Zorba The Greek

26

IT WAS ALL OVER. Zorba collected the cable, tools, trucks, iron scrap and timber, and made a heap of it on the beach, ready for the caique which was to load it.

"I'll make you a present of that, Zorba," I said. "It's all yours. Good luck!"

Zorba swallowed as íf trying to hold back a sob.

"Are we separating?" he murmured. "Where are you going, boss?"

"I'm leaving for abroad, Zorba. The old goat within me has still got a lot of papers to chew over."

"Haven't you learned any better yet, boss?"

"Yes, Zorba, thanks to you. But í'm going to adopt your system; I'm going to do with my books what you did with the cherries. I'm going to eat so much paper, it'll make me sick. I shall spew it all up and then be rid of it forever."

"And what's going to become of me without your company, boss?"

"Don't fret, Zorba, we shall meet again, and, who knows, man's strength is tremendous! One day we'll put our great plan into effect: we'll build a monastery of our own, without a god, without a devil, but with free men; and you shall be the gatekeeper, Zorba, and hold the great keys to open and close the gate-like Saint Peter…"

Zorba, seated on the ground with his back against the side of the hut, continually filled and refilled his glass, drinking and saying nothing.

Night had fallen, we had finished our meal. We were sipping wine and having our last talk. Early the following morning we were to separate.

"Yes, yes…" said Zorba, pulling at his moustache and taking a drink. "Yes, yes…"

Above us, the night was starlit; within us, our hearts longed for relief but still held back.

Say goodbye to him forever, I thought to myself. Take a good look at him; never, never again will you set eyes on Zorba!

I could have thrown myself upon his old bosom and wept, but I was ashamed. I tried to laugh to hide my emotion, but I could not. I had a lump in my throat.

I looked at Zorba as he craned his neck like a bird of prey and drank in silence. I watched him and I reflected what a truly baffling mystery is this life of ours. Men meet and drift apart again like leaves blown by the wind; your eyes try in vain to preserve an image of the face, body or gestures of the person you have loved; in a few years you do not even remember whether his eyes were blue or black.

The human soul should be made of brass; it should be made of steel! I cried within me. Not just of air!

Zorba was drinking, holding his big head erect, motionless. He seemed to be listening to steps approaching in the night or retreating into the innermost depths of his being.

"What are you thinking about, Zorba?"

"What am I thinking about, boss? Nothing. Nothing, I tell you! I wasn't thinking of anything."

After a moment or two, filling up his glass again, he saíd:

"Good health, boss!"

We clinked glasses. We both knew that so bitter a feelíng of sadness could not last much longer. We would have to burst into tears or get drunk, or begin to dance like lunatics.

"Play, Zorba!" I suggested.

"Haven't I already told you, boss? The santuri needs a happy heart. I'll play in a month's, perhaps two months' time-how can I tell? Then I'll sing about how two people separate forever."

"Forever!" I cried terrified. I had been saying that irremediable word to myself, but had not expected to hear it said out loud. I was frightened.

"Forever!" Zorba repeated, swallowing his saliva with some difficulty. "That's it-forever. What you've just said about meeting again, and building our monastery, all that is what you tell a sick man to put him on his feet. I don't accept it. I don't want it. Are we weak like women to need cheering up like that? Of course we aren't. Yet, it's forever!"

"Perhaps I'll stay here with you…" I said, appalled by Zorba's desperate affection for me. "Perhaps I shall come away with you. I'm free."

Zorba shook his head.

"No, you're not free," he said. "The string you're tied to is perhaps no longer than other people's. That's all. You're on a long piece of string, boss; you come and go, and think you're free, but you never cut the string in two. And when people don't cut that…"

"I'll cut it some day!" I said defiantly, because Zorba's words had touched an open wound in me and hurt.

