فصل 15

XV

That day there was a strong south wind, which came burning from the sands of Africa across the Mediterranean. Clouds of fine sand twisted and turned in the air and got into throat and lungs. Teeth were gritty and eyes inflamed; doors and windows had to be locked tight if one wanted to make sure of eating a single piece of bread that was not sprinkled with sand.

It was close. During those oppressive days when the sap was rising I was myself a prey to the prevailing springtime unrest. A feeling of lassitude, an emotional tension in the breast, a tingling sensation throughout my body, a desire—or was it memory—of a vast and simple happiness.

I took the pebbly mountain track. I had a sudden impulse to visit the small Minoan city which had risen from the ground after three or four thousand years and was warming itself once more under its beloved Cretan sun. I thought that perhaps after three or four hours’ walk fatigue would calm the unrest that spring had brought.

Bare grey stones, a luminous nakedness, the harsh and deserted mountain that I love. An owl, its round yellow eyes staring, blinded by the bright light, had perched on a stone. It was grave, beautiful, full of mystery. I was walking lightly, but its hearing was keen; it took fright, flew up silently among the stones and disappeared. There was a scent of thyme in the air. The first tender flowers of the yellow gorse were already showing amongst its thorns.

When I came in sight of the small ruined city I stood spell-bound. It must have been about noon, the sun’s rays were falling perpendicularly and drenching the stones with light. In old ruined cities this is a dangerous time of day, for the air is filled with cries and the noise of spirits. If a branch cracks, if a lizard darts, if a cloud throws a shadow as it passes overhead, panic seizes you. Every inch of ground you tread is a grave, and you hear the dead groaning.

Gradually my eyes grew accustomed to the bright light. I could now see traces of the hand of man in the ruins: two broad roads paved with shining stones. To the left and right of them narrow tortuous alleys. In the centre the circular agora, or public meeting-place, and next to it, with a totally democratic condescension, had been placed the king’s palace with its double columns, large stone stairways and numerous outbuildings.

In the heart of the city the stones were most heavily trodden by the foot of man and that was where the inner shrine must have been: the Great Goddess was there, with her huge breasts, set wide apart, and her arms wreathed in snakes.

Everywhere were small shops, oil presses, forges, and the workshops of joiners and potters. A cleverly designed anthill, well-built in a sheltered position, and whence the ants had disappeared thousands of years ago. In one place a craftsman had been carving a jar out of veined stone but had not had the time to finish it; the chisel had fallen from his hand, to be discovered thousands of years later, lying next to the unfinished work of art.

The eternal, vain, stupid questions: why? what for? come to poison your heart. The unfinished jar, where the artist’s happy and confident inspiration had suddenly been defeated, fills you with bitterness.

All at once a little shepherd, tanned by the sun and wearing a fringed handkerchief round his curly hair, stood up on a stone beside the crumbling palace and showed his black knees.

“You there, brother!” he shouted.

I wanted to be alone, and made believe I had not heard. But the little shepherd began to laugh mockingly.

“Ha! Playing deaf, eh? Any cigarettes? Give me one! In this empty hole I get so fed up with life.” He dragged out the last words and there was such misery in them that I felt sorry for him.

I had no cigarettes, so I offered him money. But the little shepherd was annoyed: “To hell with money!” he shouted. “What would I do with it? I tell you I’m fed up with everything. I want a cigarette!” “I haven’t any,” I said in despair. “I haven’t any.”

“No cigarettes?” He was beside himself and struck the ground with his crook. “No cigarettes! Well, what have you got in your pockets? They’re bulging with something.” “A book, a handkerchief, paper, a pencil, a penknife,” I answered, pulling out one by one the things in my pocket. “Would you like this penknife?” “I’ve got one. I’ve got everything I want: bread, cheese, olives, my knife, leather for my boots and an awl, and water in my bottle, everything… except a cigarette! And it’s as though I’d got nothing at all! And what might you be after in the ruins?” “I’m studying antiquity.”

“What good do you get out of that?”

“None.”

