God's Grace

by Bernard Malamud

  “You’re almost there.”

  The cave was lit by light flashes in the sky.

  “Whot’s thot?” Buz asked nervously.

  Cohn explained it was heat lightning, also nothing to worry about. “It’s caused by a discharge of atmospheric electricity traveling from one cloud to another.”

  “Why don’t I know about thot?”

  Cohn admitted he had never told him and guessed neither had Dr. Bünder. “I can’t tell you every fact I know.”

  Buz said he had every right to know what was going on in the world without asking the human race.

  Cohn replied there wasn’t much of the human race on the island. “But if you stayed home nights and paid more attention to your reading, instead of fantasizing when you can begin to have sexual relations, you’d pick up a lot of useful information about the world around us.”

  Buz said he had his own life to live and would live it as he saw fit.

  Cohn, feeling Buz had become snappish lately, which he attributed to the approach of puberty, wouldn’t argue with that. He did say he was concerned about getting the new chimps organized and living by the law of the island.

  “Whot law is thot?”

  “A law we’ll have to put together—all of us—but it won’t work unless we can communicate with one another. That means speech. Maybe we ought to begin teaching these recently arrived chimps a sign language. You know Ameslan, and I know a little, and if we can persuade them to show up for language lessons, we can teach them several signs a day. That’s at least a beginning.”

  Buz then sprang an astonishing surprise. “I hov already taught the new chimponzees to speak the English longuoge and hoven’t only been fontasying sexuol relations.”

  “You have what?” Cohn said in amazement. “Is it possible?”

  “It is more than possible, it is on occomplished foct”

  Cohn felt an overwhelming elation. Apologizing for his previous invidious remark, he kindled the lamp and drew the ivy curtain. When the night was warm he kept the ivy tied in bunches at the sides of the cave opening.

  Long shadows whirled on the walls.

  “But how can they talk if they have no apparatus for speech?” Cohn asked in a whisper, “no adequate larynx?”

  “Their speech is not os well articulated os mine, but they hov ocquired longuoge because they hov faith.”

  “In whom and what?”

  “In whot I hov told them.”

  “What was that?”

  “Thot they could learn if they hod faith.”

  “Incredible,” Cohn muttered. “A stupendous miracle if it has really occurred.”

  Buz insisted it had. Unusual things were abroad on the island. “Fruit is more abundont and sweeter this season. I heard mogic strains of music in those winding caves we found—prettier music thon you play on thot voice mochine. Ond now my friends hov learned to talk by an oct of faith. If you hov faith you con hear them talk.”

  Cohn humbly said he hod faith.

  Though Cohn, as scientist, could not explain how the chimps had learned to speak English, he was of course gratified that they had learned. If explanation was needed: the world was different from once it was; and what might happen, and what could not, he was not as sure of as he used to be. It seemed to him that after a frightening period of incoherence, there was now a breath of settled purpose in the universe. One could not say for sure where the Almighty stood after the Second Flood; but if He had permitted the visiting chimps to learn one of the languages unique to homo sapiens—had allowed them to go on living through Devastation and Flood in order to learn—one might say—why not similar good grace for Cohn?

  In celebration of the miraculous descent, or spontaneous emergence of human speech among the apes, he planned a seder. Cohn figured that the fifteenth day of Nisan had gone its way, but since there were no calendars available, one could not be held responsible for exact dates.

  It wasn’t, anyway, the date that counted, it was the mood and purpose of the occasion: simply a celebration—nothing extraordinary—a means of bringing together the island company, and at the same time politely thanking Someone for favors received. Nothing wrong with a little sincere gratitude for every amelioration of an unforgivable condition caused by the Creator. He had his problems too. After all, First Causes were not always first causes; and maybe He was having second thoughts about these matters.

  Anyway, it was a beautiful early spring. The bright green grass was ankle-high. Fragrant flowers, astonishing ones, were scattered everywhere. Mimosas were abloom in flaring yellow. Oleander was white and bougainvillea royal purple. Each color seemed deeper, more livingly intense, than its ordinary color. It seemed a splendid year ahead. Peace to all, amen.

