Report to Grego (70 page)

In vain I toiled to find a simple idiom without a patchwork of ornaments, the idiom which would not overload my emotion with riches and deform it. Who was the thirsty Mohammedan mystic who lowered the bucket into a well in order to pull up water and drink? He hauled up the bucket. It was filled with gold. He emptied it. He lowered the bucket again and drew it up. It was filled with silver. He emptied it. “I know you are full of treasures, Lord,” he said. “But just give me some water to drink. I'm thirsty.” He lowered the bucket again, brought up water, and drank. This is how the Word should be—without ornaments.

Realizing that the time still had not arrived, that the secret metamorphosis inside the seed still had not been completed, I stopped.

Once, I remembered, I had detached a chrysalis from the trunk of an olive tree and placed it in my palm. Inside the transparent coating I discerned a living thing. It was moving. The hidden process must have reached its terminus; the future, still-enslaved butterfly was waiting with silent tremors for the sacred hour when it would emerge into the sunlight. It was not in a hurry. Having confidence in the light, the warm air, in God's eternal law, it was waiting.

But I was in a hurry. I wanted to see the miracle hatch before me as soon as possible, wanted to see how the body surges out of its tomb and shroud to become a soul. Bending over, I began to blow my warm breath over the chrysalis, and behold! a slit soon incised itself on the chrysalis's back, the entire shroud gradually split from top to bottom, and the immature, bright green butterfly appeared, still tightly locked together, its wings twisted, its legs glued to its abdomen. It squirmed gently and kept coming more and more to life beneath my warm, persistent breath. One wing as pale as a budding poplar leaf disengaged itself from the body and began to palpitate, struggling to unfold along its entire length, but in vain. It stayed half opened, shriveled. Soon the other wing moved as well, toiled in its own right to stretch, was unable to, and remained half unfolded and trembling. I, with a human being's effrontery, continued to lean over and blow my warm exhalation upon the maimed wings, but they had ceased to move now and had drooped down, as stiff and lifeless as stone.

I felt sick at heart. Because of my hurry, because I had dared to
transgress an eternal law, I had killed the butterfly. In my hand I held a carcass. Years and years have passed, but that butterfly's weightless carcass has weighed heavily on my conscience every since.

Man hurries, God does not. That is why man's works are uncertain and maimed, while God's are flawless and sure. My eyes welling with tears, I vowed never to transgress this eternal law again. Like a tree I would be blasted by wind, struck by sun and rain, and would wait with confidence; the long-desired hour of flowering and fruit would come.

But look, I was at that very moment breaking my vow. Though Zorba's chrysalis still had not matured, I was in a hurry to open its shroud. Ashamed of myself, I tore up everything I had scrawled on the paper and went outside to lie at the edge of the sea.

I remembered something Zorba once said: “I always act as though I were immortal.” This is God's method, but we mortals should follow it too, not from megalomania and impudence, but from the soul's invincible yearning for what is above. The attempt to imitate God is our only means to surpass human boundaries, be it only by a hair, be it only for an instant (remember the flying fish). As long as we are imprisoned in our bodies, as long as we are chrysalises, the most precious orders given us by God are: Be patient, meditate, trust.

I watched the sun go down; the deserted island opposite me glowed rosily, happily, like a cheek after a kiss. I heard the small songbirds returning drowsily to go to sleep, tired after a full day's hunting and singing. Soon the stars would rise to take their places one by one, and the wheel of night would begin to turn. Midnight would come, dawn would come, the sun would assuredly appear, and the wheel of day would commence its round.

A divine rhythm. Seeds in the ground, birds, stars—all obey. Only man lifts his hand in rebellion and wants to transgress the law and convert obedience into freedom. This is why he alone of all God's creatures is able to sin. To sin—what does that mean? It means to destroy harmony.

