Zorba the Greek Read online

  "You see, boss, I changed the song to fit the circumstances.

  Away they go, away they go ... (Away they go, mother!) Ah! My Noussa! Ah! My Noussa! Vye!

  "And, as I bellowed 'Vye!' I threw myself on Noussa and kissed her.

  "That was just what was wanted. As if I had given the signal they were waiting for, and they were, in fact, only waiting for that, several great fellows with red beards rushed and put out the lights.

  "The women, the jades, started yelping, screaming they were afraid. But almost at once, in the darkness, they giggled: 'Hee-hee-hee!' They liked being tickled and laughed.

  "What happened, boss, God alone knows. But I don't think He knew eíther, because if He had known, He would have sent a thunderbolt to burn them up. There they were all mixed up, men and women, rolling on the ground. I started to search for Noussa, but where could I find her? I found another and did the job with her.

  "At daybreak I rose to leave with my woman. It was still dark, I couldn't see clearly. I caught hold of a foot, I pulled it. No, it wasn't Noussa's. I caught hold of another foot—no! I pulled a third—no! I catch hold of a fourth, a fifth, and in the end, after no end of trouble, I found Noussa's foot, pulled it, and extricated her from two or three great devils who were sprawling over the poor girl, and I woke her up. 'Noussa,' I said, 'Let's go!' 'Don't forget your fur cape!' she replied. 'Let's go!' And we left."

  "Well?" I asked again, seeing that Zorba remained silent.

  "There you go again with your 'wells,'" said Zorba, impatient at these questions.

  He sighed

  "I lived six months with her. Since that day—God be my witness!—I need fear nothing. Nothing, I say. Nothing, except one thing: that the devil, or God, wipe out those six months from my memory. D'you understand? 'I understand,' you ought to say."

  Zorba closed his eyes. He appeared very moved. It was the first time I had seen him so strongly gripped by a memory of long ago.

  "Did you love that Noussa so much, then?" I asked a few moments later.

  Zorba opened his eyes.

  "You're young, boss," he said, "you're still young, you can't understand! When you've gone white on top like me, we'll talk again about this—this everlasting business."

  "What everlastíng business?"

  "Why, women, of course! How many times must I tell you, woman is an everlasting business. Just now, you're like a young cock who covers the hens in two shakes of a lamb's tail and then puffs out his breast, gets on top of the dung hill and starts to crow and brag. He doesn't look at the hens, he looks at their combs! Well, what can he know of love? The devil take him!"

  He spat on the ground in scorn. Then he turned his head away, he did not wish to look at me.

  "Well, Zorba," I asked again, "what about Noussa?"

  Zorba replied, gazing into the distance over the sea:

  "When I came home one evening, I couldn't find her anywhere. She'd gone. A handsome soldier had just arrived in the village and she'd run off with him. It was all over! I tell you, my heart split in two. But the knave soon stuck itself together again. You must have seen those sails with red, yellow and black patches, sewn with thick twine, which never tear even in the roughest storms. Well, that's what my heart's like. Umpteen holes, and umpteen patches: it need fear nothing more!"

  "And didn't you bear Noussa any grudge, Zorba?"

  "Why? You can say what you like, woman is something different, boss ... something different. She's not human! Why bear her any grudge? Woman's something incomprehensible, and all the laws of state and religion have got her all wrong. They shouldn't act like that towards a woman. They're too harsh, boss, too unjust. If I ever had to make laws, I shouldn't make the same laws for men and for women. Ten, a hundred, a thousand commandments for man. Man is a man, after all; he can stand up to it. But not a single law for woman. Because—how many times do I have to tell you this, boss?—woman is a creature with no strength. Let's drink to Noussa, boss! And to woman!... And may God give us men more sense!"

  He drank, raised his arm and brought it down with force, as if he were using an axe.

  "He must either give us men more sense," he said, "or else perform an operation on us. Otherwise, believe me, we're finished."

