Zorba the Greek

  "Amen!" thundered Zorba, crossing himself.

  "Amen!" murmured the elders.

  "Amen!" said the workmen, last.

  "May God bless your work and give you the wealth of Abraham and Isaac!" the village priest continued, and Zorba pushed a hundred drachma note into his hand.

  "My blessing on you!" said the priest, well content.

  We returned to the hut, where Zorba offered them all wine and lenten hors d'oeuvres—grilled octopus, fried squid, soaked beans and olives. When they had devoured the lot, the officials went off home. The magic ceremony was over.

  "We managed to get through that all right!" said Zorba, rubbing his hands.

  He undressed, put on his work clothes and took a pick.

  "Come on!" he shouted to the men. "Cross yourselves and get on with the work!"

  Zorba didn't raise his head again for the rest of the day.

  Every fifty yards the workmen dug a hole, put in a post, and went on, making a beeline for the summit of the hill. Zorba measured, calculated and gave orders; he did not eat, smoke, or take a rest the whole day long. He was completely absorbed in the job.

  "It's all because of doing things by halves," he would often say to me, and "saying things by halves, being good by halves, that the world is in the mess it's in today. Do things properly by God! One good knock for each nail and you'll win through! God hates a balfdevil ten times more than an archdevil!"

  That evening, when he came in from work, he lay down on the sand, exhausted.

  "I'm going to sleep here," he said. 'I'll wait for dawn, then we'll begin work again. I'm going to start night shifts."

  "Why all the hurry, Zorba?"

  He hesitated a moment.

  "Why? Well, I want to see whether I've found the right slope or not. If I haven't, we're done for. Don't you see, boss? The sooner I see if we're dished, the better it'll be for us."

  He ate quickly, gluttonously, and soon afterwards the beach echoed to his snores. I, for my part, stayed awake a long time, watching the stars travel across the sky. I saw the whole sky change its position—and the shell of my skull, like an observatory dome, changed position, too, together with the constellations. "Watch the movement of the stars as if you were turning with them…" This sentence of Marcus Aurelius filled my heart with harmony.

  21

  IT WAS Easter Day. Zorba had dressed himself up. He had put on some thick, dark-purple, woollen socks which he said had been knitted for him by one of his women friends in Macedonia. He anxiously ran up and down a hillock near our beach. Putting his hand up over his thick eyebrows to shield his eyes, he watched the village road.

  "She's late, the old seal; she's late, the trollop; she's late, the old tattered banner!"

  A butterfly, fresh from the chrysalis, flew up and tried to light on Zorba's moustache, but it tickled him, he snorted and the butterfly flew calmly away and disappeared in the rays of the sun.

  We were expecting Dame Hortense that day to celebrate Easter. We had roasted a lamb on the spit, laid a white cloth on the sand and painted some eggs. Half in fun, half in earnest, we had decided to prepare a grand reception for her. On that isolated beach, this dumpy, perfumed, slightly rotting siren always exercised a strange charm upon us. When she wasn't there we missed something—a scent like eau-de-Cologne, a jerky waddling gait like that of a duck, a slightly husky voice, and two pale, acidulous eyes.

  So we had cut myrtle and laurel branches and made a triumphal arch under which she would have to pass. And on the arch itself we had stuck four flags—English, French, Italian, Russian—and in the center, on high, a long white sheet striped with blue. Not being admirals we had no cannon, but we had borrowed two rifles and had decided to wait on the hillock, and as soon as we saw our seal rolling and bouncing along the road to fire a salvo. We wanted to revive on this solitary coast something of her past grandeur, so that she, too, could enjoy a momentary illusion, poor wretch, and think herself once more a ruby-lipped young woman with firm breasts, patent-leather court shoes and silk stockings. What was the use of the Resurrection of Christ, if it was not a sign for the rekindling of youth and joy in us as well? If it could not make an old cocotte feel one-and-twenty again?

  "She's late, the old seal; she's late, the trollop; she's late, the old tattered banner!" Zorba grumbled every minute, pulling up his aubergine-colored socks, which kept falling down.

  "Come and sit down, Zorba! Come and have a smoke in the shade here. She won't be long!"

