Chapter 13

XIII

Three days, four days, five days went by, and still no Zorba. On the sixth day I received from Candia a letter several pages long, a whole lot of rigmarole. It was written on scented pink paper and, in the corner of the page, was a heart pierced by an arrow.

I kept it carefully and am copying it faithfully, retaining the laboured expressions to be found here and there. I have merely corrected the charming spelling. Zorba held a pen like a pickaxe; he attacked the paper violently with it, and that is why the paper had a number of holes in it and was covered with blots.

‘Dear Boss! Mister Capitalist!

‘I take up the pen to ask if your health is favourable. We are quite well, too, God be praised!

‘I have realised for some time I didn’t come into this world to be a horse, or an ox. Only animals live to eat. To escape the above accusation, I invent jobs for myself day and night. I risk my daily bread for an idea, I turn the proverb round and say: “Better be a lean moorhen on a pond than a fat sparrow in a cage.” ‘Lots of people are patriots without it costing them anything. I am not a patriot, and will not be, whatever it costs me. Lots of people believe in paradise and they keep an ass tethered there. I have no ass, I am free! I am not afraid of hell where my ass would die. I don’t long for paradise either, where he would stuff himself with clover. I am an ignorant blockhead, I don’t know how to put things, but you understand me, boss.

‘Lots of people have been afraid of the vanity of things! I’ve overcome it. Lots reflect hard; I have no need to reflect. I don’t rejoice over the good and don’t despair over the bad. If I hear that the Greeks have taken Constantinople, it’s just the same to me as if the Turks were taking Athens.

‘If you think from the balderdash I talk I’m going soft in the head, write to me. I go into the shops here in Candia, trying to buy cable, and I laugh.

‘“What are you laughing at, brother?” they keep asking. But how can I tell them? I laugh because, just when I hold out my hand to see if the steel cable is good, I think about what mankind is and why he ever came onto this earth and what good he is… No good at all, if you ask me. It makes no difference whether I have a woman or whether I don’t, whether I’m honest or not, whether I’m a pasha or a street-porter. The only thing that makes any difference is whether I’m alive or dead. Whether the devil or God calls me (and do you know what, boss? I think the devil and God are the same), I shall die, turn into a reeking corpse, and stink people out. They’ll be obliged to shove me at least four feet down in the earth, so that they won’t get choked!

‘By the way, I’m going to ask you about something that rather scares me—the only thing, mind—and it leaves me no peace, night or day. What scares me, boss, is old age. Heaven preserve us from that! Death is nothing—just pff! and the candle is snuffed out. But old age is a disgrace.

‘I consider it a deep disgrace to admit I’m getting on, and I do all I can to stop people seeing I’ve grown old: I hop about, dance, my back aches but I keep dancing. I drink, get dizzy, everything spins round, but I don’t sit down, I just act as if everything’s hunky-dory. I sweat, so I plunge into the sea, catch cold and want to cough—gooh! gooh!—to relieve myself but I feel ashamed, boss, and force back the cough. Have you ever heard me cough? Never! And not, as you might think, just when there are other people about, but when I’m by myself, too! I feel ashamed in front of Zorba—what do you think of that, boss? I’m ashamed in front of him!

‘One day on Mount Athos—because I’ve been there, and I’d have done better to cut off my right hand!—I met a monk, Father Lavrentio, a native of Chios. He, poor fellow, believed he had a devil inside him and he’d even given him a name: he called him Hodja. “Hodja wants to eat meat on Good Friday!” poor Lavrentio used to roar, beating his head on the church wall. “Hodja wants to sleep with a woman. Hodja wants to kill the Abbot. It’s Hodja, Hodja, it isn’t me!” And he’d bang his head on the stone.

‘I’ve a kind of devil inside me, too, boss, and I call him Zorba! The inner Zorba doesn’t want to grow old, not at all, and he hasn’t grown old, he never will grow old. He’s an ogre, he’s got hair as black as jet, thirty-two (figures: 32) teeth, and a red carnation behind his ear. But the outer Zorba, poor devil, has got a bit of a corporation and quite a few white hairs. He’s shrivelled and gone wrinkled; his teeth fall out and his big ear is full of the white hair of old age, long ass’s hair!

