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.”
