One Saturday, Kayo asked him if he could play football. Gustavo, who had not touched a ball for twenty years, agreed.
He ended up tripping three times and scoring against his side, but the boys celebrated as if he had won the World Cup.
That night, Gustavo looked at himself in the bathroom mirror and did not fully recognize the man in front of him.
He had grass on his Italian shoes and he smiled. He felt more alive than ever before.
With Beatriz, conversations were slowly developing, as is the case with the things that really matter in life.
It was reserved and respectful, now always the distance that social differences seemed to require between the two.
But Gustavo began to erase that distance, first by asking how she was doing, and then really listening to her answers.
He learned that Beatriz had been left alone with his three children when their father had disappeared without leaving an address.
He learned that she had studied to become a teacher, but that she had had to give up for lack of money to pay for her studies.
She had accumulated two jobs before arriving in her mansion to ensure a decent future for her little ones.
He learned that she was reading pedagogy books with a flashlight while the children slept so they wouldn’t wake them.
Why pedagogy? Asked him Gustavo for an afternoon as she put away the library of the large living room.
Beatriz looked at him as if the question was obvious, her eyes shining with a passion she could no longer hide.
“Because the children no one sees need someone to see them at last,” she replied
Gustavo remained silent. He thought of himself at eight, invisible in a family where money was the only language.
“I was a child too that nobody could see,” he thought. And something in his chest changed forever.
Love did not come like a love at first sight, but like dawn, so gradually that it is not noticed that the day rises.
Gustavo knew it on a Tuesday morning when Beatriz laughed at a stupidity of Enzo. This laughter fills every corner of the manor.
No expensive painting, no bottle of imported wine had ever brought so much heat to this huge house of marble.
It took him another three weeks to confess his feelings. Beatriz was afraid instantly upon hearing his words.
“Mr. Gustavo, you do not know what you are saying,” she replied, stepping back, palely with a pale face.
I am the one who cleans your house. There is a world of difference between us, between your life and mine.
“Yes,” he said with determination. And I want to cross this world to be by your side, if you allow me.
