His comment made me feel even sadder. That night my brother told me that trees as tall as ours take years to put out shoots above the earth. Before they do so, they make sure that their roots are deep and strong enough to sustain them.

  ‘The roots,’ he stressed, his tone serious, ‘that part hidden beneath the soil that nobody thinks about and that nobody wants to see – that’s the part that sustains us all.’

  I asked him if he knew what had happened to the tree. Sergio took a moment before replying. He said it was probably a fungus, an invisible parasite that got in via the soil and was poisoning our tree with incredible speed. He told me that years ago, one such parasite had killed off an entire forest in New Zealand.

  ‘I don’t think it’s possible to cure it. It’s dry all the way through. But don’t be fooled: the tree’s not completely dead yet.’

  He must have seen my sceptical expression, because he immediately started talking again about that infinite network that spreads out beneath the soil of the whole continent, and of which our own tree formed a part.

  ‘The roots are connected down where we can’t see them. A tree isn’t just one tree, it’s also its entire species. And then there are the seeds – dropped and dispersed far and wide for so many years – which are now reproducing.’

  As my brother spoke, I gradually drifted off. I later found out it was only for a few minutes, but it was enough time for me to have a long dream about what I had heard him say: the roots of the monkey-puzzle spreading out along the passages and the rooms in our house, the bodies of all my family members, including those of my grandparents. They entered through the soles of my feet and went up along my legs and torso, and then came out again through my eyes and mouth. They formed an intricate labyrinth, invisible but real, a kind of subterranean forest that connected us all.

  I was woken by the sound of leaves being blown by the wind. It was very cold now, and there was an unusually strong breeze. I felt my brother’s suede jacket covering me. Sergio and I got up from the lounger, our arms and legs stiff, and went and settled down in the living room where Laura had lit the fire. That night there was a storm with strong winds that lasted for over ten hours. Shut up in their room, my parents argued. From time to time, we heard the sound of something being thrown against the wall or of someone kicking the wardrobe door. This time, however, the row was overshadowed by the racket made by the hurricane. The news, which my siblings and I followed live on Sergio’s phone, brought reports of the havoc being wreaked across the different neighbourhoods in the city. By nightfall there were reports of more than thirty trees having been brought down. Two streetlights fell a few feet from us, on Avenida Miguel Ángel de Quevedo. During this whole time, we watched our monkey-puzzle resist, displaying a dignity I had never appreciated before. In the morning, the sky was completely clear. As soon as I opened my eyes, I ran out into the garden to check on the state of things. I found my father sitting on the steps outside the door, his head between his knees. His eyes were bloodshot and his expression grave. Had he spent the night out here, waiting for the tree to fall down? I couldn’t even bring myself to say good morning to him. In the end, he broke the silence.

  ‘I always felt as if this tree was the one that kept our family together. Now that it’s like this, I’m scared about what’s going to happen with us,’ he said, giving me a sad, questioning look.

  All that remains of our tree these days is a piece of hollow trunk in the middle of the garden. Over the next few months, it gradually lost its leaves and its branches, but it never did fall down, as the neighbours had prophesized. Last year, Laura started studying at a design school in Italy, and moved to live there with her boyfriend. Sergio left high school to study gardening. He is still obsessed with monkey-puzzle trees, and says that at some point he will go to see the ones in Chile and New Zealand. He is saving up to do this. There are times when I too would like to go somewhere far away, to escape from the house, from my parents and the hollowed-out trunk, but I don’t even attempt it. I’m sure that, no matter how hard I try, it would be impossible. The roots tying me to this house grow stronger and further-reaching every day and, although I cannot see them, I feel them holding fast inside me.

