Zorba The Greek

1

I FIRST MET HIM in Piraeus. I wanted to take the boat for Crete and had gone down to the port. It was almost daybreak and raining. A strong sirocco was blowing the spray from the waves as far as the little café, whose glass doors were shut. The café reeked of brewing sage and human beings whose breath steamed the windows because of the cold outside. Five or six seamen, who had spent the night there, muffled in their brown goatskin reefer-jackets, were drinking coffee or sage and gazing out of the misty windows at the sea. The fish, dazed by the blows of the raging waters, had taken refuge in the depths, where they were waiting till calm was restored above. The fishermen crowding in the cafés were also waiting for the end of the storm, when the fish, reassured, would rise to the surface after the bait Soles, hog fish and skate were returning from their nocturnal expeditions. Day was now breaking.

The glass door opened and there entered a thick-set, mud-bespattered, weather-beaten dock laborer with bare head and bare feet.

"Hi! Kostandi!" called out an old sailor in a sky-blue cloak. "How are things with you?"

Kostandi spat. "What d'you think?" he replied testily. "Good morning-the bar! Good night-my lodgings! That's the sort of life I'm leading. No work at all!"

Some started laughing, others shook their heads and swore.

"This world's a life sentence," said a man with a moustache who had picked up his philosophy from the Karagiozis [1] theater. "Yes, a life sentence. Be damned to it."

A pale bluish-green light penetrated the dirty windowpanes of the café and caught hands, noses and foreheads. It leapt on to the counter and lit the bottles. The electric light faded, and the proprietor, half-asleep after his night up, stretched out his hand and switched it off.

There was a moment's silence. All eyes were turned on the dirty-looking sky outside. The roar of the waves could be heard and, in the café, the gurgling of a few hookahs.

The old sailor sighed: "I wonder what has happened to Captain Lemoni? May God help him!" He looked angrily at the sea, and growled: "God damn you for a destroyer of homes!" He bit his grey moustache.

I was sitting in a corner. I was cold and I ordered a second glass of sage. I wanted to go to sleep, but I struggled against the desire to sleep, and against my fatigue and the desolation of the early houis of dawn. I looked through the steamy windows at the awakening port resounding with the ships' sirens and the cries of carters and boatmen. And, as I looked, an invisible net, woven from sea, air, and my departure, wound its tight meshes round my heart.

My eyes were glued to the black bows of a large vessel. The whole of the hull was still engulfed in darkness. It was raining and I could see the shafts of rain link sky and mud.

I looked at the black ship, the shadows and the rain, and my sadness took shape. Memories arose. The rain and my spleen took on, in the humid atmosphere, the features of my great friend. Was it last year? In another life? Yesterday? When was it I came down to this same port to say goodbye to him? I remembered how it rained that morning, too, and the cold, and the early light. At that time also, my heart was heavy.

How bitter it is to be slowly separated from great friends! Far better make a clean break and remain in solitude-the natural climate for man. And yet, in that rainy dawn, I could not leave my friend. (I understood why later, but, alas, too late.) I had gone on board with him and was seated in his cabin amid scattered suitcases. I gazed at him intently for a long time, when his attention was fixed elsewhere, as if I wished to make mental note of his features, one by one-his bluish-green, luminous eyes, his rounded, youthful face, his intelligent and disdainful expression, and, above all, his arístocratic hands with their long, slender fingers.

Once he caught me gazing lingeringly and eagerly at him. He turned round with that mocking air he assumed when he wanted to hide his feelings. He looked at me and he understood. And to avoid the sadness of separation, he asked with an ironical smile:

"How long?"

"What d'you mean, how long?"

"How long are you going on chewing paper and covering yourself with ink? Why don't you come with me? Away there in the Caucasus there are thousands of our people in danger. Let's go and save them." He began to laugh as if in mockery of his noble plan. "Maybe, we shan't save them. Don't you preach: 'The only way to save yourself is to endeavor to save others?'… Well, forward, master. You're good at preaching. Why don't you come with me!"

I did not answer. I thought of this sacred land of the East, the old mother of the gods, the loud clamoring of Prometheus nailed to the rock. Nailed to these same rocks, our own race was crying out. Again it was in peril. It was calling to its sons for help. And I was listening, passively, as if pain was a dream and life some absorbing tragedy, in which nobody but a boor or a simpleton would rush onto the stage and take part in the action.

