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He sat down quietly, and there he sat for I don’t know how long, watching us as we moved about from here to there doing things and he stayed so calm and quiet, so much so that at some point he must have gotten bored and fallen asleep. When we noticed, we called on his mother to take him and she told us:
“No, he’s all right here,” and with that she left, but came straight back with an old towel and covered him.
The box served as a crib, perhaps it was his crib, because we hadn’t seen one inside. None of us batted an eyelid at the time, but it seems that it did leave more than one of us a little concerned, because in the afternoon, when we finished the work, we commented on it on the way back.
“We’ll learn more about the things they need,” Simón said. “Now, the first order of business, we have to get a move on so that tomorrow we can begin to change these people’s lives, so that they don’t miss a meal. We have to make a move now to try to fix that.”
As we already had contacts, Jorge and Santi, who would pass closer to them, paid them a visit before going home. They explained the problems and the urgency of the case.
The lady who received them told them not to worry, that the next day they would go to the place and that they would see what their needs were themselves.
“And if you can, bring them some food!” Jorge told them, “they really need it.”
And that’s how it went. We were working again. We had already eaten the sandwiches that we’d brought for lunch, and today we all wanted to share them with the couple, but none of us remembered to bring any for the kid. The four of us had brought two sandwiches each without making any sort of agreement. When it was time to eat, we all took them out and gave them to the lady. Of course, since we had one extra per head, they got two each, but what about the little one? It was only at that point that we realized.
“Don’t worry,” she said with a smile, “he only takes porridge and then the breast, he’s still too small for sandwiches,” and thanking us for what we’d given her, she continued, “we already have enough food for today and tomorrow.”
“No, tomorrow we’ll bring you more,” I said promptly.
“No, there’s no need, with these we have enough, they’re very big and certainly very rich, thank you very much,” she said looking at us gratefully.
After resting a little, we’d gone back to continue with our digging, so we could finish the ditch where we would pour the cement for the wall, when we saw some confused ladies coming from the distance.
Simón, being the most alert, approached them and said:
“It’s over here, come, come.”
“We weren’t sure about the location, it’s a little complicated,” they said smiling.
“Madam, can you come out? You have a visitor,” I said, approaching the door of the house.
Without coming out, she said:
“Visitor? Surely not!” Lifting the curtain, she saw the two women who had already arrived and Simón behind them with some bags that he’d taken from their hands to help them.
“What can I do for you? Who are you?” she asked in surprise.
They introduced themselves and talked about why they’d come. We left them to it and continued with our task, because we set a goal for ourselves each day and we had to finish it, so we got back to the old grindstone as they say in construction slang. We finished the whole ditch that day, pleased and upbeat. We were even singing on the way home because of how happy we were.
We commented that they wouldn’t go hungry anymore, that was the first goal fulfilled, they would bring them food. Now we had to do our part so that they would be living in a decent place, and they wouldn’t get wet at the very least, because in this part of the country, with so many rainy days, that was very important, but as we told ourselves, that was our thing and we would leave it in fantastic condition, we were already experts after all.
How time flies. The summer passed and everything reached completion. The assignment was done and the two whitewashed rooms looked as though they’d been built by professionals. We even put in windows, well mini-windows, they might not have been very large, but they were big enough to let the light in and properly ventilate the place.
We did as we’d intended on that seemingly distant day at the start of the summer. The two rooms were connected, but there was no way of putting in doors, no matter how hard we tried, so one day when we were discussing it with the woman, she immediately told us:
“Don’t worry, they can be separated with a curtain and that’ll do very nicely.”
The ladies who came from time to time would tell us:
“Look, this’ll come in handy for you,” and they brought us a little something.
One of them appeared one day with a very beautiful painting, with views of the sea. When Encarnación saw it, she immediately asked us, “Why don’t we put it on the wall? That way it would make the place look more beautiful.”
On another occasion, they brought some blue curtains, which one of the ladies had been keeping in a drawer. She said that since she’d changed them for new ones, she wasn’t going to need them anymore and they were only getting in her way. She hadn’t wanted to throw them away because they were still good.
Those were the curtains that we subsequently put up to separate the two rooms and everything looked ten times better than we had ever imagined.
