Javier Cercas: The Speed of Light

Some LikeIt Hot, and how I'd write to Marcos to tell him I'd travelled ten thousand kilometres in vain, because Urbana — a little island of barely a hundred and fifty thousand souls floating in the middle of a sea of cornfields that stretched unbroken to the suburbs of Chicago — was not much bigger and didn't seem much less provincial than Gerona. Of course, I didn't tell him anything of the sort: in order not to disappoint him with my disappointment, or to try to modify reality a little, what I told him was that Marcelo Cuartero was mistaken and that Urbana was like Florida, or rather like a mix of Florida and New York in miniature, a vivacious, sunny and cosmopolitan city where my novels would practically write themselves. But, since no matter how hard we try, lies don't alter reality, it didn't take me long to discover that my first impression of the city was accurate, and so I let myself be overcome by sadness during the first days I spent in Urbana, unable as I was to shake off my nostalgia for what I'd left behind and the certainty that, rather than a city, that unrelenting furnace lost in the middle of nowhere was a cemetery where I'd soon end up turning into a ghost or a zombie.

It was Marcelo Cuartero's friend who helped me to get over that initial depression. His name was John Borgheson and he turned out to be an Americanized Englishman or an American who hadn't been able to give up being English (or just the opposite); what I mean is, although his culture and education were American and most of his life and all of his academic career had been spent in the United States, his Birmingham accent was still almost pure and he hadn't been infected by North Americans' direct manners, so he remained an Englishman of the old school, or he liked to imagine himself as one: a shy, courteous, reticent man who vainly struggled to hide his true vocation, which was for comedy. Borgheson, who was about forty and spoke that slightly archaic, stony Spanish often spoken by those who've read a lot of it and spoken it rarely, was the only person I knew in the city, and upon my arrival had been kind enough to take me in; later he helped me find an apartment to rent near the university campus and get settled in there, showed me the university and guided me through the labyrinth of its bureaucracy. During those initial days I couldn't avoid the suspicion that Borgheson's exaggerated friendliness was due to the fact that, by some misunderstanding, he thought I was one of Marcelo Cuartero's favourite students, which I couldn't help but find ironic, especially since by then I was beginning to entertain well-founded suspicions that if Cuartero hadn't sent me to a more remote and inhospitable place than Urbana it was because he didn't know of a place any more remote and inhospitable than Urbana. Borgheson also took pains to introduce me to some of my future colleagues, students of his and assistant professors like me in the Spanish department, and, one Saturday night, a few days after my arrival, he arranged a dinner with three of them at the Courier Cafe, a small restaurant on Race Street, very close to Lincoln Square.

I remember the dinner very well, among other reasons because I'm very much afraid that what went on there reveals the precise tone of what my first weeks in Urbana must have been like. The three colleagues, two men and one woman, were more or less the same age as me. The two men edited a biannual journal called Linea Plural: one was a Venezuelan called Felipe Vieri, a very well-read, ironic, slightly haughty guy, who dressed with a meticulousness not entirely free of affectation; the other was called Frank Solaun and he was a Cuban-American, well-built, enthusiastic, with a gleaming smile and slicked-back hair. As for the woman, her name was Laura Burns and, as I found out later from Borgheson himself, she belonged to an opulent and aristocratic family from San Juan de Puerto Rico (her father owned the country's foremost newspaper), but what most caught my attention about her that night, apart from her unmistakable gringa physique — tall, solid, blonde, very pale skin — was her intimidating propensity to sarcasm, reined in with difficulty by the respect Borgheson's presence inspired. Otherwise, he gently imposed his authority for the duration of the dinner, channelling the conversation into themes that might be of interest to me or that, he imagined or wished, at least wouldn't make me feel excluded. And so we talked about my trip, about Urbana, the university, the department; we also talked about Spanish writers and film makers, and I soon realized Borgheson and his students were more up to date on what was happening in Spain than I was, because I hadn't read the books or seen the movies of many of the film makers and writers they mentioned. I doubt the fact embarrassed me, because back then my resentment at being an unpublished, ignored and practically illiterate writer authorized me to consider everything being done in Spain to be garbage — and everything done anywhere else pure art — but I don't rule out that it may explain in part what happened when we were having coffee. By then Vieri and Solaun had been talking for a while with unrestrained devotion about the films of Pedro Almodovar; the ever attentive Borgheson took advantage of a pause in the enthusiastic duo's exchange to ask my opinion of the films of the director from La Mancha. Like everyone, I think I liked Almodovar's films back then, but at that moment I must have felt an irresistible urge to try to sound interesting or make my cosmopolitan vocation very clear by setting myself apart from those stories of drug-addled nuns, traditional transvestites and matador murderers, so I answered, 'Frankly, I think they're a pile of queer crap.'

A savage roar of laughter from Laura Burns greeted the judgement, and my satisfaction at this reception of the scandalous comment kept me from noticing the others' glacial silence, which Borgheson hurried to break by changing the subject. The dinner soon concluded without further incident and, on the way out of the Courier Cafe, Vieri and Solaun suggested going for a drink. Borgheson and Laura Burns declined the invitation; I accepted.

My new friends took me to a club called Chester Street, located appropriately enough on Chester Street, beside the train station. It was an enormous, oblong place, with bare walls, a bar on the right and in front of it a dance floor bombarded with strobes and packed with people at this hour. As soon as we got in, Solaun wasted no time in losing himself among the heaving throng on the dance floor; for our part, Vieri and I made our way to the bar to order Cuba fibres and, while we waited for them, I began a half-mocking, half-perplexed comment to Vieri about the fact that there were only men to be seen in the club, but before I could finish a guy came up to me and said something I didn't understand or didn't entirely understand. Leaning towards him, I asked him to repeat it; he repeated it: he asked me if I wanted to dance with him. I was just about to ask him to repeat it again, but instead of doing that I looked at him: he was very young, very blond, he seemed very cheerful, he was smiling; I said thanks and that I didn't want to dance. The boy shrugged and, without further explanation, he left. I was going to tell Vieri what had just happened to me when a tall, muscular guy, with a moustache and cowboy boots, came and asked me the same or a similar question; incredulous, I gave him the same or a similar reply, and without even looking at me again, the guy laughed silently and also left. At that very moment Vieri passed me my Cuba libre, but I didn't say anything and I didn't even have to read the smug and slightly vengeful sarcasm in his eyes to feel like Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis arriving in Florida dressed as girl musicians or to understand the stupefied silence that had followed my verdict on Almodovar's films. A long time later Vieri told me that when, the morning after that triumphal night, Frank Solaun told Laura Burns they'd taken me to a gay fiesta on Chester Street Laura's shriek resounded through the halls of the department like a fulmination: 'But that guy's such a Spaniard his brain must be shaped like a botijo, with a spout and everything!'

Читать дальше