God's Grace by Bernard Malamud Read Free Book Online

equipment.
    The island, he figured, was about twenty miles in length, and maybe six miles across, except at its midpoint where it seemed to bulge to nine or ten; and at its northeastern end, where it shrank to two across for three miles or so—the mouth of the flask.
    Thinking of names, he considered calling it Broken End Island. He also thought of Chimpan Zee in honor of his
young friend, and at last settled for Cohn’s Island. On a narrow mid-island beach he set up a sign stating the name of the place; but when they were once more embarked on the raft Cohn had second thoughts and felt he ought to remove the sign next time around, lest the Lord accuse him of hubris.
    Cohn supposed that the island had been four or five miles longer than at present. On the Day of Devastation an earthquake struck, and a portion of the highland mass split off and sank into the sea. What was left of the land had been overwhelmed by a tidal wave—the first stage of the World Flood, from which it had slowly, recently, recovered.
    Perhaps the island inhabitants, in fishing and farming villages sloping down the hills, had rushed in panic to higher ground, and as they ran were swept by the tidal wave into the ocean; as were those who, in panic, had remained where they were.
    Cohn, as they had rowed the raft around to the northern coast from the east, had beheld a forest of brown dead-leaved tops of trees rising in the mild waves touching the rockbound shore. He thought he could see, in the near distance, a drowned village under water.
    Could the Lord see it?
     
    The late-autumn rains—cold, pulpy raindrops—poured tor-rentially; and soon, in a second or third growing season, streams of small orange, pink, and huge purple flowers Cohn had never laid eyes on before sprang up on the earth.
    The rain went on, with a few dry periods, from possibly October to December, and March through May—Cohn did
not know because he kept no calendar; his watch had stopped, he would not wind it up. It extended time not to hack it to bits and pieces. Perhaps this was closer to the Lord’s duration. He was not much concerned with minutes, or hours, and after Creation, with days, except the Sabbath. His comfortable unit of existence was the universe enduring.
    In the afternoon, the rain lightened and Cohn would go forth in his woolen brown poncho and rain-repellent fur hat to search for fruit.
    Buz, who swam when he had to, could not stand the wet; it depressed him. When the rain was heavy he sat semi-catatonically in the cave, staring at the water streaming down. It poured as a solid sheet of wet, blurring the trees. When it let up they went forth together, and if they happened to be caught in a renewed downpour, the chimp sheltered himself under a thick-leaved tree, his hands crossed on his chest, his head bent, body hair shedding water. It was as though he mourned when it rained.
    Cohn wanted to know why.
    The ape hooted.
    Cohn prepared a map of fruit trees with footnotes saying when and how they bore fruit. The palms yielded oil, coconuts, dates, round hard red nuts. Buz collected coconuts and carried them to the cave—four in his arms against his chest. Cohn, after tapping them open with a claw hammer, milked each and saved the juice in a jug as a refreshing drink and tasty flavoring agent. And then he hammered the coconut pulp into a delicious paste, flavored with vanilla or chocolate, that they relished as candy.

    Buz led Cohn to a small grove of yellow banana trees whose plentiful fruit they ate, ripe, and sometimes fried; and that Cohn fermented in a barrel vat into a pleasant beer that Buz was fond of. When available they collected mangoes—to which Cohn had discovered he was allergic; and figs, passion fruit, oranges, but no lemons—none grew on the island—all of which, except the mangoes, he cut up and mixed with chunks of coconut and pieces of cassava into a delicious salad. He built a trap in the cold stream beyond the pool and used it as an