In the footsteps of a stranger

The writer Sara Barquinero, photographed by Ricardo Quesada.

First part

1

The largest living organism in the world is an eight hundred and ninety hectare mushroom. He lives in a forest in Oregon, United States. It started out as a single spore, barely the size of a bacterium. Invisible. Afterwards, he conquered everything. It infected soil and trees with its filaments, made their lives a home. Near Lethal - A force that first invades and ravages and then comforts and aids.

In 2000 American scientists discovered that it was a single specimen. Millennial evergreen trees died in different parts of the forest miles away, for no reason. An older civilization might have thought that it was the work of a god, just or cruel, demanding the death of a tree as a sacrifice or necessity. Maybe just on a whim. The Americans looked for a common cause, and there it was: the same DNA, signing everything. A perpetual repetition of the same disease, which made the forest a unique, perfect body.

Because of its size, the magazine says, it must have been around 2,500 years on Earth. Despite this, no one has ever bothered to give it a proper name, as other more fleeting but aggressive phenomena have. Typhoons, hurricanes. It only has the one of species: Armillaria ostoyae. It is not a gigantic and threatening mushroom, nor is it a mold that litters the wood or the floor. There are photographs of fallen trees, but the fungus almost never appears. There is no evil, only its representation, an invisible force that makes trees bend in photographs.

His inclination suggests an almost human weariness. Evergreen trees, made to last forever, but suddenly too tired. Eaten inside. And she thinks she feels sorry for him. How horrible is this parasitic substance, which takes advantage of the life of an entire forest, without even deigning to show itself to demand its destruction.

The magazine doesn't give the Oregon forest much more space, just a double page. Then an article on immunotherapy. Another on how to relax your dog with yoga, the fashionable gadgets on Wall Street. He does not read them. Keep thinking about the mushroom. Armillaria. She bought the magazine at the station hoping it would calm her down and help her sleep, but she is very nervous. Your seatmate moves too much. He does not stop receiving messages on his mobile and answers them without silencing the noise his fingers make when pressing the screen.

Close the magazine. He rests his head on the glass, feels the pain of the cold against his skin, the light against his closed eyelids, the noise against his sleep, the plastic of the seat against his neck, bent in an unnatural way, twisted like a tree in a forest in Oregon. Perhaps it is not so terrible, the fate of that tree. Always accompanied until the last moment, clothed. Killed by the one who gave him a meaning beyond himself. Killed by the community, as some animals are sacrificed for the herd, as do some human beings: Inuit elders for the newborn grandson, the weak for the strong. A community of eight hundred and ninety hectares, a collective conscience that allows neither fear nor uncertainty nor doubt, as one feels neither fear nor uncertainty nor doubts within a demonstration.Dying like this wouldn't exactly be dying. Leaving would not exactly be leaving. Abandonment impossible. And how beautiful that would be, if everything were in the end the same thing. Beating with the whole forest at the same time that you emit your last breath. Your death immortalized in a European magazine. Assuming the trees sigh. Suddenly a voice in the distance, lights brighter. A voice that says they have already reached their destination. Lots of bodies getting up for their luggage, grumbling, laughing, talking, brushing just by mistake. She puts down her suitcase, she's tired, she hasn't slept at all. Wait for them to stop completely. Touch your feet to the solid ground and toss the magazine into the trash can. There is no one waiting for her.that everything was in the end the same thing. Beating with the whole forest at the same time that you emit your last breath. Your death immortalized in a European magazine. Assuming the trees sigh. Suddenly a voice in the distance, lights brighter. A voice that says they have already reached their destination. Lots of bodies getting up for their luggage, grumbling, laughing, talking, brushing just by mistake. She puts down her suitcase, she's tired, she hasn't slept at all. Wait for them to stop completely. Touch your feet to the solid ground and toss the magazine into the trash can. There is no one waiting for her.that everything was in the end the same thing. Beating with the whole forest at the same time that you emit your last breath. Your death immortalized in a European magazine. Assuming the trees sigh. Suddenly a voice in the distance, lights brighter. A voice that says they have already reached their destination. Lots of bodies getting up for their luggage, grumbling, laughing, talking, brushing just by mistake. She puts down her suitcase, she's tired, she hasn't slept at all. Wait for them to stop completely. Touch your feet to the solid ground and toss the magazine into the trash can. There is no one waiting for her.A voice that says they have already reached their destination. Lots of bodies getting up for their luggage, grumbling, laughing, talking, brushing just by mistake. She puts down her suitcase, she's tired, she hasn't slept at all. Wait for them to stop completely. Touch your feet to the solid ground and toss the magazine into the trash can. There is no one waiting for her.A voice that says they have already reached their destination. Lots of bodies getting up for their luggage, grumbling, laughing, talking, brushing just by mistake. She puts down her suitcase, she's tired, she hasn't slept at all. Wait for them to stop completely. Touch your feet to the solid ground and toss the magazine into the trash can. There is no one waiting for her.

