Lost trumpet

IlB THE LOST TRUMPET
and steered the automobile to the side of the road.
So we slowed down and stopped. It was still the
mere beginning of the morning. The car coughed.
I turned off the engine. Pelagueya leant her face in
her hands. I said nothing. Straight and blue, little
pencillings of smoke arose from a village far down
the Cairo-wards horizon. Pelagueya took her hands
from her face.
“Do you know what I intended to do, Anton ?”
I did not look at her. “You wished to make a
great speed, and did so.”
“I intended to wreck the car and kill both of us.”
I nodded. There was no point in pretending the
lie that I did not know that. “And why did you not ?”
She laughed shakily. “Because of that look of
yours. Anton—hadn’t you ever seen me before until
you realized . . .? That look, there was nothing else
could have stopped me. . . . Oh, God !”
She took herself from my arms after a little,
staring up at me. “Anton !”
I think it was I who was trembling then. I said :
“But even so I can still remember and believe
what I said at dinner a week ago, what I told in that
parable last night. . . . And I am going to drive
now.”
She laughed. “You can remember and believe
and drive what you will, Anton Kyrilovitch.” We
changed seats. I did it with elaborate rigidity. She
sank down in the place I had vacated, and ran her
long, slender fingers through the metallic miracle
that was her hair, and touched her flushed forehead.