God's Grace (14 page)
Authors: Bernard Malamud
Tags: #Fiction, #Dystopian, #Science Fiction, #Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic, #Religious
Dead silence.
Melchior coughed.
“In other words,” Cohn desperately ran on, “why should the Lord’s imperfect creation have spoiled His originally extraordinary idea? Why hadn’t He created man equal to whom He had imagined?”
Thus Cohn had aimed his arrow at God and was invisibly aimed at.
Buz afterward swore it was he who had first seen a Pillar of Fire descending the darkened sky.
(—At the very least you ought to have called it to my attention.
—I liked thot story you were telling us and wonted it to go on.)
The fearful apes sensed something about to happen and were afraid to move or they would have jumped screaming from the tree.
ALL ONE SAW WAS LIGHT.
““Why do you contend
with Me, Mr. Cohn?””
Cohn had shriveled, but wearing his father the cantor’s white yarmulke kept him going. “I humbly ask to understand the Lord’s intention.”
““Who are you
to understand
the Lord’s intention ?
How can I explain
my mystery
to your mind ?
Can a cripple ascend
a flaming of stars?””
“Abraham and Job contended,” Cohn heard himself say.
““They were my servants.””
“Job complained You destroyed the blameless as well as the wicked.”
““Job therefore repented.””
Cohn shook his enraged fist. “You have destroyed mankind. Our children are all dead. Where are justice and mercy?”
Holy Moses, he thought. Am I deranged? What am I doing to me?
Something knocked him with a bounce off his stool. He lay in a flopping heap on the earth.
““I am the Lord Thy God
who created man
to perfect Himself.””
The chimpanzees, crouching on high branches in the schooltree, watched, hushed, as Cohn lay writhing in dead leaves.
Mary Madelyn looked on with her eyes slammed shut. None dared approach Cohn. Nor would Buz move after the Pillar of Fire had ascended the heavens.
A wind wailed, pregnant with forked flashes and thunderous roars. The apes clung with hands and feet to the swaying, creaking, hissing eucalyptus. George the gorilla was seasick in his heaving cedar.
Cohn felt a trickle of bitter rain penetrate his lips and waked, groaning.
“Something hit me on the bone of my head.”
He fell back on his stool, holding a book above him to keep the yellow raindrops from pounding his headache.
The drenched chimps held their places—barely—as the lashing wet wind diminished and the storm rose like a yellow balloon someone had let go.
Buz, from the top of the slippery tree, called the lecture a knockout. “When is the next episode?”
Cohn had no idea. His nose dripped ice water. He had caught a heavy cold and must go home. “I may have walking pneumonia. There won’t be any school tomorrow.”
Sincere, prolonged applause, drowning out Esau’s bray of contempt, rocked the schooltree.
And the ground was covered with lemons but no one had been hit except Cohn on his conk.
Melchior said, “My, all the lemonade we can shqueeze out of all those big lemonzh.”
Buz swore he had spied a black bottle in the frothy waves.
“Where in the frothy waves ?”
“There in the ocean.”
“Miserable child, why didn’t you fish it out? You can swim.”
“You said we had all the bottles we would ever need,” Buz swore.
“That bottle had to be different,” said Cohn.
“How would I know thot foct?”
As the sun broke through the morning mist three strangers appeared on the island beach a mile below Cohn’s cave. Cohn studied them through his surveyor’s glass, feeling uneasy. Where could they have come from? Is God replenishing the earth, or is the earth replenishing itself? The chimps sat in the sand diagonally opposite one another, touching toes. Buz hadn’t slept in the cave that night. Cohn snatched up his full banana basket, plus a half-dozen coconut bars, and hurried to the beach.
By the time he arrived at the water all the other chimpanzees of the island community had assembled to greet the
newcomers. Buz and Mary Madelyn, self-engrossed Esau, gentle Melchior, and the twins, were sniffing at or being sniffed by the new apes. They kissed, patted backs, grunted, embraced. None acted as a stranger, as if the world had shrunk too small for that. Cohn’s companions had at first frightened the visitors by addressing them in human speech but then reverted to their primate language, which only the twins had partially forgotten.
newcomers. Buz and Mary Madelyn, self-engrossed Esau, gentle Melchior, and the twins, were sniffing at or being sniffed by the new apes. They kissed, patted backs, grunted, embraced. None acted as a stranger, as if the world had shrunk too small for that. Cohn’s companions had at first frightened the visitors by addressing them in human speech but then reverted to their primate language, which only the twins had partially forgotten.
