieces with which we thought we'd get our revenge on the world, and most of all I remembered one time, some years before, when Marcos told me that an insufferable classmate at the Faculty of Fine Arts had told him that the ideal condition for an artist is failure, and that he'd replied with a quote from the French writer Jules Renard: 'Yes, I know. All great men were ignored in their lifetimes; but I'm not a great man, so I'dprefer immediate renown.' I also thought Rodney was talking as if he knew what success and failure were, when actually he didn't know either one (or he didn't know them except by way of books or any more than me, who barely knew), and that actually his words were just the words of a loser soaked in the hypocritical and sickly mythology of failure that ruled a country hysterically obsessed with success. I thought all this and was about to say it to him, but I didn't say anything. What I did, after a silence, was mock Rodney's jeremiad.

  'Fucked if you fail, fucked if you succeed,' I said. 'Great prospects.'

  My friend didn't even smile.

  'It's a really fucked-up job,' he said. 'But not because of that. Or not only because of that.'

  'That seems minor to you?'

  'Yeah,' he said, and then asked:

  'What's a writer?' 'What do you think?' I lost patience. 'A guy who can string words together one after the other and is able to do so with flair.'

  'Exactly,' Rodney approved. 'But it's also a guy who considers extremely complicated problems and who, instead of resolving them or trying to resolve them, like any sensible person, makes them even more complicated. That is: he's a nutcase who looks at reality, and sometimes sees it.'

  'Everyone sees reality,' I objected, 'even if they're not nuts.'

  'That's where you're mistaken,' Rodney said. 'Everybody looks at reality, but few people see it. The artist isn't the one who makes the invisible visible: that really is romanticism, although not the worst kind; the artist is the one who makes visible what's already visible and everybody looks at and nobody can or nobody knows how or nobody wants to see. Probably nobody wants to see. It's too unpleasant, often appalling, and you really have to have balls to see it without closing your eyes or running away, because whoever sees it is destroyed or goes crazy. Unless, of course, he has a shield to protect himself or he can do something with what he sees.' Rodney paused then went on: 'I mean normal people suffer or enjoy reality, but they're powerless to do anything with it, while the writer can, because his job consists of turning reality into meaning, even if it's an illusory meaning; that is, he can turn it into beauty and that beauty or that meaning are his shield. That's why I say that the writer is a nutcase who has the obligation or the dubious privilege of seeing reality, and that's why, when a writer stops writing, he ends up killing himself, because he hasn't been able to kick the habit of seeing reality but he no longer has his shield to protect himself from it. That's why Hemingway killed himself. And that's why once you're a writer you can't stop being one, unless you decide to risk your neck. Like I said: a really fucked-up job.'

  That conversation could have turned out very badly — in fact it had all the signs of turning out very badly - but I don't know why it turned out better than any other, as Rodney and I left Treno's laughing our heads off and I was feeling more his friend than ever and wanting more than ever to become a real writer. Shortly after that the winter holidays began and, almost overnight, Urbana emptied: the students fled en masse to their homes, the streets, buildings and businesses of the campus were deserted and a strange sidereal (or maybe maritime) silence took over the city, as if it had suddenly turned into a planet spinning far from its orbit or into a gleaming ocean liner miraculously run aground in the endless snows of Illinois. The last time we were together at Treno's Rodney invited me to spend Christmas Day at his house in Rantoul. I declined the invitation: I explained that for a while Rodrigo Gines and I had been planning a road trip through the Midwest, along with Gudrun and an American friend of Gudrun's I'd slept with a couple of times (Barbara, she was called); I also said that, if he gave me his phone number in Rantoul, when I got back I'd give him a call so we could see each other before classes began again.

  'Don't worry,' said Rodney, 'I'll call you.'

