God's Grace (7 page)
Authors: Bernard Malamud
Tags: #Fiction, #Dystopian, #Science Fiction, #Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic, #Religious
The chimp, observing this, tried to squeeze out a tear but failed.
Cohn said not to worry, he would teach him how, among other things.
“Sholl I call you moster/// pong-pong?”
“Call me Cal, or if you like, call me Dad.”
“Dod///” said Buz, “pong-pong.”
Cohn, with a pair of ratnose pliers, tightened Buz’s neck wires, and that ended the pong-pong. The chimp said he hadn’t minded the redundant sound so long as he could clearly say the rest of a sentence. His articulation improved, and in a short while he lost almost every trace of Dr. Bünder’s accent and enunciated consonants and most vowels correctly.
Cohn praised him for being a good lad. They laid arms around each other and affectionately kissed.
Buz began his language studies diligently assisted by Cohn, who read him selected pages in the dictionary. Cohn redefined the definitions, not always to Buz’s satisfaction. At first the chimp felt a word should mean what it looked like. He wanted an aardvark to be a snail in its shell, hoping the aard was the snail and the vark its cubicle. Later he accepted the aardvark as a termite eater and called the snail a disgusting slug.
Their dictionary study pleased Buz, and he wondered if it would improve his vocabulary if he ate a few pages now and then, but Cohn forbade that for all time.
Nonetheless he made satisfactory progress. He was not timid in guessing the meaning of words he didn’t know, that Cohn used, and asking about others. One day he had a remarkable insight: “What you don’t say means something too.” Cohn agreed. That was a breakthrough point, and thereafter Buz made faster progress in his mastery of language. Cohn was overjoyed by his semantic talent.
Buz one day wanted to know who had invented language.
Cohn said man. “That’s what made him superior to all the other creatures.”
“If he was so superior where is he now?”
“Here I am,” said Cohn.
“I mean the humon race?”
Cohn, on reflection, admitted maybe God had invented language. “The word began the world. Nor would anyone have known there was a monotheistic God if He hadn’t proclaimed it.”
Buz said that maybe Jesus had invented language.
Cohn said, “He spoke well but the word was already there.”
“He preached to the chimps,” said Buz.
Cohn said that Buz had just got close to a metaphor and praised him.
“How close?”
“The chimps as Christians.”
“Whot’s a metaphor?”
“It’s a symbol—sort of,” Cohn responded. “It says something not fully expected, through analogy. Like when a banana is conceived to symbolize a man’s phallus, and a cave or grotto, a womb.”
“I don’t agree that a cave is a wombot,” Buz said.
“Womb, not wombat.”
“I don’t believe it. I don’t think a phollus is a bonona. I eat bononas, I don’t eat pholluses.”
“Eating has nothing to do with it. An object, because of a quality in common with another, is taken to represent the other. For instance, Walt Whitman in one of his poems
refers to the grass as ‘the handkerchief of the Lord’—far out but reasonable.”
refers to the grass as ‘the handkerchief of the Lord’—far out but reasonable.”
Buz said he wished his name was Walt.
“Your name is Buz.”
“I wish it was Walt. Why does he call the grass a handkerchief?”
“It provides an earthly concept of God: He who walks on grass with the same ease as he uses His handkerchief. Or He may use the grass to wipe His brow. Anyway, He dwells in our lives. Another similar concept is God the Father.”
“Whot about God the son?”
“That’s a metaphor too.”
Buz said it was the one he liked best.
“You take your choice,” Cohn said. “In any case, it’s through language that a man becomes more finely and subtly man—a sensitive, principled, civilized human being —as he opens himself to other men—by comprehending, describing, and communicating his experiences, aspirations, and nature—such as it is. Or was.” Cohn smiled a melancholy smile.
“Don’t forget the chimponzees,” Buz said.
He afterwards asked, “If I go on learning your longuoge will I become humon?”
“Maybe not you yourself,” Cohn replied, “but something like that could happen in the long run.” He said his descent and Buz’s from a common ancestor had been a matter of eons of evolution. “And if it was to happen again, I hope it results in an improved species of homo sapiens.”
“Whot is humon, Dod?”
