DRIVER
495
asked again, this time turning to look square in their faces. They
looked back. The old man rested his fingertip against the window–
glass, appreciatively. I understood his pleasure and was pleased
myself to have brought
it
about. We drove in silence for a number
of miles.
Then the old man began to utter noises of unrest. Seeing no
house or road, I drove on. His dismay increased. "Master," said the
woman eventually; and when I had stopped the car, "There was
a road," she said, and waited. I realized that they had wanted to
get out, and, rather than cause them an extra inconvenience, I backed
some hundred yards to where, indeed, a narrow dirt road forked off.
I followed it without hesitation. An emerald-green ribbon grew
between its ruts. Overhead, branches met. I felt a foolish smile cross
my face. The road itself soon petered out. We came to a halt in the
middle of a cluttered barnyard. Dogs, pigs, doves and a few small,
soiled children moved in and out of larger, motionless shapes, a
rusty tractor, a cow. One lone peacock trailed his feathers in the
hard dirt. To greet us, four young people rounded different far
corners and stared taciturn and crimson-eared at the car. Were they
all descended from myoid couple? I could imagine that, instead of
expelling anyone from the garden, God and the angels had found
it handsomer to pack up and go themselves, for all that could
be
done without
their
guidance and example.
My passengers had alighted and were making signs of hospitality.
Too young to be gracious, I could only blush and stammer a protest.
The poetry of the invitation depended upon its refusal. Each of us,
in fact, must have felt as much. In a single gentle movement the
old woman
s~t
down her herbs, took an apple from her husband's
basket, and handed it to me. As I circled the yard they stood waving.
A dove fluttered out of my path.
I got back to my original road. The sun, pale and lowering, was
waiting for me beyond the first crest. The apple tasted bitter, hard;
it could not have been an eating apple. I tossed it away with a
shudder. Night fell before I came to a town.
From now on I would offer rides to people. Absently at first,
discouraging talk, moved chiefly by the missionary's fervor to acquaint