  8

  IT WAS raining again the next day. The sky mingled with the earth in infinite tenderness. I recalled a Hindu bas-relief in darkgrey stone. The man had thrown his arms around the woman and was united to her with such gentleness and resignation that one had the impression—the elements having worked over, and almost eaten into, the bodies—of seeing two copulating insects over which fine rain had started to fall and dampen their wings. Thus closely entwined, they were being slowly sucked back into the voracious maw of the earth.

  I was sitting in front of the hut and watching the ground darken and the sea grow a phosphorescent green. Not a soul was to be seen from one end of the beach to the other, not a sail, not a bird. Only the smell of the earth entered through the window.

  I rose and held out my hand to the rain like a beggar. I suddenly felt like weeping. Some sorrow, not my own but deeper and more obscure, was rising from the damp earth: the panic which a peaceful grazing animal feels when, all at once, without seeing anything, it rears its head and scents in the air about it that it is trapped and cannot escape.

  I wanted to utter a cry, knowing that it would relieve my feelings, but I was ashamed to.

  The clouds were coming lower and lower. I looked through the window; my heart was gently palpitating.

  What a voluptuous enjoyment of sorrow those hours of soft rain can produce in you! All the bitter memories hidden in the depths of your mind come to the surface: separations from friends, women's smiles which have faded, hopes which have lost their wings like moths and of which only a grub remains—and that grub had crawled on to the leaf of my heart and was eating it away.

  The image of my friend exiled in the Caucasus slowly appeared through the rain and sodden earth. I took my pen, bent over the paper, and began to speak to him in order to cut through the fine mesh of the rain and be able to breathe.

  MY DEAR FRIEND,

  I am writing to you from a lonely shore in Crete where destiny and I have agreed I should stay several months to play—to play at being a capitalist. If my game succeeds, I shall say it was not a game, but that I had made a great resolution and changed my mode of life.

  You remember how, when you left, you called me a bookworm. That so vexed me I decided to abandon my scribbling on paper for a time—or forever?—and to throw myself into a life of action. I rented a hillside containing lignite; I engaged workmen and took picks and shovels, acetylene lamps, baskets, trucks. I opened up galleries and went into them. Just like that, to annoy you. And by dint of digging and making passages in the earth, the bookworm has become a mole. I hope you approve of the metamorphosis.

  My joys here are great, because they are very simple and spring from the everlasting elements: the pure air, the sun, the sea and the wheaten loaf. In the evening an extraordinary Sinbad the Sailor squats before me, Turkish fashion, and speaks. He speaks and the world grows bigger. Occasionally, when words no longer suffice, he leaps up and dances. And when dancing no longer suffices he places his santuri on his knees and plays.

  Sometimes he plays a savage air and you feel you are choking because you realize all at once that your life is colorless, miserable and unworthy of man. Sometimes he plays a dolorous air and you feel your life passing, running away like sand between your fingers, and that there is no salvation.

  My heart is going to and fro in my breast like a weaver's shuttle. It is weaving these few months which I am spending in Crete, and—God forgive me—I believe I am happy.

  Confucius says: "Many seek happiness higher than man; others beneath him. But happiness is the same height as man." That is true. So there must be happiness to suit every man's stature. Such is, my dear pupil and master, my happiness of the day. I anxiously measure it and measure it again, to see what my stat
ure of the moment is. For, you know this very well, man's stature is not always the same.

  How the soul of man is transformed according to the climate, the silence, the solitude, or the company in which it lives!

  Seen from my solitary state, men appear to me not like ants but, on the contrary, like enormous monsters—dinosaurs, pterodactyls living in an atmosphere saturated with carbonic acid and thick decaying vegetation from which creation is formed. An incomprehensible, absurd jungle. The notions of "nation" and "race" of which you are fond, the notions of a "super-nation" and "humanity" which seduced me, here acquire the same value under the all-powerful breath of destruction. We feel that we have risen to the surface to utter a few syllables and sometimes not even syllables, mere inarticulate sounds: an Ah!, a yes!—after which we are destroyed. And even the most elevated ideas, if they are dissected, are seen to be no more than puppets stuffed with bran, and hidden in the bran an iron spring is found.

