'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.
Of course I was wrong. One night at the beginning of April or the end of March, just after Spring Break — the North American equivalent ofSemana Santa — someone called me at home. I remember I was just finishing a short story by Hemingway called 'A Clean, Well-Lighted Place' when the phone rang; I also remember I picked it up thinking of that sorrowful story and especially of the sorrowful, nihilistic prayer it contained — 'Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada' — it was Rodney's father. I still hadn't recovered from the surprise when, after confessing he'd got my number from the department, he began to apologize for the way he'd treated me on my visit to Rantoul. I interrupted him; I told him he had nothing to apologize for, I asked him if he had any news from Rodney. He answered that he'd called from somewhere in New Mexico a few days ago, that they'd talked for a while and that he was well, although for the moment it wasn't likely he'd be coming home.