Nikos Kazantzakis: Zorba The Greek

"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."