"Then I left them my basket with all I had bought.

"'All that's for you, too; take it all!'

"And I cleared out. I left the village, opened my shirt, seized the Saint Sophia I had embroidered and tore it to shreds, threw it away and ran for all I was worth.

"And I'm still running…"

Zorba leaned against the wall, and turned towards me.

"That was how I was rescued," he said.

"Rescued from your country?"

"Yes, from my country," he said in a firm, calm voice.

Then after a moment:

"Rescued from my country, from priests, and from money. I began sifting things, sifting more and more things out. I lighten my burden that way. I-how shall I put it?-I find my own deliverance, I become a man."

Zorba's eyes glowed, his large mouth laughed contentedly.

After staying silent a moment or two he started off again. His heart was overflowing, he couldn't control it.

"There was a time when I used to say: that man's a Turk, or a Bulgar, or a Greek. I've done things for my country that would make your hair stand on end, boss. I've cut people's throats, burned villages, robbed and raped women, wiped out entire families. Why? Because they were Bulgars, or Turks. 'Bah! To hell with you, you swine!' I say to myself sometimes. 'To hell with you right away, you ass.' Nowadays I say this man is a good fellow, that one's a bastard. They can be Greeks or Bulgars or Turks, it doesn't matter. Is he good? Or is he bad? That's the only thing I ask nowadays. And as I grow older-I'd swear this on the last crust I eat-I feel I shan't even go on asking that! Whether a man's good or bad, I'm sorry for him, for all of 'em. The sight of a man just rends my insides, even if I act as though I don't care a damn! There he is, poor devil, I think; he also eats and drinks and makes love and is frightened, whoever he is: he has his God and his devil just the same, and he'll peg out and lie as stiff as a board beneath the ground and be food for worms, just the same. Poor devil! We're all brothers! All worm meat!

"And if it's a woman… Ah! then I just want to cry my eyes out! Your honored self, boss, keeps teasing me and saying I'm too fond of the women. Why shouldn't I be fond of 'em, when they're all weak creatures who don't know what they're doing and surrender on the spot if you just catch hold of their breasts…

"Once I went into another Bulgarian village. And one old brute who'd spotted me-he was a village elder-told the others and they surrounded the house I was lodging in. I slipped out onto the balcony and crept from one roof to the next; the moon was up and I jumped from balcony to balcony like a cat. But they saw my shadow, climbed up on to the roofs and started shooting. So what do I do? I dropped down into the yard, and there I found a Bulgarian woman in bed. She stood up in her nightdress, saw me and opened her mouth to shout, but I held out my arms and whispered: 'Mercy! Mercy! Don't shout!' and seized her breasts. She went pale and half swooned.

"'Come inside,' she said in a low voice. 'Come in so that we can't be seen…'

"I went inside, she gripped my hand: 'Are you a Greek?' she said. 'Yes, Greek. Don't betray me.' I took her by the waist. She said not a word. I went to bed with her, and my heart trembled with pleasure. 'There, Zorba, you dog,' I said to myself, 'there's a woman for you; that's what humanity means! What is she? Bulgar? Greek? Papuan? That's the last thing that matters! She's human, and a human being with a mouth, and breasts, and she can love. Aren't you ashamed of killing? Bah! Swine!'

"That's the way I thought while I was with her, sharing her warmth. But did that mad bitch, my country, leave me in peace for that, do you think? I disappeared next morning in the clothes the Bulgar woman gave me. She was a widow. She took her late husband's clothes out of a chest, gave them to me, and she hugged my knees and begged me to come back to her.

"Yes, yes, I did go back… the following night. I was a patriot then, of course-a wild beast; I went back with a can of paraffin and set fire to the village. She must have been burnt along with the others, poor wretch. Her name was Ludmilla."

Zorba sighed. He lit a cigarette, took one or two puffs and then threw it away.

"My country, you say?… You believe all the rubbish your books tell you…? Well, I'm the one you should believe. So long as there are countries, man will stay like an animal, a ferocious animal… But I am delivered from all that, God be praised! It's finished for me! What about you?"

I didn't answer. I was envious of the man. He had lived with his flesh and blood-fighting, killing, kissing-all that I had tried to learn through pen and ink alone. All the problems I was trying to solve point by point in my solitude and glued to my chair, this man had solved up in the pure air of the mountains with his sword.

I closed my eyes, inconsolable.

"Are you asleep, boss?" said Zorba, vexed. "Here I am, like a fool, talking to you!"

He lay down grumbling, and very soon I heard him snoring.

I was not able to sleep all night. A nightingale we heard for the first time that night filled our solitude with an unbearable sadness and suddenly I felt the tears on my cheeks.

I was choking. I rose at dawn and gazed at the earth and the sea from the doorway of our hut. It seemed to me that the world had been transformed overnight. Opposite me on the sand, a small clump of thorny bushes, which had been a miserable dull color the day before, was now covered with tiny white blossoms. In the air hung a sweet, haunting perfume of lemon and orange trees in flower. I walked out a few steps. I could never see too much of this ever-recurring miracle.

Suddenly I heard a happy cry behind me. Zorba had risen and rushed to the door, half-naked. He, too, was thrilled by this sight of spring.

"What is that?" he asked stupefied. "That miracle over there, boss, that moving blue, what do they call it"? Sea? Sea? And what's that wearing a flowered green apron? Earth? Who was the artist who did it? It's the first time I've seen that, boss, I swear!"

His eyes were brimming over.

"Zorba!" I cried. "Have you gone off your head?"

"What are you laughing at? Don't you see? There's magic behind all that, boss."

He rushed outside, began dancing and rolling in the grass like a foal in spring.

The sun appeared and I held out my palms to the warmth. Rising sap… the swelling breast… and the soul also blossoming like a tree; you could feel that body and soul were kneaded from the same material.

Zorba had stood up again, his hair full of dew and earth.

"Quick, boss!" he shouted. "We'll dress and make ourselves smart! Today we are to be blessed. It won't be long before the priest and the village notables are here. If they find us grovelling in the grass like this it will be a disgrace to the firm! So on with the collars and ties! Out with the serious faces! It doesn't matter a damn if you have no head, you must wear the right sort of hat…! It's a crazy world!"

We dressed, the workmen arrived, and soon after them the notables.

"Make your mind up, boss, no fooling today! We mustn't make ourselves look ridiculous."

Pappa Stephanos walked in front in his dirty cassock with its deep pockets. At consecration ceremonies, funerals, marríages, baptisms, he would throw into these abysmal pockets anything he was offered: raisins, rolls, cheese pies, cucumbers, bits of meat, sugared sweets, everything… and at night, his wife, old Pappadia, would put on her spectacles and sort it all out, nibbling all the time.

Behind Pappa Stephanos came the elders: Kondomanolio, the café proprietor, who fancied he knew the world because he had been as far as Canea and had seen Prince George himself; uncle Anagnosti, calm and smiling, wearing a wide-sleeved, dazzling white shirt; the schoolmaster, grave and solemn with his stick, and, last of all, Mavrandoni, with his slow, heavy tread. He wore a black kerchief on his head, a black shirt and black shoes; he acknowledged us with a forced air. He was bitter and aloof. He stood a little apart, his back to the sea.