  Cohn diligently cleaned the cave, swept, shined, mopped. And he had built a long teak table that would seat eight—three on each side bench, one at head and foot.

  He carried out and hid, according to ritual, all suspected unleavened food, recalling how his mother, holding a candle in her hand, had prayed on this occasion, “May all the leaven in my possession, whether I have seen it or not, be annulled and considered as dust of the earth.” In those days dust of the earth was a more innocent substance.

  Cohn was the official host and Buz assisted. The guests were the five new chimps, and George the gorilla, if he was in the mood to appear. Any way one looked at it, the gorilla was a permanent inhabitant of the island and had to be encouraged to join the company. Cohn had more or less forgiven him for destroying his father’s record—“Kol Nidre,” nothing less, a sad loss—probably George had thought the record was a licorice wafer or something equally good to eat.

  To invite him personally, since there were no mail deliveries, and since Buz wouldn’t go in his place to persuade him to attend, Cohn scouted George’s usual haunts. He came across his nests in the flattened deep grass but rarely found a trace of George himself, not even a fragment of fibrous dung where he had recently made camp. Gorillas soiled their nests but were not themselves soiled; chimps, because of their liquid excrement, would tend to perform their bowel functions outside their nests, and save himself who loitered below. Who was, therefore, the more civilized?

  Buz said that probably the giant ape’s fear of the presence of six lively chimpanzees had scared him away.

  Cohn replied George would be welcome if he came. “I’ll put him down for Elijah’s seat, but whoever sits there first is the guest of honor.”

  “Not thot fot ape, in the cave I live in.”

  “This is a celebration. Be generous, Buz.”

  “I om but I om not cuckoo. You don’t like thot monster any more thon I do. You said thot ofter he smoshed your father’s music record.”

  “I’ve since had second thoughts. Frankly, I respect him. I feel there’s more than gorilla to George.”

  “Yes, he is bigger and stupider.”

  “He is a lonely ape. I sense he’s had a bad time beyond our late bad times, perhaps a personal crisis. He may look fierce but has a gentle heart. I suspect he was the one who helped me when I was sick with radiation poisoning. And keep in mind that he never had your advantages, Buz.”

  Buz covered his nose with one hand and tugged at an imaginary toilet chain with the other hand. He could have got that gesture only from Dr. Bünder.

  Seder night was a night of full moon. Wearing a reasonable facsimile of a traditional white kitl he had stitched together out of a roll of mosquito netting they had fetched from the hold of the Rebekah Q, Cohn prepared the festive seder meal. He had baked a batch of thin, round, crisp flat-cakes, according to the tradition of the hastily baked bread in Exodus.

  Cohn covered the teak table with a portion of sail they had recovered from the former oceanographic schooner. Since they had only one candle left, he installed the lit kerosene lamp as centerpiece; and in the shadowy scene on the cave wall the seated chimps looked like wise elders.

  On the teak table stood two slender-necked blue vases Cohn had recently p
otted out of some rare lumps of clay, aburst with white fruit-tree blossoms he had painted on them. And there were three carafes of banana wine, a tasty light wine, something like a gewürztraminer, that required a longer fermentation than the fizzy banana beer.

  For baked eggs—nothing on the island could lay an egg—he served pickled red palm nuts. A platter of matzos lay on the table covered with a linen napkin. Instead of bitter herbs Cohn offered cut-up chunks of cassava root.

  In place of lamb shankbone, he had served on each wooden plate a portion of leg bone of a fossil he was almost certain was Eohippus, the fox-size, dawn horse, the first of this species to be discovered outside North America. Cohn, in tense excitement, had dug up the leg bone, embedded in limestone, in a back-yard dig in the field beyond the rice paddy. The bone, hardly kosher, and expendable because he already had two hind right-leg femurs in his bone box-was for ritual purposes only; to be used symbolically, therefore he hoped permissibly. Eohippus, if that’s what it was, suited the occasion because it was distantly related to the thundering equi of the Egyptian charioteers.

  Mary Madelyn picked up her small portion of bone and cautiously sniffed it; she hastily replaced it on the plate.

  “For symbolic use only, not for eating,” Cohn explained in a whisper, patting her hand, and she, affectionate creature, patted his.