Without waiting for an answer, my friend rose. The boat sounded its siren for the third time. He gave me his hand and again hid his emotion in raillery.

"Au revoir, bookworm!"

His voice trembled. He knew it was shameful not to be able to control one's feelings. Tears, tender words, unruly gestures, common familiarities, all seemed to him weaknesses unworthy of man. We, who were so fond of each other, never exchanged an affectionate word. We played and scratched at each other like wild beasts. He, the intelligent, ironical, civilized man; I, the barbarian. He exercised self-control and suavely expressed all his feelings in a smile. I would suddenly utter a misplaced and barbarous laugh.

I also tried to camouflage my emotions with a hard word. But I felt ashamed. No, not exactly ashamed, but I didn't manage it. I grasped his hand. I held it and wouldn't let it go. He looked at me, astonished.

"Are you so moved?" he said, trying to smile.

"Yes," I replied, with calm.

"Why? Now, what did we say? Hadn't we agreed on this point years ago? What do your beloved Japs say? Fudoshin! Ataraxia, Olympian calm, the face a smiling, unmoving mask. As for what happens behind the mask, that is our business."

"Yes," I replied again, trying not to compromise myself by embarking on a long sentence. I was not sure of being able to control my voice.

The ship's gong sounded, driving the visitors from the cabins. It was raining gently. The air was filled with pathetic words of farewell, promises, prolonged kisses, and hurried, breathless injunctions. Mothers rushed to sons, wives to husbands, friends to friends. As if they were leaving them forever. As if this little separation recalled the other-the Great Separation. And suddenly, in the humid air, the sound of the gong echoed softly from stem to stern, like a funeral bell. I shuddered.

My friend leaned over.

"Listen," he said in a low voice. "Have you some foreboding?"

"Yes," I replied once more.

"Do you believe in such humbug?"

"No," I answered with assurance.

"Well, then?"

There was no "well." I did not believe in it, but I was afraid.

My friend lightly touched my knee with his left hand, as he was wont to do in moments of abandon. I would urge him to take a decision, he would oppose this, stopping his ears, and refuse; finally he would accept, and then he would touch my knee, as if to say: "All right, I'll do what you say, for friendship's sake…"

He blinked two or three times, then stared at me again. He understood I was distressed and hesitated to use our usual weapons: laughter, smiles and chaff.

"Very well," he said. "Give me your hand. If ever one of us finds himself in danger of death…"

He stopped, as if ashamed. We who had, for so many years, made fun of metaphysical "flights" and lumped together vegetarians, spiritualists, theosophists and ectoplasm…

"Well?" I asked, trying to guess.

"Let's think of it as a game," he said suddenly, to get out of the perilous sentence he had embarked upon. "If ever one of us finds himself in danger of death, let him think of the other so intensely that he warns him wherever he may be… Right?" He tried to laugh, but his lips remained motionless, as if frozen.

"Right," I said.

Fearing that he had displayed his feelings too clearly, my friend hastened to add:

"Mind you, I haven't the slightest belief in telepathy and all that…"

"Never mind," I murmured. "Let it be so…"

"Very well, then, let's leave it at that. Agreed?"

"Agreed," I answered.

They were our last words. We clasped each other's hands in silence, our fingers joined fervently, and suddenly unclasped. I walked away rapidly without looking back, as if I were being followed. I felt a sudden impulse to give one last look at my friend, but I repressed it. "Don't look back!" I bade myself. "Forward!"

The human soul is heavy, clumsy, held in the mud of the flesh. Its perceptions are still coarse and brutish. It can divine nothing clearly, nothing with certainty. If it could have guessed, how different this separation would have been.

It was growing lighter and lighter. The two mornings mingled. The loved countenance of my friend, which I could see more clearly now, remained immobile and desolate in the rain and the atmosphere of the port. The door of the café opened, the sea roared, a thickset sailor entered with legs apart and drooping moustaches. Voices rang out in pleasure:

"Welcome, Captain Lemoni!"

I retreated into the corner, trying to concentrate my thoughts afresh. But my friend's face was already dissolving in the rain.