"It's difficult, boss, very difficult. You need a touch of folly to do that; folly, d'you see? You have to risk everything! But you've got such a strong head, it'll always get the better of you. A man's head is like a grocer; it keeps accounts: I've paid so much and earned so much and that means a profit of this much or a loss of that much! The head's a careful little shopkeeper; it never risks all it has, always keeps something in reserve. It never breaks the string. Ah no! It hangs on tight to it, the bastard! If the string slips out of its grasp, the head, poor devil, is lost, finished! But if a man doesn't break the string, tell me, what flavor is left in life? The flavor of camomile, weak camomile tea! Nothing like rum-that makes you see life inside out!"

He was silent, helped himself to some more wine, but started to speak again.

"You must forgive me, boss," he said. "I'm just a clodhopper. Words stick between my teeth like mud to my boots. I can't turn out beautiful sentences and compliments. I just can't. But you understand, I know."

He emptied his glass and looked at me.

"You understand!" he cried, as if suddenly filled with anger. "You understand, and that's why you'll never have any peace. If you didn't understand, you'd be happy! What d'you lack? You're young, you have money, health, you're a good fellow, you lack nothing. Nothing, by thunder! Except just one thing-folly! And when that's missing, boss, well…"

He shook his big head and was silent again.

I nearly wept. All that Zorba said was true. As a child I had been full of mad ímpulses, superhuman desires, I was not content with the world. Gradually, as time went by, I grew calmer. I set limits, separated the possible from the impossible, the human from the divine, I held my kite tightly, so that it should not escape.

A large shooting star streaked across the sky. Zorba started and opened wide his eyes as if he were seeing a shooting star for the first time in his life.

"Did you see that star?" he asked.

"Yes."

We were silent.

Suddenly Zorba craned his scraggy neck, puffed out his chest and gave a wild, despairing cry. And immediately the cry canalized itself into human speech, and from the depths of Zorba's being rose an old monotonous melody, full of sadness and solitude. The heart of the earth itself split in two and released the sweet, compellíng poison of the East. I felt inside me all the fibers still linking me to courage and hope slowly rotting.

Iki kiklik bir tependé otiyor Otme dé, kiklik, bemin dertim yetiyor, aman! aman!

Desert, fine sand, as far as eye can see. The shimmering air, pink, blue, yellow; your temples bursting. The soul gives a wild cry and exults because no cry comes in response. My eyes filled with tears.

A pair of red-legged partridges were piping on a hillock; Partridges, pipe no more! My own suffering is enough for me, aman! aman!

Zorba was silent. With a sharp movement of his fingers he wiped he sweat off his brow. He leaned forward and stared at the ground.

"What is that Turkish song, Zorba?" I asked after a while.

"The camel driver's song. It's the song he sings in the desert. I hadn't sung it or remembered it for years. But just now…"

He raised his head, his voice was sharp, his throat constricted.

"Boss," he said, "it's time you went to bed. You'll have to get up at dawn tomorrow if you're going to catch the boat at Candia. Good night!"

"I'm not sleepy," I said. "I'm going to stay up with you. This is our last night together."

"That's just why we must end it quickly!" he cried, turning down his empty glass as a sign he did not wish to drink any more. "Here and now, just like that. As men cut short smoking, wine, and cards. Like a Greek hero, a Palikari,

"My father was a real Palikari. Don't look at me, I'm only a breath of air beside him. I don't come up to his ankles. He was one of those ancient Greeks they always talk about. When he shook your hand he nearly crushed your bones to pulp. I can talk now and then, but my father roared, neighed and sang. There very rarely came a human word out of his mouth…

"Well, he had all the vices, but he'd slash them, as you would with a sword. For instance, he smoked like a chimney. One morning he got up and went into the fields to plough. He arrived, leaned on the hedge, pushed his hand into his belt for his tobacco pouch to roll a cigarette before he began work, took out his pouch and found it was empty. He'd forgotten to fill it before leaving the house.

