01 May ‘Do you dance?’ he asked me intensely. ‘Do you dance?’ (NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS)
Zorba was dumbfounded. He tried hard to understand; he could not believe in such
happiness. All at once, he was convinced. He rushed towards me and took me by the
shoulders.
‘Do you dance?’ he asked me intensely. ‘Do you dance?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
He was flabbergasted, and let his arms dangle at his sides.
‘Oh, well,’ he said after a moment. “Then I’ll dance, boss. Sit further away, so that I
don’t barge into you.’
He made a leap, rushed out of the hut, cast off his shoes, his coat, his vest, rolled his
trousers up to his knees, and started dancing. His face was still black with coal. The
whites of his eyes gleamed.
He threw himself into the dance, clapping his hands, leaping and pirouetting in the air,
falling on to his knees, leaping again with his legs tucked up – it was as if he were
made of rubber. He suddenly made tremendous bounds into the air, as if he wished to
conquer the laws of nature and fly away. One felt that in this old body of his there was
a soul struggling to carry away this flesh and cast itself like a meteor into the
darkness. It shook the body which fell back to earth, since it could not stay very long
in the air; it shook it again pitilessly, this time a little higher, but the poor body fell
again, breathless.
Zorba puckered his brow; his face had assumed an alarming severity. He no longer
uttered cries. With clenched teeth he was endeavouring to attain the impossible.
‘Zorba! Zorba!’ I shouted. “That’s enough!’
I was afraid that his old body would not stand up to such violence and might be
shattered into a thousand pieces and scattered to the four winds of heaven.
But what was the use of my shouting? How could Zorba hear my cries from the earth?
His organs had become like those of a bird.
I anxiously followed the savage and desperate dance. When I was a child I used to let
my imagination go and told my friends outrageous fibs in which I came to believe
myself.
‘How did your grandfather die?’ my little school-friend asked me one day.
And straight away I invented a myth, and the more I invented the more I believed.
‘My grandfather had a white beard and used to wear rubber shoes. One day he leapt
from the roof of our house, but when his feet touched the ground he bounced like a
ball and bounced up higher than the house, and went higher and higher still till he
disappeared in the clouds. That is how my grandfather died.’
After inventing that myth, every time I went into the little church of St. Minas and saw
at the bottom of the iconostasis the ascension of Christ, I would point to it and say to
my comrades:
‘Look, there’s grandfather with his rubber shoes!’
Now, this evening, after so many years, seeing Zorba leaping into the air, I lived
through my childish tale again with terror, fearing that Zorba might disappear in the
clouds.
‘Zorba! Zorba!’ I shouted. “That’s enough!’
At last Zorba crouched on the ground, out of breath. His face was shining and happy.
His grey hairs were sticking to his forehead and the sweat, mixed with coal-dust, was
running down his cheeks and chin.
I bent over him anxiously.
‘I feel better for that/ he said, after a minute, ‘as if I had been bled. Now I can talk.’
He went back to the hut, sat in front of the brazier and looked at me with a radiant
expression.
‘What came over you to make you dance like that?’
‘What could I do, boss? My joy was choking me. I had to find some outlet. And what
sort of outlet? Words? Pff!’
‘What joy?’
His face clouded over. His lip began to tremble.
‘What joy? Well, what you said to me a moment ago, you said … just like that, in the
air? You didn’t understand it your self? We didn’t come here for the coal, you told me.
That’s what you said, didn’t you? We came here to while away the time and lead them
up the wrong track so that they shouldn’t take us for lunatics and sling tomatoes at us!
But when we’re alone together and nobody can see us, we can laugh and enjoy
ourselves! Isn’t that right? I swear that’s what I wanted, too, but I didn’t realise it
properly. Sometimes I thought of the coal, sometimes of old Bouboulina, sometimes of you … a regular muddle. When I was picking out a gallery, I said: It’s coal I want! And
from head to heel I became coal. But afterwards, when the work was finished, when I
was skylarking with that old sow – good luck to her! -1 said, let all the sacks of lignite
and all the bosses go hang -by the little ribbon round her neck – and Zorba with them!
Then when I was alone and had nothing to do, I thought of you, boss, and my heart
melted. It weighted on my conscience. “It’s disgraceful, Zorba,” I’d cry, “disgraceful for
you to go and fool that good man and eat up all his money. When’ll you stop being a
rotter, you Zorba, you? I’ve had enough of you!” I tell you, boss, I didn’t know where I
was. The devil was dragging me one way, God the other; and, between the two of
them, they split me down the middle. Now, bless you, boss, you’ve said a great thing
and I can see it all clearly now. I’ve seen, I’ve understood! We’re agreed!
Let’s get cracking! How much money have you got left? Hand it over! Let’s eat it up!’
Zorba mopped his brow and looked around. The remains of our dinner were still lying
on the little table. He reached for them with his long arm.
‘With your permission, boss,’ he said. Tm hungry again.’
He took a slice of bread, an onion and handful of olives.