“Do any of you know any of them?” Cohn, in a straw hat, standing barefoot in the hot sand with his banana basket, asked Buz.
“No,” said Buz, “but we like them.”
“Well done,” said Cohn, “but who are they and where have they come from?”
“They say they don’t know thot.”
“Was it high ground or low?”
“They say it was either one or the other.”
“Could they have got here by boat—maybe our old raft?—I mean from some other island?”
“They hov no boats or rofts. Their footsteps come out of the woods, but not out of the water.”
Buz said he would know more about the visitors after he had taught them to speak like the others.
Cohn said the sooner the better. “I am eager to know how they escaped the Second Flood.” He cheerfully passed out some overripe bananas and candy bars to the three new chimps, who ate hungrily what he offered them. The two males, good-humored, one tall, the other stocky with bowed legs, had glossy brown coats. The old grandmother chimp
sported ragged ears, teeth worn to the gums, and a threadbare behind.
sported ragged ears, teeth worn to the gums, and a threadbare behind.
Cohn, before Buz could make suggestions, called the old female Hattie, after an aunt; and the males he named Bromberg—the monkish tall one—and Esterhazy, the short other—after two college friends whose names he liked to be able to say once more.
Melchior enjoyed making the acquaintance of Hattie. He chucked her under the chin. They gamboled in the sand, huffing and panting, pushing each other down on their backs, tickling until they gasped.
Esterhazy, a bookkeeperish-looking ape, swallowed his soft banana without bothering to remove the peel; and Bromberg, a sweet-toothed type, applied himself to a coconut candy bar, teasing it with his tongue. When Saul of Tarsus and Luke begged for a piece, lifting their palms, he broke off two minute bites, handed one to each twin, and grunting, patted their heads. After wearing out the first candy bar he swallowed the second in a lip-sucking gulp.
Esau then informed the newly arrived brothers that he was the Alpha Ape of the island; and neither of them, although they seemed to consider the news seriously, objected.
The brothers watched Mary Madelyn in fascination, and sniffed at her rear, to her acute embarrassment, to determine whether she was in heat; apparently she wasn’t. Mary Madelyn climbed a tree and sat in it, hidden by leafy branches.
In the afternoon, Bromberg and Esterhazy sat in a fig tree, plucking and eating ripe figs as they watched Cohn’s community
going through its varied chores—except for Esau, who was squatting on the ground poking long straws into the mound-nests of nonexistent ants.
going through its varied chores—except for Esau, who was squatting on the ground poking long straws into the mound-nests of nonexistent ants.
And the next morning the newcomer apes sat hunched under the schooltree but refused to join the others in the branches, as if embarrassed by their lack of language, while Cohn discoursed on the first ice age. Those in the tree listened to the lecture in a mood resembling stupefied absorption. Saul of Tarsus broke into shivers, and Luke, after watching him a minute, joined him. Mary Madelyn sat hunched up in anticipation of Cohn’s next freezing sentence. Melchior chewed thoughtfully on a leftover matzo from the seder, as he listened.
Buz dangled in suspense by one arm from an upper limb of the eucalyptus; and George the gorilla at length dropped out of his cedar to think something over; he headed, knuckle-walking, into the rain forest, frightening Esterhazy, Bromberg, and Hattie, who hastily ascended the schooltree and at once became students. Sometime afterwards, during a whispered conversation with Buz, they began to speak in a human tongue.
These were productive days. Cohn had taken to throwing and baking clay pots; also to practicing herbal medicine, a development that brought the community closer together because they appreciated having an attending physician.
Always a collector, Cohn liked to take samples of grasses, herbs, leaves, and barks of various trees, some of which he boiled up in water and evaporated, to produce an extract of each substance. He sampled these concoctions, bitter and
sweet, and found that one calmed his stomach if he had overeaten, and another lightened a severe headache.
sweet, and found that one calmed his stomach if he had overeaten, and another lightened a severe headache.