‘What can he do, boss? How long will these two Zorbases fight each other? Which one will win? If I kick the bucket soon, it’ll be all right, I don’t care. But if I go on living for a long time yet, I’m done. Done, boss! The day will come when I’ll be disgraced. I’ll lose my liberty: my daughter-in-law and daughter will order me to keep watch on some infant, a fearful little monster of theirs, so that he doesn’t burn himself, or fall over, or dirty himself. And if he does dirty himself, pooh! they’ll make me clean him up!

‘You’ll have to go through the same sort of shame, boss, although you’re young. You watch out. Listen to what I tell you, follow the same road as me, there’s no other salvation: let’s go up into the mountains, mine them for coal, copper, iron and calamine; let’s make our pile so that relatives respect us and friends lick our boots and all the well-to-do raise their hats to us. If we don’t succeed, boss, we might as well pack up, be killed by wolves, or bears, or any wild beast we can find—and much good may it do them! That’s why God sent wild beasts on earth: to finish off a few people like us, so they don’t fall too low.’

Here Zorba had drawn with coloured pencils a tall, lean man, fleeing under some green trees, with seven red wolves at his heels, and at the top of the picture, in big letters, was written: “Zorba and the Seven Deadly Sins” Then he went on: ‘You must see from this letter what an unhappy man I am. It’s only when I’m with you that I have any chance, through talking to you, of getting some relief from my morbid state of mind. Because you’re like me, too, only you don’t know it. You’ve got a devil inside you, as well, but you don’t know his name yet, and, since you don’t know that, you can’t breathe. Baptise him, boss, and you’ll feel better!

‘I was saying how unhappy I am. I can see clearly that all my intelligence is stupidity and nothing more. There are times, though, when for whole days great thoughts occur to me, and if only I could do what that inside Zorba tells me to do the world would be amazed!

‘Seeing as how I have no time-limit clause in my contract with life, I let the brakes off when I get to the most dangerous slopes. The life of man is a road with steep rises and dips. All sensible people use their brakes. But—and this is where, boss, maybe I show what I’m made of—I did away with my brakes altogether a long time ago, because I’m not at all scared of a jolt. When a machine goes off the rails we mechanics call that “a jolt!” And the devil knows if I take any notice of the jolts I get. Day and night, I go full steam ahead, doing just what I like; so much the worse if I fold up and get smashed to pieces. What have I got to lose? Nothing. Even if I do take it easy, won’t I end up just the same? Of course I will! So let’s scorch along!

‘I’m sure I’m making you laugh now, boss, but I’m writing down my blather, or, if you like, my reflections, or my weaknesses—what’s the difference between the three?—I really couldn’t say—I’m writing to you, and you have a good laugh if you’re not bored. I’m laughing at the thought of you laughing, and that’s how laughing never stops on this earth. Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all, in my view, is not to have one.

‘So you can see I’m sorting out my own brand of folly here in Candia, and I’m giving you the whole shoot, boss, because I want to ask your advice. You’re still young, of course, but you have read the old books of wisdom and you’ve become, if you don’t mind my saying so, a bit old fashioned; so I’d like your advice.

‘Well, I think every man has his own smell. We don’t notice it much because smells mingle all together and we can’t tell which is yours and which is mine, really… All we know is that there’s a foul smell and that’s what we call “humanity”… I mean “the human stench.” There are people who sniff at it as if it was lavender. It makes me want to spew. Anyway, let’s get on, that’s another story… ‘I wanted to say—I was just going to let off the brake again—that women, the jades, have wet noses, like bitches, and straight away smell out a man who desires them and one who doesn’t. That’s why in every town I’ve ever set foot in, even now when I’m old, ugly as an ape and got no smart clothes, I’ve always had one or two women running after me. They sniff me out, the bitches! God bless ‘em!

‘Anyway, the first day I arrived safely in Candia, it was dusk. I rushed straight to the shops, but they were all closed. I went to an inn, gave the mule some fodder, ate myself and had a clean-up. I lit a cigarette and went out for a look-round. I didn’t know a soul in the town and no one knew me; I was absolutely free. I could whistle in the street, laugh, talk to myself. I bought some passatempo, [19] nibbled, spat and wandered to my heart’s content. The street-lamps were lit, men were having their aperitifs, women were going home, the air was scented with powder, toilet-soap, anisette, and souvlakia. [20] I said to myself: “Listen, Zorba, how long do you expect to live with those quivering nostrils? You haven’t got very long left, to sniff the air. Go on, old chap, breathe it in as deep as you can!” [19] Salted roast pumpkin seeds.