  You know me well enough to realize that these cruel meditations, far from making me flee, are, on the contrary, indispensable tinder for my inner flaine. Because, as my master, Buddha, says: "I have seen." And as I have seen and, in the twinkling of an eye, have got on good terms with the jovial and whimsical, invisible producer, I can henceforward play my own part on earth to the end, that is to say coherently and without discouragement. For, having seen, I have also collaborated in the work in which I am acting on God's stage.

  This is how it is that, scanning the universal stage, I can see you over there, in those legendary fastnesses of the Caucasus, also playing out your role; I can see you fighting to save thousands of souls of our race who are in danger of death. A pseudo-Prometheus who must, however, suffer very real tortures while he combats the dark forces of hunger, cold, sickness and death. But, being proud, you must sometimes rejoice that the dark forces of destruction are so numerous and invincible: for thus your aim to live almost without hope becomes more heroic and your soul acquires a more tragic greatness.

  You certainly must consider the life you lead a happy one. And since you consider it such, such it is. You have also cut your happiness according to your stature; and your stature now—God be praised—is greater than mine. The good master desires no greater recompense than this: to form a pupil who surpasses him.

  As for me, I often forget, I disparage myself, I lose my way, my faith is a mosaic of unbelief. Sometimes I feel I should like to make a bargain: to live one brief minute and give the rest of my life in exchange. But you keep a firm hold on the helm and you never forget, even in the sweetest moments of this life, towards which destination you have set your course.

  Do you remember the day we both crossed Italy on our way to Greece? We had decided to make for the Pontus region, which was then in danger. We hastily alighted from the train in a little town—we had just one hour to catch the other train. We went into a large wooded garden near the station. There were broad-leaved trees, bananas growing, bamboos of dark metallic colors, bees were swarming over a flowering branch which trembled to see them suck.

  We strolled on in müte ecstasy, as if in a dream. Suddenly, at a turn of the flower walk, two girls appeared, reading a book as they went along. I no longer remember whether they were pretty or plain. I remember only that one was fair, the other dark, and both were wearing spring blouses.

  And with the boldness one has in dreams, we approached them and you said: "Whatever the book may be you are reading, we'll discuss it with you." They were reading Gorki. Then, going posthaste, for we had little time, we talked of life, of poverty, of the revolt of the mind, of love…

  I shall never forget our delight and our sorrow. We and these two unknown girls were already old friends, old lovers; we had become responsible for their souls and bodies, and we made haste, for a few minutes later we were going to leave them forever. In the vibrant air we could smell ravishment and death.

  The train arrived and whistled. We started, as if awaking from a dream. We shook hands. How can I ever forget the tight and desperate grip of our hands, the ten fingers which did not wish to separate. One of the girls was very pale, the other was laughing and trembling.

  And I said to you then, I remember: "What do Greece, Our Country, Duty mean? The truth is here!" And you replied: "Greece, Our Country, Duty mean nothing. And yet, for that nothing we willingly court destruction."

  But why am I writing this to you? To let you see that I have forgotten none of the moments we have lived together. And also to have an opportunity of expressing what, because of our good (or bad) habit of curbing our feelings, I can never reveal to you when we are together.

  Now that you are no longer before me and cannot see my face, and now that I run no risk of appearing soft or ridiculous, I can tell you I love you very deeply.

  I had finished my letter. I had conversed with my friend, and I felt relieved. I called Zorba. Crouching beneath a rock, so as not to get wet, he was trying out his model line.

  "Come along, Zorba," I cried. "Get up and let's go for a stroll to the village."

  "You're in a good humor, boss. It's raining. Can't you go alone?"

  "I don't want to lose my good humor. If we go together, there'll be no danger of that. Come along."

  He laughed.

  "I'm glad you need me," he said. "Come on, then."

  He put on the little woolly Cretan coat with a pointed hood which I had given him and, splashing through the mud, we made for the road.

  It was raining. The mountain peaks were hidden. There was not a breath of wind. The pebbles gleamed. The lignite hill was smothered by the mist. It was as if the woman's face of the hill were shrouded in sorrow, as if she had fainted beneath the raín.

  "A man's heart suffers when it rains," Zorba said. "You mustn't bear it any ill will, boss. The poor wretch has a soul, too."