Handwritten note extracted from the book 'I'll be alone and without a party', by Sara Barquinero.

2

You are in town for an unpleasant circumstance. A death, with his wake and his burial. It was early Wednesday morning when his mother wrote to him. She was awake. She hadn't been able to sleep well for weeks because of the heat, but she didn't read it until an hour and a half later. Then she couldn't stop thinking about everything that had happened while she wasn't looking, how the minutes had been such a different thing for her mother and for her, that she just was wasting time on the couch. Several messages separated by unequal intervals: "Aunt Antonia is dead." "Angel and I are in the hospital, his children have not come, we do not know anything about your father either." An unspoken disapproval even at such a time. At half past four, practical information: "The wake will be tomorrow, the funeral on Friday." Finally, a shy "Are you coming?"

It was difficult for him to assimilate the message.

I know.

Has died.

The.

Aunt.

Antonia.

Actually, Aunt Antonia was not his aunt.

She was his father's aunt and he hadn't seen her for almost eight years.

He visited her during her first year in the nursing home and did not dare to return again, as he already considered her dead then.

He's dead, he thought that night.

Is incredible.

He has died again.

"He's dead," he told the silence of the study.

Made coffee. Carlos was still in the bedroom unperturbed, despite the sound of the coffee pot, his voice rising in the empty living room. She always tells him to wake him up if he can't sleep, but he never finds out if he gets out of bed. She didn't ask him to come with her the next day, he still had to work. He would return on Saturday to start his vacation, flying to Cannes together. Carlos understood, although he tried to convince her that a great-aunt was not so important: maybe she could not go? No. I couldn't. She understood that he was not accompanying her, but she had to go. He even preferred it: he had barely seen Carlos for a year and a half, but he never stops looking for opportunities to meet his parents. So he took a train and then a taxi and is already home, unable to sleep for a single moment.

Her mother and Ángel are waiting for her in an old Nissan to go to the wake with her cousin Ignacio.

He wonders how Angel will feel, going to the funeral of a borrowed family.

"Are you dizzy?"

-A little.

They get lost. They don't know how to get to the funeral home. GPS doesn't help and they take much longer than necessary. From the front seat, Ignacio keeps making them laugh: laughter through dead ends and circles; Laughter for other times that Ignacio has gotten lost going to important places and has been late, or has not arrived. They laugh, they really want to do it. Again and again the same gas station and again the same absurd laugh: we have already done the fool of the day, Ignacio says each time they return to the same point. But in the end they find it. A sign with the name of the funeral home. An arrow to the right. Six hundred meters. They are quiet, their laughter stops abruptly. His mother fills the silence instead.

"He died with the radio on."

Her neighbor in the room complained that the radio was on late, and when the nurses came in, she had been dead for a while.

The exact time is not known.

Add details: how they woke up, how they went to the hospital.

No one expected Aunt Antonia to die then.

He had a stable old age, only aches, sour smell, senility.

She herself did not expect to do it that day: she had left her things ready for the night and for the next day.