He ate voraciously, tipped up the calabash; and the red wine gurgled down his throat
without the calabash touching his lips. Zorba clicked his tongue; he was satisfied.
‘That’s better,’ he said.
He winked at me and asked:
‘Why don’t you laugh? Why d’you look at me like that? That’s how I am. There’s a devil
in me who shouts, and I do what he says. Whenever I feel I’m choking with some
emotion, he says: “Dance!” and I dance. And I feel better! Once, when my little
Dimitraki died, in Chalcidice, I got up as I did a moment ago and I danced. The
relations and friends who saw me dancing in front of the body rushed up to stop me.
“Zorba has gone mad!” they cried, “Zorba has gone mad!” But if at that moment I had
not danced, I should really have gone mad – from grief. Because it was my first son
and he was three years old and I could not bear to lose him. You understand what I’m
saying, boss, don’t you – or am I talking to myself?’
‘I understand, Zorba, I understand; you’re not talking to yourself.’
‘Another time … I was in Russia then … yes, I’ve been there, too, for the mines again,
copper this time, near Novo Rossisk … I had learnt five or six words of Russian, just
enough for my work: no; yes; bread; water; I love you; come; how much? … But I got
friendly with a Russian, a thoroughgoing Bolshevik. We went every evening to a
tavern in the port. We knocked back a good number of bottles of vodka, and that put
us into high spirits. Once we began to feel good we wanted to talk. He wanted to tell
me everything that had happened to him during the Russian revolution, and I wanted to let him know what I had been up to … We had got drunk together, you see, and had become brothers.
‘We had come to an arrangement as well as we could by gestures. He was to speak
first. As soon as I couldn’t follow him, I was to shout: “Stop!” Then he’d get up and
dance. D’you get me, boss? He danced what he wanted to tell me. And I did the
same. Anything we couldn’t say with our mouths we said with our feet, our hands, our
belly or with wild cries: Hi! Hi! Hop-la! Ho-heigh!
‘The Russian began. How he had taken a rifle; how war had spread; how they arrived
in Novo Rossisk. When I couldn’t follow any more, I cried: “Stop!” The Russian straight
away bounded up, and away he went dancing! He danced like a madman. And I
watched his hands, his feet, his chest, his eyes, and I understood everything. How
they had entered Novo Rossisk; how they had looted shops; how they had gone into
houses and carried off the women. At first the hussies cried and scratched their own
faces with their nails and scratched the men, too, but gradually they became tamed,
they shut their eyes and yelped with pleasure. They were women, in fact…
‘And then, after that, it was my turn. I only managed to get out a few words – perhaps
he was a bit dense and his brain didn’t work properly – the Russian shouted: “Stop!”
That’s all I was waiting for. I leapt up, pushed the chairs and tables away and began
dancing. Ah, my poor friend, men have sunk very low, the devil take them! They’ve let
their bodies become mute and they only speak with their mouths. But what d’you
expect a mouth to say? What can it tell you? If only you could have seen how the
Russian listened to me from head to foot, and how he followed everything! I danced
my misfortunes; my travels; how many times I’d been married; the trades I’d learned –
quarrier, miner, pedlar, potter, comitadji, santuri-player, passa-tempo hawker,
blacksmith,smuggler – how I’d been shoved into prison; how I escaped; how I arrived in Russia …
‘Even he, dense as he was, could understand everything, everything. My feet and my
hands spoke, so did my hair and my clothes. And a clasp-knife hanging from my
waistband spoke, too. When I had finished, the great blockhead hugged me in his
arms; we filled up our glasses with vodka once more; we wept and we laughed in
each other’s arms. At daybreak we were pulled apart and went staggering to our beds.
And in the evening we met again.
‘Are you laughing? Don’t you believe me, boss? You’re saying to yourself: Whatever
are these yarns this Sindbad-the-Sailor is spinning? Is it possible to talk by dancing?
And yet I dare swear that’s how the gods and devils must talk to each other.
‘But I can see you’re sleepy. You’re too delicate. You’ve no stamina. Go on, go to
sleep, and tomorrow we’ll speak about this again. I’ve a plan, a magnificent plan. I’ll
tell you about it tomorrow. I’m going to smoke one more cigrette. I may even take a dip
in the sea. I’m on fire. I must put it out. Good night!’
I was a long time getting to sleep. My life is wasted, I thought. If only I could take a
cloth and wipe out all I have learnt, all I have seen and heard, and go to Zorba’s
school and start the great, the real alphabet! What a different road I would choose. I
should keep my five senses perfectly trained, and my whole body, too, so that it would
enjoy and understand. I should learn to run, to wrestle, to swim, to ride horses, to row,
to drive a car, to fire a rifle. I should fill my soul with flesh. I should fill my flesh with
soul. In fact, I should reconcile at last within me the two eternal antagonists.
Sitting on my mattress, I thought of my life which was being completely wasted.
Through the open door I could just discern Zorba by the light of the stars. He was
crouching on a rock, like a night-bird. I envied him. It is he who has discovered the truth, I thought. His is the right path.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Zorba the Greek
