Free God's Grace by Bernard Malamud

word was already there.”
    “He preached to the chimps,” said Buz.
    Cohn said that Buz had just got close to a metaphor and praised him.
    “How close?”
    “The chimps as Christians.”
    “Whot’s a metaphor?”
    “It’s a symbol—sort of,” Cohn responded. “It says something not fully expected, through analogy. Like when a banana is conceived to symbolize a man’s phallus, and a cave or grotto, a womb.”
    “I don’t agree that a cave is a wombot,” Buz said.
    “Womb, not wombat.”
    “I don’t believe it. I don’t think a phollus is a bonona. I eat bononas, I don’t eat pholluses.”
    “Eating has nothing to do with it. An object, because of a quality in common with another, is taken to represent the other. For instance, Walt Whitman in one of his poems
refers to the grass as ‘the handkerchief of the Lord’—far out but reasonable.”
    Buz said he wished his name was Walt.
    “Your name is Buz.”
    “I wish it was Walt. Why does he call the grass a handkerchief?”
    “It provides an earthly concept of God: He who walks on grass with the same ease as he uses His handkerchief. Or He may use the grass to wipe His brow. Anyway, He dwells in our lives. Another similar concept is God the Father.”
    “Whot about God the son?”
    “That’s a metaphor too.”
    Buz said it was the one he liked best.
    “You take your choice,” Cohn said. “In any case, it’s through language that a man becomes more finely and subtly man—a sensitive, principled, civilized human being —as he opens himself to other men—by comprehending, describing, and communicating his experiences, aspirations, and nature—such as it is. Or was.” Cohn smiled a melancholy smile.
    “Don’t forget the chimponzees,” Buz said.
    He afterwards asked, “If I go on learning your longuoge will I become humon?”
    “Maybe not you yourself,” Cohn replied, “but something like that could happen in the long run.” He said his descent and Buz’s from a common ancestor had been a matter of eons of evolution. “And if it was to happen again, I hope it results in an improved species of homo sapiens.”
    “Whot is humon, Dod?”

    Cohn said he thought to be human was to be responsive to and protective of life and civilization.
    Buz said he would rather be a chimp.
     
    He wanted to know where stories came from.
    Cohn said from other stories.
    “Where did they come from?”
    “Somebody spoke a metaphor and that broke into a story. Man began to tell them to keep his life from washing away.”
    “Which was the first story?”
    “God inventing Himself.”
    “How did He do thot?”
    “He began, He’s the God of Beginnings. He said the word and the earth began. If you tell stories you can say what God’s doing. Let’s read that one again, Buz.” He turned to the story of Creation.
    Buz said he was tired of that one. “Nothing hoppons in thot fairy story. Why don’t you read about Jesus of Nozoroth? He preached to the chimponzees.”
    “In what language?”
    “I don’t know thot. We heard His voice in our ears.”
    Cohn said he didn’t have a copy of the New Testament in the cave. He did have the Old.
    “Tell it without the book.”
    He would, promised Cohn. “But you complain I don’t tell you enough animal stories, so how about one of those now? I’ll start with the old snake who lived in Paradise with Adam and Eve.”
    Buz said he hated snake stories. “They crawl on their bellies.”

    Cohn said God had punished them for getting man into trouble. “Rashi—he was a medieval Talmudic commentator —in other words, somebody who told stories about stories—he said the snake saw Adam and Eve having intercourse amid the flowers. The snake afterwards asked Eve for a bit of the same, but she indignantly refused. That started off his evil plans of the betrayal of man. I’ve read you the story where he tempted Eve with the apple. She could have said no, but the snake was a tricky gent. He got her confused by his sexual