God's Grace (5 page)
Authors: Bernard Malamud
Tags: #Fiction, #Dystopian, #Science Fiction, #Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic, #Religious
They played tag, hide-and-seek, nut-in-the-hole, an aggie game he had taught him that Buz liked extraordinarily well, although he rolled his nut clumsily and Cohn often let him win by rolling his own so forcefully it shot past the hole. Victory, however arranged, made no difference to Buz so long as he won. He grunted as he ate, danced on occasion, and if Cohn tickled him, responded by tickling Cohn. Cohn enjoyed laughing helplessly—it fitted the scheme of things. And he often thought what a fine friend Buz would make if he could talk.
As spring neared, Cohn, wearing an old army cap to protect his head in the sun, worked with rocks and dead tree limbs to divert the stream that flowed from the waterfall across the savanna below the farther hills. Cohn dammed it and fed the water as irrigation to a rice paddy he had constructed after reading an article and studying a picture in his encyclopedia; and he seeded it with rice sprouts he had grown in the cave. Within about four months he harvested a crop of rice and planted another. So long as the Lord was in a genial mood there would be rice forever. Cohn played with thoughts of immortality.
He also planted—from seeds he had collected and saved—
yams and black-eyed beans. Unfortunately there was no lettuce or tomatoes anywhere on the island. Cohn relished salad but could not enjoy leaf salads, passing them up when Buz arrived with his offerings. He presented him, too—from his mouth into Cohn’s palm—with a chewed-up green gob of leaves; but Cohn was not tempted.
yams and black-eyed beans. Unfortunately there was no lettuce or tomatoes anywhere on the island. Cohn relished salad but could not enjoy leaf salads, passing them up when Buz arrived with his offerings. He presented him, too—from his mouth into Cohn’s palm—with a chewed-up green gob of leaves; but Cohn was not tempted.
Buz now and then assisted with the gardening. His fingers weren’t subtle and he was inefficient in planting, when Cohn, on his insistence, let him help. Buz cupped a small mound of beans in his palm but found it difficult to insert them individually into the soft soil; so he chewed up some and flung the rest away. Cohn thought he might be of more help in harvesting.
But Buz was comparatively handy with a few tools. He liked plunging the point of his can opener into the top of a can, working it raggedly around until the tin was cut and he could get his fingers under the lid. He had learned to slice fruit with a knife and he used a hammer fairly accurately. All Cohn had to do was tap the tip of a nail into wood and Buz would drive it in all the way.
Cohn crafted things. He carved wood with a jackknife and chisel, and made bowls, platters, pitchers. He carved a variety of wooden flowers and animals for remembrance. He wove fibers of cactus into stiff little cloths he wasn’t sure what to do with, and gathered and polished stones.
One day he fixed up a small hammock for Buz, converting a topcoat of Dr. Bünder’s. He tied it between two live oak saplings, and Buz lay in it, swinging gently until he fell off to sleep. The chimp liked sunbathing in his hammock.
He also enjoyed sniffing Cohn’s bare feet as he lay in his hammock contemplating his fate.
He also enjoyed sniffing Cohn’s bare feet as he lay in his hammock contemplating his fate.
Would He have given me Buz if He intended to slay me?
That night in the cave, Cohn said the island was shaped like a short, stubby bottle.
Buz pantomimed he disagreed, a grunt with a shake of the head. He pantomimed peeling a banana.
“A little like one, maybe,” Cohn nodded, “but a lot more like a stubby bottle, in my eye.”
A banana, Buz insisted.
Cohn had brought from the
Rebekah Q
five of Dr. Bünder’s fairly legible, waterlogged notebooks. He had discovered in one of them approximately forty partially blurred small drawings of sign-language images the scientist had taught the chimp. Cohn practiced as many signs as he could read.
Rebekah Q
five of Dr. Bünder’s fairly legible, waterlogged notebooks. He had discovered in one of them approximately forty partially blurred small drawings of sign-language images the scientist had taught the chimp. Cohn practiced as many signs as he could read.
One day, as he sat in his rocker with Buz on his lap, he signaled to the chimp: “We—you and I—are alone in this world. Do you understand?”
The chimp signaled, “Buz wants fruit.”
Cohn signed: “I feel alone (lonely). Is Buz lonely?”
The chimp signaled, “What is alone ?”
Cohn, excited by the ape’s genuine question, pantomimed signs that might mean sad, unhappy, oppressed.
Buz signed, “Play with Buz.”
