God's Grace (6 page)
Authors: Bernard Malamud
Tags: #Fiction, #Dystopian, #Science Fiction, #Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic, #Religious
“What do you see?” Cohn held the lamp aloft.
The chimp whimpered as a musty hot odor, like a burning tire, or someone’s stinkingly sweaty body, with a redemptive trace of mint, flowed into the cave.
Calvin Cohn stared into the primeval night and saw nothing. An essence, unformed and ancient in the night’s ripe darkness, caused him to sense he was about to do battle with a dinosaur, if not full-fledged dragon; but he saw neither. Yet he thought he had heard an explosive grunt and had observed a shadow flit out of the hut and into the trees.
Cohn went out in his stocking feet. No stars were visible, but a slender emerald crescent moon was rising. He stood for a while probing the night. When he returned to the cave Buz was snoring as if accompanying a dream of hot pursuit.
In the morning, Cohn returned to his chores in the rice paddy and Buz went exploring. On the way, he played in the acacias and tumbled among the branches of a bushy eucalyptus a little farther down.
He tore off a long leafy branch and leaped to the ground, dragging it up the rocky slope to the escarpment, and then charged down, venting a long scream as he pulled the hissing branch after him. A shower burst on his head as he plunged down the slope. Buz danced like an Indian chief in the rain.
When the rain had let up the next morning, the little chimp went out, stopping to throw rocks at a mangrove tree he didn’t like. Before slipping into the rain forest he heaved chunks of coconut shell at two epiphytic trees in the leafy gloom, as if to drive away any lingering evil spirit.
Then he disappeared into the forest, sometimes hooting from trees deep in the green growth. That afternoon when the chimp returned from the rain forest his face seemed gone several shades pale. He covered his shoulders with Cohn’s poncho and sat in the chair, hoo-hooting to himself. Cohn squatted, stroking his shoulders, at last quieting him. At dusk he climbed into his acacia sleep-tree and bent some branches back to make a nest for himself, but had second thoughts and slept in the cave.
A quarter moon rose and Buz walked in his sleep. Either that, or he had been frightened as he slept and walked away from the offending sleep-cage.
Cohn asked him if he had had a bad dream but the chimp made no reply.
The next evening, after they had eaten a supper of yams and black beans and drunk tumblers of coconut juice, Cohn played on the phonograph a record of his father the cantor praying. The chimp yodeled along with him, and Cohn, in a sentimental mood, danced to the music of his father’s voice. He snapped his thumbs, shook his hips, and sang in Yiddish, “Ich tants far mayn tate.”
Buz also tried a few dance steps, dangling one foot, then the other. Abruptly he stopped, his face a frozen sight. What had troubled him? He was these days a nervous chap.
Puberty? Cohn wondered. Simply unfulfilled sexual desire? Certainly he was mature enough to want a female—lost cause.
Puberty? Cohn wondered. Simply unfulfilled sexual desire? Certainly he was mature enough to want a female—lost cause.
But if there was a female chimp around, Buz wasn’t responding in an attractive fashion. Standing at the cave entrance, he pitched into the night a teapot, two tablespoons, a salad bowl Cohn had sculpted with his jackknife and chisel. He had to wrestle two porcelain dishes away from Buz.
Peering through the vines, the chimp bristled and hooted, then retreated, grumbling. Cohn wondered whether the little ape knew something he didn’t and ought to?
It seemed to him he heard someone mumbling, or attempting to sing in a guttural voice. It came out a throaty basso aiming an aria to the night sky, possibly pledging his heart and soul to the song of the impassioned cantor. The phonograph was suddenly stilled—silent. Cohn heard nothing more outside the cave. He carried the kerosene lamp to the hut, holding it high so he could see to the edge of the forest.
Amid the shadows wrought in the uneasy night, he had the startled impression he was gazing at a huge man in a black suit seated on the ground twenty feet beyond the hut.
Cohn almost dropped the teetering lamp.
“Who are you?”
The man, rising slowly, became a gorilla lumbering away. When he stopped to look back, his deep, small, black eyes glowed in the lamplight. Cohn wanted frantically to run.