[20] Grilled meat on a skewer.

‘That’s what I was saying as I walked up and down the big square -you know the one. Suddenly—praise be to God—I heard shouts, dancing, a tambourine playing and some oriental songs. I pricked up my ears and ran to where the noise was coming from. It was a cafe with a cabaret. That was just what I wanted. I went in. I sat down at a little table, well to the front. Why shouldn’t I be bold? As I say, nobody knew me, I was absolutely free.

‘A big gawk of a woman was dancing on the platform, lifting her skirts up, but I didn’t pay any attention. I ordered a bottle of beer, and then a sweet, dusky little creature came and sat down at my table. She’d plastered on her paint with a trowel.

‘“Do you mind, grandad?” she asked, laughing.

‘The blood rushed up to my head at this. I felt a terrible urge to wring her neck, the hussy! But I held myself back, I was sorry for the “female of the species” so I called a waiter.

‘“Two bottles of champagne!”

‘Forgive me, boss! I’ve spent some of your money, but it was such a terrible insult, I had to save our honour, yours as well as mine, I had to bring that little brat to her knees before us, I really had to. I know you would never have left me defenceless, like that, at a difficult moment! So, “Two bottles of champagne, waiter!” ‘The champagne arrived, and I ordered cakes as well, then some more champagne. A man with some jasmine came up and I bought the basketful and emptied it into the lap of the little bit of fluff who’d dared insult us.

‘We drank and drank, but on my oath, boss, I didn’t even pinch her. I know my stuff. When I was young the first thing I did was to pinch and play with them. Now I’m old, the first thing I do is to spend money, be gallant, open-fisted. Women adore being treated like that. The jades go crazy about you; and you can be hump-backed, an old ruin, as ugly as a louse, and they’ll forget all that. They can’t see anything else, the bitches, but the hand that brings out the money and lets it flow away like a basket with a hole in it. So, as I was saying, I spent a fortune—may God bless you, boss, and return it to you a hundred-fold—and the above-mentioned girl stuck tight to me. She came closer and closer; she pressed her little knee up against my big bony stumps. But I was just like a block of ice, although inside I was hot and bothered. That’s what makes women lose their heads; you’d better learn that, in case you find yourself in the same situation, it might stand you in good stead: let ‘em feel you’re burning inside and yet you don’t touch ‘em!

‘Well, midnight came and went. The lights began going out, the cafe was closing. I took out a roll of thousand-drachma notes, paid the bill and left a generous tip for the waiter. The girl clung to me.

‘“What’s your name?” she asked me in a love-sick tone.

‘“Grandad!” I replied, vexed.

‘The brazen little bitch pinched me hard, and whispered: “Come with me… come with me!” ‘I took her little hand, squeezed it with a knowing air and answered:

‘“Come, then, little one…” My voice was hoarse.

‘You can imagine the rest, boss. We did our stuff. Then we went to sleep. When I woke up it must have been at least midday. I looked round, and what do I see? A charming little room, spick and span, easychairs, a washbasin, soaps, scent bottles, mirrors of all sizes, gaily-coloured dresses hanging on the wall, a crowd of photographs: sailors, officers, captains, policemen, dancing-women, women with only one thing on—a pair of sandals. And next to me in the bed—warm, scented, and with ruffled hair, the female of the species!

‘“Ah, Zorba,” I said to myself, closing my eyes, “you’ve entered Paradise while you’re still alive! This is a good place to be; don’t budge!” ‘I told you once before, boss, that each man has his own particular paradise. For you, Paradise will be stocked full of books and big demijohns of ink. For someone else it’ll be full of casks of wine, of rum and brandy, for another piles of money. For me Paradise is this: a little perfumed room with gay-coloured dresses on the wall, scented soaps, a big bed with good springs, and at my side the female of the species.

‘A fault confessed is half redressed. I didn’t stick my nose outside the door that day. Where would I have gone? What should I have done? No fear! I was fine where I was. I sent an order to the best inn of the town and they brought us a tray of food—nothing but good, strength-giving food: black caviar, chops, fish, lemon-juice, cadaif.[21] We looked after our little affairs again and had another nap. We woke up in the evening, dressed and went off arm-in-arm to the cafe once more.

