Zorba the Greek Page 7

  "He had hardly got back to the village when he heard the good news.

  "'Long life to him, Kostandi. Your wife has given birth to a son!' It was me, old Anagnosti here. But I was born with a weak ear. You see, my father had blasphemed, he'd called the Virgin deaf.

  "'Oh, that's how it is, is it?' the Virgin must have said. 'Well, just you wait, I'll make your son deaf, that'll teach you to blaspheme!'"

  And uncle Anagnosti crossed himself.

  "But that's nothing," he said. "God be praised! She might have made me blind or an idiot, or hunchbacked, or even—God Almighty preserve us!—she might have made me a girl. This is just nothing at all, I bow to her holiness!"

  He filled the glasses.

  "Long may she help us!" he said, raising his glass.

  "To your health, uncle Anagnosti. I hope you live to a hundred and see your great-great-grandchildren!"

  The old man tossed off his wine in one go and wiped his moustache.

  "No, my son," he said. "That's too much to ask. I've seen my grandchildren. That's enough. Mustn't ask too much. My hour has come. I am old, my friends, my loins are empty, I can't—much as I'd like to—I can't sow the seed for any more children. So what'd I be doing with life?"

  He filled the glasses again, pulled out from his waistband some walnuts and dríed figs wrapped in laurel leaves and shared them with us.

  "I have given everything I had to my children," he said. "We've become poverty-stricken, yes, poverty-stricken, but I don't complain. God has all that is needful!"

  "God may have all that's needful, uncle Anagnosti," Zorba shouted in the old man's ear. "God may have, but not us. The old skinflint gives us nothing!"

  But the old villager frowned.

  "Don't say that!" he chided severely. "Don't upbraid him! The poor fellow counts on us, too, you know!"

  At this moment grandmother Anagnosti entered silently and submissively carrying the celebrated delicacy on an earthenware dish, and also a large jug full of wine. She set them on the table and remained standing with hands clasped and lowered eyes.

  I felt some repugnance at having to taste this hors d'oeuvre, but, on the other hand, I did not have the courage to refuse. Zorba was watching me out of the corner of his eye and enjoying my discomfiture.

  "It's the most tasty dish you could wish for, boss," he affirmed. "Don't be squeamish."

  Old Anagnosti gave a little laugh.

  "That's the truth, indeed it is, you try them and see. They melt in the mouth! When Prince George—may the hour be blessed for him!—visited our monastery up there in the mountains, the monks prepared a royal feast in his honor, and they served meat to every one save to the prince, who was given a plateful of soup. The prince took his spoon and began to stir his soup. 'What are these? Beans?' he asked in surprise. 'White haricot beans, are they?' 'Try them, Your Highness,' said the old abbot. 'Try them and we'll talk about them afterwards.' The prince took a spoonful, two, three, he emptied his plate and licked his lips. 'What is this wonderful dish?' he said, 'What tasty beans! They're as nice as brains!' 'They're no beans, your Highness,' replied the abbot, laughing. 'They're no beans! We've had àll the cocks of the neighborhood castrated!'"

  Roaring with laughter, the old man stuck his fork into another morsel.

  "A dish fit for princes'." he said. "Open your mouth."

  I opened my mouth and he popped in the morsel.

  He filled the glasses again and we drank to the health of his grandson. Old Anagnosti's eyes shone.

  "What would you like your grandson to be, uncle Anagnosti?" I asked. "Tell us, so that we can wish."

  "What could I wish, my son? Well, that he takes the right road; that he becomes a good man, head of a family; that he, too, gets married and has children and grandchildren. Änd may one of his children be like me, so that old folk exclaim: 'I say, doesn't he look like old Anagnosti—God sanctify his soul!—he was a good man!'"

  "Maroulia!" he called, without looking at his wife. "Maroulia, more wine, fill up the jug again!"

  Just then the wicket gate to the enclosure yielded to a powerful thrust from the pig and the pig rushed grunting into the garden.

  "It hurts him, poor beast," Zorba said pityingly.

