528
PARTISAN REVIEW
they are pouring calmly out of the Faithful Remnant Synagogue , the
service over, and their light-struck children are bawling and shout–
ing in Yiddish. All this activity proceeds under the indifferent gaze
of three off-duty New Zealand soldiers, sunning themselves with
outstretched legs on a municipal bench opposite the courtyard of the
synagogue . They appear to be engaged in a quiet conversation .
There is calm. Aunt Natalia has opened all the windows in the flat to
banish the smells of winter and to let in the fresh air ..
So
J
ephthah comes down from the roof and decides to set out on
his voyage.
In the kitchen Aunt Natalia is preparing lunch. "You," she says,
"just you get out of here and don't start getting in my way all day .
Better you should go and play outside in the sunshine."
But the captain does not hear. Squeezed into a cardboard box,
with the handle of the floormop as a mast fitted with newspaper sails
and a blue-and-white flag, he sails towards the kitchen, to the foggy
sea-lanes, to the front balcony by way of the Gulf of Crocodiles in
the long low passage, and onwards to the back room and Daddy's
bookshelves where the dark space between the books and the wall is
waiting for him with a thousand eyes.
Aunt Natalia is crossing and recrossing the tiny kitchen with
firm footsteps, as though it really requires an iron will and stout–
hearted resolve to traverse safely the expanse between sink and kit–
chen dresser. Her lips are set in an expression of sorrowful certainty :
I am discharging my duty, while as for you , moods , little weaknes–
ses, migraines, all kinds of psychological states , I have to understand
all this and forgive it, because anyway, there are people and people .
She chops onions, as though felling a forest. She peels potatoes
with a mixture of pathos and restrained contempt. She divides a
chicken into five precisely equal portions . She grates carrots . And all
the time she keeps a watchful eye on the lentil soup which is stewing
in a soot-blackened saucepan, and which is not permitted to be
thicker or thinner than taste and principles permit : everything, great
or small, has to be done properly .
"Outside with you. I've told you before. What's this, something
new, standing there staring like a little Casanova?"
So the vessel makes a detour to avoid the enemy destroyers
lying in ambush and is caught in a local storm in the straits strewn
with rocks and reefs but still undeterred her sharp prow thrusts ever
onward. Salvos from her guns sink the dugout canoes from which
natives smeared with war paint are shooting arrows smeared with
