God's Grace Read online

  “On question 3,” he said, “what’s that again?”

  Buz repeated it.

  “One day I woke up in a tree nesht with my mother. She was good to me till the day she went off with a gentleman she had met. I followed them in the foresht and then got losht and did not ever find her again. I will miss her till the end of my days—which is not too far off.”

  Cohn remarked there was time enough to think of death.

  “No time at all,” said Melchior with an extended wheeze.

  “The fourth question,” Cohn reminded him, “concerns purpose in life.”

  “I have no regretsh,” said Melchior.

  Cohn said he hadn’t told them how he had escaped the Flood.

  “I found a big shnow mountain and sat on it eating leaves until the water on the land below disappeared. Then I began to vomit and losht all my hair. I looked like a newborn babe. I was ashamed of my nakedness, but I climbed down off the mountain and went to the lowlands. Your fruit is delicious in this country. Please don’t anyone hurt me. I am a pretty old ape.”

  Cohn said he had forbidden strife. “This is a peaceful island.”

  “We hov forbidden strife,” Buz said.

  “Everybody wovs you,” Mary Madelyn said to Melchior.

  Whenever she pronounced an el it became doubleu. Buz giggled but Cohn liked the sound of it.

  The twins cheered Melchior. That woke Esau, gagging. He was about to throw up over the tablecloth, but Cohn got him out of the cave in time. “Horseass,” groaned Esau as he retched in the bushes.

  Cohn left him there and returned to the cave to serve a platter of bananas flambé, with slices of boiled apricots stewed in brandy, their last bottle from the wreck. All ate heartily.

  Then Mary Madelyn answered the questions. Except for her partial lallation she spoke well, though not as fluently as Buz, who, despite the fact he had initiated it, seemed jealous of her swift progress in language.

  Cohn had read her the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, and though she hardly understood every word, she had listened raptly.

  She had told Cohn she didn’t know her age but suspected she would soon be old enough to bear a child.

  “Do you look forward to it?”

  “Yes, but not to be in estrus.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s humiwiating to present mysewf every time a mawe approaches. I wish to be independent and free.”

  “Have you ever been in heat?”

  “Pwease,” Mary Madelyn said, “I don’t wike that word; in fact I detest it. No, I have never been in estrus.”

  Cohn begged her pardon. “I know how you feel.”

  Mary Madelyn looked at him with a doubtful smile. She confessed she was afraid of Esau. “He threatens me by shaking big branches in my face and caws me awfuw names. He said he would break my behind if I keep on being sexuawy off-putting.”

  “How do you handle that?”

  “I asked him to wait for my fuw natuaw devewopment.”

  “Then what happens ?”

  She said she was afraid to think.

  She was an altogether interesting lady chimpanzee. Cohn thought she would look lovely in a white dress, but where would you shop for one nowadays?

  Mary Madelyn then responded to the Four Questions:

  “Yes, this night is different because we are cewebrating our survivaw now that the wicked water has run off and the vomiting sickness is no wonger in us.”

  “Bravo,” Cohn said.

  Buz nudged his arm with his head. “When do I hov my turn to onswer ?”

  “Tonight is your turn to ask and others to answer.”

  “I would rother onswer than osk,” Buz said.

  “Not tonight,” said Cohn.

  Esau, looking as though he had lost five pounds, had knuckle-walked back into the cave and taken his seat on the bench. He smelled of vomit but none of the chimps save Buz seemed to mind. He privately held his nose.

  “I am the best answerer,” Esau announced. “I am King of the Trees.”

  “I think Mr. Mewchior is,” said Mary Madelyn.

  The twins applauded and Melchior, tentatively chewing a matzo, nodded.

  “And you are a bitch-whore,” Esau spoke across the table.

  She slid as far from him as she could. Another inch and she would be sitting in Cohn’s lap—not wise for decorum.

  “In answer to the second question,” she said, “my name is Mary Madewyn, a femawe chimpanzee who respects her-sewf and wishes to be respected by others.”