F
eeling that a trip would give me the patience to wait, I boarded a caique which called at the graceful Aegean isles of Santorin, Naxos, Paros and Mykonos. I have said this and I say it
again: One of the greatest pleasures, man is capable of being granted in this world is to sail the Aegean in spingtime when a gentle breeze is blowing. I have never been able to conceive how heaven could be in any way different. What other celestial or mundane joy could be more perfectly in harmony with man's body and soul? This joy reaches as far as exaltation but it does not go beyond—praise the Lord—and thus the beloved visible world does not vanish. On the contrary, the invisible becomes visible, and what we term God, eternity, and beatitude board our caique and sail along with us. Close your eyes at the horrible hour of death, and if you see Santorin, Naxos, Paros, and Mykonos, you shall enter heaven directly, without the soil's intervention. What are Abraham's bosom and the immaterial fetches of the Christian heaven compared to this Greek eternity composed of water, rocks, and a refreshing north wind?

I rejoiced that I was a man, a man and a Greek; thus I could feel the Aegean my own, my own ancestral heritage—instinctively, without the distorting interference of abstract thought—and could sail among the islands from one happiness to the next without overstepping the boundaries of my soul. These divine islands gleamed like a partridge's downy breast; they frolicked and changed colors at every instant in the shade and sunlight, sometimes dark brown, sometimes sprinkled with gold dust, densely planted with roses in the morning, immaculate lilies at noon, and warm violets at the hour when the sun decides to set.

This honeymoon-like voyage lasted two weeks. When I returned to the little house on the seashore, my mind had settled in place and my heart was beating calmly. Christ, Buddha, and Lenin, my life's three great and beloved pirates, had not vanished; they were phosphorescing in memory's crepuscule like decorative hieroglyphics with an exalted significance that has been surpassed.

Not a single intellectual concern had distracted me during the entire course of my journey; not a single dream had come in my sleep to remind me that I had creative agonies to resolve and that I could not resolve them. I saw, heard, and smelled the world with carefree simplicity, as though my soul had become body too, as though it too saw, heard, and smelled the world in a state of well-being.

Who were the two artists of ancient times who competed to see
who could paint the visible world most faithfully? “Now I shall prove to you that I am the best,” said the first, showing the other a curtain which he had painted. “Well, draw back the curtain,” said the adversary, “and let us see the picture.” “The curtain is the picture,” replied the first with a laugh.

During this entire voyage of mine on the Aegean I had sensed with profundity that the curtain is truly the picture. Alas for him who rips the curtain in order to see the picture. He will see nothing but chaos.

I remained plunged in solitude's austere silence for many additional days. It was spring; I sat beneath the blossoming lemon tree in the courtyard, joyfully turning over in my mind a poem I had heard at Mount Athos:
“Sister Almond Tree, speak to me of God.” And the almond tree blossomed.

Truly, the curtain embroidered with blossoms, birds, and men—this must be God. This world is not His vestment, as I once believed; it is God himself. Form and essence are identical. I had returned from my Aegean pilgrimage holding this certainty, this priceless booty. Zorba knew this, but could not say it. He danced it. I thought to myself, If only I can transform this dance into words!

And as I thought this, my mind cleared. I realized that I had been seeking God all those years while never noticing that He was right in front of me, just like the fiancé who thinks he has lost his engagement ring, searches anxiously for it everywhere, and does not find it because he is wearing it on his finger. Solitude, silence, and the Aegean were secretly, compassionately collaborating with me. Time passed above me, it too one of my collaborators, and ripened the seed in my entrails. Together with the birds and stars I yoked myself to the eternal wheel and for the first time in my life, I believe, felt what true liberty is: to place oneself beneath God's—in other words harmony's—yoke.

Creation, like love, is a seductive pursuit filled with uncertainty and fluttering heartbeats. Every morning when I went out for this mystical pursuit, my heart throbbed with anguish, curiosity, and a strange satanic arrogance which resembled (I don't know how or why) deep, untellable humility. For without having this at all in mind, from the very first days I fearfully realized which was the invisible—perhaps nonexistent—bird I was hunting. The mountains
were filled with partridge, the passes with turtledoves, the lakes with wild duck. But I, scornfully bypassing all this delicious flying flesh, was hunting the uncatchable bird which from time to time I heard flapping its wings in my heart of hearts, the bird made so far of wings only. I was struggling to give this bird a solid body so that I could catch it.

