Copyright © 2001-2002 Panayotis Skordos
contact: pskordos (at) alum (dot) mit (dot) edu

my Greek-to-English translation of
Nikos Kazantzakis' "The Life and Adventures of Alexi Zorba" 

CHAPTER 1

I first met him in Piraeus. I had come to the port to take the boat
for Crete. It was almost dawn. It was raining.  A strong southeasterly
wind was blowing, and the spray from the sea could reach the little
coffee shop. The glass doors were closed, and the air smelled of human
fetidness and sage. It was cold outside, and the windows were fogged
from the breathing. Five or six fishermen who had been awake all
night, with their brown goat-woolen shirts, were drinking coffee and
sage, and were looking at the sea through the fogged windows.

The fish, dazed from the blows of the storming sea, had found refuge
in the deep calm waters and were waiting for when the world above
would calm; and the fishermen, crowded in the coffee shop, were also
waiting for when the heavenly disturbance would stop, the fish would
stop being afraid and would rise to the face of the sea to bite.  The
soles, the scorpion fish, and the skates were returning from their
nocturnal hunting, to sleep. It was dawning.

The glass door opened. A short harbor-man wrapped in bucolic clothes
entered; without a hat, bare-footed, completely covered with mud.

--- Eh, Kostandi, shouted an old seafarer with a blue woolen coat, how
are you, breh?

Kostandi spit enraged.

--- How could I be? he answered. Good morning coffee shop! Good
morning home! Good morning coffee shop! Good evening home!  This is my
life.  Work, nothing !

Some men laughed, other shook their heads, cursed.

--- Life is imprisonment, said a heavily mustached man, who had done
his philosophical studies on Karaghiozi; imprisonment, damn it!

Sweet blue-green light spilled over the dirty windows, and entered
into the coffee shop, suspended itself from hands and noses and
foreheads, jumped to the fireplace, and the bottles caught fire. The
electric lights lost their power, the drowsy owner of the coffee shop
who had not slept all night reached out his hand and turned them off.

A moment of silence. All the eyes raised and looked outside at the
mudded day.  One heard the breaking waves rumbling, and inside the
coffee shop a few narghiles that were bubbling.

The old seafarer sighed.

--- Eh, what has happened to captain Lemoni, he shouted. May God put
his hand.

He looked far out the sea with an agree eye.

--- Spit on you, couple splitter! he shouted and bit his grey
moustache.

I was sitting in a corner, I was cold, I ordered yet a second sage; I
was sleepy; I was struggling with the sleep, with the fatigue and the
morning sadness of the day. I was staring through the fogged windows
at the harbor which was awakening and was howling with the ship's
sirens and with the cart people and the boat people. I was staring and
staring, and a multi-hook fishing net made from the sea, the rain, and
the going away, very thick, was wrapping tightly around my heart.

I had nailed my eyes nearby at the black bow of a large ship which
remained immersed in the night from the gunwale down. It was raining,
and I was watching the threads of the rain that were joining the sky
with the mud.

And as I was looking at the black ship and the shadows and the rain,
little by little my grief was assuming a face, the memories were
rising, they were solidifying in the humid air, made from rain and
longing, the beloved friend. When?  Last year? In another life?
Yesterday?  I had come to this same port to bid him farewell.  Rain, I
remember it was, again, and cold and dawn; and the heart was inflating
again disturbed.

Venom, the slow separation from the people you love; better to cut off
with the knife and to remain completely alone again in the natural
climate of human beings, in solitude. However, on that rainy dawn, I
could not unglue myself from my friend (later I sensed, alas, too
late, the reason why). I had come on board the ship with him and I was
sitting in his cabin, in the midst of scattered suitcases. I was
staring at him slowly, persistently, when he was looking elsewhere, as
if I wanted to mark one by one his features --- the bright blue-green
eyes, the plump young face, the fine proud expression and above all
the long-fingered noble hands of his.

