As she took out the chilled dough from the refrigerator, dividing it into four round pieces, each one of which she divided into numerous triangles that she then rolled into crescents, the idea went dreamily through her head. Yes, he would be grateful for a little company from a woman his own age, a woman who had experienced loss, a pious woman who knew what it was to live by the side of a revered scholar and posek whose doorbell never stopped ringing. A woman who knew how to fill a man’s home with good cooking smells and cleanliness and order; who knew how to talk to such a man without making him feel burdened, weighed down with responsibilities to come up with solutions to problems that only God Himself could solve; a woman who knew when to put in a comforting word and when to keep her lips sealed.

She had a vision, right there in her kitchen. It was a modest one, nothing like the prophets who saw dry bones rising and being covered with sinews and flesh and becoming a great army; nothing like chariots with four-headed horses. It was a vision of lamplight and an old armchair in which an elderly, bearded man sat with his holy books while in the corner, on a flowered sofa, she herself sat with her long plastic knitting needles twining fine wool around her arthritic fingers, content to be once more a wife, part of a couple, useful, the long loneliness banished, and the blackness of the street—which held within it hints of the terrifying descent into the permanent darkness to come—was held at bay by the reflections of light from within the room, creating a bastion, a shining fortress, that would comfort her frightened and aching heart.

She rolled out the dough—which was perfect—then pinched generous amounts of the sweet, cinnamon-chocolate filling with its chopped walnuts, sprinkling it evenly over the smooth surface. Finally, she rolled each piece into a little crescent, which she dabbed with egg yolk, then sprinkled with more nuts. Placing her little treasures carefully in the oven, she set her timer, waiting for the glorious moment when her entire apartment would be filled with the heavenly scent like incense on the altar in the Holy of Holies. As she opened the oven door, she breathed it in. To fill Rav Alter’s sad home with such a smell! She straightened her back. Now all she had to do was wait for them to be cool enough to handle.

21

FIRST MEETING

The office of Yoel Grub was in a run-down office building housing a dental clinic, a chiropractor, the headquarters of some schnoring organization, and what seemed to be a factory producing orthopedic shoe inserts. Leah could hear the machines whirring from the moment she opened the front door to the building.