"He foamed with rage, let out a roar, and then bounded away towards the village. His passion for smoking completely unbalanced his reason, you see. But suddenly-I've always said I think a man's a mystery-he stopped, filled with shame, pulled out his pouch and tore it to shreds with his teeth, then stamped it in the ground and spat on it. 'Filth! Filth!' he bellowed. 'Dirty slut!'

"And from that hour, until the end of his days, he never put another cigarette between his lips.

"That's the way real men behave, boss. Good night!"

He stood up and strode across the beach. He did not look back

once. He went as far as the fringe of the sea and stretched himself out there on the pebbles.

I never saw him again. The muleteer arrived before cock-crow. I climbed into the saddle and left. I may be mistaken, but I suspect that Zorba was hidden somewhere about, watching me leave, though he did not run up to say the usual words of farewell, to make us sad and tearful, to shake hands and wave handkerchiefs and exchange vows.

Our separation was as clean as a sword cut.

In Candia I was given a telegram. I took it with trembling hands and looked at it for some time before I opened it. I knew what it said. I could see with a terrifying certainty the number of words, even the number of letters it contained.

I was seized with the desire to tear it to pieces without opening it. Why read it when I knew what was inside? But we no longer have faith in our souls, alas! Reason, the eternal grocer, laughs at the soul, as we ourselves laugh at witches and old women who cast spells. Or at eccentric old ladies. So I opened the telegram. It was from Tiflis. For a moment the letters danced before my eyes, I could not make out a word. But slowly they came to a standstill and I read:

YESTERDAY AFTERNOON STAVRIDAKI DIED FROM PNEUMONIA.

Five years went by, five long years of terror, during which time gathered speed, and geographical frontiers joined the dance, national boundaries expanded and contracted like so many concertinas. Zorba and I were carried away by the storm; though from time to time, in the first three years, I had a brief card from him.

One from Mount Athos -a card of the Virgin, Guardian of the Gates, with her big sad eyes and her strong and determined chin. Beneath the Virgin Zorba had written with his thick, heavy pen, which always scratched the paper: "No chance of doing business here, boss! The monks here even fleece their fleas! I'm leaving!" A few days later another card: "I can't go round all these monasteries holding the parrot in my hand like a travelling showman. I made a present of it to a comic sort of monk who had taught a blackbird to whistle Kyrie Eleison beautifully. The little devil sings like a real monk; it shocks you to hear him. He's going to teach our poor parrot to sing, too. Ah! the things that rascal's seen in his lifetime! And now he's become a holy father, our parrot has! All the best. Father Alexios, holy anchorite."

Six or seven months later I had a card from Rumania showing a very buxom woman wearing a low-necked dress.

I'm still alive, I'm eating mamaliga [33] and drinking vodka. I work in the oil mines and am as dirty and stinking as any sewer rat. But who cares? you can find here plenty of all your heart and belly can desire. A real paradise for old rascals like me. Do you understand, boss? A wonderful life… plenty of sweetmeats, and sweethearts into the bargain, God be praised! All the best.

Alexis Zorbescu, sewer rat.

Two years went by. I received another card, this time from Serbia.

I'm still alive. It's hellishly cold, so I've been obliged to get married. Turn over and you'll see her face-a fine bit of female stuff. She's a trifle fat about the middle because she's cooking up a little Zorba for me. I am standing at her side wearing the suit you gave me, and the wedding ring you see on my hand is poor old Bouboulina's-nothing is impossible! God bless her remains! This one's name is Lyuba. The coat with fox-fur collar I'm wearing is part of my wife's dowry. She also brought me a mare and seven pigs-a funny lot they are! And two children from her first marriage, because I forgot to say she was a widow. I've found a copper mine in a mountain close by here. I've managed to get round another capitalist and am now taking it very easy, like a pasha. All the best.

Alexis Zorbic', ex-widower.