“None. Nor do I. This is all dead, and we’re alive. You’d do better to go, quick. God be with you!” “I’m going,” I said obediently.

I went back along the little track with some anxiety in my mind.

I turned for a moment and could see the little shepherd who was so tired of his solitude still standing on his stone. His curly hair, escaping from under his black handkerchief, was waving in the south wind. The light streamed over him from head to foot. I felt I was looking at a bronze statue of a youth. He had placed his crook across his shoulders and was whistling.

I took another track and went down towards the coast. Now and then, warm breezes laden with perfume reached me from nearby gardens. The earth had a rich smell, the sea was rippling with laughter, the sky was blue and gleaming like steel.

Winter shrivels up the mind and body of man, but then there comes the warmth which swells the breast. As I walked I suddenly heard loud trumpetings in the air. I raised my eyes and saw a marvellous spectacle which had always moved me deeply ever since my childhood: cranes deploying across the sky in battle order, returning from wintering in a warmer country, and, as legend has it, carrying swallows on their wings and in the deep hollows of their bony bodies.

The unfailing rhythm of the seasons, the ever-turning wheel of life, the four facets of the earth which are lit in turn by the sun, the passing of life—all these filled me once more with a feeling of oppression. Once more there sounded within me, together with the cranes’ cry, the terrible warning that there is only one life for all men, that there is no other, and that all that can be enjoyed must be enjoyed here. In eternity no other chance will be given to us.

A mind hearing this pitiless warning—a warning which, at the same time, is so compassionate—would decide to conquer its weakness and meanness, its laziness and vain hopes and cling with all its power to every second which flies away for ever.

Great examples come to your mind and you see clearly that you are a lost soul, your life is being frittered away on petty pleasures and pains and trifling talk. “Shame! Shame!” you cry, and bite your lips.

The cranes had crossed the sky and disappeared to the north, but in my head they continued to fly from one temple to another, uttering their hollow cries.

I came to the sea. I was walking rapidly along the edge of the water. How disquieting it is to walk alone by the sea! Each wave, each bird in the sky calls to you and reminds you of your duty. When walking with company you laugh and talk, and cannot hear what the waves and birds are saying. It may be, of course, that they are saying nothing. They watch you passing in a cloud of chatter and they stop calling.

I stretched out on the pebbles and closed my eyes. “What is the soul, then?” I wondered. “And what is this secret connexion between the soul, and sea, clouds and perfumes? The soul itself appears to be sea, cloud and perfume…” I rose and started walking again, as if I had come to a decision. What decision? I did not know.

Suddenly I heard a voice behind me.

“Where are you going, sir, by the grace of God? To the convent?”

I turned round. A stocky, robust old man, with a handkerchief twisted round his white hair, was waving his hand and smiling at me. An old woman walked behind him, and behind her their daughter, a dark-skinned girl with fierce eyes, wearing a white scarf over her head.

“The convent?” asked the old man a second time. And suddenly I realised that I had decided to go that way. For months I had wanted to go to the little convent built for the nuns near the sea, but I had never managed to make up my mind. My body had abruptly made the decision for me that afternoon.

“Yes,” I answered. “I’m going to the convent to hear the chants to the Holy Virgin.” “May Her blessing be upon you.”

He quickened his pace and caught me up.

“Are you what they call the Coal Company?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, may the Blessed Virgin send you good profits! You are doing a lot of good for the village, bringing a means of livelihood to many a poor father with a family to keep. May you be blessed!” And a moment or two later the cunning old fellow, who must have known that we were not doing very well, added these words of consolation: “And even if you get no profit out of it, my son, don’t worry. You’ll not be the loser. Your soul will go direct to paradise…” “That’s what I’m hoping, grandad.”

“I never had any education, but one day at church I heard something Christ had said. It stuck in my head and I never forget it: ‘Sell,’ he said, ‘everything you possess to obtain the Great Pearl.’ And what is that Great Pearl? The salvation of your soul. You are well on the way to getting the Great Pearl, sir.” The Great Pearl! How many times it had gleamed in the darkness of my mind like a huge tear!

