Report to Grego (69 page)

I was carried away, not by grief, but by anger. “Unjust! Unjust!” I cried. “Such souls should not die. Will earth, water, fire, and chance ever be able to fashion a Zorba again?”

Although I had gone without news from him for many months, I had not been worried. It was as though I believed him to be immortal. I said to myself, How can a fountain like that ever run dry? How can Charon force such a cunning antagonist to bite the dust? At the last moment won't he find a laugh, a dance, a maneuver to trip up Charon and escape him?

I was unable to close my eyes that entire night. Memories had set out in haste, one straddling the next, to ascend anxious and
panting into my mind, as though they wished to gather Zorba up from the ground and air in order to keep him from scattering. Even the most insignificant incidents connected with him gleamed clear, quick-moving, and precious in my memory, like colorful fish in a transparent summertime ocean. Inside me nothing of his had died. It seemed that whatever Zorba touched had become immortal.

All night long I kept thinking, What can I do, what can I do to exorcise death—his death?

The trap door to my vitals swung open and the irate memories sprang out, jostling one another in their haste to encircle my heart. Working their lips, they called me to gather Zorba up from earth, sea, air, and bring him back to life. Was this not the heart's duty? Did not God create the heart for this very purpose: to resurrect dear ones, bring them back to life?

Resurrect him!

The human heart is surely a deep, closed, blood-filled pit. When it opens, all the thirsting, inconsolable shades we have loved run to drink and be revived; they grow continually denser around us, blackening the air. Why do they run to drink the blood of our hearts? Because they realize that no other resurrection exists. On this day Zorba was running in front of all the rest with his great strides, pushing aside the other shades, because he knew that, of all those I loved in my life, I loved him most.

By morning I had made my decision. I felt suddenly calm, as though the resurrection had already begun inside me, as though my heart were a Magdalene speeding to the tomb and resurrecting.

I had remained in bed later than usual. The cheerful springtime sun entered my room and illuminated the beloved bas-relief above my bed. My father had found this relief somehow and had hung it over my head while I was still a child. I do not believe in coincidence; I believe in destiny. This bas-relief divulged the secret of my life with astonishing simplicity, perhaps the secret of Zorba's life as well. It was a copy of an ancient tombstone carving. A naked warrior, who has not abandoned his helmet, not even in death, is kneeling on his right knee and squeezing his breast with both palms, a tranquil smile flitting around his closed lips. The graceful motion of the powerful body is such that you cannot
distinguish whether this is a dance or death. Or is it a dance and death together?

Even if it is death, we shall transform it into a dance, I said to myself, encouraged by the happy sun falling upon the warrior and bringing him to life. You and I, my heart, let us give him our blood so that he may be brought back to life, let us do what we can to make this extraordinary eater, drinker, workhorse, woman-chaser, and vagabond live a little while longer—this dancer and warrior, the broadest soul, surest body, freest cry I ever knew in my life.

T
HE MYTH
of Zorba began to crystallize inside me. At first it was a musical agitation, a new rhythm, as though the blood had begun to circulate more rapidly in my aorta. I felt feverish and giddy, a mixture of pleasure and vexation difficult to disentangle, as though some undesirable foreign body had entered my blood stream. My entire organism was roused to charge forward and expel it, but the foreign body resisted, entreated, put out roots, and gripped first one organ then another, not wishing to leave. It had become a seed, a hard grain of wheat; it seemed to feel that the ears and bread imprisoned within it were in danger, and it fought desperately to keep itself—and them—from perishing.

I went out and walked for hours in the fields, I swam in the sea, I returned to Knossos again and again. Like the horse which shakes itself and struggles to be rid of the ravenous horsefly that has alighted upon it, I too shook myself and kicked. In vain. The seed continually sprouted new roots and took possession.

At that point the second secret processing began inside me. By nourishing that seed and watering it with my blood I would make it part of my own vitals, thus subduing it by assimilating it. This was my only hope of release. The seed which entered me as a conqueror had to be united with me, so that both of us might become victors and vanquished.

