"In the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ!" said Zorba in a solemn voice. He went to the head of the processíon and all followed hím in pious self-communion.

Century-old memories of magic ceremonies were awakened in those peasant breasts. They all had their eyes riveted on the priest as though they expected him to confront and exorcise invisible forces. Thousands of years ago the sorcerer raised his arms, sprinkled the air with his holy water, muttered mysterious and allpowerful words, and the evil demons fled while the good spirits came from water, earth and air, to the aid of mankind.

We arrived at the pit we had dug by the sea to take the first pylon of the line. The men raised a huge pine trunk and set it up erect in the hole. Pappa Stephanos put on his stole, took his censer and, gazing at the trunk all the time, began intoning the exorcism: "May it be founded on solid rock, that neither wind nor water may shake it. Amen."

"Amen!" thundered Zorba, crossing himself.

"Amen!" murmured the elders.

"Amen!" said the workmen, last.

"May God bless your work and give you the wealth of Abraham and Isaac!" the village priest continued, and Zorba pushed a hundred drachma note into his hand.

"My blessing on you!" said the priest, well content.

We returned to the hut, where Zorba offered them all wine and lenten hors d'oeuvres-grilled octopus, fried squid, soaked beans and olives. When they had devoured the lot, the officials went off home. The magic ceremony was over.

"We managed to get through that all right!" said Zorba, rubbing his hands.

He undressed, put on his work clothes and took a pick.

"Come on!" he shouted to the men. "Cross yourselves and get on with the work!"

Zorba didn't raise his head again for the rest of the day.

Every fifty yards the workmen dug a hole, put in a post, and went on, making a beeline for the summit of the hill. Zorba measured, calculated and gave orders; he did not eat, smoke, or take a rest the whole day long. He was completely absorbed in the job.

"It's all because of doing things by halves," he would often say to me, and "saying things by halves, being good by halves, that the world is in the mess it's in today. Do things properly by God! One good knock for each nail and you'll win through! God hates a balfdevil ten times more than an archdevil!"

That evening, when he came in from work, he lay down on the sand, exhausted.

"I'm going to sleep here," he said. 'I'll wait for dawn, then we'll begin work again. I'm going to start night shifts."

"Why all the hurry, Zorba?"

He hesitated a moment.

"Why? Well, I want to see whether I've found the right slope or not. If I haven't, we're done for. Don't you see, boss? The sooner I see if we're dished, the better it'll be for us."

He ate quickly, gluttonously, and soon afterwards the beach echoed to his snores. I, for my part, stayed awake a long time, watching the stars travel across the sky. I saw the whole sky change its position-and the shell of my skull, like an observatory dome, changed position, too, together with the constellations. "Watch the movement of the stars as if you were turning with them…" This sentence of Marcus Aurelius filled my heart with harmony.

21

IT WAS Easter Day. Zorba had dressed himself up. He had put on some thick, dark-purple, woollen socks which he said had been knitted for him by one of his women friends in Macedonia. He anxiously ran up and down a hillock near our beach. Putting his hand up over his thick eyebrows to shield his eyes, he watched the village road.

"She's late, the old seal; she's late, the trollop; she's late, the old tattered banner!"

A butterfly, fresh from the chrysalis, flew up and tried to light on Zorba's moustache, but it tickled him, he snorted and the butterfly flew calmly away and disappeared in the rays of the sun.

We were expecting Dame Hortense that day to celebrate Easter. We had roasted a lamb on the spit, laid a white cloth on the sand and painted some eggs. Half in fun, half in earnest, we had decided to prepare a grand reception for her. On that isolated beach, this dumpy, perfumed, slightly rotting siren always exercised a strange charm upon us. When she wasn't there we missed something-a scent like eau-de-Cologne, a jerky waddling gait like that of a duck, a slightly husky voice, and two pale, acidulous eyes.

So we had cut myrtle and laurel branches and made a triumphal arch under which she would have to pass. And on the arch itself we had stuck four flags-English, French, Italian, Russian-and in the center, on high, a long white sheet striped with blue. Not being admirals we had no cannon, but we had borrowed two rifles and had decided to wait on the hillock, and as soon as we saw our seal rolling and bouncing along the road to fire a salvo. We wanted to revive on this solitary coast something of her past grandeur, so that she, too, could enjoy a momentary illusion, poor wretch, and think herself once more a ruby-lipped young woman with firm breasts, patent-leather court shoes and silk stockings. What was the use of the Resurrection of Christ, if it was not a sign for the rekindling of youth and joy in us as well? If it could not make an old cocotte feel one-and-twenty again?

"She's late, the old seal; she's late, the trollop; she's late, the old tattered banner!" Zorba grumbled every minute, pulling up his aubergine-colored socks, which kept falling down.

"Come and sit down, Zorba! Come and have a smoke in the shade here. She won't be long!"

He cast a last glance down the village road and then came over to sit under the carob tree. It was nearly midday and it was hot. In the distance we could hear the lively, joyous bells of Easter. From time to time the wind brought us the sound of the Cretan lyre. [27] The whole village was buzzing with life, like a hive in springtime.

Zorba shook his head.

"It's finished. I used to feel my soul rise again every Easter, at the same time as Christ, but that's all finished!" he said. "Now, only my body is reborn-because when somebody stands you a meal, and then a second and a third, and they say: 'Just have this little mouthful, and just this one more'… well, you just fill yourself up with more heaps of luscious food, which doesn't all turn into dung. There's something which stays, something that's saved and turns into good humor, dancing, singing, wrangling even-that's what I call Resurrection."

He stood up, looked at the horizon and frowned.

"There's a youngster running this way," he said, and hurried to meet him.

The boy stood on tiptoe and whispered something in Zorba's ear, who started back, furious.

"Ill?" he shouted. " Ill? Shoot off or I'll beat you up!" Then he turned to me.

"Boss, I'm running down to the village to see what's happened to the old seal… Just a minute… Give me two red eggs so that I can crack them with her. I'll be back."

He put the two eggs in his pocket, pulled up his aubergine socks and went off.

I came down from the hillock and lay on the cool pebbles. There was a light breeze, the sea was faintly ruffled; two seagulls bobbed up and down on the tiny waves, with necks fluffed out, voluptuously enjoying the movement of the water.

I could well imagine their delight in the freshness of the water under their bellies. As I watched the seagulls, I thought: "That's the road to take; find the absolute rhythm and follow it with absolute trust."

An hour later Zorba reappeared, stroking his moustache with an air of satisfaction.

"She's caught cold, poor sweet," he said. "Nothing really. The last few days-in fact the whole of Holy Week-she's been goíng to the midnight service, even though she's a Frank. [28] She went on my account, she says. And she caught cold at it. So I cupped her, rubbed her with oil from the lamp and gave her a glass of rum. Tomorrow she'll be hale and hearty again. Ha! the old crock, she's amusing in her way; you should have heard her cooing like a dove while I massaged her-she said it tickled!"