  “Beautiful,” commented Cohn.

  “You praise her but never praise me,” Buz complained in a whisper.

  Cohn whispered she was their guest. “The third question?” he asked.

  “First there was the Fwood and then came the awfuw nights of rain. We wost our poor mother in the rising water before we cwimbed to the headwands. After the Fwood sank, my baby sister and I were sick in a wet cave. She died there and I weft and wandered on, miserabwy awone untiw I met Mr. Mewchior and the twins.

  “When Esau joined our group he said he was our weader. He got wost wherever we went, and Mr. Mewchior had to show us the way. Soon we came to this wand of fruit trees and decided to stay. Buz found us and taught us to speak your wanguage. He towd us his dod was a white chimpanzee, and no one bewieved it untiw we met you.”

  “God’s grace,” said Cohn.

  “As for question 4,” Mary Madelyn went on, “my speciew purpose in wife is to wiv.”

  “Marvelously put,” he said.

  Buz produced a mild rumble with his lips not unlike that which Cohn in his boyhood had known as a Bronx cheer. And Esau gurgled as if he was swallowing a whole egg, but it was the way he laughed.

  No one asked questions of the twins.

  “We are too young,” said Luke.

  Saul of Tarsus nodded sagely.

  Cohn removed the napkin from the matzo bowl. “This is the bread of affliction,” he recited. “Let us eat to remember who we are.”

  “Who are we?” Buz said, despite himself, asking.

  “The still-alive—those who have survived despite the terrible odds,” Cohn said. He passed a matzo to each of them except Melchior, who slowly chewed the broken piece he held in his hand. The chimps bit into the unleavened bread and spat it out, except Buz, who was used to the taste. He got his matzo down with a fistful of oak leaves and a long drink of banana wine. Mary Madelyn politely nibbled hers in tiny bites.

  Cohn began the singing—“A Kid for Two Farthings.” Though he urged them all to join no one would, so he put on a record of his father the cantor chanting “Chad Gadye” in a way that made the apes dance.

  They danced at the rear of the cave and watched their shadows dance. The twins chased after the dancing shadows, slapping the wall with their palms.

  At the end of the seder, Cohn poured a tumbler of wine to toast Elijah the Prophet.

  The cantor was singing: “God is mighty … / Awesome is His mystery.”

  The chimps at the table were grooming one another. Esau insisted on combing Mary Madelyn’s rump, as she groomed Buz. Luke picked among the hairs of Saul of Tarsus’s head, and Saul did the same for Luke. Cohn was wondering whether—to be congenial—he ought to groom himself, when a streak of light flashed across the rear wall of the cave as George the gorilla, sweeping aside the ivy curtain, eased himself into the chamber.

  A heavy, nose-filling odor of bay leaves and garlic seeped into the cave as he paused at the entrance to stare at the assemblage of apes at the table.

  Cohn at once rose to welcome the visitor and offered him Elijah’s seat.

  The chimps, grinning in fear, froze in their places.

  Cohn urged them all to remain calm. “This is a different night. Nobody wants to harm anybody. It’s a night of peace and a celebration of life. Sit down, George, and have a glass of wine.”

  George, sitting bulkily at the table, drank from a tumbler of banana wine. He sat with eyes lowered as if to affirm
he was their peaceful neighbor. To prove it he smiled, revealing his fangs.

  The chimps slid to the ends of both benches close to Cohn. Even Esau had gone pale.

  Cohn asked George to taste his matzo and say a good word to his friends-and-fellow-islanders.

  The giant ape, after a hesitant bite he seemed to relish, strove to speak. He coughed, strained, sighed. His throat bulged. Now he grunted as though resisting constipation. His heavy black form trembled as if he was feverish. In desperation, George rose from the chair and beat his booming chest. The cave resounded loudly with the drumming. With a roar of rage he lifted and overturned the teak table. The seder food and wine crashed to the floor.