The chimp at the cave stood hooting at the giant ape, preaching against his kind. He shrieked as the gorilla, reversing direction, moved toward him, halting, staring with
blank gaze all the more frightening because it seemed to be his only expression.
blank gaze all the more frightening because it seemed to be his only expression.
Cohn ducked into the cave, set down the lamp, and instinctively grabbed a shovel. As though he had touched hot metal, he tossed it aside and reached for an orange.
Buz, sounding more like monkey than ape, retreated as the gorilla loomed up at the cave entrance. A musty, rank, yet heavy herbal odor filled the cave.
Cohn in a quick whisper warned Buz to quiet down, but the half-hysterical animal, scooping a coconut off the shelf, pitched it at the gorilla. It bounced with a thud off his sloping skull, yet his eyes did not flicker in the lamplight as he stared at the two frightened inhabitants of the cave.
Cohn, sotto voce, informed Buz that the gorilla would not attack if he did not bother him. “But he will rend you limb from limb if you act like a hysteric.”
The chimp protested this strategy, but the gorilla, as if he had decided he would never make a home in this cave, mercifully fell back, turning again to cast an impassive stare at them. Or was it a depressive type they were contending with? As he knuckle-walked to the rain forest he expelled a burst of gorilla gas and was gone.
Cohn wondered how many more apes, large or small, he must confront if the Lord’s computer had stopped telling Him the numerical truth.
The next morning the gorilla sat alone under a bearded palm tree fifty feet from the cave.
He seems a peaceful gent, Cohn thought, and I’ll pretend he isn’t there unless he gives me a sign to the contrary.
He was a burly beast, almost ugly, with a shaggy blue-black head and heavy brow ridges. His nostrils were highlighted like polished black stones, and his mouth, when he yawned, was cavernous. The gorilla’s black coat was graying on his massive shoulders. Still, if he was frightening, he was not frightful. Despite his size and implied strength—perhaps because he seemed to have a talented ear for devotional music—there was something gentle about him. His dark brown eyes seemed experienced, saddened—after the Flood? —in a way Buz’s weren’t. Cohn respected the giant ape.
All morning he had remained nearby, as though listening, waiting perhaps to hear the cantor singing. No doubt he was looking for company. Cohn asked Buz not to disturb him. A large friend in a small world had its advantages. But Buz, though he listened obediently, at least respectfully, on catching sight of the gorilla sitting under his favorite white acacia, persistently banged an aluminum frying pan against the escarpment until it howled like a metal drum. He orated at length, growing hoarse, and barking like a baboon. But the gorilla sat motionlessly watching.
Cohn figured he might put on a phonograph record to test his theory; instead he ventured forth and sat in the grass about ten feet from the gorilla, his heart pounding. One false move—for instance, threatening the beast by staring into his eyes—and goodbye Cohn.
Calvin Cohn then experienced an extraordinary insight: I know this one. I know his scent. We’ve met before.
“Are you the one,” he asked humbly, “who fed me when I was sick? If so, please accept heartfelt thanks.”
The gorilla blinked as though he wasn’t sure he understood
the question. He stared at Cohn as if he might have helped him, or he might not; he had his mystery.
the question. He stared at Cohn as if he might have helped him, or he might not; he had his mystery.
Cohn cautiously approached the huge animal—he weighed a good five hundred pounds—with extended hand, his gaze on the ground.
The gorilla rose on his short legs, as he watched the man coming toward him, and modestly raised his own right arm. But Buz, spying the gesture, ran between them, screeching, before the extended arms could become a handclasp.
Although Cohn tried to restrain the jealous chimp, Buz chattered at the gorilla, taunting him.
The chimp pretend-charged, backed off, lunged forward as if to attack, but the gorilla patiently fended him off with his meaty long arm. Grunting at the chimp, he knuckle-walked away. He lifted himself into an acacia tree and sat on a low bough in the dappled sunlight, peacefully observing the scene below.
A true gentleman, Cohn thought.
“If it’s all right with you,” he addressed the gorilla in gratitude, “I’d like to call you George, after my late wife’s father, who was an accomplished dentist, a wonderful man. He often fixed people’s teeth for nothing.”
He told the gorilla they three were alone in the world and must look after each other.
George seemed to agree, but Buz had clapped both hands over his ears and was mockingly hooting.