It was becoming still lighter. Captain Lemoni, austere and taciturn, took out his amber rosary and began to tell his beads. I struggled not to see, not to hear, and to hold on a little longer to the vision which was melting away. If only I could live again the moment of that anger which surged up in me when my friend called me a bookworm! I recalled then that all my disgust at the life I had been leading was personified in those words. How could I, who loved life so intensely, have let myself be entangled for so long in that balderdash of books and paper blackened with ink! In that day of separation, my friend had helped me to see clearly. I was relieved. As I now knew the name of my affliction, I could perhaps conquer it more easily. It was no longer elusive and incorporeal; it had assumed a name and a shape, and it would be easier for me to combat it.

His expression must have made silent progress in me. I sought a pretext for abandoning my papers and flinging myself into a life of action. I resented bearing this miserable creature upon my escutcheon. A month earlier, the desired opportunity had presented itself. I had rented on the coast of Crete, facing Libya, a disused lignite mine, and I was going now to live with simple men, workmen and peasants, far from the face of bookworms!

I prepared excitedly for my departure, as if this journey had a mysterious significance. I had decided to change my mode of life. "Till now," I told myself, "you have only seen the shadow and been well content with it; now, I am going to lead you to the substance."

At last I was ready. On the eve of departure, while rummaging in my papers, I came across an unfinished manuscript. I took it and looked at it, hesitating. For two years, in the innermost depths of my being, a great desire, a seed had been quickening. I could feel it all the time in my bowels, feeding on me and ripening. It was growing, moving and beginning to kick against the wall of my body to come forth. I no longer had the courage to destroy it. I could not. It was too late to commit such spiritual abortion.

Suddenly, as I hesitatingly held the manuscript, I became conscious of my friend's smile in the air, a smile composed of irony and tenderness. "I shall take it!" I said, stung to the quick. "I shall take it. You needn't smile!" I wrapped it up with care, as if swaddling a baby, and took it with me.

Captain Lemoni's deep, raucous voice could be heard. I pricked up my ears. He was talking about the water spirits who, during the storm, had climbed up the masts of his caique and licked them.

"They are soft and sticky," he said. "When you take lots of them, your hands catch fire. I stroked my moustache and so, in the dark, I gleamed like a devil. Well, the seas washed into my caique and soaked my cargo of coal. It was waterlogged. The caique began to heel over; but, at that moment, God took a hand in things; he sent a thunderbolt. The hatch covers were burst open and the sea filled with coal. The caique was lightened, righted itself, and we were saved. No more of that!"

Out of my pocket I drew a little edition of Dante-my travelling companion. I lit a pipe, leaned against the wall and made myself comfortable. I hesitated for a moment. Into which verses should I dip? Into the burning pitch of the Inferno, or the cleansing flames of Purgatory? Or should I make straight for the most elevated plane of human hope? I had the choice. Holding my pocket Dante in my hand, I rejoiced in my freedom. The verses I was going to choose so early in the morning would impart their rhythm to the whole of the day.

I bowed over this intense vision in order to decide, but I did not have the time. Suddenly, disturbed, I raised my head. Somehow, I felt as if two eyes were boring into the top of my skull; I quickly looked behind me in the direction of the glass door. A mad hope flashed through my brain: "I'm going to see my friend again." I was prepared for the miracle, but the miracle did not happen. A stranger of about sixty, very tall and lean, with staring eyes, had pressed his nose against the pane and was looking at me. He was holding a little flattened bundle under his arm.

The thing which impressed me most was his eager gaze, his eyes, ironical and full of fire. At any rate, that is how they appeared to me.

As soon as our eyes had met-he seemed to be making sure I was really the person he was looking for-the stranger opened the door with a determined thrust of his arm. He passed between the tables with a rapid, springy step, and stopped in front of me.

"Travelling?" he asked. "Where to? Trusting to providence?"

"I'm making for Crete. Why do you ask?"

"Taking me with you?"

I looked at him carefully. He had hollow cheeks, a strong jaw, prominent cheekbones, curly grey hair, bright piercing eyes.

"Why? What could I do with you?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Why! Why!" he exclaimed with disdain. "Can't a man do anything without a why? Just like that, because he wants to? Well, take me, shall we say, as cook. I can make soups you've never heard or thought of…"

I started to laugh. His bluff ways and trenchant words pleased me. Soups pleased me, too. It would not be a bad thing, I thought, to take this loose-knit fellow with me to that distant, lonely coast. Soups and stories… He looked as if he had knocked about the world quite a lot, a sort of Sinbad the Sailor… I liked him.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked me familiarly, shaking his great head. "You keep a pair of scales, too, do you? You weigh everything to the nearest gram, don't you? Come on, friend, make up your mind. Take the plunge!"