  And so we said goodbye, and less than a week later I set off travelling with Rodrigo, Barbara and Gudrun. We'd planned to be away from Urbana for two weeks, but in fact we didn't get back for almost a month. We travelled in Barbara's car, at first following a vaguely fixed plan, but then allowing whim or chance to guide us, and in this way, often driving all day and sleeping in highway motels and cheap little hotels, first we went south, through St Louis, Memphis and Jackson, until we got to New Orleans; we stayed there for several days, after which we began our return, making a detour through the east, up through Meridian, Tuscaloosa and Nashville till we got to Cincinnati and then to Indianapolis, from where we came home drenched in the light and the cold and the highways and sound and immensity and snow and the bars and the people and the plains and the filth and the skies and the sadness and the towns and cities of the Midwest. It was a huge and happy trip, during which I made the irrevocable decision to pay attention to Rodney, throw the novel I'd been working on for months in the garbage and start writing another one immediately. So the first thing I did when I got back to Urbana was to go look for Rodney. In the phone book there was only one Falk - Falk, Dr Robert - resident in Rantoul and, since I knew that Rodney lived with his father, I supposed it must be Rodney's father. I dialled the number several times, but no one answered. For his part, and contrary to what he'd promised, Rodney didn't get in touch with me either during the rest of the holidays.

  Classes resumed at the end of January, and the first day, opening the door to my office, sure I was finally going to see Rodney again, I almost crashed head first into a chubby, little, albino-looking guy I'd never seen before. Naturally, I thought I'd opened the door to the wrong office and quickly apologized, but before I could shut the door the guy held out his hand and in a laboured Spanish told me I hadn't been mistaken; he then pronounced his name and announced he was the new assistant professor of Spanish. Perplexed, I shook his hand, mumbled something, introduced myself; then we chatted for a moment, I don't know what about, and only at the end did I resolve to ask him about Rodney. He told me he didn't know anything, except that he'd been hired to replace him. Before my first class that day I inquired in the offices: they didn't know anything there either. Finally it was the secretary of the department head who, the next day, gave me news of my friend. It seems just a few days before the end of the vacation a relative had called to say Rodney wouldn't be returning to work, leaving the head of the department furious and having to look as fast as possible for someone to replace him. I asked the secretary if she knew what had happened to Rodney; she said no. I asked if the boss knew; she said no and advised me not to even consider asking him. I asked if she had Rodney's phone number; she said no.

  'I don't and neither does anyone else in the department,'she said, and then I realized that she was just as furious with Rodney as her boss; however, before I left she broke down in the face of my insistence and added reluctantly: 'But I have his address.'

  A few days later I asked Barbara if I could borrow her car and went to Rantoul. It was a bright afternoon at the beginning of February. I drove out of Urbana along Broadway and Cunningham Avenue, went north on a highway that advanced between corn fields buried in snow, glistening in the sun, scattered with pine trees, maples, metal silos and isolated little houses, and twenty-five minutes later, after passing an army air base, I arrived at Rantoul, a small working-class city (really it was more like a large town) that gave Urbana a certain metropolitan air in comparison. On the outskirts, at the intersection of two streets — Liberty Drive and Century Boulevard — there was a gas station. I stopped and asked a man in overalls for Belle Avenue, which was the street where, according to the department head's secretary, Rodney li
ved; he gave me some directions and I continued on towards the centre. I was soon lost. It had started to get dark; the city seemed deserted. I stopped the car at a corner, just where a sign proclaimed Sangamon Avenue. In front of me were train tracks and beyond them the city dissolved into a wooded darkness, to my left the street was soon cut off, to my right, three hundred or so metres away, blinked a neon sign. I turned right and headed towards the sign: BUD'S BAR, it said. I parked the car in the middle of a string of cars and went in.

  In the bar a smoky, jovial, Saturday-night atmosphere prevailed. There were lots of people: boys playing pool, women putting coins in the slot machines, men drinking beer and watching a basketball game on a giant television screen; a jukebox spread country music all through the place. I went over to the bar, behind which three waiters —two very young and the other somewhat older — wandered around a low table covered in bottles and, while waiting for someone to serve me, I looked at the photos of baseball stars and the big portrait of John Wayne dressed as a cowboy, with a dark red bandana knotted at his throat, which hung on the back wall. Finally one of the waiters, the oldest of the three, came over with a hurried air, but before he could ask me what I wanted to drink I told him I was looking for Belle Avenue, 25 Belle Avenue.

  As if he were mocking me, the bartender asked:

  'You want to see the doctor?'

  'I want to see Rodney Falk,' I answered.