  The shrieking, hooting chimpanzees scattered. They rushed out of the cave into the night and hastily disappeared in every direction.

  Cohn’s father was singing a hymn in praise of deliverance.

  George, slumped in Elijah’s chair, listened, moodily munching his matzo.

  Cohn, although outraged by the shambles the gorilla had made of the seder—their first communal enterprise—restrained his anger, in keeping with the spirit of the evening, and even attempted to cheer up the unfortunate ape. For as long as he lived on the island there could be no functioning community without George. Outsiders were dangerous; he had to be in.

  “George,” said Cohn, “for certain reasons I forgive you the mess you made tonight at the end of an unusual occasion, and while I’m forgiving I want you to know I no longer hold it against you that you absconded with, and destroyed, a rare record of my father’s. But I have to tell you this: either change your ways or go your way.”

  George, after a moment of depressed silence, moaned.

  Cohn, on impulse, asked the gorilla the Four Questions and, not surprisingly, got no reply. He then related the story of the Prodigal Son, a parable Buz had more than once requested, and the gorilla listened with tears flowing as he consumed large pieces of damp matzo.

  “They that sow in tears,” sang the passionate cantor, “shall reap in joy.”

  “Amen,” answered Cohn.

  George bonged his chest in joy.

  After he had swept the cave and put things away, Cohn, as he slept, conceived a white dream. An albino ape had appeared in the mist-laden forest, a fearsome male chimpanzee no one had seen but all seemed to know of.

  “Is he for real?” Cohn asked Buz, and Buz replied, “He hos to be, I dream of him often.”

  Cohn lived in serious concern that the white ape might appear in his cave and make demands. He foresaw trouble.

  He felt he would not be at ease until he had talked with the creature, asked who he was, and what he wanted here. If he wished to join the community, let him sign up.

  One morning he set out to find the albino ape in the rain forest. He remained there searching for three days and nights, but got no more than a muffled glimpse of a white figure, dimly lit amid misty trees and the green-gloomy foliage.

  Exasperated, Cohn flung his iron spear (he had chanced on it in the Rebekah Q) to the ground; and in his dream was angered at God for having got him to this island and into this dream. “What kind of God is that?”

  At once, above the trees, he beheld a bulbous cloud shaped like a white tulip held aloft by strains of music.

  Mr. Cohn? an angelic voice spoke, one so beautiful that Cohn was all goose pimples when he heard it. He sank to his knees. “Yes, sir, or ma’am, whichever the case may be.”

  Mr. Cohn, please don’t utter blasphemous thoughts. Or express childish doubts about the Deity. I say this for your good.

  Cohn sincerely apologized. “I’m sorry I misspoke. After seeing that white ape, I felt a dread something bad might happens.”

  State the nature of that dread.

  “Was he really there like a dim light in those trees, or is it all imagined and dreamed by me?”

  He is insofar as it seems to be, said the angelic voice.

  Cohn groaned at length. “That moldy chestnut encore?”

  What there is to use we use, the angel replied.

  “What I want to know is: Is he on this island, and others like him in black or brown? Or any like me?” Cohn went on, “Another human being, for instance—perhaps female—anywhere in what’s left of the world? I wish to know for my peace of mind. Put yourself in my place.”

  Where I put myself is not your concern, Mr. Cohn. But I will say in answer to your question that there are none like you anywhere, any more.

  “How would anybody know for sure?”

  Who knows anything for sure?

  “That old saw, too?”

  What’s usable we use, said the angel with the beautiful voice.

  “Then who knows what’s happening anywhere? Is this island what it seems to be?”

  What does it seem to be?

  “At least an island with two on it, conversing.”

  Whatever I reply, would you in reality believe me?

  “Not necessarily,” Cohn warily said.

  So call it a dream.

  “No more than that?” he cried.

  But the angel had gone, though the haunting sound of his voice lingered.

  Cohn woke holding his spear aloft in a dark-green forest.

  He feared God more than he loved Him.

