The last-bus driver learned his first sign language

The number 22 last bus pulls out of the railway station at eleven o'clock sharp. Old Cui has been driving it for fourteen years.

In fourteen years he has come to know the regulars on the route: the designated drivers, the kebab-stall owners coming off their shift, the travellers sprinting for the last high-speed train. The ones he worried about most were a married couple — both deaf, the man tall and thin, the woman with a ponytail. They worked at a garment factory on the east side of the city, and every night at twenty to midnight they boarded at Hongxing Road and rode one stop short of the terminus.

The first time, he had no idea they couldn't hear. He called out as usual, "Move along inside, hold the rail," and got no reaction, and assumed they were simply cold. At their stop the man turned and made a gesture at him: a thumb up, bent twice, then two hands clapped together. A passenger nearby translated. "Driver, he's saying thank you."

Old Cui waved it off, but he remembered it.

From then on, every night at twenty to midnight, he pulled into Hongxing Road extra straight, stopping exactly where it was easiest to step aboard. The couple would get on, the woman would always give him that thank you, and he would nod, as though completing some handover.

After a while he began to think about it. He went to his daughter. "Teach me a couple of signs." She asked what for. He said there was a deaf couple on the bus, they rode with him every day, and he wanted to be able to say something to them. She taught him thank you, take care, mind the road. He was clumsy at it and practised in front of the mirror for half a month.

One night when they stood up to get off, he suddenly raised his hand and signed mind the road. It was probably not correct. The man froze for a second, then broke into a grin and nodded hard, took his wife's hand and gave a little hop there in the doorway. The woman's eyes curved into crescents and she signed a long stream back at him. He couldn't read it, but he knew it probably meant you're a good man, driver.

From that night he pestered his daughter for more. He even kept a small notebook, drawing the common signs as pictures: last bus, home now, ride slowly in the rain. "They ride my bus every day," he said. "I can't spend my whole life only taking fares and driving."

That is how they "talked" for two years. Old Cui learned that the man loved football and would bounce around the living room when there was a goal; that the woman's hands were quick and she was the fastest worker in the factory; that the two of them were saving to open a small tailoring shop. The couple "learned" that his daughter was at university in another province, that his back was bad, and that nothing annoyed him more than traffic.

Last winter the woman stopped coming for a while. The man came alone, looking terrible. Old Cui's heart dropped and he signed a question mark. The man wrote a line on a piece of paper and held it up: she'd had an operation, she was in hospital. The next night, before his shift, Old Cui detoured to the hospital. Through the window of the ward he signed mind the road — then decided that was wrong and changed it to safe. Inside, the woman watched the man in the snow outside, gesturing, and laughed until she cried.

She told her husband afterwards, "We can't hear. But that night, I heard it."

The couple's tailoring shop now stands beside the Hongxing Road stop. On the sign, under the shop's name, there is a line of sign-language symbols meaning thank you. They stay open until eleven. They say they can only lock up once Old Cui's last bus has gone by.

Some love doesn't need a voice. It's parking the bus a little straighter every night, learning two clumsy signs, and handing you mind the road.