Cohn said he thought to be human was to be responsive to and protective of life and civilization.
Buz said he would rather be a chimp.
He wanted to know where stories came from.
Cohn said from other stories.
“Where did they come from?”
“Somebody spoke a metaphor and that broke into a story. Man began to tell them to keep his life from washing away.”
“Which was the first story?”
“God inventing Himself.”
“How did He do thot?”
“He began, He’s the God of Beginnings. He said the word and the earth began. If you tell stories you can say what God’s doing. Let’s read that one again, Buz.” He turned to the story of Creation.
Buz said he was tired of that one. “Nothing hoppons in thot fairy story. Why don’t you read about Jesus of Nozoroth? He preached to the chimponzees.”
“In what language?”
“I don’t know thot. We heard His voice in our ears.”
Cohn said he didn’t have a copy of the New Testament in the cave. He did have the Old.
“Tell it without the book.”
He would, promised Cohn. “But you complain I don’t tell you enough animal stories, so how about one of those now? I’ll start with the old snake who lived in Paradise with Adam and Eve.”
Buz said he hated snake stories. “They crawl on their bellies.”
Cohn said God had punished them for getting man into trouble. “Rashi—he was a medieval Talmudic commentator —in other words, somebody who told stories about stories—he said the snake saw Adam and Eve having intercourse amid the flowers. The snake afterwards asked Eve for a bit of the same, but she indignantly refused. That started off his evil plans of the betrayal of man. I’ve read you the story where he tempted Eve with the apple. She could have said no, but the snake was a tricky gent. He got her confused by his sexual request.”
“Whot’s intercourse?”
“I read you the relevant passage in Dr. Bünder’s book.”
“When will I get some of it?”
Cohn said he was sorry but couldn’t say.
“If not the snake, how about Cain and Abel?” he asked. “There’s action in that one, a stupendous blow on the head.”
Buz said he disliked violence and bloodshed. He said he preferred the New Testament.
“There’s plenty of violence and blood in the New Testament. Painters worked in red from that for centuries.”
“Thot’s because they crucified Jesus of Nozoroth,” Buz said.
“Who did?” asked Cohn, on the qui vive.
“The Roman soldias.”
Cohn patted his head.
“Tell me the one about the Dod who cut his little boy’s throat,” Buz then asked.
Cohn responded in annoyance. “Buz, I’ve told you four times that Abraham never cut his boy’s throat. Those who
said he did were making up stories that suited their own natures, not Isaac’s or Abraham’s.”
said he did were making up stories that suited their own natures, not Isaac’s or Abraham’s.”
“Tell me again,” sighed Buz, climbing up on Calvin Cohn’s lap.
Cohn told him again: “This is the story of Abraham and Isaac, his beloved son,” he began. “The Talmud says that Satan pestered God to test Abraham’s love for Him; and God, to test and prove that love, commanded Abraham to take his boy up to the mountain in Moriah and give him for a burnt offering to the Lord Himself.
“As the story goes, Abraham, not flicking an eyelash, out of love for God, consented. Isaac carried the wood for the fire up the mountain. Then Abraham laid it on the altar, binding his son with leather thongs before lifting the knife to his throat.”
Buz said the story was giving him cramps.
“Then why do you ask me to tell it?”
Buz thought maybe it was the figs he had eaten for breakfast that gave him cramps. “But tell the story anyway.”
Cohn went on: “Just as Abraham was about to sacrifice his son, an angel called to him out of the blue, ‘Don’t lay your hands on that boy, or do anything to hurt him. I know you fear God.’ And that proves that the Lord, at any given time, may not know all, or He would surely have known that Abraham feared Him.
“On the other hand, if God was testing Abraham to get Satan off His back, He knew what the outcome would be, and I bet Satan did—he has his talents—but not Abraham
or Isaac. Still and all, their suffering was limited more or less to intense worry, and had no discernible traumatic effect after the incident when they had confirmed the hard way that they all loved each other.”
or Isaac. Still and all, their suffering was limited more or less to intense worry, and had no discernible traumatic effect after the incident when they had confirmed the hard way that they all loved each other.”
Buz liked happy endings. “God is love,” he said.
