The Speed of Light by Javier Cercas Read Free Book Online

talking to anybody either. He was leaning against the frame of the door to the kitchen, perfectly still, with a half-smile on his face and a drink in his hand, just as though he was watching another production. I kept an eye on him surreptitiously, making sure I didn't meet his gaze: there he was, alone and as if invisible to all in the middle of the hubbub of the party. He didn't look uncomfortable; on the contrary: he seemed to be really enjoying the music and laughter and conversations that bubbled up around him, he seemed to be getting up the courage to break his self-imposed isolation and join in with any of the circles that were constantly forming and dissolving, but most of all (this occurred to me as I watched him watch a couple trying out a few dance steps at a clear end of the living room) he seemed like a child lost among adults or an adult lost among children or an animal lost in a herd of animals of a different species. Then I stopped spying on him and started to talk to one of the actresses, a quite good-looking blonde girl with freckles who told me how difficult Pinter was to perform; I told her how difficult Pinter was to understand, about Pinter's writing method, about Pinter's wife, about Pinter's critics; the girl looked at me very closely, unsure whether to get angry, feel flattered or laugh. When I looked around for Rodney again I didn't see him; I looked all round the living room: nothing. Then I went over to Wong and asked if he'd seen him.
    'He just left,' he answered, pointing at the door with an offended gesture, 'without saying anything to me about the play. Without saying goodbye. That guy is obviously nuts, unless he's a complete bastard.'
    I peered out a window that looked onto the street and saw him. He was standing on the porch steps, tall, bulky, vulnerable and hesitant, his aquiline profile barely standing out against the wan light of the street lamps while he turned up the collar of his sheepskin coat and adjusted his fur cap and stood very still, looking at the darkness of the night and the big snowflakes falling in front of him, covering the garden and road in a dull brightness. For a second I remembered him sitting on the bench and watching the children playing Frisbee and I thought he was crying, or rather, I was sure he was crying, but the next second what I thought was that actually he was just looking at the night in a very strange way, as if he could see things in it that I couldn't see, as if he were looking at an enormous insect or a distorting mirror, and then I thought no, actually he was looking at the night as if he were walking along a narrow pass beside a very dark abyss and no one had as much vertigo or as much fear as he did, and suddenly, while I was thinking that, I noticed all the resentment I'd been harbouring against Rodney during the week had evaporated, who knows whether because at that moment I thought I glimpsed the reason he never attended faculty meetings or parties and had, nevertheless, attended that one.
    I grabbed my coat, said a rushed goodbye to Wong and went out to find Rodney. I found him when he was opening his car door; he didn't seem especially glad to see me. I asked him where he was going; he answered home. I thought of Wong and said:
    'You could at least have said goodbye, no?'
    He didn't say anything, he pointed to his car and asked:
    'Do you want a lift?'
    I answered that my house was only a fifteen-minute walk from there and that I preferred to walk; then I asked him if he wanted to walk with me for a while. Rodney shrugged his shoulders, closed the car door and began walking alongside me, at first without saying anything and then talking with sudden animation, though I don't remember what about. What I do remember is that we walked along Race and that when we reached Silver Creek — an old brick mill converted into a chic restaurant — after a silence Rodney stopped.
    'What's it about?' he asked out of the blue.
    I immediately knew what he was