Zorba the Greek

  When he writes, this ignorant workman breaks his pens in his impetuosity. Like the first men to cast off their monkey skins, or like the great phílosophers, he is dominated by the basic problems of mankind. He lives them as if they were immediate and urgent necessities. Like the child, he sees everything for the first time. He is forever astonished and wonders why and wherefore. Everything seems miraculous to him, and each morning when he opens his eyes he sees trees, sea, stones and birds, and is amazed.

  "What is this miracle?" he cries. "What are these mysteries called: trees, sea, stones, birds?"

  One day, I remember, when we were making our way to the village, we met a little old man astride a mule. Zorba opened his eyes wide as he looked at the beast. And his look was so intense that the peasant cried out in terror:

  "For God's sake, brother, don't give him the evil eye!" And he crossed himself.

  I turned to Zorba.

  "What did you do to the old chap to make him cry out like that?" I asked him.

  "Me? What d'you think I did? I was looking at his mule, that's all! Didn't it strike you, boss?"

  "What?"

  "Well ... that there are such things as mules in this world!"

  Another day, I was reading, stretched out on the shore, and Zorba came and sat down opposite me, placed his santuri on his knees and began to play. I raised my eyes to look at him. Gradually his expression changed and a wild joy took possession of him. He shook his long, creased neck and began to sing.

  Macedonian songs, Klepht songs, savage cries; the human throat became as it was in prehistoric times, when the cry was a great synthesis which bore within it all we call today by the names of poetry, music and thought. "Akh! Akh!" The cry came from the depth of Zorba's being and the whole thin crust of what we call civilization cracked and let out the immortal beast, the hairy god, the terrifying gorilla.

  Lignite, profits and losses, Dame Hortense and plans for the future, all vanished. That cry carried everything before it; we had no need of anything else. Immobile, on that solitary coast of Crete, we both held in our breasts all the bitterness and sweetness of life. Bitterness and sweetness no longer existed. The sun went down, night came, the Great Bear danced round the immovable axis of the sky, the moon rose and gazed in horror at two tiny beasts who were singing on the sands and fearing no one.

  "Ha! Man is a wild beast," Zorba said suddenly, overexcited with his singing. "Leave your books alone. Aren't you ashamed? Man is a wild beast, and wild beasts don't read."

  He was silent a moment, then started to laugh.

  "D'you know," he said, "how God made man? Do you know the first words this animal, man, addressed to God?"

  "No. How should I know? I wasn't there."

  "I was!" cried Zorba, his eyes sparkling.

  "Well, tell me."

  Half in ecstasy, half in mockery, he began inventing the fabulous story of the creation of man.

  "Well, listen, boss! One morning God woke up feeling down in the dumps. 'What a devil of a God I am! I haven't even any men to burn incense to me and swear by my name to help pass the time away! I've had enough of living all alone like an old screech owl. Ftt!' He spat on his hands, pulled up his sleeves, put on his glasses, took a piece of earth, spat on it, made mud of it, kneaded it well and made it into a little man which he stuck in the sun.

  "Seven days later he pulled it out of the sun. It was baked. God looked at it and began to split his sides with laughter.

  " 'Devil take me,' he says, 'it's a pig standing up on its hind legs! That's not what I wanted at all! There's no místake, I've made a mess of things!'

  "So he picks him up by the scruff of his neck and kicks his backside.

  " 'Go on, clear off! All you've got to do now is to make other little pigs; the earth's yours! Now, jump to it. Left, right, left, right… Quick march!...'

  "But, you see, it wasn't a pig at all! It was wearing a felt hat, a jacket thrown carelessly across its shoulders, well-creased trousers, and Turkish slippers with red tassels. And in its belt—it must have been the devil who'd given it that—was a pointed dagger with the words: 'I'll get you!' engraved on it.

  "It was man! God held out his hand for the other to kiss, but man twirled up his moustache and said:

  "'Come on, old 'un, out of the way! Let me pass!'"