In the beginning I could not assign this bird a name, perhaps did not want to, for I knew full well that a name imprisons the soul, cramps it so that it can fit inside a word, obliges it to take whatever it has of the inexpressible, all the most precious qualities for which no substitute can be found, and abandon them outside this name's boundaries.

But I quickly understood that such anonymity makes the hunt much more difficult. I was unable to localize my prey anywhere and set a trap for it. The invisible presence hovered everywhere in the air, everywhere and nowhere. The human being cannot support absolute freedom; such freedom leads him to chaos. If it were possible for a man to be born with absolute freedom, his first duty if he wished to be of some use on earth would be to circumscribe that freedom. Man is able to bear working only in a fixed, circumscribed arena. I had to submit to this human incapacity if I wished to surpass it. Thus, with the full, bitter awareness that I was narrowing my desire, I needed to bequeath a name to the mysterious bird I had set out to hunt, a name with boundaries as movable as possible, with hedges as transparent as possible, so that I could see, even if dimly, what was happening behind and around it.

This need worked within me secretly, day and night. Fortunately, my mind was unaware; all this went on behind its back. One morning I got up and the bird's name gleamed unforeseen and terrible in the air. It was not a bird, it was a cry from innumerable mouths. All at once I recognized it. This cry was what I had been hunting—the Cry of the future. I was tormenting myself and making war for its sake, I had been born for its sake. All the rest—my joys and sorrows, my journeys, my virtues and vices—were nothing more than my progress toward this Cry. Christ, Buddha, and Lenin had been stations en route. I had to go by way of them; it was they who marked out the passings of the hidden bird, they who functioned as beaters to help me flush the Cry.

Had nothing gone to waste, then? Considered separately, each of my intellectual ramblings and sidewise tacks seemed wasted time, the product of an unjelled, disordered mind. But now I saw that considered all together they constituted a straight and unerring line which knew full well that only by sidewise tacks could it advance over this uneven earth. And my infidelities toward the great ideas—I had abandoned them after being successively fascinated and disillusioned—taken all together these infidelities constituted an unshakable faith in the essence. It seemed that luck (how shall we call it? not luck, but destiny) had eyes and compassion; it had taken me by the hand and guided me. Only now did I understand where it had guided me and what it expected me to do. It expected me to hear the Cry of the future, to exert every effort to divine what that Cry wanted, why it was calling, and where it invited us to go.

My blood coursed up to my head, babbling all with joy. Taking my pen, I inscribed at the very top of a page the happy motif of the final, definitive work I was beginning:

Greetings, man, you little two-legged plucked cock! It's really true (don't listen to what others say): if you don't crow in the morning, the sun does not come up!

A cool, playful flame had perched on my head; I felt it waving like a red feather in the breeze. It was a mysterious, chirping bird, a fiery helmet with magical power to increase the warrior's ferocity and hope. Beating with impatience, my heart was about to gather up momentum, but when it saw the gulf in front of it (the gulf? or God?), it turned coward. The wretched flesh had not the slightest appetite for adventure. Comfortably installed in that peaceful little house with the lemon trees and the sea and the ponderous bolt, it kept backing away and shrieking. But an invisible eminence higher and truer than my true body surged above my head and ruled me. I had become a ship and was preparing to cut across the main. Nailed to my prow was a mermaid with one hand resting upon her breast, the other extended commandingly, straight forward. She was not a Nike, she was the Great Cry, and she pointed my way between sky and sea.

All the words, tales, and jokes I knew—all entered the ship. I took aboard my dearest friends, the most disparate stalwarts my
imagination possessed, also ample provisions, ample goatskins of wine, and a goodly number of ancient gods crudely carved in wood, to help me pass the time. The sails bellied; we put out to sea.

Where should we lay our course? I had nothing in my mind; my temples were open, and all four winds were blowing with equal strength. Between my fingers I held a hard lump of clay, the future. I kneaded it, gave it a form—man, god, devil—then destroyed it and fashioned another. The forms ran off my fingertips, solidified for a moment in the air, and flowed back into chaos. You must not say I was playing; I was not playing, I was agonizing-toiling to bequeath my soul's countenance to the clay.