The Speed of Light (19 page)

That night I went home earlier than usual, lay down in bed with my eyes open and, for the first time in many months, slept for six hours straight. I had two dreams. In the first only Gabriel appeared. He was playing table football in a big, dilapidated, empty place like a garage, hitting the balls with adult, almost ferocious glee; he had no opponent or I couldn't see his opponent, and he didn't seem to hear my shouts as I tried to get his attention; until suddenly he let go of the handles and, frustrated or furious, turned towards me. 'Don't cry, Papa,' he said then, with a voice that wasn't his, or that I couldn't quite recognize. 'It didn't hurt.' The second dream was longer and more complicated, more disconnected as well. First I saw Paula and Gabriel'sfaces, close together, almost cheek to cheek, smiling at me in an inquisitive way as if they were on the other side of a pane of glass. Then Rodney's face joined theirs and the three began to superimpose like transparencies, blending into each other, so Gabriel's face changed until it turned into Paula's or Rodney's, and Paula's face changed until it turned into Rodney's or Gabriel's, and Rodney's face changed until it turned into Gabriel's or Paula's. At the end of the dream I saw myself arriving at Rodney's house in Rantoul, on a bright, sunny day, and discovering, with unspeakable anguish, between false smiles and suspicious looks, not his wife and son living with my friend, but Paula and Gabriel, or a woman and a boy who imitated Paula and Gabriel's voices and appearance and even their affectionate gestures but who, in some perverse way, weren't them.

The next day I was woken by anxiety. I shaved, showered, got dressed and, while I was having coffee and smoking a cigarette, I decided to write to Rodney. I remember the letter very well. I started it by apologizing for having stopped writing to him; then I asked about his life, asked after his wife and son; then I lied: I wrote about Gabriel and Paula as if they were still alive, and I also talked about myself as if for many months I hadn't been busy dying but being born, as if I hadn't turned into a ghost or a zombie and was still living and writing just as if the house of my soul had not been consumed. I immediately noticed that writing to Rodney operated on me like a soothing balm and, while watching the words appear like insects on the computer screen, almost without noticing it I conceived the unarguable illusion that visiting Rodney at his house in Rantoul was the only way to break the logic of annihilation in which I found myself trapped. I had barely formulated this idea when I began putting it in writing, but, because I realized it was imperious and incredible and demanded too many explanations, I immediately deleted it, and, after thinking it over and over and going through several drafts, I ended up simply expressing my desire to return to Urbana one day and for us to see each other again there or in Rantoul, a vague enough declaration not to be out of synch with the placid and casual mood of the rest of the missive. Night had fallen by the time I finished writing it, and the next morning I sent it to Rantoul by express mail.

For a couple of weeks I waited in vain for Rodney'sreply. Fearing my letter had got lost, I printed up another copy and sent it again; the result was the same. This silence was disconcerting. I didn't think it plausible that neither of the two letters had reached their destination, but I did think Rodney might have received them and, for some reason (maybe because he'd taken as ingratitude or insult my inexplicable interruption of our correspondence in the middle of the maelstrom of my success), refused to answer them; there was also the possibility that Rodney no longer lived in Rantoul, a speculation backed up by the fact that, as far as I could find out, there was no listing for a telephone number under the name of Falk in Rantoul. Either of the two hypotheses was credible, but I don't remember how I arrived at the conclusion that the second was the more reasonable, and that it was also the most worrying or least optimistic: after all, if hurt pride was the cause of Rodney's silence, then there was hope of breaking it, because it wasn'tfoolish to think that sooner or later it would heal; but if the cause of his silence was that Rodney hadn't received my letters because he'd moved with his family to another city (or, even worse, because he'd fled again, turned back into the chronic fugitive incapable of freeing himself from his dishonourable past), then any prospect of seeing Rodney again evaporated forever. Soon the unease turned to despondency, and the fleeting fantasy that an encounter with Rodney would have the effect of a sort of salubrious sorcery on me was suddenly revealed as a last and ridiculous decoy of my powerlessness. Once again I had nothing before me but a stone door.

