God's Grace

by Bernard Malamud

  After a long descent through shadowy corridors lit by Cohn’s white candle stub in his wax-stippled hand, they discovered that this mountainful of twisting chambers at last opened on a sparkling sand beach by the restless, booming sea.

  Buz hopped with joy at the sight, and Cohn fell to his knees in the white sand, ravished by the view of purple waves breaking and spilling over a line of black rocks along the shore, and flowing as lit foam up the beach.

  They swam in the refreshing water and afterwards ascended the mountain into a long cave crowded with crystalline columns. The walls gave forth mysterious noises, as though of voices whispering, or muted singing in the rocks; but no living creatures, not even a small fish, dwelt anywhere they could see or hear.

  “I say a hundred,” Buz swore, panting like an exhausted messenger.

  Cohn, cleaning a fossilized spinal column of a small ancient horse, possibly Eohippus, that he had dug up in a rocky field beyond the rice paddy, suggested maybe a dozen?

  “Droves,” Buz swore, swaggering from foot to foot.

  “Would you say ten?”

  The ape jumped two feet in annoyance, hitting the ground on his fours.

  Cohn, abandoning skepticism, cast aside his leather apron and hurried after Buz into the trees below the cave. These were separated by a grassy sward from the edge of the rain forest.

  There in the woodland, halfway up a massive, scarred baobab that looked like a ruined tree crossed with an abandoned tenement house of a former world, appeared—great heavens!—five unknown chimpanzees huddled together on a bough whose girth was that of an ordinary tree trunk. The five apes had been exploring the baobab, but when Cohn approached, a warning hoot drove them together.

  The tree, whose top looked like an arthritic human hand, seemed to have been stripped of its fruit, leaves, yards of bark, by the famished, hyperactive, shabby apes, who looked as if they had been recently released from a prison pit, and had spent their first hours of freedom devouring the baobab. Their bellies had popped out—but their faces were gaunt. On the ground around its trunk lay piles of hard-shelled green fruits spilling their mucilaginous pulp.

  Calvin Cohn stared at the strangers in the tree, momentarily stunned. He found the sight, real as it was, difficult to believe. If there was no single live insect on the island, where did five living chimps come from?

  Studying them, Cohn discovered a young female holding a pendulous white flower; and a graybeard male with rheumy eyes and a chest cold; also a gorilla-like, sour-faced, youthful male, who bristled at Cohn—and two squatting, skinny male children, apparently younger than Buz, with relatively large heads, low-lying eyes, and short extremities. Both peered stilly at Cohn as he observed them. They were surely twins. He could hear them rhythmically breathing.

  “Where are you from?” Cohn asked, and the five startled apes, as if they had been whistled to, broke their huddle and disappeared into the forest.

  Cohn, considering hot pursuit, paused to reflect. He must find out where they had come from and how escaped Devastation and Flood. Suppose—as the five chimps unexpectedly were—another human being, possibly female, was also alive on the island? Though Cohn believed that only he, of all men, had been more or less spared—who, on this further evidence of the Lord’s occasional inattentiveness to events on earth, could be certain?

  If he pursued, they would easily outdistance him. Better he woo them with bananas. Cohn hurried to the cave for a ripe basketful—this was the best red-banana season ever—and then hastened into the forest, trailing Buz. The little ape, having watched Cohn’s encounter with the newly arrived chimps, from a discreet distance, now swung on lianas from tree to tree, as his dod, carrying the banana basket, plowed through the vegetation below, depending on Buz to alert him when he sighted the apes.

  Within minutes they came upon the newcomers, now dispersed on five limbs of an ebony tree. They were a genuinely tired lot, the female an attractive but wilted creature, the males grubby, their unkempt coats missing patches of hair, their eyes listless, still showing hunger. Only the barrel-chested male seemed energetic. Seeing Cohn, he rose threateningly, but was immediately affected by the banana basket, at whose contents he stared greedily.

