ONE THURSDAY AFTERNOON, an ancient man selling apples knocked at the door of our house in Dublin. He appeared to me to be about ninety. His hair was thin and white. His back was stooped, his expression was vague and humble, and he held his hat in one of his hands. His other hand rested on the handle of an enormous basket of apples that stood beside him. My mother, who had opened the door at his knock, stood staring at him. I peered out past her. I was nine. The first question that came into my mind was how did that thin old man carry that big basket of apples — because there was no one in the vicinity, as far as I could see, who might have given him a hand. The second question was how far had he come with his burden. I am sure the same dismayed speculations were in my mother’s head, but she had no chance to ask him anything, because as soon as the door began to open he began to talk — to describe his apples and to praise them and to say how cheap they were. After every few words he paused, not so much to catch his breath, it seemed, as to collect his wits and to assure himself that the door was still open and that we were still listening, and, perhaps, to make certain that he himself was still standing where he thought he was. As soon as my mother could with politeness interrupt him, she said hastily that she would take a dozen apples for eating and a dozen for cooking. She got two large bowls from the kitchen, filled them with apples, and paid the old man. She left me to close the door. I watched him shuffle down the tiny tiled path that led to the sidewalk. He closed our gate carefully behind him and started to open the gate next door, but I was quick to tell him that our neighbors were away. He nodded without looking at me, and continued on his way. I hurried into the front sitting room. From the window there, I could see what luck he had at the four other houses that remained for him to visit. By the rapidity with which he retreated from each door, and by the abrupt manner in which he pulled the gates to after him, I judged that he had sold no more apples.

I charged off down to the kitchen. My mother was already peeling the cooking apples. My Uncle Matt, my mother’s brother, was standing in the door to the garden, smoking a cigarette. My little sister, Derry, was sitting on a chair and trying to clasp her hands behind its back.

“I suppose you took every apple he had in the basket,” my uncle said to my mother.