  LIFE ELSEWHERE

  It happened a couple of years ago, when my wife and I were renting the apartment. We had gone with an agency recommended by a friend and which charged very reasonable commission rates. After visiting apartment buildings in every neighbourhood of Barcelona, we selected two: one on Calle Mistral, near Plaza de España, and another on Calle Carolines, in the heart of Gràcia. The one on Mistral was a bright space, with a covered sun terrace that Anna immediately envisaged full of plants, like an indoor garden. The architecture wasn’t especially lovely. It was one of those seventies buildings, squat and not particularly attractive, which this area is full of, but which to my wife seemed spacious and, as such, appealing. In contrast, the flat in Gràcia was on the first and grandest floor, on the left-hand side of Calle Carolines, coming from the Fontana metro stop. The building was old with good quality finishes. The wooden lift that went with the modernist main door and the columns and arches inside the apartment all gave it a certain air of distinction. In short, it was a very stylish apartment, somewhere you could host pleasant dinner parties – a home to be proud of. Unfortunately, it was somewhat gloomy, the sun only entering through the front part of the space. The light from the inner courtyard no doubt illuminated the apartments on the uppermost floors, but it failed to reach this one. This was the reason we didn’t choose it right away. In her spare time, Anna did illustrations for children’s books and preferred to have a bright space. I turned the matter over in my mind that weekend and eventually decided on the flat in Gràcia. Who cared about the lack of sun if we only ever invited people round in the evenings? In any case, Anna drew so infrequently that this sideline of hers shouldn’t restrict us. When she did do so, she could use one of those artist’s lamps that simulates daylight perfectly. I promised her that I personally would take charge of setting it up.

  On Monday morning, we called the agency to let them know we had decided on the apartment on Carolines, but the agent told us it was no longer available.

  ‘It’s very much spoken for, I’m afraid. A young couple with two kids has reserved it.’

  ‘We’ve already filled out all the forms,’ I argued, to no avail. ‘Can’t you just rent it to us?’

  But the man said it wasn’t possible. The couple had already paid the deposit, and this would mean going against the agency’s policy.

  ‘If anything changes or they take too long to bring me the paperwork, I’ll let you know right away,’ he promised before hanging up.

  That same afternoon, Anna went by the agency to pay the deposit for Calle Mistral. I, meanwhile, continued to imagine my life in Gràcia: the walks I would take around the neighbourhood, the films I would see at the Verdi cinema, the coffees I would drink out on the terraces, the old Teatre Lliure. I was convinced that living near the theatre would help me get back to it. Before the year was up, I would be working on some play or other. And so, as I thought about the future I wished I had, the Gràcia apartment became more and more essential in my eyes. On Thursday, however, the agency called me to confirm that it had now been let. There was nothing for it but for us to move to the one near Plaza de España.

  Over July, Anna and I focused on renovating our new place. We painted the walls and the ceiling, arranged the wardrobes and planted the little inside garden she had imagined. When we’d finished, we decided to spend a few days away in my parents’ village. When we came back from the countryside, the smell of paint had gone. Nonetheless, from the first night, I had the impression that the place remained uninhabitable. I had no reason to think so, and so I chose not to say anything to Anna. She, however, was happy with the results of the changes we’d made and of the colours we’d painted the living room.

  That autumn, I devised a new strategy to get back into acting. It consisted of spending time around the youngsters who probably still had a degree of respect for actors of my generation. And so I organized various dinners in order to meet a couple of directors. I had been working for more than two years in one of the Generalitat’s ministries, and three without setting foot on a stage. According to Anna, I should thank heaven for this crappy job and leave acting to my spare time, as she did with her illustrating. Our dinner guests would congratulate us on the apartment, but never offered me any work in their plays, not even as an assistant set designer. Winter was approaching, and the situation remained the same. As time went on, I was overwhelmed by an undefinable sensation, too serene to be called anxiety, but unpleasant enough not to go unnoticed. I suspected that something was brewing, something I couldn’t quite see but which concerned me absolutely. I began to take walks in the afternoons to calm myself down. After work, I would roam the city with no particular route in mind. These walks would often culminate in me circling around the gravitational pull of a theatre. The Romea, if I was in El Raval, or the Lliure de Montjuïc, a little closer to home. Most of the time I didn’t even go up to the entrance to look at the hoardings, but simply stayed on the surrounding streets waiting for people to leave after the performance and spill out towards the local bars and restaurants. It was enough for me to breathe in the intensity given off by the audience after a good show, this intensity I had felt so many times myself and which, as a teenager, had led me to believe that I was born to act.