Buz complained his eyes were strained and Cohn advised him to cut down on reading, but Buz wouldn’t because he liked the stories he was becoming acquainted with. “Everything gets to be a story,” he said, and Cohn agreed. He brewed up a mimosa ointment with boric acid, a concoction that reduced his boy’s eyestrain.
For most minor ailments Cohn prescribed a mixture of eucalyptus oil and bicarbonate of soda. Either his patients vomited up the medication and improved in health, or kept it down and got better. With the same prescription he purged Saul of Tarsus, and Luke, of “worms,” which couldn’t really have been worms because they no longer lived on earth, though they resembled worms. Whatever they were, Cohn eradicated them. He also calmed Esau’s toothache, offering to pull the offending molar with a pair of pliers, at which the Alpha Ape bristled threateningly and hooted sternly. He informed Cohn he no longer felt the toothache.
George the gorilla still loitered in the vicinity of Cohn’s cave, usually when the cantor was singing, but he refused to enter and be treated for illness when he seemed to be ailing, though one day he suffered a severe, nose-dripping, eye-tearing, sneezy cold, for which Cohn wanted to prescribe an herb that would clear his breathing.
George refused to accept it.
“If you like to suffer,” Cohn said to the gorilla, “that’s your choice.”
George sneezed seven times and Cohn uttered one “God bless.”
Calvin Cohn had baked his early pots in midday sunlight but they hadn’t turned out well. In his last large dig in the field beyond and above the rice paddy, he had discovered a muddy vein of white hydrous aluminum silicate clay, with which he began to mold unique dishes, bowls, vases, artificial flowers, other artifacts of decoration. He fired these in a kiln he had constructed in the fireplace, a simple metal “firebox” he had fabricated out of a ship’s locker; this he heated with homemade charcoal of ebony wood that got so hot the box glowed vermilion and took hours to cool. Buz was uncomfortable in the presence of the red-hot kiln, yet as he lurked by the cave opening, he liked to watch Cohn remove the fired objects, some severely cracked because there was no temperature control.
Cohn, to the chimp’s amusement, had lately begun to design clay masks sculpted with faces of Greek gods, former politicians, famous scientists of the past, some of whom he hung up as a mobile on a tree near the eucalyptus; and he created a few vertebrate animals the chimp had never laid eyes on. Cohn hadn’t learned how to glaze his pots, so he painted the white clay masks with features colored in black, green, red, and yellow inks.
Buz saw his first lion’s head as a mask produced by Cohn. Afterwards the artist destroyed many of the masks, fearing that the Lord, if He got a peek at them, might accuse him of worshipping false gods.
The island community was active and flourished beyond Cohn’s best hopes. All the chimps, even the newcomers, were
gainfully employed, with the exception of Esau, who lived on the fruit of the island. “Why disturb yourself if the fruit is for free? Why spoil our natures to please a non-chimp? Who is he, for instance ?”
gainfully employed, with the exception of Esau, who lived on the fruit of the island. “Why disturb yourself if the fruit is for free? Why spoil our natures to please a non-chimp? Who is he, for instance ?”
Cohn wouldn’t say.
Saul of Tarsus and Luke helped in the rice paddy, Melchior overseeing them. Sometimes he fell asleep, standing, and the twins stopped working until he awoke and then asked for a banana-beer break, a custom Melchior favored.
Mary Madelyn assisted Cohn in collecting roots, leaves, new samples of bark. She watched him catalogue each item on a 3x5 card.
“I wish I had a handwriting, Cawvin.”
“Maybe someday.”
“Wiw I someday be human?”
“It’s a long haul.”
“I would wike to be Juwiet in wov with Romeo.”
Cohn was growing a brown beard as he became bald.
Buz was, page by page, reading through the encyclopedia. His dod permitted him to use his personal reading eyeglasses, and they seemed to ease a slight strabismus.
Hattie had for a while looked after the twins, who resisted her motherly ministrations. She then took care of Melchior and he permitted her to build a sleep-nest near his in a low live oak.