On the back of the card was a photograph of Zorba in splendid form, dressed as a newlywed, with a fur cap and a long new overcoat and carrying a swagger cane. On his arm was a beautiful Slav woman of no more than twenty-five, a wild mare with generous haunches, looking tempting and roguish, wearing high boots and graced with an ample bosom. Beneath the photograph was some more of Zorba's pot-hooked writing: "Me, Zorba, and that unending business, women-this time her name's Lyuba."

All those years I was travelling abroad. I also had my unending business, but it had no ample bosom, no new coat, no pigs to give me.

One day in Berlin came a telegram: FOUND A WONDERFUL GREEN STONE. COME IMMEDIATELY, ZORBA.

It was the time of the great famine in Germany. The mark had fallen so low that you were obliged to carry millions of them about in a suitcase to buy even the smallest thing, like a postage stamp. Famine, cold, worn clothes, shoes full of holes everywhere-and the ruddy German cheeks had grown pale. If there was a slight breeze, men fell down in the street like leaves before the wind. Mothers gave their children pieces of rubber to chew to stop them crying. At night the police kept guard on the bridges across the river to prevent mothers from throwing themselves over, with their children in their arms, just to bring it all to an end somehow.

It was winter and it was snowing. In the room next to mine a German professor of oriental languages tried to warm himself by taking a long brush in his hand and, after the painful custom of the Far East, copying out some old Chinese poems or a saying from Confucius. The tip of the brush, the raised elbow and the heart of the writer had to form a triangle.

"After a few minutes," he used to tell me with satisfaction, "sweat begins to pour off me. That's how I get warm."

It was in the midst of bitter days such as those that I received Zorba's telegram. At first I was angry. Millíons of men were sinking into degradation because they hadn't even a crust of bread to sustain their bodies and souls, and here came a telegram asking me to set out and travel thousands of miles to see a beautiful green stone! To hell wíth beauty! She has no heart and does not care a jot for human suffering!

But soon I was horrified: my anger had evaporated and I began to realize my heart was responding to this inhuman appeal of Zorba's. Some wild bird in me was beating its wings and asking to go.

Yet I did not go. Once more I did not dare. I did not obey the divine and savage clamor within me; I did no insensate, noble act. I listened to the moderating, cold, human voice of logic. So I took my pen and wrote to Zorba to explain. And he answered.

You are a pen-pusher, boss, if you'll allow me to say so. You too could have seen a beautiful green stone at least once in your life, you poor soul, and you didn't see it. My God, sometimes when I had no work, I asked myself the question: Is there or isn't there any hell? But yesterday, when your letter came, I said: There surely must be a hell for a few pen-pushers like the boss!

Zorba has never written to me since. We were separated by even more terrible events. The world continued to stagger and reel like a drunken man. The ground opened and friendships and personal cares were engulfed.

I often talked to my friends of this great soul. We admired the proud and confident bearing, deeper than reason, of this untutored man. Spiritual heights, which took us years of painful effort to attain, were attained by Zorba in one bound. And we said: "Zorba is a great soul!" Or else he leapt beyond those heights, and then we said: "Zorba is mad!"

So time passed, sweetly poisoned by memories. Another shadow, that of my friend, also fell across my soul. It never left me-because I myself did not wish to leave it.

But of that shadow I never spoke to anyone. I talked to it in private, and, thanks to it, was becoming reconciled with death. I had my secret bridge to the other side. When my friend's soul crossed the bridge, I felt it was weary and pale; it was too weak to shake my hand.

Sometimes I thought with fright that perhaps my friend had not had time on earth to transform the slavery of the body into liberty, or to develop and strengthen his soul, so that it should not be seized by panic and destroyed at the supreme moment of death. Perhaps, I thought, he had no time to immortalize what there was to immortalize in him.

But now and then he was stronger-was it he? or was it just the more intense way I remembered him?-and when he came at these times he was young and exacting. I seemed even to hear his steps on the stairs.

