"A shadow moved down the muddy road in pale moonlight. Its steps were urgent. A decision had been made, a course determined. The hours of deliberation were over." "Noah the Water Carrier" is a collection of short stories whose setting is "T," a small city in Poland in the 1930's. The stories reflect the lives of Jews and Gentiles living together in a time and place that have disappeared forever. It was a time of change and even of optimism, before the Holocaust cast its vast net over an unprepared and unwitting people.