A boy's greeting

(My journey hadn't been planned meticulously, but I didn't mind. It was a heavenly late-summer afternoon and the final stage was a mere 8-mile walk across the part of Lower Silesia that I love to bits. I felt secure and light - the summer completely distracted me from most of my sins, so my only burden was a small trustworthy suitcase* and the prospect of death; the former I could handle myself, physically; and with the latter, I dare say, I'd been dealing with considerable success, philosophically. Thus, I joyfully got off the train and set out with a spring in my soul, making up a psalm as I went along - how could I not on such a glorious Lord-given day?)



Then a boy on a bicycle emerged out of the curve in the road and said 'Good afternoon' as he went past me. I replied - and suddenly understood that his sincere and unprompted* greeting prompted, implied and, if you cared to take a closer look, encompassed the whole human moral code - starting with the very premises, going through all the commandments and finishing with most intricate nuances.

(Just after the boy, two fully-fledged teenage girls appeared on the horizon. And as always with more shapely specimen of the opposite sex, there was some confusion in my mind: were they there to reward my faith or to test it? Their bodies were approaching at an exciting  youthful pace and I was trying hard not to think of them as mere sexual objects, at which I nearly succeeded when their faces became discernible***, and fully - with the help of the boy's 'Good afternoon' - when they were some 10 steps behind me.)

*Tripp's the brand; I think it's Debenham's in-house luggage label; recommended.
**but what do I know about where the Spirit blows?
***not that they were ugly, quite the contrary; but then I saw them as they really were: fully-fledged persons.


Illustration: Tobias and the Angel (1663) by Claude Lorraine
Oil on canvas, 116 x 153.5 cm