Zorba The Greek

9

THE DAYS were growing shorter, the light was quickly failing, and towards the end of each afternoon the heart became uneasy. A primitive terror seized us-that of our ancestors who during the winter months watched the sun go out a little earlier each day. "Tomorrow it will go out forever," they must have thought in despair, and spent thé entire night on the heights in fear and trembling.

Zorba felt this uneasiness more deeply, more primitively than I. To escape from it he would not leave the galleries of the mine until the stars were shining in the sky.

He had come across a seam of very good lignite, which did not produce much ash, was not very damp and was rich in calories. He was pleased. For in his mind our profits underwent marvellous transformations: they became travels, women and new adventures. He was waiting impatiently for the day when he would earn a fortune, when his wings would be sufficiently big-"wings" was the name he gave to money-for him to fly away. He therefore spent whole nights trying out his miniature cable railway, always seeking the right slope for the tree trunks to move down slowly-gently, gently, he said, as if borne by angels.

One day he took a large sheet of paper and some colored pencils and drew the mountain, the forest, the line, the trunks suspended from the cable and descending, each. endowed with two sky-blue wings. In the little rounded bay he drew black boats and green sailors, like líttle parrots, and mahones loaded with yellow tree trunks. A monk was drawn in each of the four corners, and from their mouths came pink ribbons on which was printed in black capital letters: "Great is the Lord and wonderful are his works!"

For some days now Zorba had hastíly lít the fire and prepared the evening meal. When we had eaten he would run off to the village. A little later he would return scowling.

"Where have you been again, Zorba?" I would ask him.

"Never you mind, boss," he would say, and change the subject.

When he returned one evening, he asked me anxiously:

"Is there a God-yes or no? What d'you think, boss? And if there is one-anything's possible-what d'you think he looks like?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"I'm not joking, boss. I think of God as being exactly like me. Only bigger, stronger, crazier. And immortal, into the bargain. He's sitting on a pile of soft sheepskins and his hut's the sky. It isn't made out of old petrol-cans, like ours is, but clouds. In his right hand he's holding not a knife or a pair of scales-those damned instruments are meant for butchers and grocers-no, he's holding a large sponge full of water, like a rain-cloud. On his right is Paradise, on his left Hell. Here comes a soul; the poor little thing's quite naked, because it's lost its cloak-its body, I mean-and it's shivering. God looks at it, laughing up his sleeve, but he plays the bogy man: 'Come here,' he roars, 'come here, you miserable wretch!'

"And he begins his questioning. The naked soul throws itself at God's feet. 'Mercy!' it cries. 'I have sinned.' And away it goes reciting its sins. It recites a whole rigmarole and there's no end to it. God thinks this is too much of a good thing. He yawns. 'For heaven's sake stop!' he shouts. 'I've heard enough of all that!' Flap! Slap! a wipe of the sponge, and he washes out all the sins. 'Away with you, clear out, run off to Paradise!' he says to the soul. 'Peterkin, let this poor little creature in, too!'

"Because God, you know, is a great lord, and that's what being a lord means: to forgive!"

I remember I had to laugh that evening, while Zorba was pouring out his profound balderdash. But this "lordliness" of God was taking shape and maturing within me, compassionate, generous and all-powerful.

Another evening, when it was raining, and we were crouched over the brazier in the hut roasting chestnuts, Zorba turned round to me and looked at me a long while as if he were trying to unravel some great mystery. Finally, unable to contain himself any longer, he said:

"Boss, I'd like to know what the devil you can see in me; why you don't take me by the ear and pitch me out? I told you they called me Mildew, because everywhere I go I never leave one stone on another… Your affairs will go to rack and ruin. Throw me out, I tell you!"

"I like you," I replied. "Leave it at that."

"But don't you realize, boss, that my brain's not the correct weight) Maybe it's a little overweight, maybe a little under, but the correct weight it certainly isn't! Look now, here's something you'll understand: I haven't been able to rest for days and nights because of that widow. No, I don't mean on my account; no, I swear that's not the case. The devil take her, that's what I say. I'll never touch her, that's one sure thing. I'm not her cup of tea… But I don't want her to be lost for everybody. I don't want her to sleep alone. It wouldn't be right, boss; I can't bear that thought. So I wander at night round her garden-that's why you see me disappear and you ask me where I'm going. But d'you know why? To see if someone is going to sleep with her; then I can be easy in my mind."

I started laughing.

"Don't laugh, boss! If a woman sleeps all alone, it's the fault of us men. We'll all have to render our accounts on the day of the last judgment. God will forgive all sins, as we've said before-he'll have his sponge ready. But that sin he will not forgive. Woe betide the man who could sleep with a woman and who did not do so! Woe betíde the woman who could sleep with a man and who did not do so! Remember the words of the hodja!"