  Cohn set the basket down under the ebony tree and though the two boys came to life, whimpering in anticipation, none of the apes descended the tree to get at the bananas.

  “Eat if you please,” Cohn announced, and nobody moved.

  Buz tried an encouraging food grunt or two but the apes remained stationary.

  Cohn thought they might eat if he left. “Tell them there’s more where this came from,” he said to Buz. “But please also say we’ll have to be careful with distribution because the supply isn’t endless. The way they stripped the baobab isn’t advisable behavior. In fact, I urge them to be careful how much they eat once they get over their present pangs.”

  He reminded Buz to bring the basket back with him. He seemed to be admiring the young lady chimp, who now sat timidly at the very top of the tree.

  Cohn, on leaving them, stepped behind a tall fern and peeked through it to watch the five chimpanzees climb down the tree in a single line and make for the basket with grunts, squeals, congratulatory back slappings and embraces. While four of them were hugging, the energetic male grabbed the basket and began to devour the red bananas. The rheumy old chimp approached him with extended palm, but the youthful ape, clutching the basket, would not part with even a banana skin.

  Cohn was about to come thundering back but decided to let them work it out themselves. The husky one was obviously the dominant male and had certain privileges. Cohn would keep his eye on him to see that none of the others went hungry.

  He returned to the cave and ate supper alone, a rice pudding with slices of tangerine baked into it. The food situation worried him. Would there be enough for all? Counting George, the island company now made eight. If eight, why not nine soon, or ten, enough for a hungry minyan?

  He unfolded and examined his map of fruit trees. Bananas and figs were doing well; the figs would last at least eight weeks if the chimps were careful. Oranges and coconuts were plentiful, and so were dates, mangoes, and passion fruit. There was enough for all. Cohn thought he might apportion fruit trees so that each chimp would share what was available without trespassing on the rights of others.

  And he was concerned what the unexpected appearance of five ape strangers might signify regarding God’s decisive intent toward Calvin Cohn. Apparently He had slipped again, or was it His nature to be unable to count? Why should He have to if He contained all numbers, all possible combinations thereof? Or had He planned to develop it thus, individual animals appearing on the island, dribbling in one by one? For what purpose, if there was purpose?

  After he had stopped posing himself unanswerable questions, Cohn stepped out of his cave, holding his kerosene lamp, to read in the evening cool. To his surprise, the visiting chimps—Buz among them—were sitting on the rocky ground in an untidy semicircle, as if expecting Cohn to walk over and officially greet them.

  He wanted to, this was his chance to become acquainted. And he would take the occasion, after a word of welcome, to say how they could best get along together on this island.

  “My dear primate brothers and sister,” he began hoarsely. Cohn blew his nose before going on, when George the gorilla, his head helmeted with cockleburs, making him look like Mars himself if not a militant Moses or Joshua, emerged from the forest and cautiously beheld the assembled chimpanzees.

  They, catching sight of the gorilla and the gigantic shadow he dragged after him, rose with excited hoots and shrieks and ran up the nearest trees.

  When George observed Cohn’s exasperated disappointment, he plunged into an empty cave and did not emerge for two days.

  The five apes, perhaps tracking another basket of bananas, appeared at the cave again the next morning, but when Cohn came out in his lab apron, holding a leg bone of a fossilized ape he had been cleaning—screeching, the c
himps galloped off and were at once in flight along arboreal ways.

  Only the young female remained an instant, as if to satisfy a curiosity about the white-skinned ape before turning tail and flying off with the others.

  Cohn was disappointed at not being able to establish contact with them. He looked forward to feeding them at his table. He hoped soon to set up rules and regulations for apportioning and distributing fruit. To have order you had to plan order. He had mentioned this to Buz and explained the American Constitution to him, asking him to convey his thoughts to the visiting apes. He wasn’t sure of the range of ape comprehension, but given Buz’s recent language experiences, held high hopes for them.

