The Speed of Light

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'But there is a coffee machine on the first floor.'

We went up to the first floor laughing about Madrid's nonstop nightlife which, according to Rodney, the travel guides all touted, and then returned to the hall with the concoction from the coffee machine and sat down on the sofa where I'd been waiting for him. Rodney couldn't resist the temptation of taking a quick glance at the cover of the novel lying on the table; since I noticed he made a perplexed grimace, I couldn't resist the temptation of asking him if he knew the author.

'Of course,' he answered. 'But he's too intelligent for me. Actually I'm afraid he's too intelligent to be a good novelist. He's always demonstrating how intelligent he is, instead of letting the novel be the intelligent one.' Taking a sip of coffee, he leaned back on the sofa and carried on, 'And speaking of novels, I suppose you must've started turning into a cretin or a son of a bitch by now, huh?'

I stared at him, uncomprehending.

'Don't make that face, man,' he laughed. 'It was a joke. But, really, isn't that what all successful guys end up turning into?'

'I'm not so sure,' I defended myself. 'Maybe what success does is just bring out some people's inner cretin or son of a bitch. It's not the same. Besides, I hate to tell you but my success is so minor, it's not even enough for that.'

'Don't be so optimistic,' he insisted. 'Since I've been in Spain two or three different people have already told me about your book.Malum signum.By the way: did Paula tell you that even I've read it?'

I nodded and, to save myself from the humiliation of asking him what he'd thought of it, in one motion I finished off my coffee and put a cigarette between my lips. Rodney leaned over with his rusty old yellowing Zippo he'd brought back from Vietnam.

'Well, actually I think I've read them all,' he said.

I choked on the first drag.

'All of them?' I asked once I'd stopped coughing.

'I think so,' he said after lighting himself a cigarette as well. 'In fact, I think I've become a notable expert on your oeuvre. Oeuvre with a capital or small O?'

'Go to hell.'

Rodney laughed again happily. He really seemed glad that we were together again; I was too, but less so, perhaps because Rodney's provocations wouldn't allow me to entirely discard the paranoid fear that my friend had travelled all the way from the United States just to ridicule my success, or at least to take me down a peg or two. Maybe to rule out this fear once and for all, or to confirm it, since Rodney didn't seem willing to go on, I asked, 'Well, aren't you going to tell me what you thought of it?'

'Your latest novel?'

'My latest novel.'

'I thought it was good,' said Rodney, making an uncertain gesture of assent and looking at me with his cheerful, brown eyes. 'But, can I tell you the truth?' '

Of course,' I said, cursing the hour I'd decided to travel to Madrid in search of Rodney. 'As long as it's not too offensive.'

'Well, the truth is I liked the first one you wrote more,' he said. 'The one about Urbana, I mean. What's it called?'

'The Tenant!

'Yeah, that's the one.'

'I'm so pleased,' I lied, thinking of Marcelo Cuartero or Marcelo Cuartero's student who had written about that book. 'I have a friend who thinks the same. I thought he was the only one who'd read it. In his review he more or less said there was an immense gulf in universal literature between me and Cervantes.'

Rodney let out a guffaw that revealed his whole mouthful of bad teeth.

'What I like about it is that it seems like a cerebral novel, but it's actually full of feeling,' he said afterwards. 'But this latest one seems full of feeling, but it's actually too cerebral.'

'Exactly the opposite to what the critics who didn't like it thought. They say it's sentimental.'

'You don't say? Then I'm right. These days, when some halfwit doesn't know how to attack a novel, they attack it by saying it's sentimental. The halfwits don't understand that writing a novel consists of choosing the most moving words to provoke as much emotion as possible; nor do they understand that sentiments are one thing and sentimentalism something else entirely, and that sentimentalism is the failure of sentiment. And, since writers are a bunch of cowards who don't dare take issue with the halfwits in charge and who've banned sentiment and emotions, the result is all these well-mannered, cold, pale, lifeless novels that seem like they've come directly out of some avant-garde civil servant's office to please the critics. .' Rodney took a greedy drag on his cigarette and seemed lost in thought for a few seconds. 'Listen, tell me something,' he added, then suddenly looked me in the eye. 'The nutcase professor in the novel is me, right?'

The question shouldn't have caught me off guard. I'vealready said that in my Urbana novel there was a semi-hopeless character whose eccentric physical appearance is based on Rodney's physical appearance, and at that moment I remembered that while I was writing the novel, I often imagined that, in the unlikely case that he read it, Rodney would unavoidably recognize himself. I suppose to gain time and find a convincing reply that, without straying from the truth, wouldn't hurt Rodney's feelings, I asked, 'What professor? What novel?'

'What novel do you think?' answered Rodney.'TheTenant.Is Olalde me or not?'

'Olalde is Olalde,' I improvised. 'And you're you.'

'Throw another dog that bone,' he said in Spanish, as if he'd just learned the phrase and was using it for the first time. 'Don't give me that old story of novels being one thing and life another,' he went on, back in English now. 'All novels are autobiographical, my friend, even the bad ones. And as for Olalde, well, I think he's the best thing in the book. But, in truth, what I think is funniest is that you saw me like that.'

'How?' I asked, no longer trying to hide the obvious.

'As the only one who really understands what's going on.'

'And why do you think that's funny?'

'Because that's exactly how I saw myself.'

Now we both laughed, and I took advantage of the situation to change the subject. Of course, I was eager to talk to him about Vietnam and my frustrated attempts to tell his story, but because I thought it might be counterproductive to be too hasty or premature and could put him off broaching a subject he'd never wanted to talk about with me, I opted to wait, sure that the night would eventually afford me the opportunity without turning that friendly reunion into an interrogation and without Rodney conceiving the not entirely baseless suspicion that I'd only come to see him to pump him for information; so, trying to recover in the late summer night of that Madrid hotel the complicity of those winter evenings in Treno's — with the snow lashing the windows and ZZ Top or Bob Dylan coming out of the speakers — I started talking about Urbana: about John Borgheson, Giuseppe Rota, Wong, the Chinese guy and the sinister-looking American, whose name we'd both forgotten or never known, about Rodrigo Gines, Laura Burns, Felipe Vieri and Frank Solaun. Then we talked at length about Gabriel and Paula, and I summed up my life in Urbana after he disappeared and also my life in Barcelona and Gerona after Urbana disappeared, and finally, without my asking, Rodney told me with a few extra bits what Paula had already told me: that he'd been living in Burlington, Vermont for almost ten years, that he had a son (called Dan) and a wife (called Jenny), that he was employed at a real estate agency; he also told me that in the next few days he would find out if he'd got a position as a teacher in a public school in Rantoul, something he fervently desired, because he very much wanted to go back to live in his home town. As soon as he pronounced that name I realized my opportunity had arrived.