They also brought a vase, which, although it didn’t seem useful to us, Encarnación was very excited about. Santi immediately went around the field and picked some bunches of flowers and put them into that vase and in truth, what he created was pretty original.
One of the days that the ladies came, one of them brought a small picture frame.
“When the little one gets older, I’ll take a photograph and put it in here,” the mother said, thanking them.
Santi, who had inadvertently overheard her, having passed by at just that moment to get some water, told us. I instantly had an idea and I told them:
“Let’s give them a surprise, you’ll all see, let’s take that photograph ourselves and give it to them.”
“How?” Simón asked. “That really is beyond our abilities.”
“No, listen, my father has a device for that, I’ll try to get it from him,” I was telling him, but I was already questioning it as I heard myself say it, it would be very difficult. Surely he would tell me, without even thinking about it, that he wouldn’t dream of letting me take that device.
I was thinking about it for several days, but I just couldn’t decide upon the right moment, and one afternoon while we were returning Jorge asked me:
“What about that photo you talked to us about?”
I didn’t want to tell him that I hadn’t yet dared to ask my father for it and I answered:
“I’m on it,” and as I headed home afterwards, after having said goodbye to the others, I told myself: “If it doesn’t happen today, if he says no, well, at least I tried.”
I summoned up my courage and asked my father for the camera. Of course I had to tell him what it was for. He thought about it for a few moments. I was afraid that he would say no, so I insisted:
“Dad, they’d be very excited to have a photograph of their young son.”
“Yes, you’re right son, I’d also have liked to have one of you all when you were little and that way you would all have some to remember your childhood whenever you saw them, but Manu, you have to be careful not to damage it,” he said in an apprehensive tone, “these things are very fragile.”
Then, after giving me some instructions so that the photo would turn out well, he left it in my care. I handled it with the utmost care because I did not want anything to happen to it. My father would be so dismayed if anything did, he’d only acquired it recently and he took great care of it.
With that, we took a photo of the little one. We placed him in a seated position, sitting well-behaved on the floor next to a hen, which he tried to catch and I took it right at that moment. It came out pretty nice. When my father finished up the film and the photographs were developed, even the photographer where he’d taken the film congratulated him on the photo. He said:
“Look at that, it’s difficult to get a chicken to stand still, how did you manage it?”
“I don’t know,” said my father, “my son took it, and I don’t know the child.”
“Well, congratulate your son, he has a future as a photographer,” the man said.
He smiled and told me that he’d answered:
“Well, it’s the only photograph he’s ever taken in his life.”
I believe the gentleman told him:
“Not a chance, he’ll have done it before without you knowing.”
“No, because the photographs would be here, he doesn’t have another camera,” my father argued.
He had told me all of that, and I was telling the parents of the little boy while they stared enthralled at the photo, which had been put into that little picture frame that the wife had placed on some boxes in a corner. We had taken the frame from there a while ago, and she hadn’t noticed, we had put the photo inside and then the four of us gave it to them as a farewell gift.
The father, who was on the verge of tears, told us:
“It was a pleasure,” and we laughed, so as to keep him from tearing up.
“Let’s see if from now on, it can make you happy,” Simón told him. “You see how everything has been overcome. You have to have more confidence man; life is very beautiful.”
“Well, almost everything,” he said, looking sadly at the sheet that covered him.
“Yeah, but that’s not something we can help you with that,” Simón added very seriously.
“Yes, well we can’t complain,” the woman interrupted. “Thank you for everything, we’ll never forget you.”
We all said our goodbyes. We didn’t want to extend that moment that was difficult for all of us any further. So many hours spent there, so many memories that would safely stay with us forever.
When we were returning home, commenting on the incidents that had happened to us, we said:
“We spent so much time there and we never did find out what was wrong with him, why was he always covered?”
“I know why,” said Santi.
“Tell us, tell us!” we all asked him, eager to know.
“Well, he was a blacksmith, and one day he had an accident. Some chunks of iron fell on him because the wooden shelf they were sitting on collapsed. He was so unlucky that they injured both his arms. He took little notice, but it seems that the iron was rusty. The wounds it caused developed gangrene, so his arms had to be cut off.”
