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amid the smoky wreckage of the Warsaw Jewish quarter in 1939 under German bombardment — erect, busy, aged but sturdy as a peasant, with the full gray beard of the orthodox, a paterfamilias, a community leader, a prosperous merchant; and beneath that conventional surface a steely survivor, an Ahasuerus of Christian legend, the indestructible Wandering Jew. Seven or eight years younger than I am, Berel served four years on the battlefronts in the First World War. He was a soldier; he was a prisoner; he escaped; he fought on several fronts, in three different armies. In all that time, through all those perils (so he once wrote me, and so I believe) not only did he emerge unharmed; not a particle of forbidden food ever passed his lips. A man who could care so much about our old God and our ancient Law puts to shame, in point of gallantry, his assimilated cousin who writes about Jesus. And yet the voice of enlightened humanism, speaking with all respect, might well ask whether living in a dream, however comforting and powerful —

    “Damn it, Aaron! How long has he been uncovered like this?” Crouched over the basket, Natalie was angrily pulling the flapping blanket back over Louis, who began to cry.
    “Oh, has it come undone?” Jastrow said with a start. “Sorry. He’s been quiet as a mouse.”
    “Well, it’s time to feed him.” She picked up the basket, giving him an exasperated glare. “If he’s not too frozen to eat, that is.”
    “What did Rabinovitz want?”
    She bluntly told him.
    “Really, Natalie! That much money! An illegal departure! That’s terribly upsetting. We must be careful with our money, you know. It’s our only salvation.”
    “We’ve got to get out of here. That’s our salvation.”
    “But perhaps Rabinovitz is just squeezing the rich Americans a bit — now Natalie, don’t scowl so! I only mean —”
    “Look, if you don’t trust him, go ashore and give yourself up. I’ll split the three hundred with Rose.”
    “Good heavens, why do you snap at me so? I’ll do it.”
    Heavy vibration woke her. Sitting up, clutching over her nightgown the sweater in which she slept, she looked through the open porthole. Cold foggy fishy-smelling air came drifting in. The pier was sliding backward in the misty night. She could hear the slosh of the propellers. Aaron snored in the upper bunk. On the deck beside her, the baby rustled and wheezed in his basket.
    She snuggled down again beneath the coarse blankets, for it was very cold. Under way! A departure was always exhilarating; this risky clandestine slip from the trap of Nazi Europe, doubly so. Her mind sleepily groped ahead to Palestine, to getting word to Byron, to making her way home. The geography of the Middle East was blurry to her. Could she perhaps find passage at Suez to Australia, and from there go on to Hawaii? To wait out the war in Palestine was impossible. At best it was a disease-ridden barren country. The Germans in North Africa were a menace. So were the Arabs.
    At each change in engine sound she grew more wakeful. The rolling and pitching were bad right here in the harbor; what would they be like on the open sea? The extra oil tanks welded on the main deck clearly made the vessel very unstable. How long to reach the three-mile limit? Dawn was making a violet circle at the porthole. The captain would have to go slow in this fog, and daylight would increase the chance of being caught. What a business, what a predicament! So Natalie lay tense and worrying, braced against the unsteady bunk through a long, long half hour, while the porthole brightened to whitish-gray.
    WHUMP!
    On the instant she was out of her bunk, bare feet on the icy iron deck, pulling on a coarse bathrobe. Natalie had heard a lot of gunfire in Warsaw.She knew that noise. Cold wet wind through the porthole tumbled her hair. The fog had lifted a little off the rough sea, and she saw far ahead a gray ship with a white number on its bow. From this bow came a smoky