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Authors: Javier Cercas
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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 of Semana 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.
'But that's not why I called,' he immediately made clear. 'I'm calling because I'd like to talk to you. Would you have any time to spare for me?'
'Of course,' I said. 'What about?'
Rodney's father seemed doubtful for a moment and then he said: 'The truth is I'd rather talk about it in person. Face to face. If it's not too much trouble.'
I told him it was no trouble.
'Would you mind coming to my house?' he asked.
'No,' I said and, although I meant to go in any case, because by then I'd forgotten the sensation of anxiety that had seized me after my first visit to Rantoul, I added: 'But you could at least tell me what you want to talk about.'
'It's nothing important,' he said. 'I'd just like to tell you a story. I think it might interest you. How does Saturday afternoon suit you?'
SIXTEEN YEARS HAVE NOW gone by since that spring afternoon I spent in Rantoul, but, perhaps because during all that time I've known that sooner or later I'd have to tell it, that I couldn't not tell it, I still remember quite accurately the story Rodney's
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 of Semana 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.
'But that's not why I called,' he immediately made clear. 'I'm calling because I'd like to talk to you. Would you have any time to spare for me?'
'Of course,' I said. 'What about?'
Rodney's father seemed doubtful for a moment and then he said: 'The truth is I'd rather talk about it in person. Face to face. If it's not too much trouble.'
I told him it was no trouble.
'Would you mind coming to my house?' he asked.
'No,' I said and, although I meant to go in any case, because by then I'd forgotten the sensation of anxiety that had seized me after my first visit to Rantoul, I added: 'But you could at least tell me what you want to talk about.'
'It's nothing important,' he said. 'I'd just like to tell you a story. I think it might interest you. How does Saturday afternoon suit you?'
SIXTEEN YEARS HAVE NOW gone by since that spring afternoon I spent in Rantoul, but, perhaps because during all that time I've known that sooner or later I'd have to tell it, that I couldn't not tell it, I still remember quite accurately the story Rodney's
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