God's Grace (20 page)
Authors: Bernard Malamud
Tags: #Fiction, #Dystopian, #Science Fiction, #Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic, #Religious
“What can we do to dispel the evil rife in this land?”
Buz said it was Cohn’s fault for not teaching love. Cohn said he had tried to teach the good life, but it hadn’t come to much.
Buz then advised him to remove the false Admonition he had put up on the face of the escarpment.
“Why do you call it false?”
“Because God is love.”
Cohn said he wouldn’t feel secure promising a loving
God. Afterwards he realized he hadn’t said that; he had quietly thought it.
God. Afterwards he realized he hadn’t said that; he had quietly thought it.
He told Buz he was discouraged and would try anything that helped the cause of peace.
When he came out of the woodland the next day, after a count of new fruit trees, to his astonishment but not surprise, Cohn beheld Buz standing in a balconied enclosure two-thirds of the way up the escarpment, preaching to the chimpanzees assembled below, where the waterfall sometimes sprayed them, but they seemed not to mind.
The chutzpah of that little chimp.
Cohn discovered that Buz, without seeking his consent, had altered the second of the Seven Admonitions on the face of the escarpment. He had removed the “not,” and the Admonition read “God is love, God is God.”
Cohn decided he would disassemble the second Admonition altogether, except “Remember Him.” God, he thought, would not mind so long as he didn’t mess around with basics.
It would take a while, given the present spiritual resources of the chimps, to get a new morality in place and working. Even Moses had had trouble, and Isaiah had all but blown his voice crying out against the ethical failures of the Israelites.
At the foot of the escarpment stood the small band of chimpanzees, among them Mary Madelyn holding Rebekah, now very lively. Melchior smoked a homemade cigar rolled from some tough tobacco leaves he had stumbled on on the island. And Hattie remarked she felt she was now Mrs. Melchior, whether they were married or not, even though Melchior had no great interest in sex anymore.
Then Esterhazy and Bromberg slithered in among the others, like escaped convicts who had been slinking around in the rain forest. Yet when they pressed their palms together and sank to their knees, Cohn considered rescinding their sentence to exile. He might give them another chance, but not Esau, because his nature was close to evil.
And Luke, and Saul of Tarsus, were on their knees, praying, but not George the gorilla.
George wasn’t there anymore. He had disappeared a few days ago. The rumor was he had trudged off to the headlands, and no one knew for sure if this was a temporary move or one for all time.
Cohn, not without a pang, had watched him lumbering away in the sunset, carrying a small bundle of his belongings at the end of a stick on his shoulder.
“Blessed are the chimpanzees,” Buz preached from the terrace of the yellow escarpment, “for they hov inherited the whole earth.”
And the chimps below let out a resounding hearty cheer.
Buz later told Cohn he thought that things would go better hereafter in the island community; but Cohn pessimistically reminded him that Christianity, too, hadn’t prevented the Holocaust—“the Jewish one I lectured on most recently in class”—nor had it stayed the Day of Devastation.
Buz angrily accused Cohn of never approving anything, pragmatic or spiritual, that he was interested in or had done; and Cohn vehemently denied it.
For an instant they faced each other in anger, right arms upraised, then turned and walked/knuckle-walked away.
After an early supper, as Mary Madelyn was rinsing the wooden platters in the water bucket, Cohn lit the lamp, and pressing his shoulder to the wooden wall, pushed it creaking on its rollers across the mouth of the cave.
“God is wov,” she reminded him. “Why are you shutting the cave off from daywight and fresh air?”
Cohn said he had this feeling that evil persisted in the land, and doubted Buz’s sermon would do much to allay it. “It will take a while to get things in order; the atmosphere has been tense since those baboons appeared in the neighborhood. I’ve been wondering what God is up to.”
She asked Cohn when they might get married, and he said they were more or less married. “We must breed daughters.”
Cohn held Rebekah in his lap, dressed in a little white sailcloth jumper he had sewed for her; he was about to tell her a bedtime story.
Rebekah, though a half-chimp infant, looked more than half-human. She liked to sit on the ground on her hard little behind, playing with a straw doll Cohn had made for her, whose head she had eaten.
