The widow got onto her knees and looked about her for a way of escape, but the villagers had barred the way. They were in a circle round the churchyard and standing on the benches; when they saw her looking for an opening they stepped forward and closed the circle.

Meanwhile Zorba, agile, resolute and calm, was struggling silently. From my place near the church door, I watched anxiously. Manolakas's face had gone purple with fury. Sifakas and another giant of a man came up to help him. But Manolakas indignantly rolled his eyes:

"Keep away! Keep away! Nobody's to come near!" he shouted. He attacked Zorba again fiercely. He charged him with his head like a bull.

Zorba bit his lips without saying a word. He got a hold like a vise on the constable's right arm, and dodged to right and left to avoid the blows from the constable's head. Mad with rage, Manolakas lunged forward and seized Zorba's ear between his teeth, and tore at it with all his might. The blood spurted. "Zorba!" I cried, terrified, rushing forward to save him.

"Get away, boss!" he cried. "Keep out of it!"

He clenched his fist and hit Manolakas a terrible blow in the lower part of the abdomen. The wild beast let go immediately. His teeth parted and set free the half-torn ear. His purple face turned ghastly white. Zorba thrust him to the ground, snatched away his knife and threw it over the church wall.

He stemmed the flow of blood from his ear with his handkerchief. He then wiped his face, which was streaming with sweat and his face became all smeared with blood. He straightened up, glanced around him. His eyes were swollen and red. He shouted to the widow:

"Get up! Come with me!"

And he walked towards the churchyard door.

The widow stood up; she gathered all her strength together in order to rush forward. But she did not have the time. Like a falcon, old Mavrandoni threw himself on her, knocked her over, wound her long black hair three times round his arm and with a single blow of his knife cut off her head.

"I take the responsibility for this sin!" he cried, and threw the victim's head on the doorstep of the church. Then he crossed himself.

Zorba looked round and saw the terrible sight. He gripped his moustache and pulled out a number of hairs in horror. I went up to him and took his arm. He leaned forward and looked at me. Two big tears were hanging on his lashes.

"Let's get away, boss," he said in a choking voice.

That evening Zorba would have nothing to eat or drink. "My throat's too tight," he said; "nothing will go down." He washed his ear in cold water, dipped a piece of cotton wool in some raki and made a bandage. Seated on his mattress, his head between his hands, he remained pensive.

I too was leaning on my elbows as I lay on the floor along by the wall, and I felt warm tears run slowly down my cheeks. My brain was not working at all, I was thinking of nothing. I wept, like a child overcome by deep sorrow.

Suddenly Zorba raised his head and gave vent to his feelings. Pursuing his savage thoughts, he began to shout aloud:

"I tell you, boss, everything that happens in this world is unjust, unjust, unjust! I won't be a party to it! I, Zorba, the worm, the slug! Why must the young die and the old wrecks go on living? Why do little children die? I had a boy once-Dimitri he was called-and I lost him when he was three years old. Well… I shall never, never forgive God for that, do you hear? I tell you, the day I die, if He has the cheek to appear in front of me, and if He is really and truly a God, He'll be ashamed! Yes, yes, He'll be ashamed to show himself to Zorba, the slug!"

He grimaced as though he was in paín. The blood started flowing again from his wound. He bit his lips so that he should not cry out.

"Wait, Zorba!" I said. "I'll change your dressing!" I washed his ear once again in raki, then I took the orange-water which the widow had sent me and which I had found on my bed, and I dipped the cotton wool in it.

"Orange water?" said Zorba, eagerly sniffing at it. "Orange water? Put some on my hair, like that, will you? That's it! And on my hands, pour it all out, go on!"

He had come back to life. I looked at him astounded.

"I feel as though I'm entering the widow's garden," he said.

And he began his lamentations again.

"How many years it's taken," he muttered, "how many long years for the earth to succeed in making a body like that! You looked at her and said: Ah! if only I were twenty and the whole race of men disappeared from the earth and only that woman remained, and I gave her children! No, not children, real gods they'd be… Whereas now…"

He leaped to his feet. His eyes filled with tears.

"I can't stand it, boss," he said. "I've got to walk, I shall have to go up and down the mountainside two or three times tonight to tire myself, calm myself a bit… Ah! that widow! I feel I must chant a mirologue [29] for you'."

He rushed out, went towards the mountain and disappeared into the darkness.

I lay down on my bed, turned out the lamp and once more began, in my wretched, inhuman way, to transpose reality, removing blood, flesh and bones and reduce it to the abstract, link it with universal laws, until I came to the awful conclusion that what had happened was necessary. And, what is more, that it contributed to the universal harmony. I arrived at this final and abominable consolation: it was right that all that had happened should have happened.

The widow's murder entered my brain-the hive in which for years all poisons had been changed into honey-and threw it into confusion. But my philosophy immediately seized upon the dreadful warning, surrounded it with images and artifice and quickly made it harmless. In the same way, bees encase the starving drone in wax when it comes to steal their honey.

A few hours later the widow was at rest in my memory, calm and serene, changed into a symbol. She was encased in wax in my heart; she could no longer spread panic inside me and paralyze my brain. The terrible events of that one day broadened, extended into time and space, and became one with great past civilizations; the civilizatíons became one with the earth's destiny; the earth with the destiny of the universe-and thus, returning to the widow, I found her subject to the great laws of existence, reconciled with her murderers, immobile and serene.

For me time had found its real meaning: the widow had died thousands of years before, in the epoch of the Aegean civilization, and the young girls of Cnossos with their curly hair had died that very morning on the shores of this pleasant sea.

Sleep took possession of me, just as one day-nothíng is more certain-death will do, and I slipped gently into darkness. I did not hear when Zorba returned, or even if he returned. The next morning I found him on the mountainside shouting and cursing at the workers.

Nothíng they did was to his liking. He dismissed three workers who were obstinate, took the pick himself and began clearíng through the rocks and brush the path which he had marked out for the posts. He climbed the mountain, met some woodcutters who were cutting down the pines and began to thunder abuse. One of them laughed and muttered; Zorba hurled himself at hím.

That evening he came down to the hut worn out and in rags. He sat beside me on the beach. He could hardly open his mouth; when he did speak at last, it was about timber, cables and lignite; he was like a grasping contractor, in a hurry to devastate the place, make as much profit out of it as he could and leave.

In the stage of self-consolation which I had reached, I was once on the point of speaking about the widow; Zorba stretched out his long arm and put his big hand over my mouth.

"Shut up!" he said in a muffled voice.