Cohn wasn’t sure but didn’t say so.
“So Isaac’s life was saved,” he quickly went on, “and a ram caught by his horns in a thicket was substituted as the burnt offering, in that way affirming the idea of an animal in place of human sacrifice. I’m talking now about the time the story of Abraham and Isaac began to be told. It was probably a protest against the pagan sacrifice of human beings. That’s what I meant by man humanizing himself—if you follow me.”
“Ond do you call murdering onimols a civilized oct?” Buz wanted to know.
Before Cohn, embarrassed, could reply, a rumble of thunder shook the sandstone escarpment. Dirt and small stones sifted down from the ceiling. Fearing an earthquake, or worse, Cohn, cowering over Buz, listened for God’s judgment but heard none. He had broken into a chilling sweat and warned himself to be very careful what he was saying. Apparently God wasn’t liking every word of it.
“Whot hopponed?” Buz asked, hauling himself out from under Cohn.
“Thunder and lightning.”
“Is thot bod?”
“It depends on His mood.”
Cohn hesitantly returned to the story of Isaac, saying:
“That ended his ordeal, except that if you reflect on the details at the very end, you figure he must have got lost on the mountain after his life was saved by the Angel, because he disappears from the tale. Exit Isaac. The scriptures have them both going up the mountain to participate in the ceremony God had ordained, but only Abraham came down. So where was Isaac?”
“That ended his ordeal, except that if you reflect on the details at the very end, you figure he must have got lost on the mountain after his life was saved by the Angel, because he disappears from the tale. Exit Isaac. The scriptures have them both going up the mountain to participate in the ceremony God had ordained, but only Abraham came down. So where was Isaac?”
Buz, clearly in suspense, said he had no idea.
Cohn said some Talmudic sages had interpreted it that Isaac had been carried off by the Angel to the Garden of Eden, and that he had rested there, convalescing from the bloody wound his father had inflicted on him.
“Thot’s whot I said, but you got mod ot me.”
Cohn replied the true reading obviously was that Abraham had not cut his son’s throat—God wouldn’t allow it—no matter what Abraham’s intention, conscious or otherwise, may have been.
“A certain philosopher—somebody called Kierkegaard, whom I haven’t told you about, though he’s on my list to bring up—he felt that Abraham really wanted to murder Isaac. Freud might have agreed—I’ll be filling you in on him in the very near future.”
“Do I hov to know everything?” Buz complained. He hopped off Cohn’s lap, circled the cave, then climbed back on him.
Cohn loved explication—had once considered becoming a teacher. “Everything that counts,” he replied. “Which leads to why the interpretation of Abraham as his son’s cutthroat persists through the centuries. That says something about the
nature of man—his fantasies of death that get enacted into the slaughter of man by man—kinfolk or strangers in droves —on every possible mindless occasion. But let’s not go into that now, except to point out that man paid for who he was —maybe—to my mind—er—somewhat unjustly.”
nature of man—his fantasies of death that get enacted into the slaughter of man by man—kinfolk or strangers in droves —on every possible mindless occasion. But let’s not go into that now, except to point out that man paid for who he was —maybe—to my mind—er—somewhat unjustly.”
He glanced uneasily at the split up in the ceiling, yet still ran on. “When you bring it all back to basics,” he whispered, “it means that God made man seriously imperfect. Maybe what was on His mind was that if He made man whole, pacific, good, he would feel no need to become better, and if he didn’t, he would never truly be a man. He also planned it that man had to contend with evil, or it was no go. But the awful thing was that the evil was much a bigger bag of snakes than man could handle. We behaved toward each other like animals, and therefore the Second Flood followed hard on the Day of Devastation.”
Buz hooted, “I’m on onimol and hov always been a vege-torion.”
Cohn complimented him and hastily returned to Isaac lost on the mountain. “How do you think he got down?”
Buz suggested that maybe a kidnapper had kidnapped him.
Cohn said that might have happened. “But murdered, kidnapped, or whatever, he got to Paradise—some commentators said. There he was resurrected, they say. That’s a twist in the story that shows the human passion to bring the dead back to life. Given the nature of death—how long it lasts once it sets in—who can blame us for inventing resurrection?”
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