Cohn impatiently spoke aloud. “What I want to say is that the situation is getting on my nerves. I mean we’re alone
on this island and can’t be said to speak to each other. We may indicate certain things but there’s no direct personal communication. I’m not referring to existential loneliness, you understand—what might be called awareness of one’s essentially subjective being, not without some sense of death-in-life, if you know what I mean. I’m talking, rather, about the loneliness one feels when he lacks companionship, or that sense of company that derives from community. Do you read me, Buz?”
on this island and can’t be said to speak to each other. We may indicate certain things but there’s no direct personal communication. I’m not referring to existential loneliness, you understand—what might be called awareness of one’s essentially subjective being, not without some sense of death-in-life, if you know what I mean. I’m talking, rather, about the loneliness one feels when he lacks companionship, or that sense of company that derives from community. Do you read me, Buz?”
The chimp signaled, “Drink-fruit (orange or coconut) for Buz.”
“First Buz speak to (answer) what I ask (my question).”
The little ape yawned—a gaping pink mouth and lively tongue within a semicircle of strong teeth. His breath smelled like a fragrant mulch pile. Cohn coughed.
Buz attempted to suckle his left nipple.
Cohn dumped him on the ground.
The chimp bit Cohn’s right ankle.
He cried out, at once springing a nosebleed. When Buz saw the blood flowing down his upper lip he scampered out of the cave and knuckle-galloped into the forest.
When he was gone two days Cohn worried about him, but on the third day he returned, not without a smirk of guilt, and Cohn forgave him.
Some nights were lonelier than others. They sat by the fire and Buz watched the shadow of Cohn’s creaking rocker on the wall. Pointing at it, he let out a gurgling hoot.
“Shadow,” Cohn pantomimed, casting a barking dog on the wall with his fingers.
Buz, after studying it, hooted weirdly.
When, as the nights grew warmer, they dispensed with the fire, Cohn, after supper, waited till it was dark, then lit the kerosene lamp if he wanted to read. He read quickly, the kerosene was going fast. When the cave was sultry he read at the table in the hut. There were no moths or mosquitoes invading the lamp. If one could invent a mosquito, Cohn would.
“The silence bugs me.”
Buz produced a shrill hoot.
Cohn thanked him.
One night he read to the chimpanzee, regretting he had nothing appropriate for an equivalent of young teenager. But he sensed Buz understood what was read to him; or he understood more than he pretended to. Cohn thought he would try a touch of Shakespeare to attune his ear to spoken English. That might wake a desire to speak the language.
Cohn tried reading aloud from
The Merchant of Venice,
to no avail. Buz was bored and yawned. He studied an illustration on the page and cautiously reached forth a finger to touch Jessica, but Cohn would not let him. Buz retreated, boredom glazing his eyes.
The Merchant of Venice,
to no avail. Buz was bored and yawned. He studied an illustration on the page and cautiously reached forth a finger to touch Jessica, but Cohn would not let him. Buz retreated, boredom glazing his eyes.
Cohn then switched to Genesis in his Pentateuch and read aloud the story of the first six days of Creation. The chimp listened stilly. On the seventh day, as God rested from His labors, Buz crossed himself. Cohn could not believe he had seen it. Was it a random act? Again he read aloud the Creation, and the ape again crossed himself. Most likely Dr. Bünder had Christianized him, Cohn decided.
His thought was that if one of them was a Christian and the other a Jew, Cohn’s Island would never be Paradise.
His thought was that if one of them was a Christian and the other a Jew, Cohn’s Island would never be Paradise.
With that in mind he searched in his valise for a black yarmulke he had saved from childhood, then decided not to offer it to Buz. If he wanted to know something about Jewish experience he would have to say so. Jews did not proselytize.
Buz, however, reached for the yarmulke and draped it on his head. That night he slept with it on his forehead, as if he were trying to determine where it would rest most comfortably. He wore it the next day when he made his usual exploratory rounds among the neighboring trees before entering the rain forest, but in the late afternoon he came back without it.
Cohn wanted to know what he had done with it, and got no reply.
He never saw his yarmulke again. Perhaps in some future time, Deo volente, a snake might come slithering along wearing one. Who knows the combinations, transformations, possibilities of a new future?
He offered the chimp the silver crucifix he had been holding for him, but Buz signed for Cohn to retain it since he had no pockets of his own.
Cohn figured that when the chimp hit what might be the equivalent of thirteen years of age, he would offer him a Bar Mitzvah. Buz might accept; he might not. If he didn’t, Cohn would give him back his silver cross. I wonder if he thinks he can convert me by letting me hang onto it?