Words, rhymes, and similes began immediately to run around the intruding seed, to encompass it and nourish it like an embryo.
Faint memories revived; submerged joys and sorrows, laughter, gushing conversations all ascended. Our many days together crossed in front of me like graceful white doves, full of gurgles. The memories ascended a story higher than truth, two stories higher than falsehood. Zorba metamorphosed gradually and became a legend.

At night I did not have the courage to go to bed; I felt the seed working away in my sleep. In the night's hallowed calm I listened intently as it nibbled and nibbled the leaves of my heart of hearts like a silkworm desiring to turn them into silk.

I rambled through Kastro's narrow streets at night. The ancient memories kept springing out from every corner. I met myself as a child walking all alone and not wanting to play with other children, then as an adolescent promenading with his friends on the Venetian ramparts above the sea—it was the hour of dusk and there was a gentle breeze laden with salt from the sea, jasmine from the neighborhood's tiny gardens, and perfume from the girls who were promenading too, laughing and taunting us because they longed to have us turn and look at them, whereas we were discussing God and whether or not the soul was immortal. . . . And whenever the moon was full and clear, a deep bewitching intoxication overcame me. The doors and roof tiles of the houses became intoxicated too. Stones, wood, fountains, and bell towers doffed their thick bodies, relieving themselves of the weight which crushed them during the day. Now their souls beamed naked in the moonlight.

The first rains of autumn came. Sky descended to earth; the seeds raised their heads in the furrows and gazed upward rejoicingly. Finding my family home too confining now, I fled all alone to a little deserted house belonging to one of my friends. It stood by the water's edge, outside the city: a square enclosed courtyard with high walls, containing two lemon trees, a cypress, and several pots of basil and marjoram; a ponderous street door made of three layers of planking like a fortified gate, with a massive unliftable bolt, which to be drawn required both your hands and all your strength. What deep happiness when I did draw it, barred the door, and remained alone with no one able to set foot in my solitude! “I'll hold you tightly beneath my arm when I enter heaven, and you shall enter with me,” I said to the bolt, looking at
it with gratitude. Some will hold the tools they worked with to earn a living, some the lances they fought with, some the pens they wrote with, some will hold their sweethearts by the hand. I shall hold this bolt.

What a pleasure to be alone, to hear the sea sighing beyond your threshold, to have the first rains burst upon the lemon trees and cypresses of your courtyard—and to feel a seed eating you in the very, very middle of your vitals!

Zorba reposed inside me like a chrysalis, swaddled in a hard, transparent shell. He did not move. But I sensed an inscrutable, terribly mysterious process continuing night and day, secretly, noiselessly, inside that mute chrysalis. Its collapsed veins were gradually filling, its desiccated flesh softening—the shell was about to split at any minute near the shoulders, and the immature, curled, still-impotent wings to appear. Stretched inside the chrysalis was a grub which had been swept away by a sudden divine madness and wished to emerge as a butterfly. And I, I heard the first rains, heard the earth crack and receive the downfall, heard the wheat germs drinking and swelling in the ground, heard them throwing out all-powerful green grapples to hook into the soil, afterwards lifting the ground and rising into the light to become wheat and bread for people to eat in order to stay alive and keep God from dying. Listening intently, I heard the spirit which stands by every tiny blade of grass to help it grow and accomplish its duty on earth. Here in my impregnable solitude I sensed that even the most insignificant of God's creatures—a grain of wheat, a worm, an ant—suddenly recalls its divine origin, is possessed by a God-inspired mania, and wishes to mount step by step in order to touch the Lord; the wheat, worm, or ant to touch Him and stand at His side along with angels and archangels, it too an angel, an archangel.

Having met Zorba when he still cast a shadow on the earth, and knowing that neither his body, nor song, nor even his dance was big enough to contain him, I wondered with great expectation what kind of wild beast would burst forth when its hour came and shatter the transparent swaddling bands which held it immobile now in my bowels. What beast, what insatiable desolation, what unslackening, unhoping flame? If a worm, a good-for-nothing worm, wanted to become a butterfly, I said to myself, what then would a Zorba want to become!