I went back to my underground life; I let time pass. One Friday in February, two months, more or less, after trying to resume my correspondence with Rodney, when I opened my mailbox to retrieve the packet of joints that Marcos left for me each week I found a letter from my literary agent. Unusually, this time I opened it: my agent told me in the letter that the Spanish Embassy in Washington was proposing a promotional trip to various universities in the United States. I don't know if I've already said that these invitations to travel here and there had turned into something as routine as the administrative silence with which I answered them all. I was about to throw the letter away when I thought of Rodney; I opened Marcos' packet, took out a joint, lit it, took a couple
of
tokes and put the letter in my pocket. Then I went outside and started walking towards the city centre. That night I didn't do anything different from what I'd been doing for months; same on the Saturday and the Sunday night. But during the whole weekend I didn't stop thinking about the proposal, and on the Monday afternoon, after giving no sign of life for a long time, I called my agent. She still hadn't recovered from the shock of hearing from me when I gave her the additional surprise of my decision to accept the proposal for the trip to the United States with the non-negotiable condition that one of its legs include Urbana. From there everything moved very quickly: the embassy and the universities accepted my conditions, organized the trip and in the middle of April, almost fifteen years after leaving Urbana, I got back on a plane for the United States.

ALGEBRA OF THE DEAD

THE TRIP TO THE United States lasted two weeks during which I crossed the country from coast to coast, dominated at first by a state of mind that was at the very least contradictory: on the one hand I was expectant, keen not only to return to Urbana, to see Rodney again, but also — which perhaps amounted to the same thing — to emerge for a while from the filth of the underground and unburden myself of the weight of a past that didn't exist or that I could pretend did not exist once I arrived; but, on the other hand, I also felt a gnawing apprehension because for the first time in almost a year I was going to emerge from the state of hibernation in which I'd tried to protect myself from reality and I had no idea what my reaction would be when I exposed myself to it again in the flesh. So, though I soon realized I wasn't entirely unaccustomed to being out in the open, for the first few days I had a bit of a feeling of groping my way around, like someone taking a while to get used to the light after a long confinement in darkness. I left Spain on a Saturday and only arrived in Urbana seven days later, but as soon as I set foot in the United States I began to receive news of people from Urbana. The first stop was at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville. My host, Professor Victor T. Davies, a renowned specialist in literature of the Enlightenment, came to pick me up at Dulles Airport, in Washington, and during the two-hour drive to the university we talked about acquaintances we had in common; Laura Burns turned out to be one of them. I hadn't had any news of Laura for years, nor of any of the rest of my friends from Urbana, but Davies had kept in frequent contact with her since she'd published a critical edition (which he described as excellent) of
Los eruditos a la
violeta,
the book by Jose Cadalso; according to what Davies told me, Laura had been divorced from her second husband for several years and now taught at the University of St Louis, less than three hours' drive from Urbana.

'If I'd known you were friends, I would have told her you were coming,' Davies said ruefully.

When we got to Charlottesville I asked him for Laura's phone number and that same night I phoned her from my room in the Colonnade Club, a sumptuous eighteenth-century pavilion where official visitors to the university are put up. The call filled Laura with an exaggerated and almost contagious jubilation and, once we got beyond the first moment of astonishment and a quick exchange of information, we agreed that she'd get in touch with John Borgheson, who was now the head of the department and had organized my stay in Urbana, and in any case we'd see each other there the following Saturday.

The second city I visited was New York, where I was supposed to speak at Barnard College, an affiliate of Columbia University. The night I arrived, after the lecture, my host, a Spanish professor called Mercedes Esteban, took me out for dinner along with two other colleagues to a Mexican restaurant on 43rd Street; there, sitting at a table waiting for us was Felipe Vieri. It seems Esteban and he had met when they were both teaching at NYU and had remained close friends since then; she'd let him know about my visit, and between the two of them they'd organized that unexpected reunion. Vieri and I had stopped writing to each other many years before and, apart from the odd bit of news caught here and there (of course, echoes of my novel's success had reached Vieri's ears, too), we knew nothing about each other's lives, but during the meal my friend did what he could to fill that void. So I found out that Vieri was still teaching at NYU, still living in Greenwich Village, he'dpublished a novel and several non-fiction books, one of which dealt with the films of Almodovar; for my part I lied to him the same way I'd done in the useless letter I'd sent to Rodney, just as I'd lied to Davies and Laura: I talked about Gabriel and Paula as if they were alive and about my happy life as a successful provincial writer. But what we mostly talked about was Urbana. Vieri had brought several copies of
Linea Plural
('an elusive gem,' he joked, putting on an effeminate voice and gesture and addressing the rest of the dinner guests) and a pile of photos among which I recognized one from the meeting of contributors to the journal when Rodrigo Gines told of his Dadaist encounter with Rodney while he was sticking up Socialist Workers' Party posters against General Electric. Pointing at a guy in the photo who was looking at the camera with a radiant smile, sandwiched between Rodrigo and me, Vieri asked:

'Remember Frank Solaun?'