  Instead of haroset, he served a sweet paste of chopped apricots and nuts from a ten-pound bag they had found in the vessel. For lettuce and celery, he placed a small bouquet of oak leaves on the plate before each chimp. For himself he had collected a few rice shoots that reminded him of a Japanese drawing he had once owned.

  And for the ritual red wine he poured white banana wine into the rough wooden tumblers he had carved. Bit by bit Cohn was replacing objects he and Buz had salvaged with ones he made himself. Each tumbler depicted an epic scene from Exodus of the escape of the Israelites from their Egyptian oppressors—the symbolic escape that dwelt in the minds of Jews throughout history and inspired them in times of desperation. On his own tumbler Cohn had portrayed the visage of Moshe Rebbenu, with his two-pronged beard. One might have mistaken it for the likeness of God himself, if that was possible.

  Cohn sat at the head of the table, opposite the cave entrance, facing the empty seat for Elijah, or whoever appeared in his place. Here he could easily reach to the fireplace ledge where he had baked the matzos and prepared the food.

  The appearance of the visiting chimps had improved. Their hair had grown in and their coats were sleek. They were energetic and talkative. Cohn enjoyed hearing them talk among themselves.

  On the bench to his right sat trusty Buz; next to him, Melchior; and to his side Saul of Tarsus, whom the old man kept a wet eye on.

  On his left, Cohn had seated Mary Madelyn, at her request opposite Buz and as far from Esau as she could be; not very far, for only Luke sat between them. Esau tended to make a nuisance of himself although she tried not to notice each offense. Buz, however, bristled. The situation between the two young apes was charged, and Cohn tried to keep them busy with ritual.

  Melchior, the graybeard chimp, oversaw the twins on both sides of the table. What they did not eat on their plates or drink from their cups, he willingly consumed.

  Mary Madelyn was an intelligent, attractive young female with silken hair, a somewhat heart-shaped, healthy face—a trifle pale—and an affectionate manner. Her sexy ears lay close to the head. She had almost a real figure, Cohn thought. When Melchior grew too sleepy to fuss over the restive twins, a glance from her would calm them.

  Cohn began the seder with a kiddush for wine, and the first two toasts he proposed were the traditional ones to life and to freedom.

  Closing his eyes, he recited, “Our thanks to God who kept us alive and sustained us to this moment”—(notwithstanding the fact He had not sustained any others, ran through Cohn’s mind, but he banished the thought. Not on this night of celebration).

  When he explained who God was everyone at the table cheered.

  Buz tugged at Cohn’s kitl. “I thought you told me He let the Holocaust ond Second Flood hoppen?”

  “I’m thanking Him for what good He did, not for what He did badly,” Cohn whispered. “You and I are alive, as are those present, despite the Devastation. Certain grateful thanks therefore are due to Whom they are due. That’s how I look at it.”

  Buz crossed himself and the twins followed suit; they imitated him often.

  “Do that later, Buz,” Cohn said sotto voce.

  “Whot’s wrong with now?”

  “It’s not part of this ceremony. It’s another modality.”

  Buz took a moment to memorize the word and went on eating.

  Cohn lifted his tumbler and toasted peace. “Next year on this blessed isle—may we all have prospered!”

  “I hope we hov freedom of religion,” Buz said.

  “Amen,” said Cohn, toasting every freedom.

  All joined the toast and drank down the banana wine. Buz went around the table refilling the tumblers. Esau tried to trip him but Buz hopped over his foot. Though his hair had risen he kept out of a fight. Mary Madelyn smiled at him.

  Cohn knew he wasn’t following the sequence of the seder, but what counted was the spirit, and that was running high.

  He had explained that the seder was originally a Passover celebration. “The Jews were slaves in Egypt and God brought them out. That’s the thing to keep in mind, that He brought them out, although not always quickly enough in the recent past. In any case, tonight we are celebrating the escape from Egypt and our own personal escape from the Second Flood, though our burden of mourning is still heavy. Our present ceremony is also a thanksgiving for our life on this island. We’re alive and in good health. Our task is to co-exist peacefully in the future.”

  Buz crossed himself and Cohn pretended not to notice.