One moment he caught my gaze sliding in a snatching, suckling way over
him; he turned around, in the mocking style he used to assume when he
wanted to hide his emotions. He sensed me; he understood. And in order
to derail the sadness of the separation:

--- Until when? he asked me smiling ironically.

--- Until when, what?

--- You will be eating paper, you will be daubing yourself with ink?
Come join me; over there, in Caucasus, thousands of our race are in
danger; come so we shall save them.

He laughed, as if he wanted to ridicule his high goal.

--- It's possible of course that we won't save them, he added; but we
will save ourselves trying to save them. Isn't it so? Isn't this what
you were preaching, my teacher? "The only way to save yourself is to
be struggling to save the others..." Come on, then, teacher who used
to teach... Come!

I didn't reply. Sacred, god-bearing Anatolia, tall mountains, the
shout of Prometheus nailed to the rock... Nailed was our race to the
same rocks in those years, it was shouting. It was in danger; it was
calling again one of her sons to save her. And I was listening to her
without acting, as if the pain was a dream, and life a captivating
tragedy, and it's a great peasantry and naivety to jump from your
theater seat to the stage and interfere with the act.

My friend, without expecting an answer, got up. The ship was whistling
now for a third time. He extended the hand:

--- Farewell, paper-mouse! he said mockingly, in order to hide his
emotions.

He knew well that it was a shame not to be able to exercise control
over your heart. Tears, tender words, disorderly gestures, common
intimacies, they all appeared to him as ugly things unworthy of a
human being. Never, we ourselves who loved each other so much, had
exchanged a tender word; we played and scratched each other like
beasts. Himself fine, ironic, civilized; myself barbarous. Himself
controlled, easily exhausting all the disclosures of his psyche around
a smile; myself abrupt, breaking out into improper uncivilized
laughter.

Me too I attempted to camouflage my agitation, using hard words, but I
was ashamed to. No, I was not ashamed to, I was not able to. I clasped
his hand; I held it and would not let it go. He looked at me in
bewilderment.

--- Emotion? he asked me while trying to smile.

--- Yes, I answered him quietly.

--- Why? Didn't we say so, years ago, didn't we reach an agreement?
How do the Japanese, whom you love, say it?  Foontonsen!  Apathy,
placidness, the face is a smiling motionless mask, what takes place
behind the mask is our business.

--- Yes, I replied again, trying not to say too much --- I was not
sure that I could control my voice, not to tremble.

The gong sounded in the ship sending away the visitors from the cabins
one by one. There was a light rain. The air became full with
passionate words of separation, vows, long-drawn kisses, hasty panting
requests... The mother was leaning on the son, the wife on the
husband, the friend on the friend. As if they separated for ever; as
if this small separation reminded them of the Big one.  And the sweet
droning sound of the gong suddenly reverberated, from stern to bow, in
the moist air, like a funeral bell.

My friend stooped:

--- Listen, he said quietly, is it a bad premonition you have?

--- Yes, I replied again.

--- You believe in such fairy tales?

--- No, I replied with confidence.

--- So, then?

There was no "then"; I didn't believe, but I was afraid.

My friend placed his left hand lightly on my knee, as he used to do in
a most cordial moment, when we were discussing something together and
I would push him to make a decision and he would resist and finally he
would accept and would touch my knee, as if to say: "I will do what
you want, from love..."

Two or three times my eyelids trembled. He looked at me again.  He
understood that I was very sad and hesitated to use our favorite
weapons --- the laugh, the mockery...

--- Okay, he said. Give me your hand; if one of us finds himself in
mortal danger...

--- He stopped, as if he was ashamed. We who had been mocking for
years such psychic airy ideas and had been putting in the same hole
vegetarians, spiritualists, theosophists, and ectoplasms...

--- Then? I asked, trying to guess.

--- Let's just do it as a game, he said hastily, to evade the
dangerous sentence he entangled himself in. If one of us finds himself
in mortal danger, he must think of the other with such intensity as to
inform him, wherever he is... Agreed?