“Oh, is that why he was always covered up to his neck?” asked Jorge. “It did seem odd to me.”
“Come on you idiot! Didn’t you notice that the bedding was flat where his arms should have been?” asked Simón.
“Yeah, but I didn’t think much of it, I thought maybe it was his legs that were bad. Hey, and how come you know that?” he asked Santi looking at him.
“Listen, do you remember that day when we had to break down the wall that connected the new room to the old one? I overheard the woman when she worriedly said:
‘But honey, they’ll have to find out, they’ll help you, I surely can’t do it alone.’”
“‘No, please,’ I heard him say, crying. ‘Please help me on your own, please don’t let them see me like this.’”
“On impulse, I walked in and told them:
‘I’m here to help you for whatever you need.’”
“He was uncovered and I saw him lying there without his arms. The woman rushed to cover him right away, but when she saw that I’d seen him, she told me:
‘Please don’t tell the others, I couldn’t bear to see their faces full of pity, watching me,’ and two big tears ran down her cheeks.”
“‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘keep calm, now I can help you,’ and before anyone could protest, I was uncovering him, and helping him to get up.”
“I put him in a chair in that corner, where he could be sure that no rubble would fall from the wall when we made the hole, and I wrapped him up properly with a blanket so that he wouldn’t get cold, and also so that if you guys came in, you wouldn’t see.”
“The woman was watching me, it seemed that she couldn’t believe what was happening, I’d caught her off guard and all she could say was:
‘Thank you! Thank you! Are you okay, honey?’ She looked at him with such tenderness.”
“He was sobbing the entire time and I asked him:
‘Am I hurting you?’”
“He shook his head, because the words wouldn’t come out. He let me do this to him, and once he was sitting in that corner, he said softly:
‘Thank you son, God will bless you for it.’”
“I tried to smile to calm him down and said:
‘Come on, it was nothing.’ Then I grabbed the straw mattress and pulled it out so that it wouldn’t get in the way, and in turn so that the rubble from the wall wouldn’t fall onto it.”
“When I came outside, I went to tell you guys that we could start making the hole where we had planned, because it was in the same place where he had been lying on the other side, and I told you:
‘He’s already been moved from there, there’s no danger that anything will fall on him.’”
We worked more quickly that morning. Everything had to be completed so that he could go back to his place. The back room was almost finished, all we had to do was close up the hole through which we went in and out. After creating that connecting door, two of us dedicated ourselves to closing the hole and plastering everything properly and the other two to removing the debris.
The wife could not stay still and in her eagerness to help, was faster than we were. Surely it also came down to her nerves, but it made us take on more than we would have done had she not been helping, because we realized how much she was doing, which was a lot and we were not going to be doing less.
When everything had been cleaned up, we finished properly reviewing the new space we’d created, and we said satisfied:
“It’s not too bad.”
The husband, who had been tucked up quietly in that corner the entire time, told us:
“Not too bad? It’s fantastic! You seem to be professionals, surely they wouldn’t have done a better job.”
Since we were lucky that day and it was very hot, the cement dried well, so we could put the mattress into their new bedroom at the end of the afternoon. They would sleep there that night, and we told them that we would take it out again tomorrow to finish up and whitewash the walls, and we left it at that.
Santi was still telling us his story and as we reached the point where we had to go our own separate ways and say goodbye, we asked him:
“What happened the next day? Why did you go early?”
“Don’t you remember? When we were on the way home that afternoon, I said, ‘I forgot my sweater, you guys just keep going,’ and I ran back.”
“Yes, and by the way you took a long time to come back,” Jorge said, “we were waiting for you there in the countryside, we were exhausted and you didn’t seem to be in any hurry.”
“Well, that’s because I’d thought, ‘When we leave, he’ll have to be put back into his bed,’ and I had to find an excuse to help him without you guys knowing, so I left my sweater in a corner, how could I have forgotten it? That’s why I told you that I was going back for it, and that’s how I arrived just when Encarnación was about to lift him up so she could put him back onto the bed. I helped her to do it and then I went back to where you guys were waiting, but in the rush, I left again without the sweater and I had to go back to pick it up, that’s why it took so long.”