He was silent for an instant.

"When a man dies, can he come to life again?" he asked abruptly.

"I don't think so, Zorba."

"Neither do I. But if he could, then those men I was referring to, those who've refused to serve, the deserters, will come back on earth, guess as what? As mules!"

He fell silent again and reflected. Suddenly his eyes sparkled.

"Who knows," he said, excited at his discovery, "maybe all the mules we see in the world today are those same people, the maimed, the deserters, who during their lifetíme were men and women-and at the same time were not. And that's why they're always kicking. What d'you say, boss?"

"That your brain's underweight, Zorba," I replied, laughing. "Get your santuri!"

"No offence, boss, but there'll be no santuri tonight. If I go on talking, talking nonsense, d'you know why? Because I've got a load of worries on my mind. The new gallery-the devil take it-is going to play me up. And there you go talking to me about the santuri…"

Thereupon he pulled the chestnuts out of the ashes, gave me a handful, and filled our glasses with raki.

"May God weight the scales on the right side!" I said, clinking glasses.

"On the left!" Zorba corrected. "On the left! Up to now, the right's produced nothing good."

He swallowed the liquid fire in one gulp and lay on his bed.

"Tomorrow," he said, "I'm goíng to need all my strength. I'll have to fight against a thousand demons. Good night!"

The next day, at first light, Zorba disappeared down into the mine. The men had made progress in cutting out the gallery along the good seam. The water was seeping through the roof and the men were splashing about in black mud.

Two days ago Zorba had called for tree trunks to strengthen the gallery. But he was uneasy. The props were not so big as they should have been, and, with his profound instinct which made him feel all that was going on in that subterranean labyrinth as if it were his own body, he sensed that the props were not safe. He could hear creakings, very slight ones, ímperceptible as yet to the others-as if the supports of the roof were groaning under the weight.

Another thing had increased Zorba's uneasiness that day. Just as he was about to go down the shaft, the village priest, Pappa Stephanos, passed by on his mule, going posthaste to the neighboring convent to give the last sacrament to a dying nun. Fortunately Zorba had just enough time before the priest spoke to him to spit on the ground three times and pinch himself.

"Morning, father!" he replied glumly to the priest's greeting.

And then he added in a slightly lower voice:

"May your curse be upon me!"

He felt, however, that these exorcisms were insufficient, and he went nervously down the new gallery.

There was a heavy smell of lignite and acetylene. The men had already begun to strengthen the beams holding up the gallery roof. Zorba wished them good morning in a brusque, surly fashion. He rolled up his sleeves and set to work.

A dozen men were beginning to pick into the seam and heap the coal at their feet, others were shovelling it up and carting it out on little barrows.

Suddenly Zorba stopped, signed to the men to do likewise, and pricked up his ears. Just as the rider becomes one with his steed and the captain with his ship, so Zorba had become one with the mine. He could feel the ramifications of the galleries like veins in his flesh, and what the dark masses of coal could not feel, Zorba felt with a conscious, human lucidity.

After listening intently with his large, hairy ears, he peered into the gallery. It was at that moment I arrived. I had waked with a start, as if I had some presentiment, as if urged by some hand. I had dressed in haste and rushed out, without knowing why I was hurrying so, or where I was going. But my body had unhesitatingly taken the road to the mine. I had arrived at the moment when Zorba was anxiously listening and looking.

"Nothing…" he said after a while. "I thought for a moment… Never mind. To work, boys!"

He turned round, saw me and puckered up his lips.

"Boss, what are you doing here so early?"

He came up to me.

"Why don't you go up and get some fresh air, boss?" he whispered. "You can come and take a little turn here another day."

"What's the matter, Zorba?"

"Nothing… I was imagining things. A priest crossed my path first thing this morning. Go away."

"If there's any danger, wouldn't it be shameful if I left?"

"Yes," Zorba replied.

"Would you leave?"

"No."

"Well, then!"

"What Zorba has to do is one thíng," he replied irritably, "what others have to do is another! But as you feel it's shameful to leave, don't. Stay here. It's your funeral!"