  He stooped by a hedge and picked the first little wild narcissi. He looked at them a long while, as if he could not see enough of them, as if he were seeing narcissi for the first time. He closed his eyes and smelled them, sighed, then gave them to me.

  "If only we knew, boss, what the stones and rain and flowers say. Maybe they call—call us—and we don't hear them. When will people's ears open, boss? When shall we have our eyes open to see? When shall we open our arms to embrace everything—stones, rain, flowers, and men? What d'you think about that, boss? And what do your books have to say about it?"

  "The devil take them!" I said, using Zorba's favorite expression. "The devil take them! That's what they say, and nothing else!"

  Zorba took me by the arm.

  "I'm going to tell you of an idea of mine, boss, but you mustn't be angry. Make a heap of all your books and set light to them! After that, who knows, you're no fool, you're the right sort ... we might make something of you!"

  "He is right!" I exclaimed to myself. "He is right, but I can't."

  Zorba hesitated and reflected. Then he said:

  "There's one thing I can see…"

  "What? Out with it!"

  "I don't know, but I think, just like that, I can see it. But if I try to tell you, I'll make a hash of it. One day, when I'm in good form, I'll dance it for you."

  It started to rain harder. We came to the village. Little girls were bringing the sheep back from grazing; the ploughmen had unyoked the oxen and were abandoning the half-ploughed field; the women were running after their children in the narrow streets. A cheerful panic had broken out in the village when the shower started. Women uttered shrill cries and their eyes were laughing; from the men's stiff beards and curled-up moustaches hung large drops of rain. A pungent smell rose from the earth, the stones and the grass.

  We dived into The Modesty Café-and-Butcher's-Shop like drowned rats. It was crowded. Some men were playing a game of belote, others arguing at the top of their voices as if they were calling to each other across the mountains. Round a little table at the far end the village elders were laying down the law: uncle Anagnosti with his broad-sleeved white shirt; Mavrandoni, severe
and silent, smoking his hookah, with his eyes riveted on the floor; the gaunt, middle-aged and rather imposing schoolmaster leaning on his thick stick and listening with a condescending smile to a hairy giant who had just returned from Candia and was describing the marvels of that great town. The café proprietor, standing behind the counter, was listening and laughing as he kept an eye on the coffeepots which stood in a row on the stove.

  As soon as he saw us, uncle Anagnosti got up.

  "Do come and join us, countrymen," he said. "Sfakianonikoli is telling us about all he saw and heard in Candia. He's very funny. Do come!"

  He turned to the café proprietor.

  "Two rakis, Manolaki!" he said.

  We sat down. The wild shepherd, seeing strangers present, withdrew into his shell and was silent.

  "Well, chief Nikoli, didn't you go to the theater, too?" the schoolmaster said, to make him talk. "What did you think of it?"

  Sfakianonikoli stretched out his great hand, seized his glass of wine, gulped it down and plucked up courage.

  "Not go to the theater?" he shouted. "Of course I did! They all kept talking about Kotopouli this and Kotopouli that. So one evening I crossed myself and said: 'All right, why don't I go and see for myself? What the devil is she for them to make all this fuss about Kotopouli?'"[12]

  "So what did you see, young fellow?" uncle Anagnosti asked. "What was it? Tell us, for God's sake."

  "Well, upon my soul, not much of anything. You hear 'em all talking about this 'theater,' and you think to yourself, 'Now I'm going to see something.' But, I tell you, you're wasting your money. There's a great tavern of a place, but round, like a threshing floor, all full of chairs and lights and people. I didn't know where I was and the lights dazzled me and I couldn't see. 'The devil,' I said to myself, 'they'll be casting a spell on me next; I'll be off.' But just then a girl, as frisky as a wagtail, gets hold of me by the hand. 'Hi! Where are you taking me?' I called out, but she just pulls me along and at last she turns round and tells me to sit down. So I sat down. Just think of it. Nothing but people in front of me and behind and both sides, and right up to the ceiling. 'I'm going to stifle,' I told myself, 'I'll bust. There's no air at all.' Then I turn to my neighbor and ask him, 'Can you tell me, friend, where do these permadonnas[13] come out from?'