Nikos Kazantzakis - Zorba The Greek

"Let's get away, boss," he said in a choking voice.

That evening Zorba would have nothing to eat or drink. "My throat's too tight," he said; "nothing will go down." He washed his ear in cold water, dipped a piece of cotton wool in some raki and made a bandage. Seated on his mattress, his head between his hands, he remained pensive.

I too was leaning on my elbows as I lay on the floor along by the wall, and I felt warm tears run slowly down my cheeks. My brain was not working at all, I was thinking of nothing. I wept, like a child overcome by deep sorrow.

Suddenly Zorba raised his head and gave vent to his feelings. Pursuing his savage thoughts, he began to shout aloud:

"I tell you, boss, everything that happens in this world is unjust, unjust, unjust! I won't be a party to it! I, Zorba, the worm, the slug! Why must the young die and the old wrecks go on living? Why do little children die? I had a boy once-Dimitri he was called-and I lost him when he was three years old. Well… I shall never, never forgive God for that, do you hear? I tell you, the day I die, if He has the cheek to appear in front of me, and if He is really and truly a God, He'll be ashamed! Yes, yes, He'll be ashamed to show himself to Zorba, the slug!"

He grimaced as though he was in paín. The blood started flowing again from his wound. He bit his lips so that he should not cry out.

"Wait, Zorba!" I said. "I'll change your dressing!" I washed his ear once again in raki, then I took the orange-water which the widow had sent me and which I had found on my bed, and I dipped the cotton wool in it.

"Orange water?" said Zorba, eagerly sniffing at it. "Orange water? Put some on my hair, like that, will you? That's it! And on my hands, pour it all out, go on!"

He had come back to life. I looked at him astounded.

"I feel as though I'm entering the widow's garden," he said.

And he began his lamentations again.

"How many years it's taken," he muttered, "how many long years for the earth to succeed in making a body like that! You looked at her and said: Ah! if only I were twenty and the whole race of men disappeared from the earth and only that woman remained, and I gave her children! No, not children, real gods they'd be… Whereas now…"

He leaped to his feet. His eyes filled with tears.

"I can't stand it, boss," he said. "I've got to walk, I shall have to go up and down the mountainside two or three times tonight to tire myself, calm myself a bit… Ah! that widow! I feel I must chant a mirologue [29]for you'."

He rushed out, went towards the mountain and disappeared into the darkness.

I lay down on my bed, turned out the lamp and once more began, in my wretched, inhuman way, to transpose reality, removing blood, flesh and bones and reduce it to the abstract, link it with universal laws, until I came to the awful conclusion that what had happened was necessary. And, what is more, that it contributed to the universal harmony. I arrived at this final and abominable consolation: it was right that all that had happened should have happened.

The widow's murder entered my brain-the hive in which for years all poisons had been changed into honey-and threw it into confusion. But my philosophy immediately seized upon the dreadful warning, surrounded it with images and artifice and quickly made it harmless. In the same way, bees encase the starving drone in wax when it comes to steal their honey.

A few hours later the widow was at rest in my memory, calm and serene, changed into a symbol. She was encased in wax in my heart; she could no longer spread panic inside me and paralyze my brain. The terrible events of that one day broadened, extended into time and space, and became one with great past civilizations; the civilizatíons became one with the earth's destiny; the earth with the destiny of the universe-and thus, returning to the widow, I found her subject to the great laws of existence, reconciled with her murderers, immobile and serene.

For me time had found its real meaning: the widow had died thousands of years before, in the epoch of the Aegean civilization, and the young girls of Cnossos with their curly hair had died that very morning on the shores of this pleasant sea.

Sleep took possession of me, just as one day-nothíng is more certain-death will do, and I slipped gently into darkness. I did not hear when Zorba returned, or even if he returned. The next morning I found him on the mountainside shouting and cursing at the workers.

Nothíng they did was to his liking. He dismissed three workers who were obstinate, took the pick himself and began clearíng through the rocks and brush the path which he had marked out for the posts. He climbed the mountain, met some woodcutters who were cutting down the pines and began to thunder abuse. One of them laughed and muttered; Zorba hurled himself at hím.

That evening he came down to the hut worn out and in rags. He sat beside me on the beach. He could hardly open his mouth; when he did speak at last, it was about timber, cables and lignite; he was like a grasping contractor, in a hurry to devastate the place, make as much profit out of it as he could and leave.

In the stage of self-consolation which I had reached, I was once on the point of speaking about the widow; Zorba stretched out his long arm and put his big hand over my mouth.

"Shut up!" he said in a muffled voice.

I stopped, ashamed. That is what a real man is like, I thought, envying Zorba's sorrow. A man with warm blood and solid bones, who lets real tears run down his cheeks when he is suffering; and when he is happy he does not spoil the freshness of his joy by running it through the fine sieve of metaphysics.

Three or four days went by in this way. Zorba worked steadily, not stopping to eat, or drink, or rest. He was laying the foundations.

One evening I mentioned that Dame Bouboulina was still in bed, that the doctor had not come and that she was continually calling for him in her delirium.

He clenched his fists.

"All right," he answered.

The next morning at dawn he went to the village and almost immediately afterwards returned to the hut.

"Did you see her?" I asked. "How is she?"

"Nothing wrong with her," he answered, "she's going to die."

And he strode off to his work.

That evening, without eating, he took his thick stick and went out.

"Where are you going?" I asked. "To the village?"

"No. I'm going for a walk. I'll soon be back."

He strode towards the village with fast determined steps.

I was tired and went to bed. My mind again set itself to passing the whole world in review; memories came, and sorrows; my thoughts flitted around the most remote ideas but came back and settled on Zorba.

If he ever runs across Manolakas while he's out, I thought, that Cretan giant will hurl himself on him in a savage fury. They say that for these last few days he has been staying indoors. He is ashamed to show himself in the village and keeps saying that if he catches Zorba he will "tear him to bits with his teeth, like a sardine." One of the workmen said he had seen him in the middle of the night prowling about the hut fully armed. If they meet tonight there will be murder.

I leaped up, dressed and hurried down the road to the village. The calm, humid night air smelled of wild violets. After a time I saw Zorba walking slowly, as if very tired, towards the village. From time to time he stopped, stared at the stars, listened; then he started off again, a little faster, and I could hear his stick on the stones.

He was approaching the widow's garden. The air was full of the scent of lemon blossom and honeysuckle. At that moment, from the orange trees in the garden, the nightingale began to pour out its heart-rending song in notes as clear as spring water. It sang and sang in the darkness with breath-taking beauty. Zorba stopped, gasping at the sweetness of the song.