  Here Zorba stopped as he saw me bursting with laughter. He frowned.

  "Don't laugh!" he said. "That's exactly what happened!"

  "How do you know?"

  "That's how I feel it happened, and that's what I'd have done if I'd been in Adam's place. I'd wager my head being chopped off if Adam acted any different. And don't you believe all the books tell you; I'm the one you should trust!"

  He stretched out his big hand without waiting for an answer and started playing the santuri once more.

  I was still holding Zorba's scented letter with its heart pierced by an arrow, and was living through those days, filled with his human presence, which I had spent at his side. Time had taken on a new savour in Zorba's company. It was no longer an arithmetical succession of events without, nor an insoluble philosophical problem within. It was warm sand, finely sieved, and I felt it running gently through my fingers.

  "Blessed be Zorba!" I murmured. "He has given a warm, beloved, living body to all the abstract ideas which were shivering inside me. When he is not there, I start shivering again."

  I took a sheet of paper, called a workman and sent an urgent telegram:

  "Come back immediately."

  14

  SATURDAY AFTERNOON, the first of March. I was leaning against a rock facing the sea, writing. That day I had seen the first swallow and I was happy. The exorcism of Buddha was flowing without hindrance onto the paper, and my struggle with him had become calmer; I was no longer in a desperate hurry, and I was sure of my deliverance.

  Suddenly I heard steps on the pebbles. I raised my eyes and saw our old siren rolling along the shore, decked out like a frigate. She was hot and short of breath. She seemed to be worried about something.

  "Is there a letter?" she asked anxiously.

  "Yes!" I answered with a laugh, and rose to welcome her. "He sends you lots of greetings; says he's thinking about you day and night. He can hardly eat or drink, he finds the separation so unbearable."

  "Is that all he says?" the unhappy woman asked, gasping for breath.

  I was sorry for her. I took his letter from my pocket and pretended that I was reading it. The old siren opened her toothless mouth, her little eyes blinked and she listened breathlessly.

  I made believe I was reading, but, as I got rather involved, I pretended I had difficulty in making out the writing: "Yesterday, boss, I went into a cheap eating-house for a meal. I was hungry… When I saw an absolutely beautiful young girl come in, a real goddess… My God! She looked just like my Bouboulina! And straight away my eyes began spouting water like a fountain, I had a lump in my throat… I couldn't swallow! I got up, paid my bill and left. And I who only think of the saints once in a blue moon, I was so deeply moved, boss, I ran to Saint Minas's church and lit a candle to him. 'Saint Minas,' I said in my prayer, 'let me have good news of the angel I love. May our wings be united very soon!'"

  "Ha! Ha! Ha!" went Dame Hortense, her face beaming with joy.

  "What are you laughing at, my good woman?" I asked stopping to get my breath and concoct some more lies. "What are you laughing at? This makes me feel more like weeping."

  "If only you knew ... if only you knew…" she chuckled and burst into laughter.

  "What?"

  "Wings… That's what he calls feet, the rascal. That's the name he gives them when we're alone. May our wings be united, he says… Ha! Ha! Ha!"

  "Listen to what comes next, then. You'll be really astounded…"

  I turned over the page and made believe I was reading again:

  "And today, as I was passing a barber's shop, the barber emptied outside his bowl of soapy water. The whole street was filled with the scent. And I
thought of Bouboulina again and began to cry. I can't stay away from her any longer, boss… I shall go off my head… Look, I've even written poetry. I couldn't sleep two nights ago and I began writing a little poem for her… I hope you'll read it to her so that she'll see how I'm suffering…

  "Ah! if only on some foot-path you and I could meet, And it were wide enough to hold our rue! Let me be ground to crumbs or pie-meat, My shattered bones would still have strength to run to you!"

  Dame Hortense, her eyes languid and half-closed, was listening happily, all attention. She even took the little ribbon from her neck, where it was nearly strangling her, and set her wrinkles free for a moment. She was silent and smiling. Happy and contented, her mind seemed to be drifting far away.

