Free War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk

looked into her cabin, which was lit by two candles. His face and hands were black with grease. Aaron was asleep in the upper bunk. Natalie sat by the baby, in a bathrobe, her hair pinned up, one hand resting on the blanketed basket.
    “How’s he doing?”
    “He’s in a deep sleep, but even so, he keeps rubbing his ear.”
    Rabinovitz produced a small flat bottle, and filled a small glass. “Drink this,” he said to Natalie. “Slivovitz, if you know what that is.”
    “I’ve drunk slivovitz. Lots of it.” She drained the glass. “Thank you. What’s the matter with the electricity?”
    “The dumb generator again. I’m trying to fix it. You have enough candles?”
    “Yes. Can you sail if it isn’t working?”
    “It will be working, and we will sail. More slivovitz?”
    “No. That was fine.”
    “See you later.”
    When the lamps flickered on about
2
A.M., Natalie began to pack a cardboard suitcase she had bought from a passenger. That took only a few minutes, and she resumed her vigil. It was a long bad night, a sterile churning of regrets and afterthoughts stretching back to her girlhood, interspersed with nightmarish dozes. The baby slept restlessly, turning and turning. She kept feeling his forehead, and to her it seemed cool; yet when the porthole began to pale he broke out in a flooding sweat. She had to change him into dry swaddlings.
    Herb Rose met her on the breezy deck as she carried the suitcase to the gangway. The dawn was breaking, a clear pleasant day. The deck was full of jubilant passengers. On one hatch cover some were singing around a concertina player, their arms thrown over each other’s shoulders. The Turkish crewmen were bawling back and forth from the wharf to the deck, and there was much noisy slinging around of tackle.
    “Good God,” Rose said. “You’re not really doing it, Natalie? You’re not putting yourself in the hands of that German?”
    “My baby’s sick as hell.”
    “Listen, honey, babies’ fevers are scary, but it’s amazing how they can recover. Just a few days at sea and you’ll be safe, once for all. Safe, and free!”
    “You may be at sea for weeks. You may have to cross mountains.”
    “We’ll get there. Your baby will be fine. Look at the weather, it’s a good omen.”
    What he said about the weather was true. The harbor had calmed down, the breeze was almost balmy, and Vesuvius seemed inked on the apple-green horizon. Happiness diffused all over the crowded deck like a flower fragrance. But when Natalie had changed Louis he had been trembling, pawing at his ear again, and whimpering. Her memories of the convulsion, the infirmary, the ghastly night, the pestilential air below decks, were overpowering. She set the suitcase down at the gangway. “I don’t suppose anybody will steal this. Still, please keep an eye on it, for a minute.”
    “Natalie, you’re doing the wrong thing.”
    Soon she returned, bearing the bundled-up baby in his basket, with Jastrow pacing behind her in cloak and hat. Beck’s Mercedes, with its large diplomatic medallion on the radiator — crimson shield, white circle, heavy black swastika — drove up the wharf and stopped. Rabinovitz stood beside Rose at the gangway now, his hands, face, and coveralls black-smeared. He was wiping his hands on a rag.
    The jocund chorus of passenger noise on deck cut off with the arrival of the Mercedes. Unmoving, the passengers stared at the car and at the Americans. The raucous cursing of the crewmen, the slosh of water, the cries of sea birds, were the only sounds. Rabinovitz picked up the suitcase, and took the basket from Natalie. “Okay, let me help you.”
    “You’re very kind.”
    As she set foot on the gangplank, Herb Rose darted at her and clutched her arm.
“Natalie!
For God’s sake, let your uncle get off if he insists. He’s had his life. Not you and your kid.”
    Jostling the American aside, Rabinovitz grated at him, “Don’t be a goddamned fool.”
    Sporty in a tweed