  Buz assured him the chimps would understand more than he thought. “They know more thon you think they do. You hov to hov faith.” Cohn decided to look further into the matter, so he changed into field boots and protective outer clothing, then pushed off into the rain forest in search of the newcomers.

  After an unsuccessful morning, Cohn, on inspiration, came back to the woodland where some mango trees in full fruit grew, and there he found the migrant apes ensconced on a glossy-leaved tree, eating the sweet orange-yellow fruit, after trial bites having discarded dozens of stringy sour ones.

  He was disappointed to see, as he approached them, that four of the six mango trees were already denuded of fruit, and the others would soon be. The ground was strewn with rotting fruit and yellow pits.

  Cohn, standing under the mango where the apes squatted, addressed them in a cordial voice. “Brother and sister primates, welcome to this island; and if this is your native land, welcome anyway to our corner of this beautiful island.

  “I hope you get the gist of what I am saying. If I didn’t think that was possible, I wouldn’t be standing here. In other words, I have faith.”

  He listened for a smattering of applause but heard none.

  “What I would hope you understand is the necessity of making a determined effort to learn a common tongue so that we can communicate with each other. Only if one knows the word, you might say, can he spread the word.”

  The chimps had stopped chewing and seemed to be absorbed in listening.

  Cohn said he would like them to enjoy their stay, but if they intended to make this their place of permanent habitation, he sincerely hoped they would not mind a few observations concerning how certain matters might be arranged for everyone’s mutual benefit.

  “Calvin Cohn’s my name, and I guess you can think of me as your protector, if you like the thought. I want you all to know I am not in the least interested in personal power; simply I would like to give the common effort a certain amount of reasonable direction.”

  He waited in vain for a random handclap. Cohn’s voice fell a bit. “Take my word for it, I would accept leadership reluctantly—my oceanographic colleagues used to say I had some talent for administration—however, I feel I ought to take responsibility because I’ve had a fairly decent education and perhaps a little more experience than most of you—to help establish what I hope will become an effective social community. Also I’m older than most of you, except maybe the old gentleman snoozing directly above me. Not that age is necessarily wisdom, but in certain ways it helps. Much, however, depends on the Lord.”

  Cohn laughed jovially, but when he beheld the two boys grinning in stupefaction, he told himself either shut up or be practical. He then addressed the multitude on the subject of food—that there would be enough around if they took care.

  “Don’t, for instance,” Cohn seriously pleaded, “eat just to eat, or because you’re bored. Kindly eat only when you’re legitimately hungry, and then only enough to satisfy that hunger.”

  Someone in the tree let out a brash hoot whose source Cohn was unable to determine, but there was no other discourteous response to speak of.

  “Please keep in mind that others have the right to share food sources equally, as free living beings. That’s saying that freedom depends on mutual obligation, which is the bottom line, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

  He heard petrified silence. After waiting for a change of heart, if that was the problem rather than their comprehension of his human language, Cohn felt he ought to shift his approach. “Let me tell you a story.”

  The apes seemed to lean forward in anticipation.

  They understand, he thought excitedly, and went at once into an old tale of a chimpanzee named Leopold, an absentminded gentleman, somewhat a narcissist, who ate without thought of other chimps’ natural rights, until he ate himself into such swollen proportions that, swallowing one last grape, he burst.

  Dead silence.

  They must know that one, Cohn reflected. Either that or they don’t like the way it ended. He asked if there were any questions, and nobody had one.

  Wanting to do it better—get it right—Cohn began another story, about someone he knew who fasted days at a time so he could feed poor people who had nothing at all to eat.

  This man’s wife asked, “How will you give them what you don’t eat, if we have nothing to eat anyway?”

  “God will take nothing from me and give something to them,” said the old rabbi.

  Cohn asked if they had got the point of the story.

  But the stunned apes were no longer listening. A stream of dung from where the dominant male stood barely missed Cohn’s head.