According to Dr. Bünder’s book, she was behind in chimp infant movements, yet ahead in speech. She said dada and mama, and counted to five on one foot and up to ten on the other. She was bright and pretty and chuckled deeply. Her eyes were intensely curious, lively, blue; Cohn was tender to her, enormously fond of his little girl.
He often pondered her fate. Would she live her life out on the island? Was she destined to be the mother of a
humanoid-chimpanzoid race if she mated with a full chimp, possibly Buz, someday, if he behaved? Cohn hoped his little girl had been created for a better than ordinary, personally fulfilling, future. At that moment there was a snap-knock on the protective wooden wall, as though someone had thrown a stone against it.
humanoid-chimpanzoid race if she mated with a full chimp, possibly Buz, someday, if he behaved? Cohn hoped his little girl had been created for a better than ordinary, personally fulfilling, future. At that moment there was a snap-knock on the protective wooden wall, as though someone had thrown a stone against it.
“Open the blosted gate,” Buz called from outside. “Whot is there to fear?”
Cohn didn’t like the question and would not move the wall.
“Who’s out there with you?”
“Just myself.”
“What do you want?”
“A condy bar,” Buz shouted in frustration, kicking the wall with his bare foot, at once wishing he hadn’t.
“Enter,” said Cohn.
Mary Madelyn quickly tucked the baby into the crib as Cohn shoved at the wall with his shoulder and slowly pushed it open.
Buz knuckle-limped in. On the way to the candy box on the shelf he peered at Rebekah in her crib. “I hov forgiven her.”
Cohn said he was pleased to hear it, especially since the baby had nothing against him.
“We all feel good will to you, Buz, although we rarely see you except in the schooltree or at public ceremonies.”
Buz swallowed a vanilla coconut bar and began chewing a chocolate. He said, with mouth full, it wasn’t a kind thing Cohn had done to evict him from his long-standing home.
Cohn reminded him that he had left the cave willingly. “You said you didn’t want to live with a squalling brat—you had your private thoughts to think.”
Buz seemed to be thinking them. He was, as he ate the candy, staring at Mary Madelyn’s bosom in a way that made her blush. She covered the baby with a second blanket.
Cohn got Buz’s silver crucifix out of his valise and offered it to him. “You’ve taken all your worldly goods out of the cave—do you want the cross I’ve been holding for you?”
“Not now,” Buz said. “I hov no pockets on me.”
“You can put it around your neck.”
“My neck is bigger than it was, the chain wouldn’t fit.”
Cohn told him to try it.
Buz said no.
Cohn was on the qui vive, when a sulphurous odor assailed his nostrils—nothing like George’s, this was a dreadfully foul smell—and his heart sank as he beheld Esau, smirking like the Devil himself, standing in the cave.
Cohn cursed himself for having neglected to roll back the protective wall after Buz had entered. “You knew all the time he hadn’t gone into exile,” Cohn accused his boy.
Buz said he had heard a rumor but wasn’t sure. Cohn was angered and fearful.
With Esau, Esterhazy appeared; and Bromberg, Luke, and Saul of Tarsus entered the cave, wearing clay masks stolen from Cohn’s collection, all holding sharp rocks aimed at his head.
Esau, his soiled bandage wrapped around his thick skull, had become heavy-bodied, his face bloated. He looked as if
he had spent his time in hiding drinking banana beer. His glazed, reddened eyes were mean-looking.
he had spent his time in hiding drinking banana beer. His glazed, reddened eyes were mean-looking.
Mary Madelyn, letting out a cry, snatched the baby from her crib and tried to get out of the cave, but Esterhazy, raising the saber he had found hanging on a hook on the wall, barred her way.
Cohn warned Esterhazy to watch where he pointed the weapon or he would be docked a month’s fruit rations.
He then said to Esau, “I have treated you well since you appeared at this end of the island. I pulled a painful tooth and bandaged your wounded head. Be merciful, Esau.”
Not mentioning who had wounded the head he had bandaged, Cohn tried to move toward Mary Madelyn and Rebekah and found that his wrists were tightly held by each twin.