  How can I square it with Him for that dream I think I dreamed, if that’s what it was, assuming He knows? He must, it is His Name and Nature. I’ve got to be careful.

  It seemed to Cohn he had to be wary, indeed, in dealing with God. Theoretically no, but in truth yes. He was constantly slipping up, speaking and acting in error against his best interests; not containing his dissatisfactions; not therefore protecting himself, considering his hunger to survive.

  I have to watch my words, also thoughts and dreams.

  They had irreconcilable differences concerning whose responsibility the Day of Devastation was. Cohn still had trouble subduing his rage and grief therefrom; but practically speaking, the event was beyond redoing and one had the future to contend with.

  In that matter the Lord held every card in His comprehensive hand; and if Cohn held one it was invisible to him, except perhaps his extraordinary knowledge that God did not know everything. He had difficulty with numbers, could not always count accurately; for instance, there were more than only poor Cohn alive on earth. That was the only card Cohn held.

  Still if he wanted to go on breathing on this less-than-perfect, magic island, as indeed he did if it was at all feasible, he had to invent some practical means of winning God’s favor while not exactly taking Him off the hook for perpetrating His Latest Flood.

  Cohn hoped the Lord had appreciated his seder and all the nice things they had said about Him the other night.

  What might please God would be some sensible arrangement of the lives of the apes on the island into a functioning social community, interacting lives; and with Cohn as advisor and protector to help them understand themselves and fulfill the social contract. Maybe start with a sort of small family and extend into community? You are not the chimps your fathers were—you can talk. Yours, therefore, is the obligation to communicate, speak as equals, work and together build, evolve into concerned, altruistic living beings.

  Not bad if it worked. How would Cohn know unless and until he tried? On this island more seemed possible than one might imagine. A functioning social unit, even as small as seven or eight living beings, would be a civilizing force inspiring a higher order of behavior—to a former lower order of creatures—highest now that man was more or less kaput.

  If this small community behaved, developed, endured, it might someday—if some chimpy Father Abraham got himself born—produce its own Covenant with God. So much better for God, Who seemed to need one to make Him feel easy with Himself as Party-of-the-First-Part, even though He found it troublesome, in the long run, to make the Covenant work as it should. One could hardly look after the party of the second part every minute of the day.

  It was better to attempt to civilize whoeve
r needed civilizing, the Lord would surely agree—more good that way, less evil. A good society served a good purpose; He would surely approve if Cohn dedicated himself to fostering it.

  To do what God might be expecting, now that a common language existed between himself and the chimps, Cohn felt he ought to try to educate them up to some decent level, Eventually to make them aware of the cosmos and of mankind, too, who had fallen from earth and cosmos, because men had failed each other in obligations and responsibilities—failed to achieve brotherhood, lost their lovely world, not to mention living lives.

  Therefore Cohn established a schooltree for them, a bushy-leaved, bark-peeled, hard-blue-acorned eucalyptus tree exuding a nose-opening aromatic odor, especially after rain, that kept them alert in the grove of mixed trees, some of which were crabbed live oaks not more than sixty feet from his cave.

  The apes, including Buz, who was advanced in schooling but liked to listen to others being taught, attended classes regularly, spending two hours each morning getting educated; except on the Seventh Day, when Cohn preferred not to teach because, since he did not keep track of time, he might inadvertently be working on the Sabbath. God was a great fan of the Sabbath, and it was worth anybody’s life, it said in Exodus, to work on that day.

  So he skipped each Seventh Day to show his respect and good will.

  Cohn blew on a brass horn to summon them to class.

  The apes, some reluctantly, climbed the eucalyptus and moved out on spreading limbs of the blowsy tree, sitting alone or in two’s, chewing leaves and spitting them out; or cracking nuts they had brought along, and eating them out of their palms as they listened to Calvin Cohn lecture; or groomed themselves and their partners as he droned on. When the lectures got to be boring they would shake branches and throw nuts at him. They hooted and grunted, but subsided when Cohn raised his hand, indicating he intended to do better.