  It was one of these walks that took me back to Calle Carolines again. Ever since we’d finished doing up the place on Mistral, I thought a lot less about the other apartment. The place in Gràcia now formed part of that endless list of longed-for things that had never come to pass, and to which I believed I had resigned myself. Even so, once I was near Fontana metro station, I couldn’t stop myself from going to have a look at the building. The street was quite dark. From the corner, I could make out the lighted windows on the first floor. When I got a little closer, I could hear music echoing. I noticed that there was a standing lamp just in the spot I had planned to put one, and I also fancied I could see a couple of pot plants. I stayed there for a few minutes, imagining that the silhouettes I could make out in the window were my own and those of my family. Not mine and Anna’s, but a different family, a wife and children I did not know but who inspired a tenderness in me that was both profound and unbearably sad, like that inspired by loved ones we no longer see.

  When I got home, Anna had made dinner and was waiting for me in the dining room, reading. I went to wash my hands and, when I looked in the mirror, I felt like another individual had taken over my face. I thought about the other house for the rest of the night. I couldn’t let go of the idea that this apartment was the one most suited to my tastes and my way of being, in the same way as the one on Mistral was more appropriate for Anna. To console myself, I told myself that an apartment is similar in many ways to a child in whom the genes of two families are mixed. In our case, my wife’s tastes had triumphed; perhaps it would be my turn the next time we moved.

  That Friday, when I left the office, I headed once again to the building. It was the time of year when it started to get dark early, and so it was already night when I got off the metro at Fontana. This time, however, there were no lights on in the apartment. Almost all the windows in the property were shut. That’s normal, I thought, no one’s home at this time. And so I decided to take a seat in the café on the other side of the road. I chose a table near the street and ordered a decaf café con leche. The place had all the style of Gràcia’s shabby little bars, Parisian-esque and bohemian, with low lighting and a few posters on the walls. I saw that one of the posters was the listings for Gràcia’s Lliure Theatre. They were putting on Ubu Roi again, with Alfred Jarry’s character relocated to the political context of Catalonia. The play was going to run for the whole of the winter season. Although I had heard good things about it on several occasions, I had chosen not to go and see it. Xavi Mestre, a dark, muscular guy who played the lead, had been a classmate of mine at drama school. After graduation, Xavi had travelled to Italy and then Denmark to train with Eugenio Barba. When he returned, the Catalan theatre world embraced him like a Messiah, giving him the roles that up until then no one of our generation had managed to bag. As I sipped my coffee slowly, my gaze moved between the theatre listings and the entrance to the building opposite. Two places which had denied me access, except as a spectator.

  This was where my mind was when I saw a woman stop in front of the property. She can’t have been much older than thirty. She was slim and blonde, with her hair tied up in a casual but elegant style. A pram and a small boy were waiting for her to open the door. The face I observed for a second or two seemed attractive to me. A few minutes later, the lights went on in the first-floor apartment. The boy’s silhouette appeared in the window and, a little further in, the woman with the baby in her arms. The warm atmosphere of the place spilled out towards the café on the corner. I carried on watching for a few minutes, then paid for my coffee and went home. This time, Anna had already eaten, and I found her in bed watching TV.

  On Monday, we got up at the same time as usual. We ate a calm breakfast and left the house in opposite directions. But instead of taking the metro towards work, I sat on the green line like a zombie until I got to Fontana. I had to wait an hour in the café before I saw the first-floor tenant emerge. Judging by the little boy’s outfit, it looked like she was taking him to school. I left a few coins on the table and prepared to follow her.

