"The old boy just wouldn't stop talking, the sweat was pouring off him. So they all rushed round him and hugged him to make him stop talking. He stopped. Noussa signed to me. 'Now you must speak!'

"So I got up in my turn and made a speech, half in Russian, half in Greek. What did I say? I'm damned if I know. I only remember that at the end I launched on some Klepht brigand songs. Without rhyme or reason, I began to bellow:

From the hills the Klephts came down, Each a rustler! Of horses found they none, But they found Noussa!

"You see, boss, I changed the song to fit the circumstances.

Away they go, away they go… (Away they go, mother!) Ah! My Noussa! Ah! My Noussa! Vye!

"And, as I bellowed 'Vye!' I threw myself on Noussa and kissed her.

"That was just what was wanted. As if I had given the signal they were waiting for, and they were, in fact, only waiting for that, several great fellows with red beards rushed and put out the lights.

"The women, the jades, started yelping, screaming they were afraid. But almost at once, in the darkness, they giggled: 'Hee-hee-hee!' They liked being tickled and laughed.

"What happened, boss, God alone knows. But I don't think He knew eíther, because if He had known, He would have sent a thunderbolt to burn them up. There they were all mixed up, men and women, rolling on the ground. I started to search for Noussa, but where could I find her? I found another and did the job with her.

"At daybreak I rose to leave with my woman. It was still dark, I couldn't see clearly. I caught hold of a foot, I pulled it. No, it wasn't Noussa's. I caught hold of another foot-no! I pulled a third-no! I catch hold of a fourth, a fifth, and in the end, after no end of trouble, I found Noussa's foot, pulled it, and extricated her from two or three great devils who were sprawling over the poor girl, and I woke her up. 'Noussa,' I said, 'Let's go!' 'Don't forget your fur cape!' she replied. 'Let's go!' And we left."

"Well?" I asked again, seeing that Zorba remained silent.

"There you go again with your 'wells,'" said Zorba, impatient at these questions.

He sighed

"I lived six months with her. Since that day-God be my witness!-I need fear nothing. Nothing, I say. Nothing, except one thing: that the devil, or God, wipe out those six months from my memory. D'you understand? 'I understand,' you ought to say."

Zorba closed his eyes. He appeared very moved. It was the first time I had seen him so strongly gripped by a memory of long ago.

"Did you love that Noussa so much, then?" I asked a few moments later.

Zorba opened his eyes.

"You're young, boss," he said, "you're still young, you can't understand! When you've gone white on top like me, we'll talk again about this-this everlasting business."

"What everlastíng business?"

"Why, women, of course! How many times must I tell you, woman is an everlasting business. Just now, you're like a young cock who covers the hens in two shakes of a lamb's tail and then puffs out his breast, gets on top of the dung hill and starts to crow and brag. He doesn't look at the hens, he looks at their combs! Well, what can he know of love? The devil take him!"

He spat on the ground in scorn. Then he turned his head away, he did not wish to look at me.

"Well, Zorba," I asked again, "what about Noussa?"

Zorba replied, gazing into the distance over the sea:

"When I came home one evening, I couldn't find her anywhere. She'd gone. A handsome soldier had just arrived in the village and she'd run off with him. It was all over! I tell you, my heart split in two. But the knave soon stuck itself together again. You must have seen those sails with red, yellow and black patches, sewn with thick twine, which never tear even in the roughest storms. Well, that's what my heart's like. Umpteen holes, and umpteen patches: it need fear nothing more!"

"And didn't you bear Noussa any grudge, Zorba?"

"Why? You can say what you like, woman is something different, boss… something different. She's not human! Why bear her any grudge? Woman's something incomprehensible, and all the laws of state and religion have got her all wrong. They shouldn't act like that towards a woman. They're too harsh, boss, too unjust. If I ever had to make laws, I shouldn't make the same laws for men and for women. Ten, a hundred, a thousand commandments for man. Man is a man, after all; he can stand up to it. But not a single law for woman. Because-how many times do I have to tell you this, boss?-woman is a creature with no strength. Let's drink to Noussa, boss! And to woman!… And may God give us men more sense!"

He drank, raised his arm and brought it down with force, as if he were using an axe.

"He must either give us men more sense," he said, "or else perform an operation on us. Otherwise, believe me, we're finished."

8

IT WAS raining again the next day. The sky mingled with the earth in infinite tenderness. I recalled a Hindu bas-relief in darkgrey stone. The man had thrown his arms around the woman and was united to her with such gentleness and resignation that one had the impression-the elements having worked over, and almost eaten into, the bodies-of seeing two copulating insects over which fine rain had started to fall and dampen their wings. Thus closely entwined, they were being slowly sucked back into the voracious maw of the earth.

I was sitting in front of the hut and watching the ground darken and the sea grow a phosphorescent green. Not a soul was to be seen from one end of the beach to the other, not a sail, not a bird. Only the smell of the earth entered through the window.

I rose and held out my hand to the rain like a beggar. I suddenly felt like weeping. Some sorrow, not my own but deeper and more obscure, was rising from the damp earth: the panic which a peaceful grazing animal feels when, all at once, without seeing anything, it rears its head and scents in the air about it that it is trapped and cannot escape.

I wanted to utter a cry, knowing that it would relieve my feelings, but I was ashamed to.

The clouds were coming lower and lower. I looked through the window; my heart was gently palpitating.

What a voluptuous enjoyment of sorrow those hours of soft rain can produce in you! All the bitter memories hidden in the depths of your mind come to the surface: separations from friends, women's smiles which have faded, hopes which have lost their wings like moths and of which only a grub remains-and that grub had crawled on to the leaf of my heart and was eating it away.

The image of my friend exiled in the Caucasus slowly appeared through the rain and sodden earth. I took my pen, bent over the paper, and began to speak to him in order to cut through the fine mesh of the rain and be able to breathe.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

I am writing to you from a lonely shore in Crete where destiny and I have agreed I should stay several months to play-to play at being a capitalist. If my game succeeds, I shall say it was not a game, but that I had made a great resolution and changed my mode of life.

You remember how, when you left, you called me a bookworm. That so vexed me I decided to abandon my scribbling on paper for a time-or forever?-and to throw myself into a life of action. I rented a hillside containing lignite; I engaged workmen and took picks and shovels, acetylene lamps, baskets, trucks. I opened up galleries and went into them. Just like that, to annoy you. And by dint of digging and making passages in the earth, the bookworm has become a mole. I hope you approve of the metamorphosis.

My joys here are great, because they are very simple and spring from the everlasting elements: the pure air, the sun, the sea and the wheaten loaf. In the evening an extraordinary Sinbad the Sailor squats before me, Turkish fashion, and speaks. He speaks and the world grows bigger. Occasionally, when words no longer suffice, he leaps up and dances. And when dancing no longer suffices he places his santuri on his knees and plays.