  The month of March, fresh grass, little red, yellow and purple flowers, limpid water where groups of white and black swans were mating as they sang. The females white, the males black and with half-open, crimson beaks. Great blue Moray eels rose gleaming from the water and twined themselves round big yellow serpents. Dame Hortense was fourteen again, dancing on oriental carpets in Alexandria, Beirut, Smyrna, Constantinople, then off Crete on the polished decks of ships… She could not remember very clearly now. It was becoming confused, her breast was heaving, the shores were splitting. And suddenly, while she was dancing, the sea was covered with vessels with golden prows. On their decks, multicolored tents and silken oriflames. A whole procession of pashas came from the tents with golden tassels upright on their fezes, wealthy old beys on pilgrimages with hands full of rich offerings, and their melancholy, beardless sons. Admirals came, too, with their shining three-cornered hats, and sailors with their dazzling white collars and broad, flapping trousers. Young Cretans followed, in their billowing breeches of light-blue cloth, yellow boots, and black kerchiefs knotted over their hair. A good last came Zorba, huge, grown lean from love-making, with a massive engagement ring on his finger, a crown of orange-blossom on his greying hair…

  From the ships came all the men she had known in her adventurous lifetime, not one was missing, not even the old gap-toothed and hunchbacked boatman who had taken her out on the water one evening at Constantinople. Night had fallen and no one could see them. They all came out, all of them, and in the background, mating away, oho! the Morays, the Serpents, the Swans!

  The men came and joined her; they formed clusters, like amorous snakes in the spring, who rise hissing in a sheaf. And in the center, all white and naked, and glistening with sweat, lips parted to show her little pointed teeth, rigid, insatiable, her breasts erect, hissed a Dame Hortense of fourteen, twenty, thirty, forty, sixty summers.

  Nothing was lost, no lover had died! In her wilted breast they were all resuscitated, in full parade dress. As if Dame Hortense were a noble three-masted frigate and all her lovers—she had seen forty-five working years—were boarding her, climbing into the holds, onto the gunwale, into the rigging, while she sailed along, much-battered and much-caulked, towards the last great haven she had longed for so ardently: marriage. And Zorba assumed a thousand faces: Turkish, European, Armenian, Arab, Greek, and, as she hugged him, Dame Hortense hugged the entire, blessed and interminable procession…

  The old siren, all at once, realized that I had ceased reading; her vision suddenly stopped and she raised her heavy lids:

  "Doesn't he say anything else?" she asked in a tone of reproach, licking her lips greedily.

  "What more do you want, Madame Hortense? Don't you see? The whole letter talks about you and nothing else. Look, four sheets of it! And there's a heart here in the corner, too. Zorba says he drew it himself, with his own hand. Look, love has pierced it through, and underneath, look, two doves embracing, and on their wings, in small microscopic letters in red ink, two names intertwined: Hortense—Zorba!"

  There were neither doves nor names, but the old siren's small eyes had filled with tears and could see anything they wished.

  "Nothing else? Nothing else?" she asked again, still not satisfied.

  Wings, the barber's soapy water, the little doves—that was all very well, a lot of fine words all that, nothing but air. Her practical woman's mind wanted something else, something more tangible, solid. How many times in her life had she heard this sort of nonsense! And what good had it done her? After years of hard work, she had been left all alone, high and dry.

  "Nothing else?" she murmured again reproachfully. "Nothing else?"

  She looked at me with eyes like those of a hind at bay. I took pity on her.

  "He says something else very, very important, Madame Hortense," I said. "That's why I kept it till the end."

  "What is it…?" she said with a sigh.

  "He writes that, as soon as he gets back, he'll go on his knees to implore you, with tears in his eyes, to marry him. He can't wait any longer. He wants to make you, he says, his own little wife, Madame Hortense Zorba, so that you need never be separated again."

  This time the tears really began to flow. This was the supreme joy, the ardently desired haven; this was what she had hitherto regretted not having in her life! Tranquillity and lying in an honest bed, nothing more!

