Nikos Kazantzakis: Zorba The Greek

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.