War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk Page A

mother, he says, she’ll no doubt decide wisely. The risks of the voyage for her infant are pointless and intolerable. She’s not a stateless refugee. That’s what he wanted to tell her.”
    “You haven’t seen this man in twelve years, Aaron.” Natalie’s voice almost broke in mid-sentence. Her hands were crumpling the mimeographed sheets. “He’s trying to keep you here. Why?”
    “Well, why indeed? Do you suppose he wants to murder me?” Jastrow said, with tremulous facetiousness. “Why should he? I gave him straight A’s in my seminar.”
    Rabinovitz said, “He doesn’t want to murder you.”
    “No. I believe he wants to help his old teacher.”
    “God in heaven,” Natalie all but shouted, “will you ever show a trace of common sense? This man is a high-placed Nazi. What makes you willing to accept a word he says?”
    “He’s not a Nazi.” Jastrow spoke with calm pedantry. “He’s a professional diplomat. He regards the Party as a pack of gross ill-educated opportunists. He does admire Hitler for unifying Germany, but he has grave misgivings about the way the war is going. The Jewish policy appalls him. Werner once studied for the ministry. I don’t think there’s an anti-Semitic bone in his body. Unlike some American consuls we’ve been dealing with.”
    There was a double knock at the door. The rough-looking man who was Rabinovitz’s assistant looked in to hand him an envelope sealed with red wax. Rabinovitz read the letter and stood up, peeling the coveralls off a clean white shirt and dark trousers. “Well, all right. We’ll talk some more later.”
    “What is it?” Natalie blurted.
    “We’re cleared to leave. I’m to pick up the ship’s papers at once from the harbor master.”

3

    B EREL J ASTROW, in a tattered Soviet army greatcoat, shuffles up to his ankles in snow along a road in southwest Poland. The long column of Russian prisoners is winding through flat white fields of the area historians call Upper Silesia. Green-clad SS men guard the column, clubs or machine guns in hand. Leading and trailing the column, two large clanking army vehicles full of more SS men ride. This labor draft, culled from the sturdiest prisoners in the Lamsdorf Stalag, has been walking the whole way. Death has shrunken it en route by about a third. The daily meal at 10 A.M. has been a slice of blackish woody stuff resembling bread, lukewarm soup made of nettles, spoiled potatoes, rotten roots, and the like. Even this ration has often failed, and the men have been turned loose in the fields to forage like goats under the SS guns. For twelve to fourteen hours each day, they have had to foot it at the pace of the stout healthy guards, who march and ride in two-hour shifts.
    Berel Jastrow’s oaken constitution
is
nearing collapse. All around him, men have been dropping in their tracks right along; often silently, sometimes with a groan or a cry. When kicking or clubbing does not rouse a man who falls, he gets a bullet through the head. This is a routine precaution, for partisans might otherwise revive and recruit him. Calmly but punctiliously the Germans blow each skull to pieces, leaving a red mass on the snow by the neck of the huddled Russian greatcoat.
    The column is walking now from Cracow to Katowice; fresh signposts in heavy German lettering call it KATTOWITZ. Berel Jastrow numbly surmises that the trek may soon be ending, for Katowice is a center of industry and mining. He is too low in vital energy, too shrunken by cold, hunger, and crushing weariness, to wonder at the chance that brings him to familiar scenes. All his waning attention is focussed on keeping his eyes on the man ahead, his legs moving, and his knees still;, for he fears if he relaxes the joints they will buckle, and he will go down and get his head blown off.
    In forty years the old road has not changed much. Berel can predict each turn. He knows when the next peasant home or wooden church will loom through the fine dry blowing