God's Grace

by Bernard Malamud

  He sat on a stool he had assembled at the foot of the shedding schooltree, on a leaf-covered hillock of hard earth he had constructed as a teaching platform, talking fast or slow, depending on the subject. He addressed them on a variety of topics, or inspired thoughts, formally or casually; or he read aloud from one book or another. And Cohn related tales he had made up as best he could the night before as he prepared his lectures; or had culled from memory.

  He was no Martin Buber and the apes no Hasidim, though they might someday be, Cohn permitted himself to think. These things needed time. It depended, to some degree, on how one addressed the apes and they played it back.

  The chimps seemed, on the whole, to enjoy their schooling although there were occasional truants, Esau, for instance, a prime offender; and Luke and Saul of Tarsus, after a difficult lesson had left them dazed, usually took the next day off. Melchior was steady, he liked to listen; and so did Mary Madelyn, who discreetly applauded certain things Cohn said and some he only hinted at.

  Buz, diligently present, sometimes interrupted the teacher’s discourse to disagree with a fact. He also corrected Cohn’s mistakes in usage, when he caught a “which” for a “that,” or “precipitate” for “precipitous.” Buz had been immersed in dictionary study lately. Cohn, when corrected, felt some embarrassment, especially when the other chimps broke out in applause for Buz. However, the amateur teacher —he so defined himself—was good-humored about his little errors, and education went on.

  George the gorilla was a part-time scholar, listening from a neighboring cedar, because the apes, particularly after the seder shambles, showed they did not care to have him among them. George could tell and had picked himself this tall coniferous tree twenty feet from the eucalyptus. Cohn argued with the chimps, defending the gorilla’s human rights, but fortunately George preferred to be by himself.

  He crouched on the lower branch of the cedar, at times lay outstretched, chewing a weed, seemingly absorbed in Cohn’s remarks and stories, though one never knew for sure because the gorilla did not talk; yet Cohn was almost certain he comprehended what he heard.

  However, his attention to the lesson appeared to be fitful, partly because he seemed to be roused, or struck, by certain things, and for a while was not able to concentrate on anything more. At least it seemed so to Cohn.

  George would stay in his tree until some interesting fact, or quotation, or tale, excited his fancy, at which moment he lowered himself to the ground and went reeling off into the forest as though high on reflection, to hoots of ridicule by the students in the schooltree. Cohn pictured him lying in the sun-warmed grass, playing with a thought till it arranged itself in his head. Or was that giving the beast more credit than he deserved? Yet there was something “possible” about George. He looked like himself plus something else he might be.

  After the daily lectures, the chimps climbed down the eucalyptus to enjoy a cup of fizzy banana beer that Cohn served to all present.

  Melchior, as he guzzled the beer dripping into his beard, stopped drinking long enough to say this was the besht part of the day.

  Cohn thought he knew more about fossils than anything else he had studied, but with the help, if not collaboration, of his one-volume encyclopedia he would try to inform them about the major doings of the past.

  “Knowing what occurred in the world might favor the future. Yours, I mean, rather than mine. Mine looks scarce; yours, at least possible.”

  He said, “There are gaps in my knowledge, large and small, but I will tell it as best I can. If you listen, there may be some morsels to nibble on. I sincerely hope you won’t think I am being reductive.”

  The chimps in the eucalyptus, with the exception of sour-faced Esau, who sat on his hairy hands, politely applauded Cohn’s honest declaration.

  So in the days that followed he lectured on the cosmos—from Big Bang to Dying Whimper of man (for whom Cohn asked, and got, a full minute’s silence). The apes were curious about practically everything that had happened on earth and heaven. Starting there, the universe expanded.

  “What for?” asked Buz.

  “Because it’s expansible.”

  (Laughter.)

  He detailed Descent, Advent, Ascent of Man, as Darwin and Wallace had propounded the theory of the origin of species and natural selection; adding a sketch on sociobiology, with a word about the nature-nurture controversy.

  Only George clapped at that, and Cohn could not figure out if he knew what he was doing or was he trying to crush an imaginary fly between his palms?

  Cohn then noted man’s ambivalent nature, the no-in-yes, evil-in-good, death-in-life, illusion-in-real, the complex, joyous-heartbreaking way it had worked out. Was the basic split caused by body-soul? Or was it God’s withdrawal from His own presence? How would that go? Freud, an unbeliever, spoke of a secret trauma in His mind, converted to pain Everywhere.

