Read God's Grace for Free Online Page A

embarrassing condition: His insufficient creation. Man was subtly conceived but less well executed. Body and soul hung badly together.
    Maybe next time.
    Cohn said Kaddish.
     
    When he recovered from his radiation illness, he had acquired a light-brown beard and slim, tanned body, but
his short legs, from childhood a bit bent, seemed more so. No cows, no calcium. One day he journeyed with Buz by rubber raft to the coral atoll on the northwestern side of the island to see what they might recover from the wreck of Rebekah Q. Many useful objects were too large for transportation by raft, but they could pile up small things, about a four-hundred-pound load each trip.
    The cave was a sloping half mile from the southern shore of the island, on the opposite side from the reefs; and it was best to carry in supplies by raft around the island rather than attempt to lug them through the rain forest by tortuous, all-but-impossible routes. Cohn had made five trips to the beached boat, before he became ill, and had gathered many useful objects. Given his uncertain destiny, he felt he ought not pass up any serviceable item.
    He paddled at the forward-port corner, and Buz imitated his friend, wielding his aluminum oar in the starboard corner. Or if the chimp dozed off, Cohn, with difficulty, rowed alone.
    A breeze had risen and the water was choppy; it took half the morning to arrive at the reef. The grounded vessel, broken in two and lying broadside the sea, was still there, sprayed by waves chopping against the bony atoll.
    Cohn had previously taken back with him The Works of William Shakespeare, his old Pentateuch, a one-volume encyclopedia, a college dictionary, and a copy—there were eight in his cabin—of Dr. Walther Bünder’s The Great Apes , a classic textbook containing three excellent chapters on the life cycle of the chimpanzee.

    Now he set aside Morris Fishbein’s Medical Adviser, The Joys of Simple Cookery, How to do Satisfying Carpentry, and several volumes on paleontology and geology, plus two novels that had once belonged to his wife, may she rest in peace. He had, for entertainment’s sake, considered and discarded A Manual of Sexual Skills for Singles , found in Dr. Bünder’s bottom dresser drawer.
    Buz kept for himself a can opener, after he had succeeded in raggedly opening a tin of Portuguese sardines in oil, of which he ate every little fish without offering Cohn a bite.
    The ape insisted on dragging along the holding cage he had inhabited and to which he was affectionately attached. They packed the raft as best they could, for fear of overloading leaving behind on the atoll four gallons of linseed oil, a large jar of vitamin C, also Cohn’s portable typewriter because he doubted he would write another letter. As for a journal, if he should keep one, he preferred to do it in his handwriting.
    He tried to persuade Buz to abandon his silly cage, but the chimp, hooting, on the verge of displaying anger, would not yield. After their return journey in calmer waters, Buz tugged and lugged his cage along the shore and up the long rise to the cave; and he stored it under the stone ledge where Cohn kept what was left of his lumber, a dirty-clothes basket, plus several brooms and a dust mop he had collected.
    The next time they returned to the reef—on a cloudy morning after a week of rain—Cohn wondered if they had come to the wrong one, for the vessel was gone. But it was the right reef and the vessel was gone.

    The oil, vitamins, and portable typewriter had been washed away. And Cohn felt sadness at the final loss of the ship, the last home he had had in a homeless world. He forgave Buz for wanting to retain his holding cage.
     
    To explore the island, Cohn made trips in stages by raft, and forays into the interior, hiking with Buz. The chimp’s ordinary mode of locomotion was knuckle-walking, but he enjoyed brachiating, was talented at it, though no gibbon—hadn’t their almost flying skills. He would,