I was driving a taxi in those days. When I arrived at 2:30 in the morning to pick up the woman who had called, the building was dark. Only a faint light came from the ground floor.
Most other taxi drivers would have honked the horn two or three times, waited a minute, and driven off.
But I had seen too much—too many people for whom a taxi was their only way to get around. I walked to the door.
This passenger might need my help. I approached and knocked. "One more minute," came a frail voice, elderly but clear.
I could hear shoes dragging slowly across the floor. After a long pause, the door opened.
A small woman in her eighties stood before me. She wore a printed dress and a soft hat with a veil held by a pin, like something from a 1940s film. Beside her, a small fiber suitcase.
The apartment looked as if no one had lived there for years. All the furniture was draped in sheets. No clocks hung on the walls, no dishes or objects on the shelves. In one corner sat a cardboard box filled with photographs.
"Would you carry my bag to the car?" she asked.
I took the suitcase to the taxi and returned to her. She took my arm, and we walked slowly toward the sidewalk. She kept thanking me for my kindness.
"It's nothing," I said. "I simply try to treat my passengers the way I would want someone to treat my mother."
"Oh, you're a good boy," she said.
Once we were in the taxi, she gave me an address and asked: "Could we drive through town?"
"It's not the shortest route," I replied.
"Oh, that doesn't matter," she said. "I'm not in a hurry. I'm going into a nursing home."
I looked in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were glistening.
"I have no family," she went on. "The doctor told me I don't have much time left."
I quietly turned off the meter and listened.
"Which route would you like to take?" I asked.
For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She pointed out the buildings where she had worked when she was young. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived as newlyweds. She showed me a furniture warehouse, an old ballroom where she had danced in her youth.
At certain spots she asked me to slow down, gazing at corners in silence.
As dawn broke, she suddenly said: "I'm tired now. Let's go."
We drove in silence to the address she had given. It was a low building, like a small convalescent clinic, with a covered entrance. Two nurses came to the taxi as soon as we stopped. Attentive and prepared, they watched her every movement. They had been waiting for her.
I opened the trunk and carried the small suitcase to the door. From that moment on, the small woman sat in a wheelchair.
"How much do I owe you?" she asked, reaching into her purse.
"Nothing," I said.
"You have to make a living," she insisted.
"There will be other passengers," I replied.
Without thinking, I bent down and held her in my arms. She held on tight.
"You gave an old woman a moment of joy," she said. "Thank you." I squeezed her hand, then walked away in the pale morning light. Behind me, a door closed. It was the sound of a life ending.
from Alleluia-Arche