  “That brings us to evil—wherever it begins or how far goes: a metaphysical dripping, perhaps, we can’t account for, resulting in the appearance of Satan himself, whom I will discourse on for a couple of lectures at a later date—in particular, whether the Lord tore him out of His own mind and flung him into the bottomless pit out of which he afterwards crawled as a smoking snake; and has since then taken out on man his loss of angelic form and privilege—anyway, if Satan is allowed to go slithering around in Paradise, there’s bound to be serious conflict and conflagration. In essence, the old boy envies man, wants to be him. Didn’t he desire Eve when he saw her rolling bare-skinned in the flowers with Adam naked? ‘Where’s mine of that?’ the old snake said when he met her in the wood; and she modestly responded, ‘It isn’t for you, for reasons I can’t say.’ He poisoned her apple after that. Broke her tree, it stopped singing hymns.”

  Cohn then sketchily recounted Freud’s work and to prove it apt began summarizing certain aspects of human history, not excluding major wars fought and other useless disasters. “Man had innumerable chances but was—in the long run—insufficient to God’s purpose. He was insufficient to himself. Some blame it on a poisoned consciousness, caused, for some chemical reason, by our lunatic genes running wild. More about that in the near future. Anyway, man doing a not-so-hot job, by and large, in his relations to other men—he loves only finger-deep. Love is not a popular phenomenon. Talks and talks but the real thing goes only finger-deep. Anyway, in all those ages he hardly masters his nature enough to stop the endless slaughter. What I mean,” said Cohn, “is he never mastered his animal nature for the good of all—please excuse the word—I am an animal myself—nor could he invent a workable altruism. In short, he behaved too often irrationally, unreasonably, savagely, bestially. I’m talking, obviously, about constant overkill.

  “And more of the same throughout human history. Please don’t say I am hypersensitive—I’m talking at a time of almost total extinction, except us few. I will go into the Historical Past in six lectures I have planned; and the Twentieth Century Up to Now, in another two, the second beginning with the Holocaust that I mentioned yesterday: all that Jewish soap from those skeletal gassed bodies; and not long after that, since these experiences are bound to each other, the U.S. Americans drop the first atom bombs—teensy ones —on all those unsuspecting 8 a.m. Japanese crawling in broken glass to find their eyeballs. I could say more but haven’t the heart.”

  Cohn said it wasn’t his intention to exaggerate the extent of man’s failures, willed or otherwise. Nor would he slight his capacity for good and beauty. “The reason I may seem to you to dwell heavily on the sins of man is to give you something to think about so you may, in a future chimpanzee society, avoid repeating man’s worst errors. The future lies in your hands.”

  Ongoing hearty applause. Buz waved a green cap of Cohn’s he had taken to wearing lately. Esau reluctantly pat-patted his moist palms. Mary Madelyn’s eyes glowed tenderly, and Melchior, though he called it “pretty dry stuff,” blew his nose and sentimentally frowned.

  Cohn took a bow. Here’s Calvin
Cohn, one man left on earth, teaching apes concerning man’s failures. Not bad. His father the rabbi, may he rest in peace, would surely have approved.

  (—Listen, Colvin, I never liked that you changed your name from Seymour to Colvin—a big naarishkeit—but what you say to the monkeys, this I like.

  —Those aren’t monkeys, Papa, those are full-grown primates.

  —To me it’s all the same, a monkey is a monkey.)

  Cohn, unable to slow down his lecture, speculated that man failed because he was imperfect to begin with. “Never mind free will. How can he be free if the mind is limited by its constitution? Why hadn’t the Almighty—in sum—done a better job? It wouldn’t have been all that hard for Him—whether man appeared first as a gene with evolutionary potential, or as Adam himself and his rib fully formed—to have endowed him with a little more control over his instincts; and if not pure love for the human race, possibly for reasons of natural selection, then maybe at least enough feeling to be moved by their common plight—that many have little, and many have nothing—and that they are alive for a minute and die young? “Am I wrong about that?”

  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.”

  The Virgin in the Trees

  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.

  “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.

  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 ser
iously, 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.

  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.