  That week I called in sick to the office pretending to have the flu, and for five days in a row, focused on trailing the woman through the streets of Gràcia. Three days were enough to get to know her habits and schedule: after dropping the boy off, she would go back home and feed the baby in the living room armchair until ten. Later, she would take the pram out to Plaza de la Virreina, where she would sit and read in a café until it was time for lunch. Then she picked the little boy up from school and went back home. She hardly ever went out in the afternoons.

  The rest of my time – that is, the hours not devoted to my espionage work – seemed trivial to me. My own life was comparable to those adverts on TV that interrupt a thrilling film. There was nothing I could do about this, except patiently to put up with it. Anna began making sarcastic comments, saying that these days I was on another planet. But I always told her it was to do with my professional dilemma.

  On Thursday morning, when I left the house to head to the metro station, I was almost run over by a rubbish truck, and they never even drive particularly fast. I told myself that my wife was right: I ought to stop this nonsense and focus on work, but I wasn’t entirely convinced by this, just as I wasn’t entirely convinced by living on a street full of bureaucrats and immigrants, covered in dog mess, or by the graffiti on the walls of the metro. I wasn’t convinced by the thick Barcelona accent my colleagues at work had, nor by way the cortados tasted in the coffee shop on the corner. Our neighbourhood wasn’t bad, the building wasn’t bad, and nor was the apartment; but no matter how much I looked around me, I struggled to see anything that was good. Life seemed unjust to me in every aspect. Being a trained actor, I could feign the same conformity my neighbours exuded, but I couldn’t stop asking myself in which year or at what turning had I got off the highway that led to the destiny which, as far as I thought, was the right one for me, or, conversely, which corner should I have turned so as not to end up on this street crammed with cars, this high-speed avenue that led towards the frustrated parks of one’s forties. My intuition told me that something good was waiting for me in the apartment we hadn’t rented. Something unusual and refreshing, like a new start after several years of unhappiness.

  As the days went by, I became less resigned to the role of observer and my discretion began to feel unbearable. I wanted to talk to the woman, gain her trust and get her to invite me to her house. I couldn’t wait any longer, and so that Thursday morning I decided to intercept her in the café on La Virreina.

  It was a sunny winter morning, one of those when it’s not too cold and it’s nice to sit outside on the terrace of a café. She took off her coat and ordered a coffee. Sitting a couple of tables away from her, I felt how the beating of my heart sped up. Even so, I blurted out my question bluntly, quite naturally:

  ‘You were at the Institut del Teatre, weren’t you?

  The woman looked up. Her blue eyes stared hard at me for a few seconds.

  ‘No,’ she replied, with a foreign accent I struggled to place. ‘But my husband was.’

  We chatted for a few minutes. She told me she was Danish and had studied set design in Copenhagen until deciding to move to Barcelona to marry a man who was an actor. Before she even uttered her husband’s surname, I realized I was talking to Mestre’s wife.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re married to Xavi,’ I said, feigning amazement.

  I pretended to show a genuine interest in my ex-classmate’s career; I recalled aloud the three student anecdotes in which he and I had crossed paths, shamelessly amplifying the significance of our relationship. She seemed charmed and listened attentively for as long as her maternal duties allowed before she had to rush off to her son’s school.

  ‘It’s so rare to meet anyone from that time. Xavi’s classmates hardly ever come to his shows. We should get together another day,’ she said as she got up. She gave me a card with her name on it, her address on Calle Carolines, and a phone number. She was called Josephina and used her married surname.

  I went home and put the card in a drawer. I didn’t have the slightest intention of calling her, nor of following her around any longer. Things did not end there, however. Three weeks later, Anna rang to tell me that Xavi Mestre had called the house that afternoon.

  ‘He wants us to go for dinner at his place!’ she announced incredulously, as if, instead of this, I had been nominated for an Oscar.

 

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