This great lanky lubber was standing over me, and it tired me to have to look up to speak to him. I closed my Dante. "Sit down," I said to him. "Have a glass of sage?"

"Sage?" he exclaimed with contempt. "Here! waiter! a rum!"

He drank his rum in little sips, keeping it a long time in his mouth to get the taste, then letting it slip slowly down and warm his insides. "A sensualist," I thought. "A connoisseur…"

"What kind of work do you do?" I asked.

"All kinds. With feet, hands or head-all of them. It'd be the limit if we chose what we did!"

"Where were you working last?"

"In a mine. I'm a good miner. I know a thing or two about metals, I know how to find the veins and open up galleries. I go down pits; I'm not afraid. I was working well. I was foreman, and had nothing to complain about. But then the devil took a hand in things. Last Saturday night, simply because I felt like it, I went off all of a sudden, got hold of the boss, who had come that day to inspect the place, and just beat him up…"

"But what for? What had he done to you?"

"To me? Nothing at all, I tell you! It was the first time I saw him. The poor devil had even handed out cigarettes."

"Well?"

"Oh, you just sit there and ask questions! It just came over me, that's all. You know the tale of the miller's wife, don't you? Well, you don't expect to learn spelling from her backside, do you? The backside of the miller's wife, that's human reason."

I had read many definitions of human reason. This one seemed to me the most astounding of all, and I liked it. I looked at my new companion with keen interest. His face was furrowed, weather beaten, like worm-eaten wood. A few years later another face gave me the same impression of worn and tortured wood: that of Panait Istrati. [2]

"And what have you got in your bundle? Food? Clothes? Or tools?"

My companion shrugged his shoulders and laughed.

"You seem a very sensible sort," he said, "begging your pardon."

He stroked his bundle with his long, hard fingers.

"No," he added, "it's a santuri." [3]

"A santuri? Do you play the santuri?"

"When I'm hard up, I go round the inns playing the santuri. I sing old Klephtic tunes from Macedonia. Then I take my hat round-this beret here!-and it fills up with money."

"What's your name?"

"Alexis Zorba. Sometimes they call me Baker's Shovel, because I'm so lanky and my head is flattened like a griddle-cake. Or else I'm called Passa Tempo because there was a time when I hawked roast pumpkin seeds. They call me Mildew, too, because wherever I go, they say, I get up to my tricks. Everything goes to the dogs. I have other nicknames as well, but we'll leave them for another time…"

"And how did you learn to play the santuri?"

"I was twenty. I heard the santuri for the first time at one of my village fêtes, over there at the foot of Olympus. It took my breath away. I couldn't eat anything for three days. 'What's wrong with you?' my father asked. May his soul rest in peace. 'I want to learn the santuri!' 'Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Are you a gipsy? D'you mean to say you'd turn into a strummer?' 'I want to learn the santuri!' I had a little money put aside for my marriage. It was a kid's idea, but I was still half-baked then, my blood was hot. I wanted to get married, the poor idiot! Anyway, I spent everything I had and more besides, and bought a santuri. The one you're looking at. I vanished with it to Salonica and got hold of a Turk, Retsep Effendi, who taught everybody the santuri. I threw myself at his feet. 'What do you want, little infidel?' he said. 'I want to learn the santuri.' 'All right, but why throw yourself at my feet?' 'Because I've no money to pay you!' 'Ánd you're really crazy about the santuri, are you?' 'Yes.' 'Well, you can stay, my boy. I don't need paying!' I stayed a year and studied with him. May God sanctify his remains! He must be dead now. If God lets dogs enter his paradise, let him open his gate to Retsep Effendi. Since I learnt to play the santuri, I've been a different man. When I'm feeling down, or when I'm broke, I play the santuri and it cheers me up. When I'm playing, you can talk to me, I hear nothing, and even if I hear, I can't speak. It's no good my trying. I can't!"

"But why, Zorba?"

"Oh, don't you see? A passion, that's what it is!"

The door opened. The sound of the sea once more penetrated the café. Our hands and feet were frozen. I snuggled further into my corner and wrapped myself in my overcoat. I savored the bliss of the moment.

"Where shall I go?" I thought. "I'm all right here. May this minute last for years."

