"To tell you God's own truth," said aunt Lenio, creasing her little toothless mouth, "mother Malamatenia, they're doing right, those boys. 'If you want to eat something, pilfer; if you want to own something, steal…' That's what my old mother used to say to me. We've only got to rattle off our mirologues as fast as we can, lay our hands on a couple of handfuls of rice, some sugar, and a saucepan, and then we can bless her memory. She had neither parents nor children, did she, so who's going to eat her hens and her rabbits? Who'll drink her wine? Who'll inherit all those cottons and combs and sweets and things? Ha, what d'you expect, mother Malamatenia? God forgive me, but that's the way the world is… and I'd like to pick up a few things myself!"
"Wait a bit, dear, don't be in too much of a hurry," said mother Malamatenia, seizing her arm. "I had the same idea myself, I don't mind admitting, but just wait till she's given up the ghost."
Meanwhile the dying woman was fumbling frantically beneath her pillow. As soon as she thought she was in danger she had taken out of her trunk a crucifix in gleaming white bone and thrust it under her pillow. For years she had entirely forgotten it and it had lain among her tattered chemises and bits of velvet and rags at the bottom of the trunk. As if Christ were a medicine to be taken only when gravely ill, and of no use so long as you can have a good time, eat, drink and make love.
At last her groping hand found the crucifix and she pressed it to her bosom, which was damp with sweat.
"Dear Jesus, my dear Jesus…" she uttered passionately, clasping her last lover to her breast.
Her words, which were half-French, half-Greek, but full of tenderness and passion, were very confused. The parrot heard her. He sensed that the tone of voice had changed, remembered the former long sleepless nights and livened up immediately.
"Canavaro! Canavaro!" he shouted hoarsely, like a cock crowing at the sun.
Zorba this time did not try to silence him. He looked at the woman as she wept and kissed the crucified image whilst an unexpected sweetness spread over her ravaged face.
The door opened, old Anagnosti came in quietly, cap in hand. He came up to the sick woman, bowed and knelt down.
"Forgive me, dear lady," he said to her, "forgive me, and may God forgive you. If sometimes I spoke a harsh word, we're only men… Forgive me."
But the dear soul was now lying quietly, sunk in an unspeakable felicity, and she did not hear what old Anagnosti said. All her torments were gone-unhappy old age, all the sneers and hard words she had endured, the sad evenings she had spent alone in her doorway, knitting thick woollen socks. This elegant Parisienne, this tantalizing woman men could not resist and who, in her time, had bounced the four great Powers on her knee, and had been saluted by four naval squadrons!
The sea was azure blue, the waves were flecked with foam, the sea-going fortresses were dancing in the harbor, and flags of many colors were flapping from every mast. You could smell the partridges roasting and the red mullet on the grill, glacé fruits were carried to the table in bowls of cut crystal and the champagne corks flew up to the ceiling.
Black and fair beards, red and grey beards, four sorts of perfume-violet, eau-de-Cologne, musk, patchouli; the doors of the metal cabin were closed, the heavy curtains drawn to, the lights were lit. Madame Hortense closed her eyes. All her life of love, all her life of torment-ah, almighty God! it had lasted no more than a second…
She goes from knee to knee, clasps in her arms gold-braided uniforms, buries her fingers in thick-scented beards. She cannot remember their names, any more than her parrot can. She can only remember Canavaro, because he was the youngest of them all and his name was the only one the parrot could pronounce. The others were complicated and difficult to pronounce, and so were forgotten.
Madame Hortense sighed deeply and hugged the crucifix passionately to her.
"My Canavaro, my little Canavaro…" she murmured in her delirium, pressing it to her flabby breasts.
"She's beginning not to know what she's saying," murmured aunt Lenio. "She must have seen her guardian angel and had a scare… We'll loosen our kerchiefs and go nearer."
"What! Haven't you any fear of God, then?" said mother Malamatenia. "D'you want us to begin singing while she's still alive?"
"Ha, mother Malamatenia," grumbled aunt Lenio under her breath, "instead of thinking about her trunk and her clothes and all the things she has outside in the shop, and the hens and rabbits in the yard, there are you telling me we ought to wait till she's breathed her last! No! First come first served, I say!"
And as she spoke she stood up, and the other followed her angrily. They undid their black kerchiefs, let down their thin white hair and gripped the edges of the bed.
Aunt Lenio gave the signal by letting out a long piercing cry enough to make a cold shiver go down your spine.
"Eeeee!"
Zorba leaped up, seized the two old women by the hair and dragged them back.
"Shut your traps, you old magpies!" he shouted. "Can't you see she's still alive! Go to hell!"
"Doddering old idiot!" grumbled mother Malamatenia, fastening her kerchief again. "Where's he sprung from, I'd like to know, the interfering fool!"
Dame Hortense, the sorely tried old siren, heard the strident cry beside her bed. Her sweet vision faded; the admiral's vessel sank, the roast pheasants, champagne and perfumed beards disappeared and she fell back on to that stinking deathbed, at the end of the world. She made an effort to raise herself, as though trying to escape, but she fell back again and cried softly and plaintively.
"I don't want to die! I don't want to…"
Zorba leaned forward and touched her forehead with his great horny hand, and brushed away the hair which was sticking to her face; his bird-like eyes filled with tears.
"Quiet, my dear, quiet," he murmured. "I'm here; this is Zorba. Don't be afraid."
And suddenly the vision returned, like an enormous sea-green butterfly and spread íts wings over the whole bed. The dying woman seized Zorba's big hand, slowly stretched out her arm and put it round hís neck as he bent over her. Her lips moved…
"My Canavaro, my little Canavaro…"
The crucifix slipped off the pillow, fell to the floor and broke into little pieces. A man's voice rang out in the yard:
"Come on! Pop the hen in now, the water's boiling!"
I was sittíng in a corner of the room and from time to time my eyes filled with tears. That is life, I thought-checkered, incoherent, indifferent, perverse… pitiless. These primitive Cretan peasants surround this old cabaret singer come from the other end of the earth and with inhuman joy watch her die, as if she were not also a human being. As though a huge exotic bird had fallen from the sky, its wings broken, and they had gathered on the seashore by their village to watch it die. An old pea fowl, an old angora cat, a sick old seal…
Zorba gently removed Dame Hortense's arm from round his neck and stood up, white-faced. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, looked at the sick woman but could see nothing. He wiped his eyes again and could just see her moving her swollen helpless feet in the bed and twisting her mouth in terror. She shook herself once, twíce, the bedclothes slipped to the floor and she appeared, half-naked, covered with sweat, swollen, a greenish-yellow color. She uttered a strident, piercing cry like a fowl when its throat is cut, then she remained motionless, her eyes wide open, terrified, glassy.
The parrot jumped down to the bottom of its cage, clutched the bars and watched as Zorba reached out his huge hand and, with indescribable tenderness, closed his mistress's eyelids.
"Quick, all of you! She's gone!" yelped the dirge singers, rushing to the bed. They uttered a prolonged cry, rocking backwards and forwards, clenching their fists and beating their breasts. Little by líttle the monotony of this lugubrious oseillation produced in them a slight state of hypnosis, old griefs of their own invaded their minds like poison, their hearts were opened and the mirologue burst forth.