One early morning Cohn, on awaking, stealthily drew aside the vines and let in the light. Since Buz was asleep in his cage, he tiptoed over with a pair of small scissors, and
reaching between the wooden bars before the ape was thoroughly awake, snipped off his fetid, decomposing neck cloth.
reaching between the wooden bars before the ape was thoroughly awake, snipped off his fetid, decomposing neck cloth.
The wound he expected to see was totally healed, and from it two flattened copper wires grew out of the scar where a man’s Adam’s apple would be.
Buz, awaking startled, hoarsely protested the loss of his loving compress, but Cohn argued it needed a washing and dropped it into the dirty-laundry basket. Buz then did his business outside the cave, as he had been taught; and when he returned, Cohn, before serving him his banana-rice porridge, got the chimp to play tickle.
As he tickled Buz under the arms, he lifted the hilarious ape into a chair, and deftly twisted together the two exposed copper wires on his neck. There was a momentary crackling as the chimp, grinning sickly, stared at Cohn, and Cohn, smiling sheepishly, observed him. After a rasping cough, followed by a metallic gasp that startled him, Buz spoke as though reciting a miracle.
“Fontostisch/// I con hear myzelv speag/// pong-pong.” Hearing his words, Buz in joy jumped off and on his chair in celebration. Displaying proudly, he socked his chest with both fists. The chimp, then emitting a piercing hoot, rushed out of the cave, shinnied up a nearby palm tree, tore off a fan-shaped leafy branch, and charged up the rocky slope, dragging the swishing branch behind him.
“Fontostisch///” he exclaimed as he knuckle-galloped down the slope with his palm branch. “I con talg/// pong-pong.”
Calvin Cohn, flushed with the excitement of unexpected adventure, could almost not believe what he had heard.
“A miracle,” he conceded. “But what do you mean by pong-pong?”
“Thot’s nod me/// Thot’s the sound the copper wires mage when they vibrate ot the end of a sendence/// I hov on artifiziol lorynch/// pong-pong.”
His voice was metallic, as if he were a deaf person talking, who had never before heard himself articulate. Buz spoke with his juicy tongue awash in his mouth. His speech, reminiscent of Dr. Bünder’s, sounded like a metachimp’s, given that possibility. In any case, that the ape could speak had fired Cohn’s imagination.
“How do you know what a sentence is?”
“I con understond and speag only words I hov formerly heard/// pong-pong. I con say whot I hov heard you say to me/// I con alzo say those words thot Dr. Bünder taught me/// For instonze, I know the Lord’s Prayer/// pong-pong.”
“How did he teach you that?”
“He taught it to me in sign longuoge/// but now I know it is words thot I hov in my head/// pong-pong.”
“Did he perform the operation on your larynx?”
Buz coughed metallically. “If he hod waited another weeg or two I would hov done it myzelf/// I was already talging on my libs but he didn’t hear it/// I would hov talged oz I do now/// pong-pong.”
“How—without a proper larynx ?”
“Because onimals con talg///” Buz told him. “We talg among ourselves/// Maybe someday you will hear our phonemes oz we hear yours/// If you con communicade with one living onimal/// you con communicade with all
his relations/// It is pozzible if you will odmid the pozzibility ///”
his relations/// It is pozzible if you will odmid the pozzibility ///”
Cohn said it seemed a reasonable possibility. “Belief itself may not be that easy, but I want to believe. In fact, after hearing you in action, I do. I imagine your experience contains an evolutionary factor in it, and I see it as real and believable.”
Cohn went on: “What an extraordinary opportunity it provides to understand the nature of communication and development of speech in man. I bet I could make an important contribution in semantics, and I greatly regret there’s no one but us, and maybe George, to behold this miracle.”
“There’s Jesus of Nozoroth///” Buz said.
“Maybe,” said Cohn.
Buz said that was beyond question.
Withal a miracle, Cohn felt; he was deeply moved, still amazed, all but overwhelmed. Despite his eccentricities Dr. Walther Bünder had been an extraordinary scientist; and Buz—God bless—was a genius chimp.
Now I will have an intelligent companion as long as we both shall live. Cohn dabbed his eyes with his woolen handkerchief.
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