  Melchior and Mary Madelyn clapped their hands in approval of his little homily. Cohn hoped he hadn’t bored them. Esau was trying to blow bubbles with his banana wine. The twins giggled.

  But the ceremony flowed on pleasurably. Then came the Four Questions. Since neither of the twins could be depended on to stay with the script—Saul of Tarsus seemed slightly autistic; he spoke one word at a time after breathy pauses, yet he knuckle-walked steadily, if clumsily, and brachiated boldly; and Luke seemed to lack power of concentration—Cohn had asked Buz to ask the questions.

  Cohn had primed him concerning the seder. He had also composed the questions to elicit as much information as possible about the visiting chimps, hoping to understand the Lord’s purpose in letting them live after the Flood.

  These were the questions:

  i. Assuming the proposition is correct, how does this night differ from all others?

  2. Please state who you are, that is to say, define yourself.

  3. Do you know where you were born? What were your experiences during the Second Flood? How did you save yourself from the rising water?

  4. Do you think of life as having a particular purpose? What is it? Please answer responsively.

  Cohn had hand-printed the questions, and Buz, now seriously into reading, had memorized them before eating the printed page. He loved the taste of paper. Once in a rare while Cohn gave him a blank notebook sheet for a confection.

  Seeming to relish his role as correspondent, Buz recited each question, and Melchior and Mary Madelyn volunteered to answer them. Esau announced that the questions were stupid but he would respond because he had nothing better to do.

  Since acquiring speech, he had developed into a self-important overweight ape trying hard to resemble a gorilla. His face was large, his teeth unsettled and wandering in the mouth. Yet he enunciated quite clearly and spoke without hesitation. His eyes were restless, his expression, challenging. Buz obviously disliked and feared him. Esau seemed not to fear anyone and to dislike all.

  Cohn considered him a bright-enough chimp, not without native wit, but surely a case of arrested emotional development. He h
ad made up his mind to have a serious talk with him. Esau threatened; he rocked the boat.

  Esau declared he would answer first. Buz asked each question forthrightly, yet modestly, and Esau proclaimed his replies.

  “For question I, all nights are the same except when it’s raining, or I am having dirty thoughts.” He made the sound of a kiss to Mary Madelyn, and she, dear lady, pretended she was hard of hearing.

  “For question 2, I am the Alpha Ape of us all. And that’s a warning to stay away from my girl.”

  He stared fixedly at Buz, who, after glancing at Cohn, drank from his tumbler of wine, and asked the next question.

  “For 3,” said Esau, “I don’t remember where I was born. My mother used to say I had made myself out of mud and water. At the time of the high water I climbed to the top of a palm tree, lived on the coconuts, and crapped in the Flood till it ran off.”

  Cohn asked him not to be tasteless, there was a lady present.

  “On the fourth question, my answer is short. My purpose in my life right at this particular time is to slip it to Mary Madelyn as soon as she learns the facts of life. She doesn’t know what she is missing.”

  Mary Madelyn blushed deeply.

  “Don’t spoil the seder,” Cohn warned Esau. “We’re expecting Elijah.”

  Buz whispered in his ear that they would have to get rid of the brute, but Cohn replied they had to have faith. “We can’t reject him at first whiff.”

  He thanked Esau for his frank replies and called Melchior.

  Bored when the old ape rose to answer the Four Questions, Esau gnawed on the Eohippus bone. It turned to dust in his mouth. He spat it out with a gasping cough and gurgled down a carafe of wine. In a few minutes he was soundly asleep at the table. No one waked him.

  Melchior cleared his throat and warmed up his breathy voice. His speech was slurpy—every word swam in spittle, but he spoke slowly and could be understood. The old ape had trouble breathing and would bang his chest with his fist to move air into his lungs.

  He answered thus: “One to two—the weather is dry and I feel fine, thank you. Whether it’s day or night I don’t think about nowadays.” He wheezed wetly, his eyes turning slightly milky. “I feel a heaviness of the chesht but that’s the way of age. My mother used to say we exchange ailments for yearzh. We take on one as we give up the other. It doesn’t pay to live too long is my theory. Thank you kindly.