ROBERTÍN AND THE THING THAT WASN’T LOST
Robertín had a drawer for things nobody wanted.
Inside it, he kept a marble with a crack through the middle, three buttons of different sizes, a key that opened no door, a red shoelace and a wooden horse missing one leg.
There were also seventeen single socks.
Always seventeen.
He had counted them so many times that he no longer needed to. But every now and then, he counted them again, just in case one of them had finally found its other half.
A label was fixed to the front of the drawer:
THINGS THAT MAY STILL MATTER.
Nobody had asked him to keep those things.
Robertín couldn’t explain exactly why he did.
He had simply learned that something could look useless and still be connected to something else that had not yet appeared.
He had learned that in the Valley too.
That morning, he found a star beneath a bench in the courtyard.
It was small and blue.
It had been folded from a torn notebook page, and one of its points was slightly crushed, as if someone had stepped on it and then decided not to finish the job.
Robertín picked it up and slowly turned it between his small hands.
There were three pencil marks on one of its points.
He looked around.
The courtyard was full of children.
Voices moved between the trees.
A ball struck a wall somewhere beyond him.
Someone was laughing near the gate.
Nobody seemed to be looking for a star.
Robertín placed it in his drawer beside the wooden horse and closed it carefully.
The next morning, the star was gone.
He opened the drawer and checked twice.
The buttons were there.
The key.
The horse.
The seventeen socks, still seventeen.
The star was not.
He looked beneath the bench.
Then he searched the classroom, the corridor and the library.
Nothing.
His antenna vibrated once.
It wasn’t worry.
Something was different.
Something had moved.
At lunchtime, he found another star beneath the old oak tree.
Same blue paper.
Same fold.
The same three pencil marks.
Robertín stood still.
He looked at the star.
Then at the bench.
Then at the oak tree.
The distance between them wasn’t great.
But it wasn’t accidental either.
Something connected them.
Robertín followed the stars.
He found another beside the gym steps.
Another behind a waste bin.
Another beside a wooden gate that was almost always closed.
By the time he reached it, there were nine.
Nine small pieces of blue paper tracing a path that didn’t look like a path until you knew it was there.
The gate was open.
On the other side, a boy was sitting on the ground.
He held a sheet of paper against his chest so the wind wouldn’t take it.
When he saw Robertín, he looked up.
«You found them.»
Robertín looked at the stars.
«You made them.»
The boy nodded.
For a few seconds, neither of them said anything.
Then the boy looked towards the gate.
«My sister is coming today.»
Robertín waited.
«It’s her first day. She doesn’t know anyone.»
He looked down at the stars.
«When she gets scared, she forgets where she’s going.»
Robertín looked again at the little blue path.
Nine stars.
Nine small certainties crossing a place that, to someone who had just arrived, must have seemed enormous.
«I can make it better,» he said.
The boy looked at him.
Robertín was already calculating.
He could shorten the distances.
Straighten the stars.
Move them out of the shadows.
Make the path clearer.
Safer.
Impossible to misunderstand.
His small arms began to unfold.
Then the boy placed another star beneath a tree.
It was crooked.
Very crooked.
Robertín watched it.
He could straighten it.
He didn’t.
The boy placed another one too close to the previous star.
Then a third, upside down.
Robertín’s eyes dimmed slightly.
That wasn’t right.
Or, at least, it wasn’t right the way he would have done it.
He looked at the stars.
Then at the boy.
Then at the gate.
For the first time, he didn’t try to correct anything.
The path didn’t need to be perfect.
It only needed to be there.
A few minutes later, the school’s main gate opened.
A little girl entered holding her mother’s hand.
She stopped.
She looked at the courtyard, the trees, the children, the unfamiliar faces and all the movement she did not yet know how to read.
Then she saw the first blue star.
She took one step.
Then another.
She found the second.
Robertín stayed where he was.
He didn’t point.
He didn’t move the stars.
He didn’t shorten the distances.
He simply watched.
The girl found the third.
Then the fourth.
Once, she walked past one without seeing it and had to turn back.
Robertín did nothing.
He let her find it.
When she reached the last star, she looked up.
Her brother was standing on the other side of the courtyard.
She saw him.
And ran towards him.
He caught her before she reached the gate.
For a moment they held on to each other with the kind of strength you use when you are not yet completely sure the other person will still be there.
Robertín’s antenna vibrated once.
The boy looked towards him.
«Did you help?»
Robertín thought about the answer.
«No.»
The boy’s expression changed slightly.
Then Robertín’s eyes brightened.
«I noticed.»
The boy smiled.
«That counts too.»
The bell rang.
The boy took his sister’s hand and the two of them disappeared inside the building.
Robertín remained by the gate for a while.
He had a star in his hand.
He looked at it.
Then at the path.
Then at the doorway through which the two children had disappeared.
He could put it in his drawer.
He didn’t.
He placed it beside the first one.
This time, he didn’t look for where it fit.
It was enough to know that it had led someone there.
On his way back to the classroom, Robertín stopped in front of his drawer.
He opened it.
The buttons were still there.
The key.
The red shoelace.
The wooden horse with three legs.
The seventeen socks.
He counted them.
Seventeen.
He closed the drawer.
Took two steps.
Stopped.
Went back.
Opened it again.
Looked at the socks.
Perhaps one of them was waiting for someone too.
Robertín couldn’t know.
Not yet.
He closed the drawer.
But this time, he left the label slightly crooked.
And didn’t go back to straighten it.
A DOOR TO ANOTHER PLACE
Santiago Copí