23

AS DAWN BROKE Zorba sat up in bed and spoke to me, waking me.

"Are you asleep, boss?"

"What is it, Zorba?"

"I've been dreaming. A funny dream. I think we shan't be long before we go on some journey or other. Listen, this'll make you laugh. There was a ship as big as a town here in the harbor. Its siren was going, it was preparing to leave. Then I came running up from the village to catch it, and I was carrying a parrot in my hands. I reached the ship and went aboard. The captain came running up. 'Ticket!' he shouted. 'How much is it?' I asked, pulling a roll of notes out of my pocket. 'A thousand drachmas.' 'Look here, take it easy, won't eight hundred do?' I said. 'No, a thousand.' 'We only got eight hundred; you can take them!' 'A thousand,' he said, 'nothing less! If you haven't got them, get off the boat quick!' I was annoyed. 'Listen, captain,' I said, 'for your own sake take the eight hundred I'm offering you, because if you don't I'll wake up and then, my friend, you'll lose the lot!'"

Zorba burst out laughing.

"What a strange machine man is!" he said, with astonishment. "You fill him with bread, wine, fish, radishes, and out of him come sighs, laughter and dreams. Like a factory. I'm sure there's a sort of talking-film cinema in our heads."

He suddenly leaped out of bed.

"But why the parrot?" he cried anxiously. "What does that mean, taking a parrot off with me? Ha! I'm afraid…"

He had no time to finish his sentence. In rushed a stumpy, red-haired messenger, looking like the devil in person. He was gasping for breath.

"For God's sake! the poor woman's screaming her head off for the doctor! She says she's dying, for sure… and you'll have it on your conscience, she says!"

I felt ashamed. In the distress the widow had caused us, we had completely forgotten our old friend.

"She's going through it, poor woman," the red haired man went on talkatively. "She coughs so, her whole hotel's shaking with it. Yes, it's a proper ass's cough! Whoof! Whoof! It shakes the whole village!"

"Be quiet!" I said. "Don't joke about it!"

I took a piece of paper and wrote a message.

"Go and take this letter to the doctor and don't come away till you've seen him, with your own eyes, ride off on his mare! Do you understand? Now, go!"

He seized the letter, stuck it in his belt and ran off.

Zorba was up already. He dressed hurriedly without a word.

"Wait a moment, I'll come with you," I said.

"I'm in a hurry," he replied, and started out.

A little later I also set out for the village. The widow's deserted garden perfumed the air. Mimiko was sitting huddled up before the house and glowering like a beaten dog. He looked very thin; his eyes were red and sunken in their sockets. He turned round, saw me and picked up a stone.

"What are you doing here, Mimiko?" I asked, glancing regretfully at the garden. I could feel two warm, all-powerful arms twined round my neck… a scent of lemon blossom and laurel oil. We said nothing. I could see in the dusk her burning, black eyes and her gleaming, pointed, white teeth which she had rubbed with walnut leaf.

"Why d'you ask me that?" he growled. "Go away. Go about your business."

"Like a cigarette?"

"I'm not smoking any more. You're all a lot of swine! All of you! All of you!"

He stopped, panting, seeming to search for a word he could not find.

"Swine… scoundrels… liars… murderers…"

He seemed at last to have found the word he wanted and be relieved. He clapped his hands.

"Murderers! murderers! murderers!" he shouted in a shrill voice. He started laughing. It wrung my heart to see him.

"You're quite right, Mimiko," I said. "You're right." And I hurried away.

As I entered the village I saw old Anagnosti, leaning on his stick, smiling as he watched two yellow butterflies chasing each other over the spring grass. Now that he was old and no longer worried about his fields and his wife and children, he had time to look disinterestedly on the world around him. He noticed my shadow on the ground and looked up.

"What lucky chance brings you here so early in the morning?" he asked.

But he must have read my anxious face, and went on without waiting for an answer.

"Do something quickly, my son," he said. "I'm not sure whether you'll find her alive or not… Ah, the poor wretch!"

The large bed which had seen so much use, her most faithful companion, had been put in the middle of her little room and nearly filled it. Above her head there bent over the singer her devoted privy councillor, the parrot-with his green crown, yellow bonnet and round, evil eye. He was gazing down at his mistress as she lay groaning. And he leaned his almost human head to one side to listen.

No, these were not the choking sighs of joy he knew so well, that she would utter in the act of love-making, nor the tender cooing of the dove, nor the little shrieks of laughter. The beads of ice-cold sweat running down his mistress's face, her hair like tow-unwashed, uncombed-sticking to her temples, the convulsive movements in the bed, these the parrot saw for the first time, and he was uneasy. He wanted to shout: "Canavaro! Canavaro!" but his voice stuck in his throat.

His poor mistress was groaning; she képt lifting up the sheets with her wilting, flabby arms; she was suffocating. She had no make-up on her face and her cheeks were swollen; she smelled of stale sweat and of flesh which is beginning to decompose. Her down-at-heel, out-of-shape court shoes were poking out from under the bed. It wrung your heart to see them. Those shoes were more moving than the sight of their owner herself.

Zorba sat at her bedside, looking at the shoes. He could not take his eyes off them. He was biting his lips to keep back the tears. I went in and sat behind Zorba, but he did not hear me.

The poor woman was finding it difficult to breathe; she was choking. Zorba took down a hat decorated with artificial roses and fanned her with it. He waved his big hand up and down very quickly and clumsily as though he were trying to light some damp coal.

She opened her eyes in terror and looked around her. It was dark and she could see no one, not even Zorba fanning her with the flowered hat.

Everything was dark and disturbing about her; blue vapors were rising from the ground and changing shape. They formed sneering mouths, claw-like feet, black wings.

She dug her nails into her pillow, which was stained with tears, saliva and sweat, and she cried out.

"I don't want to die! I don't want to!"

But the two mourners from the village had heard of the condition she was in and had just arrived. They slipped into the room, sat on the floor and leaned against the wall.

The parrot saw them, with his round staring eyes, and was angry. He stretched out his head and cried: "Canav…" but Zorba savagely shot his hand out at the cage and silenced the bird.

Again the cry of despair rang out.

"I don't want to die! I don't want to!"

Two beardless youths, tanned by the sun, poked their heads round the door, looked carefully at the sick woman. Satisfied, they winked at each other and disappeared.

Soon afterwards we heard a terrified clucking and beating of wings coming from the yard; someone was chasing the hens.

The first dirge singer, old Malamatenia, turned to her companion.

"Did you see them, auntie Lenio, did you see them? They're in a hurry, the hungry wretches; they're going to wring the hens' necks and eat them. Àll the good-for-nothings of the village have collected in the yard; it'll not be long before they plunder the place!"

Then, turning to the dying woman's bed:

"Hurry up and die, my friend," she muttered impatiently; "give up the ghost as quick as you can so that we get a chance as well as the others."