  I must have said it too loud, because two men who were leaning on the bar nearby turned around to look at me. The waiter's expression had changed: now the mockery had turned to a mixture of surprise and interest; he leaned on the bar too, as if my answer had dispelled his hurry. He was a man of about forty, compact and dark, stony-faced, slanting eyes and boxer's nose; he was wearing a sweaty Red Sox cap, a few locks of greasy hair poked out from under it at his temples and the nape of his neck.

  'You know Rodney?' he asked.

  'Yeah,' I answered. 'We work together in Urbana.'

  'At the university?'

  'At the university.'

  'I see,' he nodded thoughtfully. Then he added: 'Rodney's not home.'

  'Ah,' I said, and was about to ask where he was or how he knew he wasn't home, but by then I must've started feeling uneasy, because I didn't. 'Well, it doesn't matter.' I repeated: 'Could you tell me where 25 Belle Avenue is?'

  'Of course,' he smiled. 'But wouldn't you like to have a beer first?'

  At that moment I noticed that the men sitting at the bar were still scrutinizing me, and absurdly imagined that everyone in the bar was waiting for my reply; a cold froth suddenly gathered in my stomach, as if I'd just entered a dream or a danger zone that I had to escape from as soon as possible. That's what I was thinking at that moment: of getting out of that bar as soon as possible. So I said: 'No, thanks.

  'Just as the waiter had indicated, Rodney's house was barely five hundred metres from Bud's Bar, as soon as I turned the corner onto Belle Avenue. It was an older, bigger and more solid house than the ones lined up next to it; except for the slate grey gable roof, the rest of the building was painted white: as well as a narrow attic, it had two floors, a porch at the top of some brown steps and a front lawn buried in snow, with two bushy maples and a pole with the American flag waving gently in the breeze of twilight. I parked the car and rang the bell. No one answered and I rang again. I was just about to peer in through one of the downstairs windows when the door opened and on the threshold appeared a man with completely white hair, about seventy years old, wearing a very thick blue dressing gown and a pair of slippers of the same colour, holding the door knob in one hand and a book in the other; in the half-light of the hallway, behind him, I glimpsed a coat stand, a mirror with a wooden frame, the base of a carpeted stairway leading up to the darkness of the second floor. Except for his heavy build and the colour of his eyes, the man hardly resembled Rodney, but I immediately guessed it was his father. I smiled and, flustered, greeted him and asked for Rodney. He suddenly adopted a defensive attitude and, with intemperate severity, asked me who I was. I told him. Only then did he seem to relax a little.

  'Rodney talked about you,' he said, without the little light of mistrust in his eyes going out. 'You're the writer, aren't you?'

  He said this with absolutely no irony and, as had happened almost a year earlier with Marcelo Cuartero in El Yate, I felt my cheeks burn: it was the second time in my life that someone had called me a writer, and I was overwhelmed by an inextricable mix of embarrassment and pride, and also a wave of affection for Rodney. I didn't say anything, but, since the man didn't seem prepared to invite me in or break the silence, for something to say I asked if he was Rodney's father. He said yes. Then I asked for Rodney again and he answered that he didn't know where he was.

  'He left a couple of weeks ago and he hasn't come back,'he said.

  'Has something happened to him?' I asked.

  'Why should something happen to him?' he answered.

  Then I told him what they'd told me at the department.

  'That's true,' the man said. 'It was me who advised them Rodney wouldn't be teaching again. I hope he hasn't caused them any problems.'

  'Not at all,' I lied, thinking about the department head and his secretary.

  'I'm glad,' said Rodney's father. 'Well,' he then added, beginning to close the door. 'Excuse me, but I have things to do and . . .'

  'Wait a second,' I interrupted him, not knowing how I was going to go on, then went on: 'I'd like you to tell Rodney that I was here.'

  'Don't worry. I'll tell him.'

  'Do you know when he'll be back?'Instead of answering, Rodney's father sighed, and immediately, as if his eyesight wasn't good enough to make me out clearly in the growing darkness of dusk, he let go of the door knob and flipped a switch: a white light suddenly swept the twilight off the porch.

  'Tell me something,' he said then, blinking. 'What have you come here for?'

  'I told you already,' I answered. 'I'm a friend of Rodney's. I wanted to know why he hadn't come back to Urbana. I wanted to know if something had happened to him. I wanted to see him.'