[21] A sweet Turkish pastry, containing nuts, etc.

To cut a long story short and not drown you in words, that programme is still in operation. But don’t you worry yourself, boss, I’m looking after your little affairs, too. Now and then I go and look round the shops. I’ll buy the cable and all we need, don’t you worry. A day sooner, or a day or a week later, even a month later, what does it matter? As we say, if the cat’s in too much of a hurry, she has peculiar kittens. In your interest, I’m waiting for my ears to pick up everything and my mind to clear, so I’m not swindled. The cable must be first-class, or we shall be dished. So be patient, boss, and trust in me.

‘Above all, don’t worry about my health. Adventures are good for me. In the matter of a few days I’ve become a young man of twenty again. I’m so strong, I tell you, I shall be growing a new set o’ teeth. My back was hurting me a bit when I arrived, now I’m as fit as a fiddle. Every morning I look at myself in the mirror and I’m amazed my hair hasn’t turned as black as boot-polish overnight.

‘But you’ll be asking why I’m writing to you like this? Well… you’re a sort of confessor to me, boss, and I’m not ashamed to admit all my sins to you. Do you know why? So far as I can see, whether I do right or wrong, you don’t care a rap. You hold a damp sponge, like God, and flap! slap! you just wipe it all out. That’s what prompts me to tell you everything like this. So listen!

‘I’m all topsy-turvy and on the point of going completely off my head. Please, boss, take your pen and write to me as soon as you get this letter. Until I have your answer, I’ll be on tenterhooks. I think that for years now my name’s been scratched off God’s register. And off the devil’s, too. Yours is the only register I think I’m still on, so I’ve got nobody but your worshipful self to turn to; so listen to what I’ve got to say. This is what it’s about: ‘Yesterday there was a fete on in a village near Candia—devil take me if I know what saint it was in aid of! Lola—ah! true enough, I’d forgotten to introduce her to you; her name’s Lola—she says to me: ‘“Grandad!” She calls me grandad once more, but now it’s a pet-name, boss. “Grandad,” she says, “I’d like to go to the fete!” ‘“Go on, then, grandma,” I say to her.

‘“But I want to go with you.”

‘“I’m not going. I don’t like saints. You go by yourself.”

‘“All right, I shan’t go either.”

‘I stared at her.

‘“You won’t? Why not? Don’t you want to?”

‘“If you come with me, I do. If not, I don’t.”

‘“Why not? You’re a free person, aren’t you?”

‘“No, I’m not.”

‘“You don’t want to be free?”

‘“No, I don’t.”

‘I thought I must be hearing voices. I really did.

‘“You don’t want to be free?” I cried.

‘“No, I don’t! I don’t! I don’t!”

‘Boss, I’m writing this in Lola’s room, on Lola’s paper; for God’s sake, listen carefully I think only people who want to be free are human beings. Women don’t want to be free. Well, is woman a human being?

‘For heaven’s sake, answer as soon as possible.

‘All the best to the best of bosses.

‘Me, Alexis Zorba.’

When I had finished reading Zorba’s letter I was for a while in two minds—no, three. I did not know whether to be angry, or laugh, or just admire this primitive man who simply cracked life’s shell—logic, morality, honesty—and went straight to its very substance. All the little virtues which are so useful are lacking in him. All he has is an uncomfortable, dangerous virtue which is hard to satisfy and which urges him continually and irresistibly towards the utmost limits, towards the abyss.

When he writes, this ignorant workman breaks his pens in his impetuosity. Like the first men to cast off their monkey-skins, or like the great philosophers, he is dominated by the basic problems of mankind. He lives them as if they were immediate and urgent necessities. Like the child, he sees everything for the first time. He is for ever astonished and wonders why and wherefore. Everything seems miraculous to him, and each morning when he opens his eyes he sees trees, sea, stones and birds, and is amazed. “What is this miracle?” he cries.

“What are these mysteries called: trees, sea, stones, birds?”

One day, I remember, when we were making our way to the village, we met a little old man astride a mule. Zorba opened his eyes wide as he looked at the beast. And his look was so intense that the peasant cried out in terror: “For God’s sake, brother, don’t give him the evil eye!” And he crossed himself.