The glass of water, the handkerchief, the folded clothes.

"It's a shame," her mother judges.

He had only two weeks until his birthday.

His oldest son's just was.

Yours is in September and your father's was in November, although who knows where he is now.

They approach the little black dots in the corridor, and these are specified in people who hug and cry, who vindicate neighbors, relatives, friends. Workers of the residence and companions of the patio in a corner, looking at everything without daring to interact with anyone; the eyes of some covered with a translucent layer of stupidity. She would like to know exactly when she died, what she was doing at that moment, if she had any strange sensations, any warning or premonition. It's a shame that everyone remained ignorant while a breath went out. Think of the people who die without anyone being aware of it until many days later, of that other old woman, annoyed by a radio on late at night, at the idea of ​​folded clothes for the next day,all those half-workings in the workshops of the nursing home: in that naivety. Spend the day making a mountain and die climbing the hill. She remembers the hand-painted postcards that Aunt Antonia kept sending on Christmas Eve, and how her mother repeated every year: "How cute, she's bored." He called tiredness boredom because old age is a very ugly word. But it was the right one.

His mother squeezes his hand, points with her chin to relatives while raising her eyebrows.

What are you doing? He says without opening his mouth, come over to say hello.

Ángel and Ignacio are lost in the crying crowd.

"I didn't sleep well tonight," he apologizes.

My head is not working well.

He hates being there. The open coffin, like a gloomy setting for the most banal conversations. Voices that are recreated in the past, in the town and in postwar childhoods, others that ask about the future: Has your cousin started college? Are you going to continue in that job? Or even more frivolous questions: did you buy the car? When are you going on vacation? Where? And the uncomfortable question, the one they expect her or her mother to ask members of their in-laws, the one that must undoubtedly annoy Ángel: Have you heard from your father? No real concern, like they just want entertainment until they get permission to leave.

He talks more than usual: about the company he works for, about his latest projects, about Carlos, about Cannes. She feels hopeless, scattered in all those words that she has been forced to pronounce, in the prayers, tears, promises that accumulate in the liturgy. An hour later there is a traffic jam at the door of the chapel because everyone wants to leave, but no one dares to be the first to leave the room. Except for her. She says that she has to walk and her mother censures her with her eyes. What are you doing. But he lets her go. No, it's not that I left her. You can't stop it.

He decides to walk home. He walks along the bank of the canal and then he sees it. It is not usual for her to walk around that area: it is the city in which she was born, but she no longer lives there, and her house was not even close when she still did. However, he walks with the carelessness of someone who knows the place well. With that tranquility. And he almost has time to think about it. He sees an overflowing orange container on the other side of the road and realizes: this is a unique moment. It is going to be. As if he already sensed that "something happened" by which the facts acquire the consistency of a story. And he regrets, he has time to do it while crossing the road. He regrets that it is something that begins by chance and not in response to a heroic act, or a conscious routine that he has been able to control.