These were unforgettable days of holy meditation. The rains fell, the clouds melted, the sun appeared freshly bathed. The lemon flowers had formed fruit, and the sacred still-green lemons glittered on the trees. The stars rose at night, revolved above my head, and fell in the west. Time ran like immortal water; I felt my head sailing above time and the flood with confidence and assurance, like the Ark, laden with every kind of seed: animals, birds, men, gods. Mobilizing all my memories, retraveling all my travels, bringing back to mind all the great souls to whom I had lighted candles in my life, dispatching wave after wave of my blood to nourish the seed within me, I waited. I fed this seed with the precious honey I had collected from a lifetime of boring into the most fragrant and venomous of flowers. For the first time I tasted the true meaning of paternal love, and what a fountainhead of eternity a son is. Just as the pearl is a sickness and at the same time the oyster's supreme accomplishment, so too I felt turmoil and fever in my blood, and at the same time a secret message from profound sources that I had arrived—was about to arrive—at the most decisive moment of my life. On the basis of this seed, this son, my fate would be determined.

A
utumn passed, winter began. I sauntered in the plowed fields around my hideaway, admiring how patiently the grassless earth retained its own seed and waited with confidence for the coming of spring. I too waited patiently, together with the soil. I felt I had switched sex, as though I were a woman like the earth, nourishing my seed, the Word, and waiting. I said to myself, O if only I can incarnate all my anguishes and hopes in this Word and leave such a son behind me when I open earth's door to depart!

I recalled an ascetic I had encountered one day on Mount Athos. He was holding a poplar leaf up to the light and looking at it, the tears flowing from his eyes. Surprised, I stopped and asked him, “What do you see in that leaf, holy Father, that makes you cry?”

“I see Christ crucified,” he answered. Then he turned the leaf over and his face beamed with joy.

“What do you see now that makes you so happy?” I asked him this time.

“I see Christ resurrected, my child.”

If only the creator could likewise see all his anguishes and hopes
even in the most humble detail of this world, in an insect, a shell, a drop of water, and not only his own anguishes and hopes, but those of the entire cosmos! If only he could see man crucified and man resurrected in every heartbeat, could sense that ants, stars, ghosts, and ideas all issue from the same mother as we do, that we all suffer and all hope the day will come when our eyes will be opened and we shall see that we all are one—and be saved.

I shall never forget those mystical months of waiting. The lemon leaves rustling, a bee flying, the sea which did not grow calm but kept sighing and knocking at my door, a crow passing over the roof of the house—all hurt me and made me cry out, as though my body had been flayed by some god and could not tolerate even a breath of wind.

Until finally one day I could stand it no longer. I had known well enough for years that the only way for me to escape intense pain or joy and to retrieve my freedom was to bewitch this pain or joy with the magic charm of words. In tropical countries an extremely thin, threadlike worm pierces the human skin and eats it. Along comes the exorciser. He plays his long magic flute; the spellbound worm appears, uncurls little by little, and emerges. Such also is the flute of art.

The sunbathed halcyon days of January had arrived, the days which God in his infinite goodness had purposely wedged into the heart of winter so that the poor unfortunate sea birds could lay their eggs with assurance and deposit them on the rocks. One morning during those halcyon days I dove into the sea, swam, worked up heat, came out, and dried myself in the sun. Seldom in my life had I tasted such bodily relief, such spiritual bliss. I returned to the house, took the penholder (this is my flute) and with a gentle shudder, leaned over the paper.

I wrote, I crossed out. I could not find suitable words. Sometimes they were dull and soulless, sometimes indecently gaudy, at other times abstract and full of air, lacking a warm body. I knew what I planned to say when I set out, but the shiftless, unbridled words dragged me elsewhere. My plan burgeoned with rank luxuriance, overflowing the mold in which I had placed it and shamelessly invading more space and time. It changed, changed again; I could not stabilize its countenance. And my soul changed with it, changed again; I could not stabilize it either.