Journeys

For Sara Yaakov’s first yahrtzeit was not only a date but something of an achievement. The last year was not what she could describe as living but rather as being propelled away from a disaster site that was still slowly smoldering.

Leaving the candle flickering on her sideboard Sara thought that Yaakov had become akin to the Shabbos lights in their dramatic shadow: zachor yizkor a quiet act of remembering a lingering glow. So she left the light in its glass and took a taxi to the station.

It seemed an extraordinarily strange thing to do. She had to leave the place of her daily life. The train journey northward toward her husband’s final resting place was largely monotonous. Looking out through grimy windows the endless flatness of fields became a flash of brown and green. But then came the sight of bright cornfields looking as though they had been stitched by hand onto the green tapestry of fields. Why should she notice this? Was it of any import on this day which was the exact day a year ago of the happening?

The happening had been a series of ordinary events which had progressed inexorably to an end completely unanticipated. At 11 a.m. she had glanced at her watch handbag looped over her arm waiting to go out together on some trifling errand. And somehow in that moment or slight increment of time there was already a dull refrain: Ayeka where are you? Or had she added this later in a kind of subtext? But Yaakov always answered when she called out to him perhaps only with one word but an answer nonetheless. So why not now?