  An explosion of derisive sounds filled the dense mango, and the apes, one by one, dropped out of its branches and disappeared into the woodland.

  Cohn made no attempt to follow them. Either they hadn’t liked his stories, or his language had failed to communicate anything but a monotonous voice. In afterthought he felt it was perhaps overambitious to have hit them with so many new concepts.

  He felt that these apes lacked Buz’s gifts of communication and wondered if he could learn, by rereading Dr. Bünder’s notebooks, how he had performed the laryngeal operation on Buz. Yet what good would the operation itself be if there were no electronic voice boxes to install?

  Vaguely stirred, vaguely dissatisfied, Cohn hurried back to his cave and began to draw up plans for a heavy gate for the entrance, but search where he would, could find no strong metal pin to hang it on.

  He began instead to construct a wall of split oak logs-very hard work—a device he planned to put on rollers so it could quickly be moved across the mouth of the cave in case of peril.

  Since the arrival of the five chimps, Buz had made himself comparatively scarce at the cave. Reasonably enough—he liked hanging out with his new friends, understandable for a creature who had been deprived of a carefree childhood.

  Once a week, or twice, he came in for supper with his dod and stayed over. Or he came to hear a story. For months he had asked only for Cain and Abel. “Thot’s where the oction is.” Once in a while he returned for a swig of banana beer and then was out again till all hours.

  One pre-dawn night Cohn woke from a stark dream of drowning, hearing gurgling sounds. He feared another flood but then remembered Buz’s borborygmus.

  In the dark he could hear the chimp stealthily picking through the food stores for some morsel or other. Outside, the sky lit up in foggy flashes of summer lightning.

  Cohn aimed his torch at Buz, who instinctively bristled when the light hit him. He self-consciously climbed down the shelf.

  “I hope you aren’t monkeying with my phonograph records ?” Cohn said

  “I om not a monkey,” said Buz. “Ond I don’t eat voice records like some stupid gorillas do. Whot I om looking for is a piece of coconut condy for Mary Modelyn.”

  “Who’s Mary Madelyn?”

  “The girl chimponzee I om interested in.”

  “Did you give her that name?”

  Buz proudly said he had. He said naming was nobody’s monopoly.

  Cohn said it had been Adam’s task and on this island was his. “But I have no objection if you name a few names —if you kindly notify me first.”

  Buz said he didn’t see why he had to. Namin
g names was freedom of speech. Cohn dropped the subject, not wanting to inhibit him.

  “Are you romantically interested in her?”

  “Thot depends. Om I sexuolly moture enough yet?”

  “That’s for you to say, Buz. Some male chimps are slower than others. Some attempt to mount a female when they are eight or nine months old.”

  “I hod nobody to mount when I was thot age, not even my mother to proctice on.”

  Cohn told him not to worry, he’d get the swing of it when he had to.

  “Not with thot loudmouth Esau around. He growls when he sees me looking ot her. He’s two years post my age and hos strong muscles.”

  “Is Esau the aggressive male? Did you name him too?”

  “He’s the hairy ape. I hov named all the new ones.”

  Cohn wanted to know the other names.

  “Melchior is the old one.”

  “Named for whom?”

  “Dr. Bünder’s father-in-law. He used to give me marsh-mollows.”

  “Who else?”

  “Luke and Saul of Tarsus are twins.”

  “Where did you get their names?”

  “Dr. Bünder had two gerbils with those names.”

  Cohn got out of bed, slipped on his robe, and they sat in their rockers facing each other. He asked Buz if the apes were a family, and Buz replied they had met in their wanderings on the island after the Flood.

  “Where did they stay during the Flood ?”

  Buz said he didn’t know, probably in trees. He said that Mary Madelyn liked Melchior and got along with the twins, but not with Esau. “All he wants is sex.”

  “Won’t she oblige?”

  “She hosn’t yet but con’t guorontee whot might hoppen ofter she goes into heat. She says she would prefer me os a lover if I hurried my development.”