I suddenly remembered those ladies, Antonio’s grandmother and her friend, who gave them so many things and I asked them, “So do those ladies still visit you?”
“Of course, they never miss a week,” answered Rafael, “they bring us food and everything. We don’t have to worry anymore; we always have a hot meal on the table. Well, they don’t come themselves, two gentlemen come on their behalf. They have come again, but just to visit. They do always bring something with them, they don’t know how to come with empty hands, but they told us that their job is to take care of other things, and they’re always very busy and they were the ones who brought those two gentlemen to us that I told you about.”
“Two gentlemen?” I asked, surprised. “Who are they?”
“They told us they were from the Conferences of Saint Vincent de Paul and that they would help us in everything we needed, in fact, this winter I felt a little unwell and it coincided with the day they came, and without any fuss they took me to the doctor so he could see me.”
“Yes, they took him in their car and everything,” Rosa added.
“You see Papa, there are still people who care about you,” Jorge told them.
“Yes,” he said, lowering his head, “there are still good people, thanks be to God.”
As we didn’t want that day to be sad, we started to make jokes about the problem we had when we installed the tiles, that there was no way they would stay in their place. Thank goodness he was an expert and he was telling us the steps we had to take and I’m certain that if he hadn’t, we would still be doing it, and we wouldn’t have finished yet.
Then they told us that the first day it had started to rain, they were watching to see whether or not the roof would leak, but they saw with joy that everything was perfectly set, and not a single drop had come through, and they said:
“What good bricklayers who have fixed everything for us, they could earn good wages working like this.”
We all laughed at that comment:
“No Papa, that work is really hard, we aren’t the kind of people who like to work like that, because we know how difficult it is. I’m sure we’ll look for another simpler trade,” we told them.
We spent the rest of the afternoon with them, remembering all those hours of work spent there, and how they gradually came to see the effort we put in and to understand that young people could also be useful, and that we didn’t just think about partying, which was what they had thought at first.
CHAPTER 3.
It was a glorious day, the sun seemed to want to encourage us. We were looking forward to seeing the new place they had assigned to us. Even though we tried to form a team with the same people as last summer, we had a change, Antonio would not be with us this year. He had left Santiago de Compostela with his family, and they put another friend in his place. His name was Santiago, he told us, Santi to his friends. It was his first time, but surely within a few days he would be just as much of an expert as we were, because he was very excited.
These works are not performed during the academic year. Everyone is dedicated to their studies and because we’re all from different courses, each of us has our own circle of friends, and when we have seen each other, we’ve only greeted each other, with warmth yes, we don’t share so many ups and downs in vain. We were jokingly asking each other, “So, have the scratches healed? How about the calluses on your hands?” and other unimportant things along those lines.
We were a team of bricklayers on the way to the construction site. Well, we may have been saying that, but we knew that it would just be for the summer, then it would be back to the books. What we did get out of that experience was to realize that we had “The best job in the world,” as I’d already heard from my grandfather countless times when I complained about everything I had to study, and that we didn’t appreciate being seated and studying comfortably, whether it was cold or hot, no matter how hard it rained. That encouraged us to improve our grades. We were discussing it when we arrived at the new place, along the path that Simón was showing us.
We saw a child playing on the floor. When he saw us approaching, he got up and looking up at us as if we were giants, he said to us with his baby talk:
“Where you go? You play with me?”
“Leave the gentlemen be, little dear. Are you looking for something?” we heard a woman, who must have been his mother, say as she appeared just then through the doorway, probably after hearing her little one.
The four of us said in unison:
“Good morning, we’ve come…”
We all laughed at the coincidence and also with a smile she said:
“Ah, so you are the ones,” and that was our formal introduction. “Come in, come in,” she said as she turned around, disappearing inside the house.
We followed her and when we entered, we saw a sad, almost tearful man, on a rickety bed, who as he saw us enter, looked down with deep sadness and said:
“I don’t know how we’re going to be able to pay for it!”
We stood, not knowing what to do. Suddenly I reacted and said:
“But you don’t have to pay us anything, haven’t you been told?”
“But I, I can’t even help,” he said, embarrassed.
“Come on, you fool!” the woman said in a loving tone. “Don’t worry, I’ll help, and you’ll see how good everything will be.”
He returned her look full of love and said:
“Thank you sweetheart! I know.”
“Well, where do we start the work?” asked Simón, who had been in charge of connecting with them a few days ago.
“My name is Encarnación, I’m here for whatever you need. Come! I’ll show you everything,” said the woman. “Honey, I’ll leave you with the baby for a little bit, so we can talk quietly, otherwise he won’t leave us be.”
“Come to Dad, little one!” said the man to the little boy who was holding his mother’s hand.
The woman led him to the side of the bed. The boy sat on the floor with a broken toy truck that he was dragging along in his hand. He started playing there straight away and he stayed quiet.
She took us to the other side of the house. Surrounding it, we saw a yard demarcated with some chicken wire and wooden sticks, and she told us:
“This is where we want to be, well, where we thought work could be done,” and she looked at us as if she was embarrassed and lowered her head.
“Don’t worry,” said Simón, “you’ll see how nice we’re going to leave it, and can we make use of all the land?” he asked, with the certainty of knowing what he wanted to do, although we had no idea what the two of them were talking about.
“Yes, whatever you want, no problem,” she answered.
“And what about the chickens? What are you going to do with them? They’re going to get in the way here,” Simón asked again.
“Well, they’re free range. They’re used to it and even though they’re not cooped up, they don’t go very far, they spend the day pecking around over there,” she added. “I’ll leave you be, I don’t want to leave the child for too long, he’s a little rascal and I want to know what he’s up to,” and off she went.
“Guys, we have a job! You’ve already seen everything that needs to be done,” Simón told us.
“And what is there to do?” we asked intrigued, because he had not put anything forward.
“Well, look here, we can build one room here,” he said quietly, as if waiting for us to protest.
“Why not two?” I asked.
“Would you be brave enough to build two?” Simón asked.
“It was an idea that came to me, I don’t know, all of a sudden,” and I asked the others.
“Sure, if we can build one, we can build two. I think it would be good, but first we have to make some plans and adapt them to the space we have,” Jorge told us. It seemed that he was on board with my idea.
“Yes, but what about the doors? Where could we put them? We’ve already seen that they only have that one room that they use for everything; sitting room, dining room and bedroom, where the bed is. With this space we can build two rooms, a larger one for the Mom and Dad and a smaller one for the little one,” Simón was telling us.