In the meantime he would tell him stories, in particular
those he remembered from Aesop, La Fontaine, Dr. Dolittle, and
Tales of the Hasidim
. How else educate someone who couldn’t read? Cohn hoped to alter and raise his experiential level—deepen, humanize this sentient, intelligent creature, even though he did not “speak” beyond a variety of hoots and grunts and make a few pantomimed signals.
those he remembered from Aesop, La Fontaine, Dr. Dolittle, and
Tales of the Hasidim
. How else educate someone who couldn’t read? Cohn hoped to alter and raise his experiential level—deepen, humanize this sentient, intelligent creature, even though he did not “speak” beyond a variety of hoots and grunts and make a few pantomimed signals.
Besides, Cohn reflected, if I talk to him and he listens, no matter how much or little he comprehends, I hear my own voice and know I am present. And if I am, because I speak to him, maybe one of these days he will reply so that he can be present in my presence. He may get the idea.
Cohn then began a story of his own. “I’m not so good at this,” he set it up. “My imagination has little fantasy in it—that’s why I became a digger of bones—but I am fairly good at describing what I’ve seen and lived through. So instead of inventing stories that never happen—although some do anyhow—I’d rather tell you a few items about my past. Let’s call it a bit of family history.
“Personally, Buz, I’m the second son of a rabbi who was once a cantor. And he was the first son of a rabbi—my grandfather, alev hasholem—who was killed in a pogrom. That’s a word you probably never heard, one I imagine that Dr. Bünder gave you no sign for.”
Buz wouldn’t say.
“Nor for Holocaust either? That’s a total pogrom and led directly to the Day of Devastation, a tale I will tell you on the next dark day.”
The chimp groomed himself under both arms, seeming to be waiting for the real story to commence.
Cohn said that his father the cantor had decided to become a rabbi, and was a good one, thus fulfilling a pledge to his father, not to mention showing respect.
“For somewhat similar reasons I attempted to go the same route, but for complex other reasons I never made it, diverted by inclinations and events I’d rather not talk about at the moment. It isn’t that I’m being evasive but there’s a time and place for everything.”
Cohn, however, mentioned experiencing a trial of faith—losing interest in religion yet maintaining a more than ordinary interest in God Himself.
“It’s like staying involved with First Causes but not in their theological consequences. Creation is the mystery that most affects me, so not unexpectedly I ended up in science. And that—to conclude this episode—is why you and I are sitting here listening to each other at a time when nobody else is, I am told.”
Cohn, as the chimp yawned, cleverly asked, “And what about yourself? Can you tell me something about you? When and where, for instance, did you meet Dr. Bünder? What influence, in the long run, did he have on you? Are you American by birth, or were you born in Tanzania or Zaire? How did you get on the oceanography vessel, and were you at all aware civilization was ending when the lights banged out and scientists and crew abandoned ship without taking you along? I sense surprising gifts of communication in you and would be grateful, sooner than later, to know the facts.”
Buz pointed to his belly button.
“Are you saying you
are
, or asking that question?” Cohn, in rising excitement, wanted to know.
are
, or asking that question?” Cohn, in rising excitement, wanted to know.
The chimp tried to make his mouth speak. His neck tendons under the decaying cloth bulged as he strained, but no sound came forth—no word, no hoot.
Buz grunted anticlimactically, then leaped up in anger, landing on one foot. He stamped the other, stormed, socked his chest, his body hair rising. There was no crying but he seemed on the verge.
To calm him, Cohn wound up the portable phonograph and put on a record of his father the cantor singing a prayer of lamentation. This was a lamentor indeed; he sang from the pit of his belly, but with respect.
The cantor noisily brayed his passion for God, pity for the world, compassion for mankind. The force of his fruity baritone seemed to shiver the cave in the rock. His voice was vibrant, youthful; though he was dead. Cohn was grateful his father had died before the Day of Devastation. For that disaster he might not have forgiven God. They had serious trouble after the Holocaust.
“‘Sh’ma yisroel, ad-nai eloheynu, ad-nai echad—’” sang the cantor, his wavering voice climbing to the glory of God.
Buz listened in astonishment. He orated, as though complaining. The chimp was holding the lamp above his head, peering at the floor of the cave as if he had encountered a snake. Or discovered a mystery. Was he seeking the source of the cantor’s voice? Cohn took the lamp from him and held it to the phonograph. He explained the voice was in the record. The ape, without glancing at it, rushed to the
cave opening, pulled aside the vines, and stared into the humid night Buz’s head-hair bristled, his canines glowed. He growled in his throat.
cave opening, pulled aside the vines, and stared into the humid night Buz’s head-hair bristled, his canines glowed. He growled in his throat.
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