We began walking, the two men in front, the two women behind with clasped hands. From time to time we made a remark. Would the olive-blossom last on the trees? Would it rain and swell the barley? We must both have been hungry because we constantly led the conversation round to food.

“What is your favourite dish, grandad?”

“All of them, my son. It’s great sin to say this is good and that is bad.” “Why? Can’t we make a choice?”

“No, of course we can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because there are people who are hungry.”

I was silent, ashamed. My heart had never been able to reach that height of nobility and compassion.

The little convent bell rang out merrily and playfully, like a woman’s laugh.

The old man made the sign of the cross.

“May the Martyred Virgin come to our help!” he murmured. “She has a knife-wound in the neck and bleeds. In the time of the corsairs…” And the old man began embroidering on the sufferings of the Virgin, as though it were the story of a real woman, a young persecuted refugee who had come in tears with her child from the East and had been stabbed by the unfaithful.

“Once a year real warm blood runs from her wound,” the old man went on. “I remember a long time ago, on her anniversary—I hadn’t yet grown a moustache—people had come down from all the villages in the hills to worship the Virgin. It was the fifteenth of August. We men slept outside, in the yard; the women were inside. And in my sleep I heard the Virgin cry out. I got up in a hurry, ran to her icon and put my hand on her throat. And what do you think I saw? My fingers were red with blood…” The old man crossed himself and looked round at the women.

“Come on, you women! We’re nearly there!” he cried.

He lowered his voice.

“I wasn’t married then. I prostrated myself to Her Holiness, and decided to leave this world of lies and be a monk…” He laughed.

“Why are you laughing, grandad?”

“Isn’t it enough to make you laugh, my son? The very same day, during the festival, the devil, dressed up as a woman, stood before me. It was she!” Without turning his head, he jerked his thumb backwards and indicated the old woman behind him, who was following us in silence.

“She doesn’t bear looking at now,” he said; “the thought of touching her disgusts you. But in those days she was a regular flirt; she quivered with life like a fish. ‘The long-lashed beauty’ they used to call her, and she well deserved the name, the little minx! But now… God rest my soul, where are her lashes now? Gone to blazes! Not a single one left!” At that moment, just behind us, the old woman made a muffled growl like a churlish dog on a chain. But she did not say a word.

“There, that’s the convent,” said the old man.

At the edge of the sea, wedged between two great rocks, was the white, sparkling convent. In the middle the chapel dome, freshly whitewashed, small and round like a woman’s breast. About the chapel were half a dozen cells with blue doors, three large cypress trees in the courtyard, and along the wall some sturdy prickly pears in flower.

We went faster. Melodious chanting floated down from the open door of the sanctuary, the salt air was perfumed with benjamin. The entrance door in the middle of the arch stood wide open and gave on to the clean, scented courtyard strewn with black and white pebbles. Along the walls, to the right and to the left, were rows of pots, with rosemary, marjoram and basil.

What serenity! What sweetness! The sun was going down now and the whitewashed walls were turning pink.

The little chapel, warm and rather dark inside, smelled of wax. Men and women were moving in clouds of incense, and five or six nuns, tightly wrapped in their long black dresses, were singing: “O, Almighty God…” in their sweet, high-pitched voices. They were constantly kneeling as they sang and the rustling of their dresses sounded like birds on the wing.

I had not heard hymns sung to the Virgin Mary for many years past. During the revolt of my early youth I had passed by every church with anger and contempt in my heart. As time went on I grew less violent. Now and again, in fact, I went to religious festivals—Christmas, the Vigils, the Resurrection—and I was happy to see the child in me come to life again. The mystic fervour of my early years had degenerated into an aesthetic pleasure. Savages believe that when a musical instrument is no longer used for religious rites it loses its divine power and begins to give out harmonious sounds. Religion, in the same way, had become degraded in me: it had become art.

I went into a corner, leaned on the gleaming stall that the hands of the faithful had polished as smooth as ivory, and listened in enchantment as the Byzantine hymns came from the distant past: “Hail! heights inaccessible to the human mind! Hail! depths impenetrable even to the eyes of angels! Hail! immaculate bride, O never-fading Rose…” The nuns once more dropped on their knees with head bowed, and their dresses rustled like wings.