'Of course,' I answered. 'Whatever happened to him?'

'He died seven years ago,' said Vieri, without taking his eyes off the photo, 'of AIDS.'

I nodded, but no one said anything else and we kept on talking: of Borgheson, of Laura, of Rodrigo Gines, of friends and acquaintances; Vieri had quite specific news of many of them, but during the dinner I didn't dare ask him about Rodney. I did later, in a bar at the corner of Broadway and 121st Street, near the Union Theological Seminary — the university dormitory where I was staying —where we were talking on our own until the early hours.Predictably, Vieri remembered Rodney very well; predictably, he hadn't heard anything about him; also predictably, he thought it strange that I, who had been his only friend in Urbana, should be asking him about Rodney.

'I'm sure they'll know something in Urbana,' he ventured.

With that hope I finally got to Urbana at midday on Saturday, arriving from Chicago. I remember as we took off from O'Hare and began to fly over the suburbs of the city —with the serrated line of the skyscrapers cut out against the vehement blue of the sky and the vivid blue of Lake Michigan — I couldn't help remembering my first trip from Chicago to Urbana, seventeen years earlier, in the dog days of August, in a Greyhound bus, while around me an endless expanse of brown uninhabited land rolled past, just like the land that now seemed to be held almost perfectly still beneath my plane, dotted here and there with green patches and the occasional farm; I remembered that first trip and it seemed astonishing to be about to arrive in Urbana, which at that moment, just when I was going to set foot in it again after so long, suddenly seemed as illusory as an invention of desire or nostalgia. But Urbana was not an invention. In the airport John Borgheson was waiting for me, maybe a bit more bald but no more decrepit than the last time I'd seen him, years ago, in Barcelona, in any case just as affable and welcoming and more British than ever and, as he drove me to the Chancellor Hotel and I gazed at the streets of Urbana without recognizing them, he outlined the plan for my stay in the city, told me the welcome party was set for that very evening at six and he would come and pick me up at the hotel ten minutes before. In the Chancellor I took a shower and changed my clothes; then I went down to the foyer and killed time walking up and down waiting for Borgheson, until at some point I fleetingly thought I recognized someone; surprised, I backtracked, but the only thing I saw was my face reflected in a large wall mirror. Wondering how long it had been since the last time I'd looked at myself in a mirror, I stared at the image of my face in the mirror as if I were looking at a stranger, and while I was doing so I imagined I was shedding my skin, thought that this was the port in the storm, thought about the weight of the past and the filth underground and the promising clarity outside, and I also thought that, although the objective of that trip was chimerical or absurd, the fact of embarking on it was not.

