A fault confessed is half redressed. I didn't stick my nose outside the door that day. Where would I have gone? What should I have done? No fear! I was fine where I was. I sent an order to the best inn of the town and they brought us a tray of food-nothing but good, strength-giving food: black caviar, chops, fish, lemon-juice, cadaif. [21] We looked after our little affairs again and had another nap. We woke up in the evening, dressed and went off arm-in-arm to the café once more.

To cut a long story short and not drown you in words, that pro gram is still in operation. But don't you worry yourself, boss, I'm looking after your little affairs, too. Now and then I go and look round the shops. I'll buy the cable and all we need, don't you worry. A day sooner, or a day or a week later, even a month later, what does it matter? As we say, if the cat's in too much of a hurry, she has peculiar kittens. In your interest, I'm waiting for my ears to pick up everything and my mind to clear, so I'm not swindled. The cable must be first-class, or we shall be dished. So be patient, boss, and trust in me.

Above all, don't worry about my health. Adventures are good for me. In the matter of a few days I've become a young man of twenty again. I'm so strong, I tell you, I shall be growing a new set o' teeth. My back was hurtíng me a bit when I arrived, now I'm as fit as a fiddle. Every morning I look at myself in the mirror and I'm amazed my hair hasn't turned as black as boot polish overnight.

But you'll be asking why I'm writing to you like this? Well… you're a sort of confessor to me, boss, and I'm not ashamed to admit all my sins to you. Do you know why? So far as I can see, whether I do right or wrong, you don't care a rap. You hold a damp sponge, like God, and flap! slap! you just wipe it all out. That's what prompts me to tell you everything like this. So listen!

I'm all topsy-turvy and on the point of going completely off my head. Please, boss, take your pen and write to me as soon as you get this letter. Until I have your answer, I'll be on tenterhooks. I think that for years now my name's been scratched off God's register. And off the devil's, too. Yours is the only register I think I'm still on, so I've got nobody but your worshipful self to turn to; so listen to what I've got to say. This is what it's about:

Yesterday there was a fête on in a village near Candia -devil take me if I know what saint it was in aid of! Lola-ah! true enough, I'd forgotten to introduce her to you; her name's Lola-she says to me:

"Grandad!" She calls me grandad once more, but now it's a pet name, boss. "Grandad," she says, "I'd like to go to the fête!"

"Go on, then, Granma," I say to her.

"But I want to go with you."

"I'm not going. I don't like saints. You go by yourself."

"All right, I shan't go either."

I stared at her.

"You won't? Why not? Don't you want to?"

"If you come with me, I do. If not, I don't."

"Why not? You're a free person, aren't you?"

"No, I'm not."

"You don't want to be free?"

"No, I don't."

I thought I must be hearing voices. I really did.

"You don't want to be free?" I cried.

"No, I don't! I don't! I don't!"

Boss, I'm writing this in Lola's room, on Lola's paper; for God's sake, listen carefully. I think only people who want to be free are human beings. Women don't want to be free. Well, is woman a human being?

For heaven's sake, answer as soon as possible.

All the best to the best of bosses.

Me, Alexis Zorba.

When I had finished reading Zorba's letter I was for a while in two minds-no, three. I did not know whether to be angry, or laugh, or just admire this primitive man who simply cracked life's shell-logic, morality, honesty-and went straight to its very substance. All the little virtues which are so useful are lacking in him. All he has is an uncomfortable, dangerous virtue which is hard to satisfy and which urges him continually and irresistibly towards the utmost limits, towards the abyss.

When he writes, this ignorant workman breaks his pens in his impetuosity. Like the first men to cast off their monkey skins, or like the great phílosophers, he is dominated by the basic problems of mankind. He lives them as if they were immediate and urgent necessities. Like the child, he sees everything for the first time. He is forever astonished and wonders why and wherefore. Everything seems miraculous to him, and each morning when he opens his eyes he sees trees, sea, stones and birds, and is amazed.

"What is this miracle?" he cries. "What are these mysteries called: trees, sea, stones, birds?"

One day, I remember, when we were making our way to the village, we met a little old man astride a mule. Zorba opened his eyes wide as he looked at the beast. And his look was so intense that the peasant cried out in terror:

"For God's sake, brother, don't give him the evil eye!" And he crossed himself.

I turned to Zorba.

"What did you do to the old chap to make him cry out like that?" I asked him.

"Me? What d'you think I did? I was looking at his mule, that's all! Didn't it strike you, boss?"

"What?"

"Well… that there are such things as mules in this world!"

Another day, I was reading, stretched out on the shore, and Zorba came and sat down opposite me, placed his santuri on his knees and began to play. I raised my eyes to look at him. Gradually his expression changed and a wild joy took possession of him. He shook his long, creased neck and began to sing.

Macedonian songs, Klepht songs, savage cries; the human throat became as it was in prehistoric times, when the cry was a great synthesis which bore within it all we call today by the names of poetry, music and thought. "Akh! Akh!" The cry came from the depth of Zorba's being and the whole thin crust of what we call civilization cracked and let out the immortal beast, the hairy god, the terrifying gorilla.

Lignite, profits and losses, Dame Hortense and plans for the future, all vanished. That cry carried everything before it; we had no need of anything else. Immobile, on that solitary coast of Crete, we both held in our breasts all the bitterness and sweetness of life. Bitterness and sweetness no longer existed. The sun went down, night came, the Great Bear danced round the immovable axis of the sky, the moon rose and gazed in horror at two tiny beasts who were singing on the sands and fearing no one.

"Ha! Man is a wild beast," Zorba said suddenly, overexcited with his singing. "Leave your books alone. Aren't you ashamed? Man is a wild beast, and wild beasts don't read."

He was silent a moment, then started to laugh.

"D'you know," he said, "how God made man? Do you know the first words this animal, man, addressed to God?"

"No. How should I know? I wasn't there."

"I was!" cried Zorba, his eyes sparkling.

"Well, tell me."

Half in ecstasy, half in mockery, he began inventing the fabulous story of the creation of man.

"Well, listen, boss! One morning God woke up feeling down in the dumps. 'What a devil of a God I am! I haven't even any men to burn incense to me and swear by my name to help pass the time away! I've had enough of living all alone like an old screech owl. Ftt!' He spat on his hands, pulled up his sleeves, put on his glasses, took a piece of earth, spat on it, made mud of it, kneaded it well and made it into a little man which he stuck in the sun.

"Seven days later he pulled it out of the sun. It was baked. God looked at it and began to split his sides with laughter.

" 'Devil take me,' he says, 'it's a pig standing up on its hind legs! That's not what I wanted at all! There's no místake, I've made a mess of things!'

"So he picks him up by the scruff of his neck and kicks his backside.