Anne has a question for her father. Where, she asks, did yesterday go?

Taken aback, David finds himself at a loss, not because has no answer, but because when he reaches for one, he finds a world of almost unbearable heartache. When she insists, he tells her that yesterday had to go home to have its dinner, take a bath, and go to sleep. She is satisfied for the moment, but David rapidly becomes transfixed by his own memory.

He sees his childhood in a tiny Russian peasant village, where he lived with his parents, aunt, and grandmother. A series of warm memories pass through his mind.

Just three years old, he hugs his aunt, Chashel, and a year and a half later, he searches for a cow in the snow with his mother. Later, despite his Jewish family's warnings to the contrary, he and his friends run up to the local Russian Orthodox church and take some apples. After they splash through a river near an old man talking to himself, they run home.

Later still, David goes on a visit to the Salty Grandmother, his father's mother, in the next village. He misses his mother, but kisses his grandmother anyway, and on the ride home, his father tells him that he will be a great scholar, a light of Israel.

Back in the present, David wonders whether his past really is as alive as it feels to him. How, he muses, can dead things be the cause of so much greater living? Suddenly, Anne pulls on his pant leg, which snaps him out of his reverie. She wants to know where yesterday really went. David promises to tell her later — it will be a long story.