God's Grace by Bernard Malamud

nipple.
    Cohn dumped him on the ground.
    The chimp bit Cohn’s right ankle.
    He cried out, at once springing a nosebleed. When Buz saw the blood flowing down his upper lip he scampered out of the cave and knuckle-galloped into the forest.
    When he was gone two days Cohn worried about him, but on the third day he returned, not without a smirk of guilt, and Cohn forgave him.
    Some nights were lonelier than others. They sat by the fire and Buz watched the shadow of Cohn’s creaking rocker on the wall. Pointing at it, he let out a gurgling hoot.
    “Shadow,” Cohn pantomimed, casting a barking dog on the wall with his fingers.

    Buz, after studying it, hooted weirdly.
    When, as the nights grew warmer, they dispensed with the fire, Cohn, after supper, waited till it was dark, then lit the kerosene lamp if he wanted to read. He read quickly, the kerosene was going fast. When the cave was sultry he read at the table in the hut. There were no moths or mosquitoes invading the lamp. If one could invent a mosquito, Cohn would.
    “The silence bugs me.”
    Buz produced a shrill hoot.
    Cohn thanked him.
    One night he read to the chimpanzee, regretting he had nothing appropriate for an equivalent of young teenager. But he sensed Buz understood what was read to him; or he understood more than he pretended to. Cohn thought he would try a touch of Shakespeare to attune his ear to spoken English. That might wake a desire to speak the language.
    Cohn tried reading aloud from The Merchant of Venice, to no avail. Buz was bored and yawned. He studied an illustration on the page and cautiously reached forth a finger to touch Jessica, but Cohn would not let him. Buz retreated, boredom glazing his eyes.
    Cohn then switched to Genesis in his Pentateuch and read aloud the story of the first six days of Creation. The chimp listened stilly. On the seventh day, as God rested from His labors, Buz crossed himself. Cohn could not believe he had seen it. Was it a random act? Again he read aloud the Creation, and the ape again crossed himself. Most likely Dr. Bünder had Christianized him, Cohn decided.
His thought was that if one of them was a Christian and the other a Jew, Cohn’s Island would never be Paradise.
    With that in mind he searched in his valise for a black yarmulke he had saved from childhood, then decided not to offer it to Buz. If he wanted to know something about Jewish experience he would have to say so. Jews did not proselytize.
    Buz, however, reached for the yarmulke and draped it on his head. That night he slept with it on his forehead, as if he were trying to determine where it would rest most comfortably. He wore it the next day when he made his usual exploratory rounds among the neighboring trees before entering the rain forest, but in the late afternoon he came back without it.
    Cohn wanted to know what he had done with it, and got no reply.
    He never saw his yarmulke again. Perhaps in some future time, Deo volente, a snake might come slithering along wearing one. Who knows the combinations, transformations, possibilities of a new future?
    He offered the chimp the silver crucifix he had been holding for him, but Buz signed for Cohn to retain it since he had no pockets of his own.
    Cohn figured that when the chimp hit what might be the equivalent of thirteen years of age, he would offer him a Bar Mitzvah. Buz might accept; he might not. If he didn’t, Cohn would give him back his silver cross. I wonder if he thinks he can convert me by letting me hang onto it?
    In the meantime he would tell him stories, in particular
those he remembered from Aesop, La Fontaine, Dr. Dolittle, and Tales of the Hasidim . How else educate someone who couldn’t read? Cohn hoped to alter and raise his experiential level—deepen, humanize this sentient, intelligent creature, even though he did not “speak” beyond a variety of hoots and grunts and make a few pantomimed signals.
    Besides, Cohn reflected, if I talk to him and he listens, no matter how