I stood at the crossroad and watched him ride away with my suitcase bouncing up and down on the rack. In the distance was a cloud of dust that obscured the bus. It must have been around noon, for the sun was high in the sky. The air shimmered above the fields. I walked in the track left by Uncle Hannes’s bike and felt the sun beating on my head and back. I was glad the old man had taken my suitcase, for it turned out to be a long walk to the fifth farmhouse. When I got there, I saw an old farmer’s wife standing in the yard.

‘Come on in,’ she said.

In a dark, low-ceilinged room a lot of people were sitting at a long table with Uncle Hannes at the head. Someone pulled up a chair for me and set a cup of milk in front of me. The milk was cool. There was a large platter with sandwiches in the middle of the table. Everyone took some. The woman next to me put a couple on my plate.

‘You have to eat, dear,’ she said, smiling. She had dark hair that she wore in a big knot at the nape of her neck. Her hands were long and slender. They were beautiful hands, with thin fingers and pointed nails, the hands of a woman who on Friday evenings lays the white damask cloth on the table, places the silver Kiddush cup next to the bottle of wine and covers the bread with the embroidered cloth. I thought of my mother, of how she used to set the table on Friday nights and how we would wait in the bright, familiar room for my father to come home from the synagogue. Then we would usher in the Sabbath with a sip of wine and a piece of bread.

‘Do eat something,’ said the woman next to me.

I picked up a sandwich and looked around the table. There were women wearing brightly coloured aprons and men in overalls. None of them looked like farmers.

A little boy across from me stared at me in curiosity with dark brown eyes while stuffing his chubby cheeks with bread. The woman next to me poured me another cup of milk.

‘My daughter is about your age,’ she said. She smiled.

‘Oh, really?’ I said. ‘It was hot on the road.’

‘It’s cool here,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where she is.’

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘My daughter,’ she said.

‘Oh, right,’ I said. Then added, ‘I had to walk a long way.’

‘It’s very remote here,’ said the woman. ‘She was supposed to have been here too; it would have worked out all right.’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said, ‘it’s a long way from the crossroad.’

‘Are you going to stay here?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

After the meal, Uncle Hannes clasped his hands together and prayed. The others bowed their heads, then got up after the prayer and left the room. I was the only one left at the table.