  She covered her eyes with her hands.

  "All right," she said, with the condescension of a great lady, "I accept. But please write to him; say that here in the village there are no orange-blossom wreaths. He'll have to bring them from Candia. He must bring two white candles as well, with pink ribbons and some good sugared almonds. Then he must buy me a wedding dress, a white one, and silk stockings and satin court shoes. We've got sheets, tell him, so he needn't bring any. We've also got a bed."

  She arranged her list of orders, already making an errand boy of her husband. She stood up. She had suddenly taken on the look of a dignified married woman.

  "I've something to ask you," she said. "Something serious." Then she waited, moved.

  "Go on, Madame Hortense, I'm at your service."

  "Zorba and I are very fond of you. You are very kind, and you'll not disgrace us. Would you care to be our witness?"

  I shuddered. Formerly, at my parents' house, we had had an old serving-woman named Diamandoula, who was over sixty, an old maid with a moustache, half-crazed by virginity, nervous, shrivelled up and flat-chested. She fell in love with Mitso, the local grocer's boy, a dirty, well-fed and beardless young peasant lad.

  "When is it you be going to marry me?" she used to ask him every Sunday. "Marry me now! How can you wait so long? I can't bear it!"

  "I can't either!" said the cunning grocer's boy, who was getting round her for her custom. "I can't hold out any longer, Diamandoula; but all the same, we can't get married till I've a moustache as well as you…"

  The years went past like that, and old Diamandoula waited. Her nerves became calmer, she had fewer headaches, her bitter lips that had never been kissed learned to smile. She washed the clothes more carefully now, broke fewer dishes, and never burned the food.

  "Will you come and be our witness, young master?" she asked me one evening on the sly.

  "Certainly I will, Diamandoula," I answered, a lump forming in my throat, out of pity for her.

  The very suggestion had wrung my heart; that is why I shuddered when I heard Dame Hortense ask the same thing.

  "Certainly I would," I replied. "It will be an honor, Madame Hortense."

  She rose, patted the little ringlets that hung from beneath her little hat and licked her lips.

  "Good night," she said. "Good night, and may he soon come back to us!"

  I watched her waddling away, swaying her old body with all the affected airs of a young girl. Joy gave her wings, and her twisted old court shoes made deep impressions in the sand.

  She had hardly rounded the headland than shrill cries and wailing came from along the shore.

  I leaped up and ran in the direction from which the noise was coming. On the opposite headland women were howling as though they were singing a funeral dirge. I climbed a rock and looked. Men and women were running up from the village; behind
them dogs were barking. Two or three were on horseback and going on ahead. A thick cloud of dúst was rising from the ground.

  "There's been an accident," I thought, and ran round the bay.

  The hubbub was growing more intense. Two or three spring clouds stood still in the light of the setting sun. The Fig Tree of Our Young Lady was covered with fresh green leaves.

  Suddenly Dame Hortense staggered up to me. She was running back again, dishevelled, out of breath, and one of her shoes had come off. She was holding it in her hand and was crying as she ran.

  "My God ... my God…" she sobbed as she saw me. She stümbled and nearly fell.

  I caught her.

  "What are you crying for? What's happened?" And I helped her put on her worn shoe.

  "I'm frightened… I'm frightened…"

  "Of what?"

  "Of death."

  She had scented with terror the smell of death in the air.

  I took her limp arm to lead her to the place, but her ageing body resisted and trembled.

  "I don't want to… I don't want to…" she cried. The poor wretch was terrified of going close to a place where death had appeared. Charon must not see her and remember her… Like all old people our poor siren tried to hide herself by taking on the green color of grass, or by taking on an earthly color, so that Charon could not distinguish her from earth or grass. She had tucked her head into her fat, rounded shoulders, and was trembling.

  She dragged herself to an olive tree, spread out her patched coat and sank to the ground.

  "Put thís over me, wíll you? Put this over me and you go and have a look."

  "Are you feeling cold?"