One winter I had gone on a solitary pilgrimage into the Engadine mountains, where many years before my friend and I, with a woman we both loved, had passed some ecstatic hours together.

I was asleep in the same hotel where he had stayed. The moon was streaming through the open wíndow and I felt the spirit of the mountains, of the snow-covered pines and the calm, blue night enter my mind.

I felt an indescribable felicity, as if sleep were a deep, peaceful, transparent sea and I was cradled, happy and motionless, in the depths; but my senses were so keenly attuned that had a boat passed on the surface of the water, thousands of fathoms above me, it would have made a gash on my body.

Suddenly a shadow fell across me. I knew who it was. His voice came, full of reproach:

"Are you asleep?"

I replied in the same tone:

"You kept me waiting for you; I haven't heard the sound of your voice for months. Where have you been wandering?"

"I have been by you all the time, but you had forgotten me. I do not always have the strength to call, and, as for you, you are trying to abandon me. The light of the moon is beautiful, and so are the trees covered with snow, and life on earth. But, for pity's sake, do not forget me!"

"I do not forget you; you know that very well. The first days when you left me, I ran over the wild mountains to tire my body out, and spent sleepless nights thinking of you. I even wrote poems to give vent to my feelings… but they were wretched poems which could not remove my pain. One of them began like this:

And whilst, with Charon, you trod the rugged yath, I admired the litheness of your bodies, your stature. Like two wild ducks who wake at dawn and depart…

And in another poem, also unfinished, I cried:

Clench your teeth, O loved one, lest your soul fly away!"

He smiled bitterly, bent his face over me and I shuddered as I saw his paleness.

He looked at me for a long tíme with empty sockets where there had once been eyes. Now there were just two little pellets of earth.

"What are you thinking of?" I murmured. "Why don't you say something?"

Again his voice came like a distant sigh:

"Äh, what remains of a soul for which the world was too small! A few lines of someone else's poetry, scattered and mutilated lines-not even a complete quatrain! I come and go on earth, visit those who were dear to me, but their hearts are closed. Where can I enter? How can I bring myself to life? I turn in a circle like a dog going round and round a house where all the doors are locked and barred. Ah! if only I could live free, and not have to cling like a drowning man to your warm and living bodies!"

The tears sprang from his sockets; the pellets of earth turned into mud.

But soon his voice grew stronger:

"The greatest joy you ever gave me," he said, "was once at a festival in Zürich. Do you rememberr1 You raised your glass to drink to my health. Do you recall that? There was someone else with us…"

"I remember," I answered. "We called her our gracious lady…"

We were silent. How many centuries seemed to have passed since then! Zürich! It was snowing outside; there were flowers on the table. There were three of us.

"What are you thinking about, master?" asked the shadow, with a touch of irony.

"A number of things, everything…"

"I am thinking of your last words. You raised your glass and said in a trembling voice: 'My dear friend, when you were a baby, your old grandfather held you on one knee, and placed on the other the Cretan lyre and played some Palikaria airs. Tonight I drink to your health. May destiny see to it that you always sit in the lap of God!'"

"God has quickly granted your prayer, alas!"

"What does it matter?" I cried. "Love is stronger than death."

He smiled again bitterly, but said nothing. I could feel his body was dissolving in the darkness, becoming a mere sob, a sigh, a jest.

For days the taste of death remained on my lips. But my heart was relieved. Death had entered my life with a familiar and well-loved face, like a friend come to call for you and who waits patiently in a corner until you have finished your work.

But Zorba's shadow was always prowling jealously about me. One night I was alone in my house by the sea on the island of Aegina. I was happy. My window was open on to the sea, the moon came streaming in, the sea was sighing with happiness, too. My body was voluptuously weary with too much swimming and I was sleeping profoundly.