I turned to Zorba.

“What did you do to the old chap to make him cry out like that?” I asked him.

“Me? What d’you think I did? I was looking at his mule, that’s all! Didn’t it strike you, boss?” “What?”

“Well… that there are such things as mules in this world!”

Another day, I was reading, stretched out on the shore, and Zorba came and sat down opposite me, placed his santuri on his knees and began to play. I raised my eyes to look at him. Gradually his expression changed and a wild joy took possession of him. He shook his long, creased neck and began to sing.

Macedonian songs, Klepht songs, savage cries; the human throat became as it was in prehistoric times, when the cry was a great synthesis which bore within it all we call today by the names of poetry, music and thought. “Akh! Akh!” The cry came from the depth of Zorba’s being and the whole thin crust of what we call civilisation cracked and let out the immortal beast, the hairy god, the terrifying gorilla.

Lignite, profits and losses, Dame Hortense and plans for the future, all vanished. That cry carried everything before it; we had no need of anything else. Immobile, on that solitary coast of Crete, we both held in our breasts all the bitterness and sweetness of life. Bitterness and sweetness no longer existed. The sun went down, night came, the Great Bear danced round the immovable axis of the sky, the moon rose and gazed in horror at two tiny beasts who were singing on the sands and fearing no one.

“Ha! Man is a wild beast,” Zorba said suddenly, overexcited with his singing. “Leave your books alone. Aren’t you ashamed? Man is a wild beast, and wild beasts don’t read.” He was silent a moment, then started to laugh.

“D’you know,” he said, “how God made man? Do you know the first words this animal, man, addressed to God?” “No. How should I know? I wasn’t there.”

“I was!” cried Zorba, his eyes sparkling.

“Well, tell me.”

Half in ecstasy, half in mockery, he began inventing the fabulous story of the creation of man.

“Well, listen, boss! One morning God woke up feeling down in the dumps. ‘What a devil of a God I am! I haven’t even any men to burn incense to me and swear by my name to help pass the time away! I’ve had enough of living all alone like an old screech-owl. Ftt!’ He spat on his hands, pulled up his sleeves, put on his glasses, took a piece of earth, spat on it, made mud of it, kneaded it well and made it into a little man which he stuck in the sun.

“Seven days later he pulled it out of the sun. It was baked. God looked at it and began to split his sides with laughter.

“’Devil take me,’ he says, ‘it’s a pig standing up on its hind legs! That’s not what I wanted at all! There’s no mistake, I’ve made a mess of things!’

“So he picks him up by the scruff of his neck and kicks his backside.

“’Go on, clear off! All you’ve got to do now is to make other little pigs; the earth’s yours! Now, jump to it. Left, right, left, right… Quick march!…’

“But, you see, it wasn’t a pig at all! It was wearing a felt hat, a jacket thrown carelessly across its shoulders, well-creased trousers, and Turkish slippers with red tassels. And in its belt—it must have been the devil who’d given it that—was a pointed dagger with the words: ‘I’ll get you!’ engraved on it.

“It was man! God held out his hand for the other to kiss, but man twirled up his moustache and said: “’Come on, old ‘un, out of the way! Let me pass!’”

Here Zorba stopped as he saw me bursting with laughter. He frowned.

“Don’t laugh!” he said. “That’s exactly what happened!”

“How do you know?”

“That’s how I feel it happened, and that’s what I’d have done if I’d been in Adam’s place. I’d wager my head being chopped off if Adam acted any different. And don’t you believe all the books tell you; I’m the one you should trust!” He stretched out his big hand without waiting for an answer and started playing the santuri once more.

I was still holding Zorba’s scented letter with its heart pierced by an arrow, and was living through those days; filled with his human presence, which I had spent at his side. Time had taken on a new savour in Zorba’s company. It was no longer an arithmetical succession of events without, nor an insoluble philosophical problem within. It was warm sand, finely sieved, and I felt it running gently through my fingers.

“Blessed be Zorba!” I murmured. “He has given a warm, beloved, living body to all the abstract ideas which were shivering inside me. When he is not there, I start shivering again.” I took a sheet of paper, called a workman and sent an urgent telegram: “Come back immediately.”