Cohn stored away in dry caves full plastic bags of newly discovered sunflower seeds.
The chimps helped plant banana groves and other fruit trees. Esterhazy and Bromberg willingly assisted.
And everyone congregated around Buz and Cohn at their dig in the late afternoon. They sniffed and—to Cohn’s annoyance—sometimes chewed on the ancient animal bones he had unearthed. To those who retched, he had to dispense gallons of eucalyptus-bicarb medicine for their dyspepsia.
He had occasional hopes that Buz might ask to be bar mitzvah’d since he was already the equivalent of age thirteen, but the little chimp never brought the matter up, and Cohn did not proselytize.
Life was serene until Mary Madelyn, the jeweled pink flower of her swollen sexual skin visible from the rear, hid herself from the pursuing males by taking to the tops of tall trees, but when the wind hit her dense scent—a compound of night-blooming jasmine and raw eggs, it seemed to Cohn —and blew it around, they went hungrily seeking and could not locate her although they ran through every tree in the vicinity.
Esau sought her relentlessly, sniffing his small-eyed way from branch to branch, breathing stertorously, restless with desire. Once after not finding her, he pounded in frustration on the trunk of the tree they had just explored.
Esterhazy and Bromberg, on the run, were ascending and descending one or another tree where they thought they had glimpsed the tempting flower, or caught an enticing trace of her sexual perfume. One dark day they pounced on someone who turned out to be Hattie, and happily crouched, but they seemed to have lost interest.
After catching an invigorating breath of Mary Madelyn’s
scent in the headlong breeze, Buz had decided he was mature enough to be interested and had joined the apes in pursuit of her; as had the twins because the chase was fun. They were caught up in adventure, spying out Mary Madelyn and swiftly shinnying up a tree to entrap her, but she escaped, and went squealing through the treetops. They pursued her until, by virtue of her inspired speed, she outdistanced them and disappeared in a curtain of green.
scent in the headlong breeze, Buz had decided he was mature enough to be interested and had joined the apes in pursuit of her; as had the twins because the chase was fun. They were caught up in adventure, spying out Mary Madelyn and swiftly shinnying up a tree to entrap her, but she escaped, and went squealing through the treetops. They pursued her until, by virtue of her inspired speed, she outdistanced them and disappeared in a curtain of green.
One still morning, Esau, bored with the school lesson, happened to spot her hiding in George the gorilla’s cedar; she had been secretly listening to Cohn lecturing on the fossils of the Mesozoic age. Mary Madelyn had been thus engaged for three days, apparently with the connivance or unconcern of George, in an attempt to keep up with her lessons.
Esau, his head hair erect, stealthily climbed higher and higher in the eucalyptus and swung into the cedar on a vine. He descended in a leap and charged at Mary Madelyn as she sat absorbed in Cohn’s description of a dinosaur attempting to defend itself in a bloody swamp against a rapacious flying reptile.
Catching sight of Esau, Mary Madelyn let out a full scream, interrupting Cohn’s lecture, and at once leaped to the ground, the males in hot pursuit. George the gorilla roared at the contretemps, and the noise seemed to paralyze the other apes in the schooltree, although it had no effect, to speak of, on Esau. Cohn bellowed at him to leave the girl alone.
The uncooperative chimp, chasing her on the ground,
caught Mary Madelyn by the arm and hurled her against a tree. She went down with the breath knocked out of her, bleeding from a wound over her left eye. Before Esau, swaggering from foot to foot, could compel her to crouch, she tore herself out of his grasp and swung into a vast baobab, immediately losing herself in it. In a minute she was brachiating like a gibbon through the rain forest, zig zagging in the foliage as Esau furiously hooted after her.
caught Mary Madelyn by the arm and hurled her against a tree. She went down with the breath knocked out of her, bleeding from a wound over her left eye. Before Esau, swaggering from foot to foot, could compel her to crouch, she tore herself out of his grasp and swung into a vast baobab, immediately losing herself in it. In a minute she was brachiating like a gibbon through the rain forest, zig zagging in the foliage as Esau furiously hooted after her.
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