For three years, I pretended I could see.

It started on a March morning when I woke up, and the world was gone. Not blurry. Not dim. Just black. As if someone had turned off the sun forever.

The doctor from the nearby town explained it like a judge delivering a sentence: “Bilateral retinal detachment. Rapid degeneration. Irreversible.” I was forty-two years old—and blind.

Two weeks later, the education inspector arrived from the capital. He wore a tie that smelled of expensive soap and spoke like a man used to closing things.

“Don Esteban, you can’t continue teaching. We’ll have to shut down the school. The children can be moved to San Rafael.”

San Rafael was four hours away—by foot, through hills and mud.

“That won’t be necessary,” I told him, staring at where I thought his eyes were. “I can keep teaching.”

He sighed. “Be reasonable, sir.”

“Give me one month,” I said. “If it doesn’t work, then close it.”

He agreed, perhaps out of pity more than belief.

That night, I counted every step from my small house to the school—two hundred and thirty-seven. I memorized each rock, root, and dip in the path. Inside the classroom, I traced every desk, every chair, the blackboard, the windows. My fingers replaced my eyes. I learned the textbooks by heart.

Monday came. Eleven children arrived, their laughter filling the room.

“Good morning, Maestro!” they shouted.

“Good morning, children,” I answered, steadying my voice. “Julián, did you finish your math homework?”

Julián’s chair creaked distinctively—the third in the second row.

“Yes, Maestro.”

“Come to the board and solve it for us.”

I recognized their footsteps now. Julián dragged his right foot slightly. Carmela’s steps were quick and light. Little Toño always ran.

“All done, Maestro.”

“Hmm… check the third step, Julián. Didn’t you forget something?”

He hesitated. “Ah—yes. The parentheses.”

“Exactly.”

I smiled. That night I had practiced that very problem, predicting the mistakes they might make.

Days turned into weeks. I invented new methods. I made them read aloud, debate, explain lessons to one another. I turned teaching into sound and rhythm.

“Lucía, read the paragraph about San Martín.”

“He crossed the Andes in 1817, Maestro.”

“Good. And why was that important, Carmela?”

When I checked homework, I touched the papers gently, feeling the grooves of the pencil marks, the smudges of erasers.

“Toño, you rushed through this,” I’d say. “I can feel all the erasures.”

“I had to fetch firewood for Mama.”

“Then plan your time better next time, boy. Learning doesn’t like to be rushed.”

Months passed, and I grew sharper. My ears replaced my sight; their voices became my compass.

One afternoon, the acting director left a pile of official papers on my desk.

“Please review these, Don Esteban.”

When she left, I sat still, palms on the pages I couldn’t read. Humiliation burned through me. Then, from outside, came the sound of my students laughing in the yard—and that was enough.

Six months later, the inspector returned.

“I’ve come to see how things are going.”

“Everything is in order,” I said, pretending to look at the blackboard.

He stayed the whole morning. I felt his eyes tracking my every move. During recess, he asked Martina, my brightest student,

“How’s your teacher doing?”

“He’s good, sir. A little strange sometimes.”

“Strange how?”

“He bumps into things. And once he called Pedro ‘Julián’. But he teaches beautifully. I already know all my multiplication tables.”

The inspector didn’t reply. But when he left, I felt that silence—the silence of understanding.

The hardest days were drawing classes.

“Maestro, is my picture good?” little Rosa asked once, handing me a paper.

I felt the waxy lines of crayon under my fingertips but couldn’t tell a river from a tree.

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“It’s my family by the river.”

“Beautiful,” I said. “Add more colors, so it feels happier.”

It always worked.

Two years passed. Two years of counting steps, memorizing voices, pretending I could see a world that had disappeared. Every morning, I woke with one fear: Today they’ll find out.

Then came Daniel.

He was ten, from the city—clever, observant. Two weeks after arriving, he stayed behind during recess.

“Maestro, can I ask you something?”

“Of course, Daniel.”

“You… you can’t see, can you?”

The question hit like a stone in still water. My hands trembled.

“What makes you say that?”

“Lots of things. You never really look at the board. You wait for us to speak before noticing we’re here. Yesterday, you stepped on my pencil.”

I sat down slowly. It’s over, I thought.

“Will you tell the others?”

He hesitated. “I don’t know. Why don’t you?”

“Because if they know, they’ll close the school. And then you’d all have to go to San Rafael.”

Silence. Then Daniel whispered,

“My grandmother is blind. She taught me math when I was little. She says there are many ways to see.”

“Your grandmother is wise.”

“So are you. You teach better than my city teachers—and they can all see.”

“Thank you, Daniel.”

He smiled. “Then I didn’t see anything, Maestro. You see perfectly.”

He left, and for the first time in a long while, I laughed.

But soon, I realized Daniel wasn’t the only one who knew. Children notice more than adults ever do. Martina probably knew. Julián too. Maybe all of them. Yet nobody said a word.

Near the end of the year, Carmela approached me shyly.

“Maestro, my mother wants to thank you.”

“Why, Carmela?”

“Because I can read everything now. Road signs, letters—everything. She says you taught me to see with words.”

She hugged me and ran off. I stayed behind, surrounded by darkness, and for the first time since losing my sight, I cried—not from sadness, but from gratitude.

When the inspector returned with the year’s results, he said,

“Your students have the best scores in the region. I don’t know how you do it, but whatever it is—it works.”

“They’re good children,” I said.

He paused, then added softly,

“You know, my uncle went blind years ago. He once told me that seeing and looking aren’t the same thing.”

“Your uncle is a wise man.”

“Like you, Don Esteban.”

He left, and once again, my secret remained safe.

Five years have passed. The school still stands. I still count two hundred and thirty-seven steps every morning. The laughter of children still fills the little classroom.

I still pretend.

Yet sometimes, I wonder who’s pretending more—me, who acts as though I can see, or my students, who act as though they believe I can.

Maybe that’s the real lesson we share: that there are ways of seeing that require no eyes, and that love—for knowledge, for children, for life—can illuminate even the darkest world.

Every dawn, I trace the familiar path, open the creaking wooden door, and say,

“Good morning, children.”

And they answer, bright as sunlight through the dark,

“Good morning, Maestro.”