12 Feb Carpenter’s shop “Number Seven”
Some people are not only obtuse, but they won’t even let you help them,” I complained. Tubs made himself comfortable and began:
Once there was a little shack—a hovel, really—on the outskirts of the city. In the front was a little workshop with a few tools and machines, and two bedrooms and a kitchen, and out back there was a very basic bathroom. But Joaquín, who lived there, never complained. For the last two years, his carpenter’s shop, called Number Seven, had become well known in town and he earned enough that he didn’t have to use up his meager savings. One morning, like every morning, he got up at six thirty to see the sunrise. But he never made it to the lake. On his way, some two hundred yards from his house, he nearly tripped over the body of a wounded young man who looked to be in quite a bad way. Quickly, he knelt down and pressed his ear to the young man’s chest. He heard his heart beating weakly, struggling to hold on to what was left of the life in his filthy body, which was covered in blood and grime and reeked of alcohol. Joaquín rushed to find a stretcher and carried the man home. When he got there, he laid him out on his bed, cut off his tattered clothes and washed him carefully with soap, water, and rubbing alcohol. The young man, in addition to being drunk, had been brutally beaten. He had cuts all over his hands and back, and his right leg was fractured.
For the next two days, Joaquín’s life centered around the health of his unexpected guest: he tended him and bandaged his wounds, put his leg in a splint and fed him little spoonfuls of chicken broth. When the young man finally awoke, Joaquín was by his side, looking down on him with tenderness and concern.
“How are you?” Joaquín asked.
“O.K., I think,” the man replied, looking at his body, now cleaned and cured.
“Who took care of me?”
“I did.”
“Why?” “Because you were hurt.”
“Is that the only reason?”
“No. I could also use an assistant.”
And they both laughed heartily
Having eaten well, slept well, and not had anything to drink, Manuel—for that was the young man’s name— recovered his strength quickly. Joaquín tried to teach the young man his trade and Manuel tried to avoid work as best he could. Time and time again, Joaquín attempted to instill in the young man’s head–which had been wasted by his dissolute life–the advantages of hard work, a good name and an honest life. And time and time again, Manuel seemed to understand, but then, two hours or two days later, he’d fall asleep on the job or forget to run the errands that Joaquín had sent him on. Months went by and by this time Manuel had recovered completely. Joaquín had ceded to Manuel his bedroom, a share in his business, and the first turn in the bathroom in exchange for the young man’s promise to dedicate himself to his job. One night, as Joaquín slept, Manuel decided that six months of abstinence were enough. One glass of wine in town wouldn’t do him any harm, he thought. In case Joaquín woke up in the night, he locked the door to his room from the inside and went out through the window, leaving his candle lit so as to give the impression that he was there.
Well, after one glass came a second, and then a third, and then a fourth, and then many more . . . He was singing with his drinking buddies when the fire engines drove by the front of the bar, sirens blaring. Manuel didn’t put two and two together until, in the wee hours, stumbling, he arrived home and saw crowds out on the street.
A few tools and machines and a wall or two were all that could be salvaged from the fire. Everything else had been destroyed in the inferno. A few scorched bones were the only remains of Joaquín they recovered, and they buried them in the cemetery under a gravestone that Manuel had engraved with the following epitaph:
I’ll do it, Joaquín, I will!
It took a lot of hard work, but Manuel rebuilt the carpenter’s shop. He was lazy, but talented, and what he’d learned from Joaquín served him well and enabled him to bring the business back. He always got the feeling that Joaquín was looking down on him from someplace, encouraging him.
Manuel thought of him with every achievement: his wedding, the birth of his first child, the purchase of his first car . . .
Three hundred miles away, Joaquín, alive and kicking, wondered if lying, deceiving, and setting fire to his sweet little house was justifiable, in the name of saving a young man. He decided that it was, and he laughed just thinking about the local policemen, who’d confused pig’s bones with human bones . . . His new carpenter’s shop was a bit more modest than the previous one, but it was already becoming known in town. It was called Number Eight.
“Sometimes, Demián, life makes it hard to help someone we love. But if there is one difficulty that’s worth taking on, it’s helping another human being. This is not a ‘moral’ duty or anything of the sort. It’s a choice we each make about our lives when the time comes, to go in whatever direction we want.
“My personal experience has led me to believe—through what I’ve gone through myself and what I’ve seen—that genuinely free, self-aware human beings are generous, supportive, friendly and able to take equal pleasure in giving and receiving. So when you meet people who are navel gazers, don’t despise them: they do a good enough job making themselves miserable on their own. Whenever you find yourself being stingy, mean or petty, use it as an opportunity to ask yourself what’s going on. I guarantee that somewhere along the way, you went off course.
“I once wrote this:
A neurotic doesn’t need
a therapist to treat him
or a parent to care for him.
All he needs
is a teacher to show him
where he lost his way . . . ”
Let Me Tell You a Story
Jorge Bucay
Image: Eszter and David Photography 2013 www.eszteranddavid.com | https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/2a/b4/0d/2ab40db650c8c0a3d8382a4c1b6eb00f.jpg