Esau, with a sneaky deft movement, snatched Rebekah out of her whimpering mother’s arms, and tossed the baby to Bromberg. Rebekah gurgled as she went sailing through the air.
Cohn flung the twins aside and sprang forward to recover the child, as Bromberg threw her to Esterhazy. The bookkeeperish ape caught her in one large hand as Mary Madelyn came rushing at him.
He flipped her to Saul of Tarsus, who passed her to Luke, who scuttled out of the cave.
Mary Madelyn made choking noises of grief as she beat off the twins and burst out of the cave on her fours in pursuit of her daughter.
Cohn prayed for Esau’s destruction where he stood—let
him drop enormously dead—but nothing came of it. The Alpha Ape lived on in the best of health.
him drop enormously dead—but nothing came of it. The Alpha Ape lived on in the best of health.
Esau and the other chimps scurried out of the cave, Buz carrying the saber in his teeth. They had left Cohn lying on the ground with a mound of rocks piled on his chest.
“Et tu, Buz?” Cohn was heartbroken beyond his anguish for Rebekah.
He lifted aside one rock after another, not without pressing pain, then rising shakily from the floor, grabbed his iron spear from its rack and charged after the evildoers in the gathering dusk.
The apes met in the gorilla’s abandoned cedar near the schooltree and curiously inspected little Rebekah. Esau sat on a high branch, tickling her little pink feet and peeking under the skirt of her jumper to see what was there.
The chimps surrounding him looked on with absorbed interest until Mary Madelyn appeared, distraught, and mumbling to herself. She begged them in heartbroken tones to return her innocent baby and she would give them anything they wanted, promising never again to flee at their approach when she was in heat.
As the sun sank, the island sky turned purple, with zigzagging rivers of black. The apes wandered like Bedouins from one tree to another with the little girl, as her mother brachiated after them, and Cohn, having abandoned his massive spear, pursued them on foot, his arms extended as he ran, to catch the child if she accidentally fell, or was dropped to the ground by the apes.
He begged them, as he ran, to be merciful. “You may think me a foolishly fond father, but Rebekah—I give you my word—is a gifted child. She’s been talking more than a month, and counts to ten on her toes. She’s a child of unusual promise, also musically inclined, and may someday be a concert pianist if we can come up with a piano and get a music-education program going.
“It’s no exaggeration at all to say that the future of us on this island lives in Rebekah’s being, the future of another and—God willing—better civilization, a more idealistic and altruistic one, I certainly hope. She is, as I’m sure you know, half your kind and half mine, and from the unique assortment of her inherited genes, and no doubt of those from one of you in the womb of her maturity—no more than a dozen years from now—the naturally best species of the future will probably be derived. Think of that, gentlemen!
“Please be careful of her—she is our dear child. I urge you to lay her gently on the ground where we can recover her and take her home. I assure you we will reward you all and treat you as heroes.”
The apes in the trees seemed to pause in their game to listen to Cohn; and Mary Madelyn, pursuing them without regard for her safety, after a moment of moving stealthily forward, was able to land in the same tree with four of them and almost had her hand on Rebekah, when the astonished Bromberg, come to life, flipped her across the tree aisle to Esau, erect atop a short flowering palm on the left. Esau caught a bad throw but held tight as the other male chimps dived out of the tree into three palms nearby. Mary
Madelyn, moaning, sprang into the crown of a nut palm, but Esau had, with a grunt, already leapt forward with the child in his arm, into an adjoining tree.
Madelyn, moaning, sprang into the crown of a nut palm, but Esau had, with a grunt, already leapt forward with the child in his arm, into an adjoining tree.
Cohn, from the ground, promised that if they returned the baby to her loving parents, to either if not both—no doubt this was their ultimate aim, none of them was an intentional kidnapper—he would happily reward them with gifts of 500 sacks of brown rice, about 200 bananas, 48 of which were pulpy red, 56 sweet tangerines, 3 boxes of dried figs, about a ton of sunflower seeds, 32 coconut candy bars, half a large vat of fizzy banana beer, and/or every other object in the cave, including his books, articles of clothing, not excluding his warm poncho; with the cave itself thrown in, and also the outside hut—a joy in summertime—if they mercifully released the little girl, unharmed.
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