  He cast a last glance down the village road and then came over to sit under the carob tree. It was nearly midday and it was hot. In the distance we could hear the lively, joyous bells of Easter. From time to time the wind brought us the sound of the Cretan lyre.[27] The whole village was buzzing with life, like a hive in springtime.

  Zorba shook his head.

  "It's finished. I used to feel my soul rise again every Easter, at the same time as Christ, but that's all finished!" he said. "Now, only my body is reborn—because when somebody stands you a meal, and then a second and a third, and they say: 'Just have this little mouthful, and just this one more'... well, you just fill yourself up with more heaps of luscious food, which doesn't all turn into dung. There's something which stays, something that's saved and turns into good humor, dancing, singing, wrangling even—that's what I call Resurrection."

  He stood up, looked at the horizon and frowned.

  "There's a youngster running this way," he said, and hurried to meet him.

  The boy stood on tiptoe and whispered something in Zorba's ear, who started back, furious.

  "Ill?" he shouted. "Ill? Shoot off or I'll beat you up!" Then he turned to me.

  "Boss, I'm running down to the village to see what's happened to the old seal… Just a minute… Give me two red eggs so that I can crack them with her. I'll be back."

  He put the two eggs in his pocket, pulled up his aubergine socks and went off.

  I came down from the hillock and lay on the cool pebbles. There was a light breeze, the sea was faintly ruffled; two seagulls bobbed up and down on the tiny waves, with necks fluffed out, voluptuously enjoying the movement of the water.

  I could well imagine their delight in the freshness of the water under their bellies. As I watched the seagulls, I thought: "That's the road to take; find the absolute rhythm and follow it with absolute trust."

  An hour later Zorba reappeared, stroking his moustache with an air of satisfaction.

  "She's caught cold, poor sweet," he said. "Nothing really. The last few days—in fact the whole of Holy Week—she's been goíng to the midnight service, even though she's a Frank.[28] She went on my account, she says. And she caught cold at it. So I cupped her, rubbed her with oil from the lamp and gave her a glass of rum. Tomorrow she'll be hale and hearty again. Ha! the old crock, she's amusing in her way; you should have heard her cooing like a dove while I massaged her—she said it tickled!"

  We sat down to eat, and Zorba filled the glasses.

  "To her health! May the devil not think of taking her off for a long while yet!"

  We ate and drank for some time in silence. The wind carried up to us, like the droning of bees, the distant, passionate notes of the lyre. Christ was being reborn again on the village terraces. The paschal lamb and the Easter cakes were being transformed ínto love songs.

  When Zorba had eaten and drunk quite copiously, he put his hand to his big hairy ear.

  "The lyre ..." he murmured. "They're dancing in the village."

  He stood up suddenly. The wine had gone to his head.

  "What ever are we doing here, all alone, like a pair of cuckoos? Let's go and dance! Aren't you sorry for the lamb we've been eating? Are you going to let it fizzle out into nothing, like that? Come on! Turn it into song and dance! Zorba is reborn!"

  "Wait a minute, Zorba, you idiot, are you crazy?"

  "Honestly, boss, I don't care! But I'm sorry for the lamb, and I'm sorry for the red eggs, the Easter cakes and the cream cheese! If I'd just sc
offed a few bits of bread and some olives, I'd say: 'Oh, let's go to sleep; I don't need to go celebrating!' Olives and bread are nothing, are they? What can you expect from them? But, let me tell you, it's a sin to waste food like that! Come on, let's celebrate the Resurrection, boss!"

  "I don't feel like it today. You go—you can dance for me as well."

  Zorba took my arm and pulled me up.

  "Christ is reborn, my friend! Ah! if only I was as young as you! I'd throw myself headlong into everything! Headlong into work, wine, love—everything, and I'd fear neither God nor devil! That's youth for you!"

  "It's the lamb talking, Zorba! It's turned wild inside you, changed into a wolf!"