Suddenly, just before dawn, in the midst of all that happiness, Zorba appeared in my dream. I cannot remember what he said or why he had come. But when I awoke my heart was ready to break. Without my knowing why, my eyes filled with tears. I was filled with an irresistible desire to reconstitute the life we had lived together on the coast of Crete, to drive my memory to work and gather together all the sayings, cries, gestures, tears, and dances which Zorba had scattered in my mind-to save them.

This desire was so violent that I was afraid. I saw in it a sign that, somewhere on earth, Zorba was dying. For I felt my soul to be so united with his that it seemed impossible for one of them to die without the other being shaken and crying out with pain.

For a moment I hesitated to group together all my memories of Zorba and put them into words. A childish terror took possession of me. I said to myself: If I do that, it will mean that Zorba is really in danger of dying. I must fight against the mysterious hand which seems to be urging mine to do it.

I resisted for two days, three days, a week. I threw myself into other writing, went out on excursions all day and read a great deal. Such were the stratagems I employed to elude the invisible presence. But my mind was entirely absorbed by a powerful feeling of disquiet on Zorba's behalf.

One day I was seated on the terrace of my house by the sea. It was noon. The sun was very hot and I was gazing at the bare and graceful flanks of Salamis before me. Suddenly, urged on by that divine hand, I took some paper, stretched myself out on the burning flagstones of the terrace and began to relate the sayings and doings of Zorba.

I wrote impetuously, hastening to bring the past back to life, trying to recall Zorba and resuscitate him exactly as he was. I felt that if he disappeared it would be entirely my fault, and I worked day and night to draw as full a picture as possible of my old friend.

I worked like the sorcerers of the savage tribes of Àfrica when they draw on the walls of their caves the Ancestors they have seen in their dreams, striving to make it as lifelike as possible so that the spirit of the Ancestor can recognize his body and enter into it.

In a few weeks my chronicle of Zorba was complete. On the last day I was again sitting on the terrace in the late afternoon, and gazing at the sea. On my lap was the completely finished manuscript. I was happy and relieved, as though a burden had been lifted from me. I was like a woman holding her new-born baby.

Behind the mountains of the Peloponnesus the red sun was setting as Soula, a little peasant girl who brought me my mail from the town, came up to the terrace. She held a letter out to me and ran away… I understood. At least, it seemed to me that I understood, because when I opened the letter and read it, I did not leap up and utter a cry, I was not stricken with terror. I was sure. I knew that at this precise moment, while I was holding the manuscript on my lap and watching the setting sun, I would receive that letter.

Calmly, unhurriedly, I read the letter. It was from a village near to Skoplije in Serbia, and was written in indifferent German. I translated it:

I am the schoolmaster of this village and am writing to inform you of the sad news that Alexis Zorba, owner of a copper mine here, died last Sunday evening at six o'clock. On his deathbed, he called to me.

"Come here, schoolmaster," he said. "I have a friend in Greece. When I am dead write to him and tell him that right until the very last minute I was in full possession of my senses and was thinking of him. And tell him that whatever I have done, I have no regrets. Tell him I hope he is well and that it's about time he showed a bit of sense.

"Listen, just another minute. If some priest or other comes to take my confession and give me the sacrament, tell him to clear out, quick, and leave me his curse instead! I've done heaps and heaps of things in my life, but I still did not do enough. Men like me ought to live a thousand years. Good night!"

These were his last words. He then sat up in his bed, threw back the sheets and tried to get up. We ran to prevent him-Lyuba, his wife, and I, along with several sturdy neighbors. But he brushed us all roughly aside, jumped out of bed and went to the window. There, he grípped the frame, looked out far into the mountains, opened wide his eyes and began to laugh, then to whinny like a horse. It was thus, standing, with his nails dug into the window frame, that death came to him.

His wife Lyuba asked me to write to you and send her respects. The deceased often talked about you, she says, and left ínstructions that a santuri of his should be given to you after his death to help you to remember him.

The widow begs you, therefore, if you ever pass through our víllage, to be good enough to spend the night in her house as her guest, and when you leave in the morning, to take the santuri with you.