‘At least, nothing I want to talk about over the phone. You understand?’
‘What’s happened?’
The resulting silence was finally broken by a bitter guffaw.
‘What do they teach you up there at the university?’ his father mused quietly, as though to himself. ‘You know nothing. Less than you did when you were ten. Five, even. Nothing, nothing…’
The voice died away.
‘I know a few things,’ Rodolfo replied truculently, hoping that he wouldn’t be asked to provide an example.
But now his father sounded contrite.
‘Of course you do, of course. You’re very learned, I’m sure. You must forgive me, it’s just…’
‘What, dad?’
‘Nothing. Just keep talking, that calms me. It’s probably just that I’ve been overworking.’
‘On what?’
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’
‘Tell me!’
‘Well, we’ve been rebuilding a retaining wall on a bend in the road up past Monte Iacovizzo, up there in the Gargano. It’s in the national park, so we have to use the original granite blocks. An absolute bitch. We’ve been there all month, and we’re not done yet. It’s going to be way over budget, but it’s for the government so of course there’s no problem about cost overruns.’
Silence fell.
‘What’s a retaining wall?’ asked Rodolfo artlessly.
His father laughed harshly.
‘Don’t pretend you give a damn!’
‘I do.’
Another long silence.
‘Well,’ his father began hesitantly, as though still suspicious of a trap, ‘basically they support unstable ground. And they’re always problematic, especially old ones like the one we’re mending.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they defy the laws of gravity and of soil mechanics. There are so many ways they can fail.’
‘Such as what?’
‘Sliding, foundation failure, you name it. Overturning is the most common. What most people don’t realise is that mortar isn’t a glue, it’s just to level out the irregularities in the stone blocks and keep the pressure diagram constant. That sort of wall is a simple gravity structure, so you need to calculate the overturning moment.’
‘You can predict when it will fall down?’
His father laughed again, with indulgent contempt this time.
‘Not that kind of moment, idiot! The outward push at a given distance from the base. The weight of the blocks times the horizontal distance from the front of the wall gives the restoring moment. That obviously has to be greater than the overturning moment if the thing’s going to stand up.’
‘I never knew anything about this,’ Rodolfo remarked.
His father laughed cannily.
‘You’re taking the piss, aren’t you? Patronising your dumb old dad banging on about stuff the Romans knew as if it was breaking news!’
‘It’s news to me.’
‘I’m sure it is, but why should you care?’
‘What about failure?’ his son replied.
‘It can happen for lots of reasons. Rising water levels during the rainy season, seasonal shrinkage and swelling.’
Rodolfo murmured his comprehension.
‘So failure is the key to everything,’ he said.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, the possibility of failure. That’s the truth maker, as philosophers say. The only authentic tasks are those at which you can fail.’
A silence fell. No, there was a sound of the sea, or maybe the soughing of a breeze in the oak grove around the house. Then he thought that his father was laughing quietly. But as the sound went on, Rodolfo realised that he was weeping.
‘What’s the matter, dad?’ he cried with genuine alarm.
‘I’m just lonely. Since your mother died, I’ve been all alone, and with so many problems, professional and personal. I want you here, but all I get is a disembodied voice down the phone line. I hate telephones, I hate computers, I hate this technology that is stealing our souls! Laugh at me all you like, the fact remains that I want you to be here. Here in Puglia, here at home. You, my only son.’
Yet another silence.
‘Now do you understand?’ his father asked.
‘Well, I’m not sure. I mean, what exactly do you have in mind?’
‘No, you don’t,’ his father retorted, plainly ashamed of having let his feelings show for the first time. ‘Your problem, Rodolfo, is that you’ve been educated beyond your intelligence. What the hell is this semiotica all about, anyway? Can you explain it to me the way I just explained retaining walls to you? If you have to waste more of your time and my money at university, why not go the whole hog and study ottica? That way you could at least make some money as an eye doctor when you finally graduate, if ever. People always need help with their sight. I can’t tell a tension crack from a spider’s thread without my glasses any more.’
Absurdly, Rodolfo found himself defending the very position he had repeatedly attacked in Ugo’s seminars.
‘You’re confusing the etymology, Dad. The Latin prefix “semi” is derived from the Sanskrit sami, meaning a half or part, whereas semiotics is from the Greek semeion, a sign. It means the study of signs.’
‘Like road signs?’
‘Well, it’s a bit more complex than that. Rightly considered, everything’s a sign.’
There was a resonant thud.
‘This isn’t a sign. It’s a damned table, for the love of God!’
Rodolfo instantly saw the massive scored and scorched surface, as though it were standing before him. But he had been trained by masters.
‘In itself, it’s nothing. Now that you’ve so designated it, then its signifier is indeed “a table” for the purposes of this text.’
‘What do you mean, it’s nothing?’
His father’s voice had now taken on an edge of rage which Rodolfo found only too familiar.
‘I built this bugger with my own hands from timbers I pulled out of the house where I was born! Hard, seasoned holm oak, at least four hundred years old. Christ, I could hardly cut or plane it even with the most powerful equipment. And you’re telling me that it’s nothing?’
‘No word or other sign has any meaning except within the context of a specified discourse. That table is evidently laden with significance for you, given its physical sourcing in the construction material of your natal home, the notion of “the family board”, and by extension the altar in church where communion is taken. But none of these intrinsically or necessarily adhere to the physical object you just struck. Surely that’s obvious.’
His father sighed.
‘All I know is that I built this table, and that my construction company now builds walls, bridges, roads, office blocks, apartment buildings, you name it. They either stay up or they fall down.’
‘That’s not the point. If someone says “This book’s really good”, they’re not referring to an object that weighs so much and is such and such a size. They’re talking about the text, the discourse, and the infinite variety of possible interpretations that it offers.’
‘You and your damn books!’
There was a dry click as the receiver went down.
You and your damn books. Rodolfo surveyed the crowded shelves on his bedroom wall. Yeah well, they were