He stops in front of the container. The way the junk piles up makes you think of a catastrophe, like a death, a sudden move, or an eviction. Curtains. Cushions. Broken lamps. Dresses. Shelves Also books, some albums, half of them poking out of the garbage can, others in boxes or scattered on the floor. Dolls, folders, hairbrushes, shoes. She finds herself skimming over some sheets, moving semi-transparent storage bags filled with women's dresses and mid-season coats. It reminds him of summers in town, of saturated photographs in an old magazine, of his grandparents' house, places that are themselves the past. Hats Tablecloths Snowballs with miniature cities trapped inside. Plush, framed photographs, rags,a whole life scattered in its waste. He's crouched down, he's stirring everything up, the curtains, the cushions, the dolls. Brake: what is he doing? He remembers his first impression from the other side of the road: an eviction, a death, a disaster. Imagine a house with the shades down, an old woman dying while waiting for the phone to ring. Quiet, impassive, her pupils fixed on the receiver in a leap of faith. He doesn't know why that image comes to mind. Are you using a misfortune to entertain yourself? Try to conjure up the ghost: maybe it's not a bad thing, why is it always so negative? Perhaps it is something pleasant, the beginning of a better life: they have thrown their things to buy a more lively, bigger house. It might just be that, what are you doing wasting your time like this?He's stirring everything up, the curtains, the cushions, the dolls. Brake: what is he doing? He remembers his first impression from the other side of the road: an eviction, a death, a disaster. Imagine a house with the shades down, an old woman dying while waiting for the phone to ring. Quiet, impassive, her pupils fixed on the receiver in a leap of faith. He doesn't know why that image comes to mind. Are you using a misfortune to entertain yourself? Try to conjure up the ghost: maybe it's not a bad thing, why is it always so negative? Perhaps it is something pleasant, the beginning of a better life: they have thrown their things to buy a more lively, bigger house. It might just be that, what are you doing wasting your time like this?He's stirring everything up, the curtains, the cushions, the dolls. Brake: what is he doing? He remembers his first impression from the other side of the road: an eviction, a death, a disaster. Imagine a house with the shades down, an old woman dying while waiting for the phone to ring. Quiet, impassive, her pupils fixed on the receiver in a leap of faith. He doesn't know why that image comes to mind. Are you using a misfortune to entertain yourself? Try to conjure up the ghost: maybe it's not a bad thing, why is it always so negative? Perhaps it is something pleasant, the beginning of a better life: they have thrown their things to buy a more lively, bigger house. It might just be that, what are you doing wasting your time like this?What are you doing? He remembers his first impression from the other side of the road: an eviction, a death, a disaster. Imagine a house with the shades down, an old woman dying while waiting for the phone to ring. Quiet, impassive, her pupils fixed on the receiver in a leap of faith. He doesn't know why that image comes to mind. Are you using a misfortune to entertain yourself? Try to conjure up the ghost: maybe it's not a bad thing, why is it always so negative? Perhaps it is something pleasant, the beginning of a better life: they have thrown their things to buy a more lively, bigger house. It might just be that, what are you doing wasting your time like this?What are you doing? He remembers his first impression from the other side of the road: an eviction, a death, a disaster. Imagine a house with the shades down, an old woman dying while waiting for the phone to ring. Quiet, impassive, her pupils fixed on the receiver in a leap of faith. He doesn't know why that image comes to mind. Are you using a misfortune to entertain yourself? Try to conjure up the ghost: maybe it's not a bad thing, why is it always so negative? Perhaps it is something pleasant, the beginning of a better life: they have thrown their things to buy a more lively, bigger house. It might just be that, what are you doing wasting your time like this?to an old woman who dies while waiting for the phone to ring. Quiet, impassive, her pupils fixed on the receiver in a leap of faith. He doesn't know why that image comes to mind. Are you using a misfortune to entertain yourself? Try to conjure up the ghost: maybe it's not a bad thing, why is it always so negative? Perhaps it is something pleasant, the beginning of a better life: they have thrown their things to buy a more lively, bigger house. It might just be that, what are you doing wasting your time like this?to an old woman who dies while waiting for the phone to ring. Quiet, impassive, her pupils fixed on the receiver in a leap of faith. He doesn't know why that image comes to mind. Are you using a misfortune to entertain yourself? Try to conjure up the ghost: maybe it's not a bad thing, why is it always so negative? Perhaps it is something pleasant, the beginning of a better life: they have thrown their things to buy a more lively, bigger house. It might just be that, what are you doing wasting your time like this?Why is it always so negative? Perhaps it is something pleasant, the beginning of a better life: they have thrown their things to buy a more lively, bigger house. It might just be that, what are you doing wasting your time like this?Why is it always so negative? Perhaps it is something pleasant, the beginning of a better life: they have thrown their things to buy a more lively, bigger house. It might just be that, what are you doing wasting your time like this?

I will be alone and without a party

Sara Barquinero.

Lumen, 2021.

304 pages.

17.90 euros.

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