  "The lamb's changed into Zorba, that's all, and Zorba's talking to you! Listen, you can swear at me afterwards! I'm a Sinbad the Sailor ... I don't mean I've wandered all over the world; not at all! But I've robbed, killed, lied, slept with heaps of women and broken all the commandments. How many are there? Ten? Why aren't there twenty, fifty, a hundred? So I could break them all? Yet, if there is a God, I shan't be afraid to appear before him when the time comes. I don't know how to put it to make you understand. I don't think any of that's important, do you see? Would God bother to sit over the earthworms and keep count of everything they do? And get angry and storm and fret himself silly because one went astray with the female earthworm next door or swallowed a mouthful of meat on Good Friday? Bah! Get away with you, all you soup-swilling priests! Bah!"

  "Well, Zorba," I said, to make him wild, "God may not ask you what you ate, but he'll certainly ask you what you did."

  "And I say he won't ask that either! 'And how do you know that, Zorba, you ignoramus?' you'll ask me. I just know! I'm sure of it! If I had two sons, one quiet, careful, moderate and pious, and the other rascally, greedy, lawless and a woman-chaser, my heart would go out to the second one. Perhaps because he'd be like me? But who's to say I'm not more like God himself than old Pappa Stephanos, who spends his days and nights going down on his knees, and collecting money?

  "God enjoys himself, kills, commits injustice, makes love, works, likes impossible things, just the same as I do. He eats what he pleases; takes the woman he chooses. If you see a lovely woman going by, as fresh as clear water, your heart leaps at the sight. Suddenly the ground opens and she disappears. Where does she go? Who takes her? If she's a good woman, they say: 'God has taken her.' If she's a harlot, they say: 'The devil's carríed her off.' But, boss, I've said so before, and I say it again, God and the devil are one and the same thing!"

  Zorba picked up his stick, pushed his cap to one side, perkily, looked at me with pity and his lips moved for a moment as if he wanted to add something to what he had just said. But he said nothing and went off with his head in the air towards the village.

  In the evening light I could see his giant shadow and his swinging stick. The whole beach came alive as Zorba passed by. I listened for some time, picking out his steps as they grew fainter and fainter. As soon as I felt myself to be absolutely alone, I leaped up. Why? To go where? I did not know. My mind had made no decision. It was my body that had leaped up. My body alone was deciding and was not consulting me.

  "Go on! Forward!" it commanded.

  I went towards the village with quick determined steps, stopping here and there to enjoy a deep breath of spring. The earth smelled of camomile, and as I approached the gardens I ran into wave upon wave of perfume from the blossom on the lemon and orange trees and the laurels. In the west the evening star began to dance merrily in the sky.

  "Sea, women, wine and hard work!" I was murmuring Zorba's words in spite of myself as I walked. "Sea, women, wine and hard work! Throwing yourself headlong into your work, into wine, and love, and never being afraid of either God or devil ... that's what youth is!" I kept saying it to myself and repeating it as if to give myself courage, and I walked on.

  Suddenly I stopped dead. As though I had come to my destination. Where? I looked round: I was in front of the widow's garden. Behind the hedge of reeds and prickly pear I could hear someone humming in a soft, feminine voice. I went near and parted the reeds. Beneath the orange tree was a woman, dressed in black, with a great swelling bosom. She was cutting branches of blossom and singing as she did so. In the dusk I could see the white globes of her half-naked breasts.

  It took my breath away. She's a wild beast, I thought, and she knows it. What poor, vain, absurd, defenceless creatures men are to her! She is fat and voracious, just like some female insects—the praying mantis, the grasshopper, the spider—and she too must devour the males at dawn.

  Had the widow become aware of my gaze? She suddenly ceased her song and turned round. Our eyes met. I felt my knees give way, as though I had seen a tigress behind the reeds.

  "Who is it?" she said in a strangled voice. She pulled her neckerchief over her bosom. Her face darkened.

  I was on the point of leaving, but Zorba's words suddenly filled my heart. I gathered strength. "Sea, women, wine ..."

  "It's me," I answered. "It's me. Let me in."

  I had hardly said these words when a feeling of terror gripped me and I was just about to run away again. But I controlled myself, though filled with shame.

  "Who d'you mean, you?"

  She took a slow, cautious step forward, leaning in my direction. She half-closed her eyes to see more clearly, advanced another step, with head forward, on the alert.