  "Of course it hurts him!" the old Cretan saíd, laughing. "Supposing they did that to you, wouldn't it hurt you?"

  Zorba fidgeted on his chair.

  "May your tongue be cut out, you old deaf post!" Zorba muttered in horror.

  The pig ran about in front of us and looked at us furiously.

  "I do believe he knows we're eating them!" said uncle Anagnosti, who had been put in high spirits by the drop of wine he had drunk.

  But we, like cannibals, went on quietly and contentedly eating the delicacy and drinking the red wine, as we gazed between the silvery branches of the olive tree towards the sea, which the sunset had turned pink.

  At dusk we left the old man's house. Zorba, who was now also in high spirits, wanted to talk.

  "What were we saying the day before yesterday, boss? You were saying you wanted to open the people's eyes. All right, you just go and open old uncle Anagnosti's eyes for him! You saw how his wife had to behave before him, waiting for his orders, like a dog begging. Just go now and teach them that women have equal rights with men, and that it's cruel to eat a piece of the pig while the pig's still raw and groaning in front of you, and that it's simple lunacy to give thanks to God because he's got everything while you're starving to death! What good'll that poor devil Anagnosti get out of all your explanatory humbug? You'd only cause him a lot of bother. And what'd old mother Anagnosti get out of it? The fat would be in the fire: family rows would start, the hen would want to be cock, the couple would just have a good set-to and make their feathers fly ...! Let people be, boss; don't open their eyes. And supposing you did, what'd they see? Their misery! Leave their eyes closed, boss, and let them go on dreaming!"

  He was silent a moment and scratched his head. He was thinking.

  "Unless," he said at last, "unless ..."

  "Unless what? Let's have it!"

  "Unless when they open their eyes you can show them a better world than the darkness in which they're gallivanting at present… Can you?"

  I did not know. I was fully aware of what would be destroyed. I did not know what would be built out of the ruins. No one can know that with any degree of certainty, I thought. The old world is tangible, solid, we live in it and are struggling with it every moment—it exists. The world of the future is not yet born, it is elusive, fluid, made of the light from which dreams are woven; it is a cloud buffeted by violent winds—love, hate, imagination, luck, God… The greatest prophet on earth can give men no more than a watchword, and the vaguer the watchword the greater the prophet.

  Zorba looked at me with a mocking smile which vexed me.

  "I can show them a better world!" I replied.

  "Can you? Well, let's hear about it!"

  "I can't explain it; you wouldn't understand."

  "That means you haven't got one to show!" Zorba rejoined, shaking his head. "Don't take me for a simpleton, boss. If anyone's told you I'm a moon-calf, they're wrong. I may have no more education than old uncle Anagnosti, but I'm nowhere near so stupid! Well, if I can't understand, what d'you expect of that poor fellow and his blockheaded mate? And what about all the other Anagnostides in the world? Have you only got more darkness to show them? They've managed pretty well up to now; they have children, and even grandchildren. God makes them deaf or blind, and they say: 'God be praised!' They feel at home in their misery. So let them be and say nothing."

  I was silent. We were passing the widow's garden. Zorba stopped a moment and sighed, but said nothing. A shower must have fallen. There was a fresh, earthy smell in the air. The first stars appeared. The new moon was shining, it was a tender shade of greenish yellow. The sky was overflowing with sweetness.

  That man has not been to school, I thought, and his brains have not been perverted. He has had all man
ner of experiences; his mind is open and his heart has grown bigger, without his losing one ounce of his primitive boldness. All the problems which we find so complicated or insoluble he cuts through as if with a sword, like Alexander the Great cutting the Gordian knot. It is difficult for him to miss his aim, because his two feet are held firmly planted on the ground by the weight of his whole body. African savages worship the serpent because its whole body touches the ground and it must, therefore, know all the earth's secrets. It knows them with its belly, with its tail, with its head. It is always in contact or mingled with the Mother. The same is true of Zorba. We educated people are just empty-headed birds of the air.

  The stars were multiplying in the heavens, and they were all hard, fierce, scornful and pitiless towards man.

