Nathen Greenberg placed the black fedora style hat firmly into place over the ancient yarmulke, it had been his father’s back in the old country and was maybe the only thing he really treasured outside his family.
Looking at his watch he decided he had time for a last sip of the black tea he loved and then shouting his goodbyes he went down the steps of his central London apartment and started the familiar walk to the synagogue.
Unlike a lot of his friends he always arrived ahead of time for Shabbat, Jewish time was not for him, he wanted to digest every word, to understand the meaning of the ancient texts, oh how many times had he listed to the incantation of these very same words, his father and fore fathers would have listened with the same rapt attention of that he was sure. He loved the deep resonance of Rabi Bernstein’s voice as he read from the Torah, if only he had a son to accompany him, but god had blessed him in so many other ways.
Nathan reached the busy cross roads at the bottom of Queensway, he would go ever the Bayswater Road and walk through the park, the weather was fine and he knew exactly how long it would take to reach his destination. If only his legs would move faster, there was so little time for the elderly to cross these busy intersections.
Nathan did not see the black cab, it hit him from behind, it had turned out of Queensway against the lights and the impact threw him into the path of a bus coming along the other side of Bayswater road. The driver of the bus would later remember nothing, seventeen witnesses saw only a black cab, there were thousands in London and they all looked the same, the CCTV cameras that surround Hyde Park missed everything. Nathan Greenberg was dead before his body hit the road.
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