  Suddenly her face lit up. She put the tip of her tongue out and licked her lips.

  "The boss!" she said in a softer voice.

  She came forward again, crouching as if ready to leap.

  "You, boss?" she asked hoarsely.

  "Yes."

  "Come!"

  Dawn was breaking. Zorba was home already, sitting before the hut on the beach. He was smoking, looking out to sea. He seemed to be waiting for me.

  As soon as I appeared he raised his head and fixed me with his gaze. His nostrils were quiveríng, like those of a greyhound. He craned his neck and took a long sniff ... he was scenting me. In a second his face lit up with joy; he had scented the widow.

  He stood up slowly, smiled with his whole being and stretched out his arms to me.

  "My blessing on you!" he saíd.

  I went to bed, closed my eyes. I heard the sea quietly, rhythmically breathing, and I felt myself rise and fall on it like a seagull. Thus, gently rocked, I fell asleep and dreamed: I saw, as it were, a giant negress crouching on the ground, and she looked to me like a gigantic old temple in granite. I was going round and round her desperately trying to find the entrance. I was scarcely as big as her little toe. Suddenly, as I rounded her heel, I saw a dark opening, rather like a cave. A great voice commanded: "Enter!"

  And I entered.

  I woke towards midday. The sun was coming in through the window, bathing the bedclothes in light; its rays were beating with such force on the small mirror hanging on the wall that they seemed to be shattering it into a thousand fragments.

  The dream about the giant negress came back to my mind, I could hear the sea murmuring, I closed my eyes again and I was deeply happy. My body was light and contented, like an animal after the hunt, when it has caught and eaten íts prey and is lying in the sun, licking its lips. My mind, a body too in its way, was resting, contented. It seemed to have found a marvellously simple answer to the vital, complicated problems which tormented it.

  All of the joy of the prevíous night flowed back from the innermost depths of my being, spread out ínto fresh courses and abundantly watered the earth of which I was made. As I lay, with my eyes closed, I seemed to hear my being bursting its shell and growing larger. That night, for the first time, I felt clearly that the soul is flesh as well, perhaps more volatile, more diaphanous, perhaps freer, but flesh all the same. And the flesh is soul, somewhat turgid perhaps, somewhat exhausted by its long journeys, and bowed under the burden it has inherited.

  I felt a shadow fall across me and opened my eyes; Zorba was standing in the doorway loo
king at me happily.

  "Don't wake, don't wake, old chap!..." he said gently with an almost maternal solicitude. "It's a holiday today, too. Sleep on!"

  "I've slept enough," I said, sitting up.

  "I'll beat up an egg for you," said Zorba, smiling. "It builds you up!"

  I made no answer but ran down to the sea, dived into the water, then dried in the sun. But I could still feel a sweet, persistent odor in my nostrils, on my lips and fingers. The scent of orange water and of the laurel oil with which Cretan women dress their hair.

  Last night she had cut an armful of orange blossom which she was going to take to Christ that evening when the villagers were dancing beneath the white poplars in the square and the church was empty. The iconostasis above her bed was loaded with lemon flowers, and through the petals could be seen the mourning Virgin, with large almond eyes.

  Zorba brought the egg in a cup down to the beach for me, with two oranges and a small Easter bun. He served me quietly and happily, as a mother would her son when he returns from the wars. He looked at me fondly and then went away.

  "I'm going to put a few pylons in," he said.

  I calmly chewed my food in the sun and felt a deep physical happiness as if I was floating on the cool, green waters of the sea. I did not allow my mind to take possession of this carnal joy, to press it into its own moulds, and make thoughts of it. I let my whole body rejoice from head to foot, like an animal. Now and then, nevertheless, in ecstasy, I gazed about me and within me, at the miracle of this life: What is happening? I said to myself. How did it come about that the world is so perfectly adapted to our feet and hands and bellies? And once again I closed my eyes and was silent.

  Suddenly I stood up and went into the hut; there I picked up the Buddha manuscript and opened it. I had finished it. At the end, Buddha was lying beneath the flowering tree. He had raised his hand and ordered the five elements he was made of—earth, water, fire, air, spirit—to dissolve.