  We no longer spoke. We were both gazing with terror at the sky. Every second new stars lit up in the east and spread the conflagration.

  We arrived at our hut. I had not the slightest desire to eat, and sat on a rock by the sea. Zorba lit the fire, ate, was about to come to sit beside me, but changed his mind and lay on his mattress and fell asleep.

  The sea was dead calm. Beneath the volley of shooting stars the earth also lay motionless and silent. No dog barked, no nightbird shrieked. It was a stealthy, dangerous, total silence, composed of thousands of cries so distant or from such depths within us that we could not hear them. I could only discern the pulsing of my blood in my temples and in the veins of my neck.

  The song of the tiger! I thought, and shuddered.

  In India, when night falls, a sad, monotonous song is sung in a low voice, a slow, wild song, like the distant yawn of a beast of prey—the song of the tiger. Man's heart flutters and seeks an outlet as he waits in tense expectation.

  As I thought of this fearful song, the void in my breast was gradually filled. My ears came to life, the silence became a shout. It was as if the soul itself were composed out of this song and were escaping from the body to listen.

  I stooped, filled my palm with sea water, moistened my brow and temples. I felt refreshed. In the depths of my being, cries were echoing, threateningly, confused, impatient—the tiger was within me and he was roaring.

  All at once I heard the voice clearly. It was the voice of Buddha.

  I started walking rapidly along the water's edge, as if I wished to escape. For some time now, when alone at night and silence reigned, I had been hearing his voice—at first sorrowful and plaintive, like a dirge; then, becoming angry, scolding and imperative. It kicked within my breast like a child when the time has come for it to leave the womb.

  It must have been midnight. Black clouds had gathered in the sky, large drops of rain fell onto my hands. But I paid no heed. I was plunged into a burning atmosphere; I could feel a flame flickering from both my temples.

  The time has come, I thought, with a shudder. The Buddhist wheel is bearing me away; the time has come for me to free myself from this miraculous burden.

  I returned swiftly to the hut and lit the lamp. When the light fell on Zorba, his eyelids twitched, he opened his eyes and watched me bending over the paper and writing. He growled something which I did not catch, turned brusquely towards the wall and fell fast asleep once more.

  I wrote quickly, I was in a hurry. Buddha was completely ready within me and I could see it issuing from my brain like a blue ribbon covered with symbols. It Was coming forth rapidly, and I tried desperately to keep up with it. I wrote; everything had become simple, very simple. I was not writing, I was copying. A whole world was appearing before me, composed of compassion, renunciation and air: Buddha's mansions, the women in the harem, the golden coach, the three fateful encounters—with the old man, with the sick man, with death; the flight, the ascetic life, the deliverance, the proclaiming of salvation. The earth was covered with yellow flowers; beggars and kings donned saffron robes; the stones, the trees and the flesh became lighter. Souls became vapor, the vapor became spirit, and the spirit became nothing… My fingers were beginning to ache, but I would not, I could not stop. The vision was passing swiftly and vanishing; I had to keep up with it.

  In the morning Zorba found me asleep, with my head on the manuscript.

  6

  THE SUN was already well up in the sky when I awoke. The joints of my right hand were stiff from holding the pen so long. I could not close my fingers. The Buddhist storm had broken over me and left me tired and empty.

  I stooped to pick up the pages scattered on the floor. I had neither the strength nor the desire to look at them. As if all that sudden rush of inspiration had been merely a dream which I no longer wished to see imprisoned in words and debased by them.

  It was raining softly, silently. Zorba, before leaving, had lit the brazier, and I spent the whole morning coiled up in front of the fire, with my hands over it, eating nothing, motionless, just listening to the first rain of the season, softly falling.

  I was thinking of nothing. Rolled up in a ball, like a mole in damp soil, my brain was resting. I could hear the slight movements, murmurings and nibblings of the earth, and the rain falling and the seeds swelling. I could feel the sky and the earth copulating as in primitive times when they mated like a man and woman and had children. I could hear the sea before me, all along the shore, roaring like a wild beast and lapping with its tongue to slake its thirst.

