"It's a disgrace! It's a disgrace! The dead can hear you, remember!"

"Shall I go and call the priest?" saïd Mimiko.

"What priest, you fool?" said Kondomanolio furiously. "She was a Frank; didn't you ever notice how she crossed herself? With four fingers-like that-the infidel! Come on, let's get her underground, so that she doesn't stink us all out and infect the whole village!"

"She's beginning to fill with worms, by the Holy Cross itself!" said Mimiko, crossing himself.

Uncle Anagnosti, the grand old man of the village, shook his fine head.

"What's strange in that, you idiot? The truth is that man is full of worms from the day he's born, but you can't see them. When they find that you're beginning to stink they come out of their holes-white they are, all white like cheese maggots!"

The first stars appeared and hung in the air, trembling, like little silver bells. All the darkness was filled with tinkling bells.

Zorba took down the parrot and his cage from over the dead woman's head. The orphan bird was crouching in one corner, terrified; he was gazing with staring eyes but could understand nothing. He pushed his head under his wings and crumpled up with fear.

When Zorba took down the cage the parrot raised himself. He was going to speak but Zorba held out his hand to stop him.

"Quiet," he murmured in a soothing tone, "quiet! Come with me."

Zorba leaned forward and looked at the dead woman's face. He looked a long time, his throat tight and dry.

He stooped, as if to kiss her, but refrained.

"Let's go, for God's sake!" he muttered. He picked up the cage and went out into the yard. There he saw me and came over to me.

"Let's leave now…" he said in a low voice, taking my arm.

He seemed calm, but his lips were trembling.

"We all have to go the same way…" I said to him.

"That's a great consolation!" he said sarcastically. "Let's be off."

"One moment," I said. "They're just beginning to take her away. We ought to wait and see that… Can't you stick it one more minute?"

"All right…" he answered in a choking voice. He put the cage down and folded his arms.

From the death chamber uncle Anagnosti and Kondomanolio came bareheaded and crossed themselves. Behind them came four of the dancers, with April roses still stuck behind their ears. They were gay, half-drunk. Each was holding a corner of the door on which they had placed the dead woman's body. There followed the lyre player with his instrument, a dozen more men who were rather tipsy, still marching, and five or six women, each carrying a saucepan or chair. Mimiko came last, with the down-at-heel court shoes tied round his neck.

"Murderers! Murderers! Murderers!" he shouted gaily.

A warm, humid wind was blowing and the sea was choppy. The lyre player raised his bow-his fresh voice rang out merrily and sarcastically in the warm níght:

"O sun, how hurriedly hast thou set in the west…"

"Come on," said Zorba, "it's over now…"

24

WE WENT in silence through the narrow streets of the village. There were no lights in the houses and they cast black shadows in the night. Somewhere a dog was barking, and a bullock sighed. From afar the wind carried to us the joyful tinkling of the lyre bells, dancing like the playful waters of a fountain.

"Zorba," I said, to break our heavy silence, "what is this wind, the Notus?"

But Zorba marched on in front, holding the parrot's cage like a lantern, and made no reply. When we came to the beach he turned round.

"Are you hungry, boss?" he asked

"No, I'm not hungry, Zorba."

"Are you sleepy?"

"No."

"Neither am I. Shall we sit down on the pebbles for a bit? I've got something to ask you."

We were both tired, but neither of us wanted to sleep. We were unwilling to lose the bitterness of those last few hours, and sleep seemed to us like running away in the hour of danger. We were ashamed of going to bed.

We sat down by the sea. Zorba put the cage between his knees and remained silent for a time. A disturbing constellation appeared in the sky from behind the mountain, a monster with countless eyes and a spiral tail. From time to time a star detached itself and fell away.

Zorba looked at the sky with open mouth in a sort of ecstasy, as though he were seeing it for the first time.

"What can be happening up there?" he murmured.

A moment later he decided to speak.

"Can you tell me, boss," he said, and his voice sounded deep and earnest in the warm night, "what all these things mean? Who made them all? And why? And, above all"-here Zorba's voice trembled with anger and fear-"why do people die?"

"I don't know, Zorba," I replied, ashamed, as if I had been asked the simplest thing, the most essential thing, and was unable to explain it.

"You don't know!" said Zorba in round-eyed astonishment, just like his expression the night I had confessed I could not dance.

He was silent a moment and then suddenly broke out.

"Well, all those damned books you read-what good are they? Why do you read them? If they don't tell you that, what do they tell you?"

"They tell me about the perplexity of mankind, who can give no answer to the question you've just put me, Zorba."

"Oh, damn their perplexity!" he cried, tapping his foot on the ground in exasperation.

The parrot started up at these noises.

"Canavaro! Canavaro!" he called, as if for help.

"Shut up! You, too!" shouted Zorba, banging on the cage with his fist.

He turned back to me.

"I want you to tell me where we come from and where we are going to. During all those years you've been burning yourself up consuming their black books of magic, you must have chewed over about fifty tons of paper! What did you get out of them?"

There was so much anguish in his voice that my heart was wrung with distress. Ah! how I would have liked to be able to answer him!

I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!

"Can't you answer?" asked Zorba anxiously.

I tried to make my companion understand what I meant by Sacred Awe.

"We are little grubs, Zorba, minute grubs on the small leaf of a tremendous tree. This small leaf is the earth. The other leaves are the stars that you see moving at night. We make our way on this little leaf examining it anxiously and carefully. We smell it; it smells good or bad to us. We taste it and find it eatable. We beat on it and it cries out like a living thing.

"Some men-the more intrepid ones-reach the edge of the leaf. From there we stretch out, gazing into chaos. We tremble. We guess what a frightening abyss lies beneath us. In the distance we can hear the noise of the other leaves of the tremendous tree, we feel the sap rising from the roots to our leaf and our hearts swell. Bent thus over the awe-inspiring abyss, with all our bodies and all our souls, we tremble with terror. From that moment begins…"

I stopped. I wanted to say "from that moment begins poetry," but Zorba would not have understood. I stopped.

"What begins?" asked Zorba's anxious voice. "Why did you stop?"

"… begins the great danger, Zorba. Some grow dizzy and delirious, others are afraid; they try to find an answer to strengthen their hearts, and they say: 'God!' Others again, from the edge of the leaf, look over the precipice calmly and bravely and say: 'I like it.'"

Zorba reflected for a long time. He was straining to understand.

"You know," he said at last, "I think of death every second. I look at it and I'm not frightened. But never, never, do I say I like it. No, I don't like it at all! I don't agree!"