I looked at the strange man in front of me. His eyes were riveted on mine. They were little, round eyes with very dark pupils and red veinlets on the whites. I felt them penetrating, searching me insatiably.

"Well?" I said. "Go on."

Zorba shrugged his bony shoulders again.

"Let's drop it," he said. "Will you give me a cigarette?"

I gave him one. He took a lighter flint out of his pocket and a wick which he lit. He half-closed his eyes with contentment.

"Married?"

"Aren't I a man?" he said angrily. "Aren't I a man? I mean blind. Like everyone else before me, I fell headlong into the ditch. I married. I took the road downhill. I became head of a family, I built a house, I had children-trouble. But thank God for the santuri!"

"You played to forget your cares, did you?"

"Look, I can see you don't play any instruments. Whatever are you talking about? In the house there are all your worries. The wife, The children. What are we going to eat? How shall we manage for clothes? What will become of us? Hell! No, for the santuri you must be in good form, you must be pure. If my wife says one word too many, how could I possibly be in the mood to play the santuri? If your children are hungry and screaming at you, you just try to play! To play the santuri you have to give everything up to it, d'you understand?"

Yes, I understood. Zorba was the man I had sought so long in vain. A living heart, a large voracious mouth, a great brute soul, not yet severed from mother earth.

The meaning of the words, art, love, beauty, purity, passion, all this was made clear to me by the simplest of human words uttered by this workman.

I looked at his hands, which could handle the pick and the santuri. They were horny, cracked, deformed and sinewy. With great care and tenderness, as if undressing a woman, they opened the sack and drew out an old santuri, polished by the years. It had many strings, it was adorned with brass and ivory and a red silk tassel. Those big fingers caressed it, slowly, passionately, all over, as if caressing a woman. Then they wrapped it up again, as if clothing the body of the beloved lest it should catch cold.

"That's my santuri!" he murmured, as he laid it carefully on a chair.

The seamen were now clinking their glasses and bursting with laughter. The old salt gave Captain Lemoni some friendly slaps on the back.

"You had a hell of a scare, now didn't you, captain? God knows how many candles you've promised to St. Nicholas!"

The captain knit his bushy eyebrows.

"No, I can swear to you, when I saw the archangel of death before me, I didn't think of the Holy Virgin, nor of St. Nicholas! I just turned towards Salamis. I thought of my wife, and I cried out: 'Ah, Katherina, if only I were in bed with you this minute!'"

Once more the seamen burst out laughing, and Captain Lemoni joined in with them.

"What an animal man is," he said. "The Archangel is right over his head with a sword, but his mind is fixed there, just there and nowhere else! The devil take the old goat!"

He clapped his hands.

"A round for the company!" he cried.

Zorba was listening intently with his big ears. He turned round, looked at the seamen, then at me.

"Where's there?" he asked. "What's that fellow talking about?"

But he suddenly understood and started.

"Bravo, my friend!" he cried in admiration. "Those seamen know the secret. Most likely because day and night they're at grips with death."

He waved his big fist in the air.

"Right!" he said. "That's another matter. Let's come back to our business. Do I stay, or do I go? Decide."

"Zorba," I said, and I had to restrain myself forcibly from throwing myself into his arms, "it's agreed'. You come with me. I have some lignite in Crete. You can superintend the workmen. In the evening we'll stretch out on the sand-in this world, I have neither wife, children nor dogs-we'll eat and drink together. Then you'll play the santuri."

"If I'm in the mood, d'you hear? If I'm in the mood. I'll work for you as much as you like. I'm your man there. But the santuri, that's different. It's a wild animal, it needs freedom. If I'm in the mood, I'll play. I'll even sing. And I'll dance the Zéimbékiko [4] the Hassápiko, [5] the Pentozáli [6]-but, I tell you plainly from the start, I must be in the mood. Let's have that quite clear. If you force me to, it'll be finished. As regards those things, you must realize, I'm a man."

"A man? What d'you mean?"

"Well, free!"

I called for another rum.

"Make it two!" Zorba cried. "You're going to have one, so that we can drink to it. Sage and rum don't go very well together. You're going to drink a rum, too, so that our agreement holds good."

We clinked our little glasses. Now it was really daylight. The ship was blowing its siren. The lighterman who had taken my cases on board signalled to me.

"May God be with us," I said as I rose. "Let's go!"

"God and the devil!" Zorba added calmly.

He leaned over, put the santuri under his arm, opened the door, and went out first.