Yoav began to pray, hour after hour, as if that could prompt him as to what to do next. I had tried and failed to make bread in a griddle over our small fire. I could only make crackers that hadn’t the strength to rise. I finally was able to cook bread on hot stones that I placed beneath burning kindling. The boys called the black, risen loaves ash bread; it was as bitter as it was satisfying. The goatskin bags of water were less heavy, drained by our thirst, and the rains hadn’t yet come. Yoav promised that Adonai would lead us, and we had no choice but to accept his decree. Secretly, I wished we could find a guide among the tribesmen in their blue robes that we sometimes spied heading toward Moab. I would give them all I had if they could help us navigate a trail.
Though our village was gone, I still thought there was a world for us to return to.
I kept my eye on the heavens. There were more birds all the time. Each day their numbers increased. I tried to count them, but it was impossible, they were as numerous as the stars, and in the end I gave up. I still felt the Baker was with me, and that brought me comfort. I spoke to him under my breath, trying to amuse him with my descriptions of the many sorts of winds we encountered: the billowing kind, the howling sort, the soft, warm wind from the south, the stark, blue wind that arrived at nightfall and abruptly departed at daybreak, the violet wind of despair. I chattered to my husband whenever no one could overhear.
Then one day I awoke and he was gone. I felt his departure as surely as if I had seen his spirit rise. All at once, my aloneness settled deeply, a stone inside of me, hard and sharp. While I slept, my husband’s spirit had been claimed by the World-to-Come. He was utterly gone. When I spoke of the hissing, rain-spattered wind that would come to us when winter arrived, he made no reply. When I described the sunstruck wind of the drifting dust funnels, I was speaking to no one but the dust itself. There were only black birds above us now, a bank of feathers and flesh that roiled across the sky like storm clouds. I waited till dark to weep, holding my grief inside, for there was no point in sharing my sorrow.
We had no choice but to go forward, as only emptiness was around us. The following day we did so. I had to leave that unmarked place, abandoning the last of my husband’s essence. I carried my loss as my burden; it weighed me down and made me slow. I could not keep pace with the tired donkeys who bleakly made their way. The boys ran back to me and grabbed my hands and urged me on. Because of them I continued, but God must have known it had crossed my mind to stay behind. I wanted to lie down beside the rocks and dream of the Baker, to call for him to come back to me, even if it meant giving up this world. Perhaps that was the sin I committed. I forgot that even the worst of lives is a treasure.
WE WANDERED to a small oasis. There was a waterfall flowing from a cliff, pouring over the rocks to form a pool of fresh water. We felt blessed, overjoyed by our good fortune.
“I told you to have faith,” my son-in-law chided. “God has done exactly as I said He would.”
There were date palms and a jumble of fragrant jasmine. Reeds on fleshy stems grew along the banks of the pool. White flowers drifted in the green water, each forming the shape of a star. There was a cluster of wild mulberries where wasps and dragonflies gathered, their drone like music. The air was cool and sweet when the breeze stirred. I could have described that breeze to my husband if his spirit was still beside me, a wind so calm it inspired envy in all other winds in every corner of the world.
My son-in-law thought we could wait out the Romans here, in this mild place. We should have known that in such cruel times it was best not to be attached to a single location, even if there was water and the air was refreshing. Envy is envy, both for the wind and for men on earth. The better the place, the more others covet what you have. Be a pauper, a wanderer, a secret in the darkness of night. Once you possess something others do not, you are a target for the wicked. It would have been better if we’d made our camp in one of the caves beyond the oasis, or perhaps gone farther into the wilderness, following the trampled paths beaten down among the thornbushes by bands of wild camels. But my son-in-law feared the heart of the desert and intended for us to stay where we would be safe. I had a rush of fear, a premonition. I saw the speckled shadows beneath the palm tree form the shape of a viper; it slithered along the sand, stopping at my feet.
My daughter hushed me when I spoke of my fears, suggesting we move on. There were people who had entered the wilderness that spread out before us never to be seen again, she whispered. Wanderers who were abandoned or devoured by beasts, defeated by hunger and thirst, kidnapped, enslaved by the tribesmen who wore blue cloaks. Here we had everything we might ever need; to leave would be an ingratitude in God’s eyes.