Minutes went by—angels with benjamin-scented wings, bearing closed lilies in their hands and singing the beauties of Mary. The sun went down, leaving us in a downy blue twilight. I do not remember how we came to be in the courtyard, but I was alone there with the old Mother Superior and two young nuns, beneath the largest of the cypress trees. A young novice came out to offer me a spoonful of jam, fresh water and coffee, and a peaceful conversation began.

We talked of the miracles wrought by the Virgin Mary, of lignite, of the hens beginning to lay now that it was spring, of sister Eudoxia who was epileptic and continually falling down on the floor of the chapel and quivering like a fish, foaming at the mouth and tearing her clothes.

“She is thirty-five,” added the Mother Superior with a sigh. “An unhappy age—very difficult! May the Holy Martyred Virgin come to her aid and cure her! In ten or fifteen years she will be cured.” “Ten or fifteen years,” I murmured, aghast.

“What are ten or fifteen years?” asked the Mother Superior severely. “Think of eternity!” I made no answer. I knew that eternity is each minute that passes. I kissed the Mother Superior’s hand—a plump, white hand, smelling of incense—and departed.

Night had fallen. Two or three crows were hurrying back to their nests; owls were coming out of the hollow trees to hunt. Snails, caterpillars, worms, field-mice were coming out of the earth to be eaten by the owls.

The mysterious snake that devours its own tail enclosed me in its circle: the earth brings to life and devours her own children, then bears more and devours them in their turn.

I looked about me. It was quite dark. The last of the villagers had gone, no one could see me, I was absolutely alone. I bared my feet and dipped them in the sea. I rolled on the sand. I felt an urge to touch the stones, the water, and the air with my bare body. The Mother Superior had exasperated me with her “eternity,” and I felt the word fall about me, like a lasso catching a wild horse. I made a leap to try to escape. I felt a desire to press my naked body against the earth and the sea, to feel with certainty that these beloved ephemeral things really existed.

“You exist, and you alone!” I cried in my innermost self. “O Earth! I am your last-born, I am sucking at your breast and will not let go. You do not let me live for more than one minute, but that minute turns into a breast and I suck.” I shuddered as if I felt I was running the risk of being hurled in to that anthropophagous word “eternity.” I remembered how formerly—when? only a year ago—I had eagerly pondered it with closed eyes and arms apart, wanting to throw myself into it.

When I was in the first form at the state school there was a story in the reading-book we used for the second half of the alphabet: A little child had fallen into a well, said the story. There it found a marvellous city, flower-gardens, a lake of pure honey, a mountain of rice-pudding and multi-coloured toys. As I spelled it out, each syllable seemed to take me further into that magic city. Once, at midday, when I had come home from school, I ran into the garden, rushed to the rim of the well beneath the vine-arbour and stood fascinated, staring at the smooth black surface of the water. I soon thought I could see the marvellous city, houses and streets, the children and the vine-arbour loaded with grapes. I could hold out no longer; I hung my head down, held out my arms and kicked against the ground to push myself over the edge. But at that moment my mother noticed me. She screamed, rushed out and caught me by my waistband, just in time… As a child, then, I had almost fallen into the well. When grown up, I nearly fell into the word “eternity,” and into quite a number of other words too—”love,” “hope,” “country,” “God.” As each word was conquered and left behind, I had the feeling that I had escaped a danger and made some progress. But no, I was only changing words and calling it deliverance. And there I had been, for the last two years, hanging over the edge of the word “Buddha.” But I now feel sure—Zorba be praised—that Buddha will be the last well of all, the last word-precipice, and then I shall be delivered for ever. For ever? That is what we say each time.

I jumped up. I was happy from head to foot. I undressed and plunged into the sea; the joyful waves were frolicking and I frolicked with them. Tired at last, I came out of the water, let the night wind dry me, and set out again with long easy strides, feeling I had escaped a great danger and that I had a still tighter grip on the Great Mother’s breast.