  I was happy, I knew that. While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realize—sometimes with astonishment—how happy we had been. But on this Cretan coast I was experiencing happiness and knew I was happy.

  That immense thirsting, dark-blue sea extended right to the shores of Africa. A very hot south wind often blew, the Livas, which comes from the distant, burning sands. In the morning the sea gave off a scent like that of a watermelon; at noon it was covered with haze and still, its slight undulations being like immature breasts; in the evening it sighed and was the color of the rose, of the aubergíne, of wine, a deep blue.

  In the afternoon I amused myself by filling my hand with fine light-colored sand and letting it run, hot and soft, through my fingers. The hand—an hour-glass through which our life runs away and is lost. It was losing itself. I looked at the sea, heard Zorba, and felt my temples bursting with happiness.

  I remembered how, one day, my niece, Alka, a little girl of four, while we were looking into a toy-shop—it was New Year's Eve—she turned to me and made this extraordinary remark: "Uncle Ogre, I'm so glad I am growing horns!" I was startled. What a miracle life is and how alike are all souls when they send their roots down deep and meet and are one! For I at once recalled a Buddha carved in ebony which I had seen in a distant museum. Buddha had freed himself and was bathed in supreme joy after seven years of agony. The veins on either side of his forehead had so swollen that they had burst out of the skin and become two vigorous, curling horns, like steel springs.

  The fine rain stopped falling towards the end of the afternoon, the sky became clear. I was hungry and was delighted to be hungry, for now Zorba would come and light the fire and begin the daily ritual of cooking.

  "Another of these things that never leave you alone," Zorba often said, as he set the pot on the fire. "It's not only woman, curse her—that's an endless affair—there's eating, too."

  On this coast I felt for the first time what a pleasant thing it could be to have a meal. In the evening Zorba lit the fire between two stones and did the cooking. We started eating and drinking, the conversation became animated. I at last realized that eating was a spiritual function and that meat, bread and wine were the raw materials from which the mind is made.

  After his day's hard work, before eating and drinking, Zorba was dull, his remarks peevish, and I had to drag words out of him. His, movements were listless and awkward. But as soon as he had stoked up the engine, as he put it, the whole grinding, weary machine of his body came to life once more, got up speed and started to work again. His eyes lit up, he was brim
full of memories, wings grew on his feet and he danced.

  "Tell me what you do with the food you eat, and I'll tell you who you are. Some turn their food into fat and manure, some into work and good humor, and others, I'm told, into God. So there must be three sorts of men. I'm not one of the worst, boss, nor yet one of the best. I'm somewhere between the two. What I eat I turn into work and good humor. That's not too bad, after all!"

  He looked at me wickedly and started laughing.

  "As for you, boss," he said, "I think you do your level best to turn what you eat into God. But you can't quite manage it, and that torments you. The same thing's happening to you as happened to the crow."

  "What happened to the crow, Zorba?"

  "Well, you see, he used to walk respectably, properly—well, like a crow. But one day he got it into his head to try and strut about like a pigeon. And from that time on the poor fellow couldn't for the life of him recall his own way of walking. He was all mixed up, don't you seeï He just hobbled about."

  I raised my head. I had heard Zorba's footsteps as he came up out of the gallery. Soon after I saw him approaching with a long scowling face, his arms dangling helplessly at his sides.

  "Evening, boss," he said lifelessly.

  "Hello, Zorba. How did the work go today?"

  He did not reply.

  "I'll light the fiíre," he said, "and prepare the meal."

  He took an armful of wood from the corner, went outside, arranged the faggots artistically in a pile between the two stones and lit them. He set the earthenware pot on top, poured in some water, threw in onions, tomatoes and rice, and began cooking. Meanwhile, I put a cloth on a low round table, cut thick slices of wheat bread, and from the demijohn I filled with wine the calabash, decorated with designs, which uncle Anagnosti had given us soon after our arrival.

  Zorba kneeled in front of the pot, stared into the fire and remained silent.

  "Have you any children, Zorba?" I said all of a sudden.

  He looked round.

  "Why d'you ask me that? I have a girl."