  Now the man scrutinized me closely, as if till then he hadn't really seen me or as if my answer had disappointed him, maybe surprised him; unexpectedly, a moment later he smiled, a smile at once hard and almost affectionate, which covered his face in wrinkles, and in which, nevertheless, I recognized for the first time a distant echo of Rodney's features.

  'Do you really think that Rodney and you were friends?'he asked.

  'I don't understand,' I answered.

  He sighed again and wanted to know how old I was. I told him.

  'You're very young,' he said. 'Tell me something else: did Rodney ever talk to you about Vietnam?' He answered his own question. 'No, of course not. How could he talk to you about Vietnam? You wouldn't have understood a thing. He didn't even talk to me about that, or only at the beginning. He did to his mother, until she died. And to his wife, until she couldn't take any more. Did you know Rodney was married? No, you didn't know that either. You don't know anything about Rodney. Nothing. How could he be your friend? Rodney doesn't have friends. He can't have any. You understand, don't you?'

  As he spoke, Rodney's father had been gradually raising his voice, charging himself with reason, getting furious, the words converted into fuel for his rage, and for a moment I feared he was going to slam the door in my face or burst into tears. He didn't slam the door in my face, he didn't burst into tears. He stood in silence, suddenly decrepit, a little out of breath, looking with the book in his hand at the night that was falling over Belle Avenue, badly illuminated by yellowish street lamps that gave off a dim light. I too stayed silent, feeling very small and very fragile before that enraged old man, and feeling most of all that I should never have gone to Rantoul to look for Rodney. Then it was as if the man had read my mind, because, sounding upset, he said:

  'I'm sorry. I shouldn't have spoken to you like that.'

  'Don't worry,' I reassured him.

/>   'Rodney will come back,' he declared, not looking me in the eye. 'I don't know when he'll come back, but he'll come back. Or that's what I think.' He hesitated for a moment and then went on: 'For years he didn't spend much time at home, he wandered around, he wasn't well. But lately everything had changed, and he was very comfortable at the university. Did you know he was comfortable at the university?' I nodded. 'He was very comfortable, he was, but it couldn't last: too good to be true. That's why what had to happen happened.' He put his free hand back on the door knob; he looked at me again: I don't know what was in his eyes, I don't know what I saw in them (it wasn't suspicion any more, nor was it gratitude), I don't even know how to describe what I felt looking at him, but what I do know is that it was very similar to fear. 'And that's all,' he concluded. 'Believe me I'm very grateful you took the trouble to come out here, and forgive my bad manners. You 're a good person and you'll be able to understand; besides, Rodney appreciated you. But listen to me: go back to Urbana, work hard, behave as best you can and forget about Rodney. That's my advice. In any case, if you can't or don't want to forget about Rodney, the best thing you can do is pray for him.'

  That night I returned to Urbana confused and maybe a little scared, as if I'd just committed a mistake that would have unforeseeable consequences, feeling lonelier than ever in Urbana and feeling as well, for the first time since my arrival there, that I shouldn't stay much longer in that country that wasn't mine and whose impossible idiosyncrasies I'd never be able to decipher, prepared in any case to forget forever my mistaken visit to Rantoul and follow Rodney's father's advice to the letter. I didn't manage this last part, of course, or at least not entirely, and not only because I'd forgotten how to pray a long time before, but also because very soon I discovered that Rodney had been too important to me to get rid of him just like that, and because all of Urbana conspired to keep his memory alive. It 's true that, in the weeks that followed and in all the rest of the time I spent in Urbana, hardly anyone in the department ever mentioned his name again, and even when I happened to meet Dan Gleylock in the faculty corridors I never made up my mind to ask if he had any news of him. But it's also true that every time I passed Treno's, and I passed it daily, I thought of Rodney, and that just at that time I began reading some of his favourite authors and I couldn't open a page of Emerson or Hawthorne or Twain — not to mention Hemingway — without thinking immediately of him, just as I couldn't write a line of the novel I'd started to write without feeling him vigilantly breathing over my shoulder. So, although Rodney had vanished into thin air, in fact he was more present than ever in my life, exactly as if he'd turned into a ghost or a zombie. Be that as it may, the fact is that not a lot of time passed before I convinced myself I'd never hear Rodney spoken of again.