He took a heavy hammer and stood on tiptoe to hit some nails into the roof bracings. I took an acetylene lamp from a post and went up and down in the mud, looking at the dark, shining seam. Immense forests must have been swallowed up millions of years ago. The earth digested and transformed its children. The trees turned into lignite, the lignite into coal, Zorba came…

I hung the lamp up again on the nail and watched Zorba work. He was completely absorbed in his task; he thought of nothing else; he was one with the earth, the pick and the coal. He and the hammer and nails were united in the struggle with the wood. He suffered with the bulging roof of the gallery. He sparred with the mountainside to obtain its coal by cunning and force. Zorba could feel matter with a sure and infallible instinct, and he struck his blows shrewdly where it was weakest and could be conquered. And, as he appeared then, covered and plastered with dirt, with only the whites of his eyes gleaming, he seemed to me to be camouflaged as coal, to have become coal itself, in order to be able to approach his adversary unawares and penetrate its inner defences.

"Bravo, Zorba! Go to it!" I cried, carried away by a naïve admiration.

But he did not even look round. How could he possibly have talked at that moment to a bookworm who, instead of wielding a pick, held in his hand a miserable stump of pencil? He was busy, he did not wish to speak. "Don't speak to me when I'm working," he said one evening. "I might snap!" "Snap, Zorba? Why?" "There you go again with your 'whys' and 'wherefores'! Like a kid! How can I explain? I'm completely taken up by my work, stretched taut from head to foot, and riveted to the stone or the coal or the santuri. If you suddenly touched me or spoke to me and I tried to turn round, I might snap. Now, d'you see?"

I looked at my watch, it was ten o'clock.

"Time to break off for lunch, my friends!" I said. "You've gone past the time."

The workmen immediately threw their tools down in a corner, mopped the sweat off their faces and prepared to leave the gallery. Completely absorbed in his work, Zorba had not heard. Even if he had, he would not have budged from there. Once again he listened anxiously.

"One moment," I said to the men, "have a cigarette."

I was rummaging in my pockets, with the men standing round me.

Suddenly Zorba started up. He stuck his ear to the gallery partition. By the light of the acetylene lamps, I could see his gaping, contorted mouth.

"What's up, Zorba?" I shouted.

But at that moment the whole gallery roof seemed to shudder above us.

"Get out!" Zorba shouted in a hoarse voice, "Get out!"

We tore back towards the exit, but we had not reached the first wooden frame when a second, louder cracking noise burst out over our heads. Zorba, meanwhile, was lifting up a great tree-trunk to wedge it in as a buttress against the timbering which was giving way. If he managed it quickly enough, it might hold up the roof a few more seconds and give us time to escape.

"Get out!" Zorba yelled again, but this time his voice was muffled, as if it were coming from the bowels of the earth.

With the cowardice which often comes over men in critical moments, we all rushed out, completely forgetting Zorba. But after a few seconds I pulled myself together and ran back into the gallery.

"Zorba!" I shouted. "Zorba!"

At least, I thought I shouted. I realized afterwards that my cry had not left my throat. Fear had strangled my voice.

I was overcome with shame. I leapt towards him with arms outstretched. Zorba had just made firm the great prop and was running, slithering in the mire, towards the exit. Rushing headlong in the darkness, he ran into me and we accidentally fell into each other's arms.

"We must get out!" he yelled. "Get out!"

We ran and reached the light. The terror-stricken workmen had gathered at the entrance and were peering inside.

We heard a third and louder cracking noise, like a tree splitting in a storm. Then, suddenly, a fearful roar, like a clap of thunder. It shook the mountainside, and the gallery collapsed.

"God Almighty!" the men murmured, crossing themselves.

"You left your picks down there!" Zorba shouted angrily.

The men said nothing.

"Why didn't you take them with you?" he shouted again, furious. "You wet your pants, I bet! Too bad about the tools, eh?"

"Oh, Zorba, this is no time to bother about the picks," I said, coming between them. "Let's be grateful that all the men are safe and sound! Thanks to you, Zorba, for we all owe our lives to you."

"I'm hungry!" Zorba said. "That's made me feel empty."

He took his haversack, which he had left on a stone, opened it and pulled out some bread, olives, onions, a boiled potato and a little gourd of wine.

"Come on, boys, let's eat!" he said, with his mouth full.

He bolted his food quickly, as if he had suddenly lost a lot of strength and wanted to stoke up again.

He ate leaning forward, without speaking. He took his gourd, threw his head back and let the wine gurgle down his parched throat.

The workmen also took courage, opened their haversacks and started eating. They sat, cross-legged round Zorba, and ate, looking at him. They wanted to throw themselves at his feet and kiss his hands, but they knew he was brusque and strange, and none of them dared make a movement.

Finally Michelis, the eldest, who had a big, grey moustache, made up his mind and spoke:

"If you hadn't been there, good master Alexis," he said, "our children would be orphans by this time."

"Dry up!" Zorba said, with his mouth full; and no one else ventured a word.