Borgheson arrived at the agreed time and took me to the house of a literature professor who had insisted on organizing the party. Her name was Elizabeth Bell and she had started at Urbana about the same time I finished there, so I only vaguely remembered her; as for the rest of the guests, the majority of them were Spanish professors and teaching assistants. I didn't know a single one, until Laura Burns rushed in, blonde and beautiful, and hugged and kissed me noisily, kissed and hugged Borgheson noisily, noisily greeted the rest of the guests and immediately took over the conversation, seemingly determined to make us pay for the two-and-a-half-hour drive it had taken her to get there from St Louis with her absolute starring role. It wasn't the first time she'd made that trip: during the conversation I'dhad with her on the phone from Charlottesville, Laura told me that every once in a while she went to visit Borgheson, who, as I found out that evening, had given up treating her like an exceptional student in order to treat her like an unruly stepdaughter whose madcap escapades he was slightly embarrassed to find irresistibly amusing. During dinner Laura didn't stop talking for a second, although, despite the fact that we were sitting beside each other, she didn't exchange a word with me alone or in an aside; what she did was talk to the others about me, as if she were one of those wives or mothers who, like symbiotic creatures, seem to live only through the achievements of their husbands or children. First she talked about the success of my novel, which she'd reviewed rapturously for
World Literature
Today,
and later she argued with Borgheson, Elizabeth Bell and her husband — a Spanish linguist called Andres Vinas — about the real characters hidden behind the fictional characters in
The Tenant,
the novella I'd written and set in Urbana, and at some point told us that the head of the department at the time had considered the head of the department who appeared in the book to be a depiction of him and had arranged for all the copies in the library to disappear, however, I was surprised that neither Laura nor Borgheson nor Elizabeth Bell nor Vinas mentioned Olalde, the fictitious Spanish professor whose exaggerated appearance — and perhaps not just his physical appearance — was so clearly inspired by Rodney. Then Laura seemed to tire of talking about me and started telling anecdotes at the expense of her two ex-husbands and especially at her own expense as the wife of her two ex-husbands. Not until after dinner did Laura cede the monopoly on the conversation, which inevitably drifted into an itemized list of the differences between the Urbana of fifteen years ago and the Urbana of today, and then into a frayed recounting of the disparate and eventful lives led by the professors and teaching assistants who'd been there at the same time as me. Everyone knew a story or a snippet of a story, but the one who seemed best informed was Borgheson, who was the longest-serving professor in the department after all, so when we stepped outside to smoke a cigarette along with Laura, Vinas and a teaching assistant, I asked him if he knew anything of Rodney.

'Shit, yeah,' said Laura. 'That's right: that nutcase Rodney.'

Borgheson didn't remember him, but Laura and I helped to remind him.

'Of course,' he finally said. 'Falk. Rodney Falk. The big guy who'd been in Vietnam. I'd completely forgotten him. He was from around here somewhere, Decatur or somewhere like that, wasn't he?' I didn't say anything, and Borgheson went on, 'Of course I remember. But I didn'thave much to do with him. You don't mean to say you were friends?'

'We shared an office for a semester,' I answered evasively. 'Then he disappeared.'

'Oh, come on now,' Laura burst in, draping herself over my shoulder. 'But the two of you were always conspiring together in Treno's like you were in the CIA. I always wondered what you spent so much time talking about.'

'Nothing,' I said. 'Books.'

'Books?' said Laura.

'He was a strange fellow,' Borgheson intervened, addressing Vinas and the teaching assistant, who were following the conversation looking like they were actually interested. 'He looked like a typical redneck, a boor, and then he never did give the impression of having his head screwed on entirely right. But he was a very cultured guy, extremely well-read. Or at least that's what Dan Gleylock, who actually was friends with him, said. Do you remember Gleylock?'

'But how could he not remember?' Laura answered for me. 'I don't know about you, but I've never met anyone else who could speak seventeen Amerindian languages. You know, John, I always thought, if Martians landed on Earth, we'd have at least one way of making sure whether they were Martians or not: send them to Gleylock and if he doesn't understand them, they're Martians alright.'

Borgheson, Vinas and the teaching assistant laughed.

'He retired two years ago,' Borgheson continued. 'He lives in Florida now, every once in a while I get an email from him . . . As for Falk, the truth is I haven't heard a single word about him.'

The party ended about nine, but Laura and I went to have a drink by ourselves before she headed back to St Louis. She took me to The Embassy, a small bar, dark and narrow, the walls and floors covered in wood, located beside Lincoln Square, and as soon as we sat at the bar, facing a mirror that reflected the quiet atmosphere of the place, I remembered that a scene in my novel set in Urbana took place in that bar. As we ordered our drinks I told Laura.

'Obviously,' she smiled. 'Why do you think I brought you here?'

We stayed in The Embassy talking until very late. We talked a bit about everything, including, as if they were alive, about my wife and my son. But what I most remember about that conversation is the end of it, perhaps because at that moment, for the first time, I had the deceptive intuition that the past is not a stable place but changeable, permanently altered by the future, and that therefore none of what had already happened was irreversible. We'd asked for the bill when, not like someone summing up the evening but like someone offering a nonchalant comment, Laura said that success agreed with me.

'Why should it disagree with me?' I asked, and immediately, automatically said what I'd said every time, over the last two years, someone had made that same mistake:'Successful writers say that the ideal condition for a writer is failure. Believe me: don't believe them. There's nothing better than success.'