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and stayed there immobile, facing the setting sun, and I didn't dare approach him and pretend I hadn't seen anything and suggest we go for a beer and a bit of a chat, and not only because I hadn't understood the scene and I would have felt uncomfortable or perturbed, but also because I was suddenly sure that at that moment my friend wanted above all to be alone, that he wasn't going to move from that bench for a long time, that he was going to let the light fade away and night fall and dawn arrive without doing anything except maybe weep or laugh silently, nothing other than looking at that expanse of grass like an enormous empty hangar that little by little the darkness would take over and on which he would probably see (but this I didn't know or imagine until much later) some indecipherable shadows dancing that only had any significance for him, though it was a dreadful significance.
    Rodney was like that. Or at least that was what Rodney was like in Urbana seventeen years ago, during the months that I was his friend. Like that and at times much more irritating, more disconcerting too. Or at least much more disconcerting and irritating to me. I remember, for example, the day I told him I wanted to be a writer. As with the friends from Linea Plural, in whose pages I published nothing except reviews and articles, I had not confessed it to Rodney out of cowardice or modesty (or a mixture of the two), but by that evening in late November I'd spent a month and a half investing all the free time my classes left me in writing a novel I would never finish, so I must have felt less insecure than usual, and at some point I told him that I was writing a novel. I told him eagerly, as if I were revealing a great secret, but, contrary to my expectations, Rodney didn't react with enthusiasm or show interest in the news; far from it: for an instant his expression seemed to darken and, with an air of boredom or disappointment, turned away towards Treno's big picture window, at that hour dappled with night-time lights; seconds later he recovered his usual cheerful, sleepy air, and looked at me with curiosity, but didn't say anything. The silence embarrassed me, made me feel ridiculous; embarrassment quickly gave way to resentment. To get out of that spot I must have asked him if he wasn't surprised by what I'd just said, because Rodney answered:
    'No. Why would it surprise me?'
    'Because not everyone writes novels,' I said.
    Now Rodney smiled.
    'That's true,' he said. 'Not even you.'
    'What do you mean?' I asked.
    'That you don't write novels, you're trying to write one, which is quite different. You'd do well not to confuse the two. Besides,' he added with no attempt to soften the harshness of his previous comment, 'no normal person reads as many novels as you do if not to end up writing them.'
    'You haven't written any,' I objected.
    'I'm not a normal person,' he answered.
    I wanted to ask him why he wasn't a normal person, but I couldn't, because Rodney quickly changed the subject.
    This interrupted conversation left me with such an unpleasant aftertaste that I cancelled our get-togethers in Treno's with the false excuse of being overwhelmed with work, but the following week we talked about the novel again and were reconciled, or rather we were reconciled and then we talked about the novel again. It wasn't in Treno's, nor in our office, but after a party at Wong's house. It happened like this. One day, as the Catalan class finished, Wong asked for the floor with a certain solemnity in order to explain that his end of term project in the Department of Theatre consisted in the staging of a one-act play and, with ceremonious humility, he assured us that it would be an honour for him if we would attend the dress rehearsal of the play, which would take place at his house that Friday evening, and tell him what we thought of it. Of course, I didn't have the slightest intention of turning up, but upon returning from the pool on Friday night, with