He tried to laugh, but his lips, as if they were frozen, did not move.

--- Agreed, I said.

My friend was worried not to show his agitation too much, and added
hastily:

--- I don't believe of course in such aerial psychic transfers...

--- It doesn't matter, I murmured; let it be...

--- Okay then, let it be; let's play. Agreed?

--- Agreed, I replied again.

These were our last words. We shook hands without a word, the fingers
joined cravingly, they separated abruptly, and I left hurriedly,
without turning to look back, as if I was being chased.  I felt an
impulse to turn the head to see my friend one last time, but
restrained myself. "Don't turn! I ordered inside me; that's enough!"

All mud is the soul of man, unwrought, unsculpted with crudely-cut
still unrefined senses, and nothing clear, nothing certain, it can not
guess; if it could, how different this separation would have been!


The light was multiplying, the two mornings were joining. The dear
face of my friend, I could see it clearer now, was getting wet in the
rain, unmoved, sad, under the wind of the harbor.  The glass door of
the coffee shop opened, the sea growled, a seafarer entered with
thighs apart, short-legged, with hanging mustache. Happy voices burst
out:

--- Welcome captain Lemoni.

I squeezed myself in my corner, I tried to make my psyche focus again;
but the face of my friend had already dissolved in the rain,
disappeared.

Captain Lemonis had taken out his worry-beads and was playing, quiet,
heavy, laconic. I was struggling to avoid looking, to not hear and to
hold yet a little more the vision that was disappearing.  To relive
again the anger that had come over me, not the anger, the shame, when
my friend called me "paper-mouse". He was right! I myself who loved
life so much, how did I get entangled, for years now, in papers and
ink! My friend, on that day of separation, had helped me to see
clearly. I joyed; knowing finally the name of my miserableness,
perhaps I could get over it more easily. As if it was not scattered
any more, bodiless and intangible; as if it had assumed a bodily form,
and it was easy for me now to wrestle with it.

This harsh word of my friend was going around inside me, and since
that time I was searching to find an excuse to abandon the papers and
to throw myself into action. I loathed and I felt shame to have as my
intellectual coat of arms this horrible gnawing animal.  And one month
ago I found the opportunity; I leased, on a Cretan beach, towards the
Lybian sea, an abandoned mine of lignite and I was going now to Crete,
to live amidst simple people, workers, peasants, away from the corrupt
league of paper-mouse people.

I got ready to go and I was emotionally agitated, as if this trip of
mine had some hidden meaning; inside me I had made the decision to
change my path. "Until now, my soul, I said, you were seeing the
shadow and you were satisfied; now I'm taking you to the meat."

I was ready; the day before the departure, while searching my papers,
I found a half-finished manuscript, I took it in my hands, skimmed it
hesitantly. For two years now in my innards there was a disturbance, a
great longing, a seed: Buda. I sensed him inside me unceasingly,
eating, assimilating, solidifying. He was growing, he was moving his
feet, he was starting to kick my chest to leave. And now my heart
could not bear throwing him away; I could not. It was already too late
for such a mental abortion.

For a moment, as I was holding the manuscript undecided, my friend's
smile moved in the air, full of irony and tenderness. "I will take it!
I said stubbornly; I'm not afraid of it, I will take it, don't smile!"
I wrapped it carefully, as if I was wrapping the swaddle of a baby,
and I took it.

The voice of captain Lemoni sounded heavy, hoarse. I propped my ears;
he was talking about the ghosts that had grabbed and had been licking
the masts of his ship during the storm.

--- Soft, slimmy, you touch them and your hands shine like fire; I
daubed my moustache, and all night I glistened like a devil. And so,
as I was saying, the water entered the ship, the coal I was carrying
wetted, became heavy. The ship started to come on its knees, but God
put his hand, threw a lightning like a star hatchet, the ship's door
broke, the sea loaded with coal. The ship became lighter, took a
breath upwards, I was saved. And that was it!

I took out of my pocket my little Dante travel-companion; I lit my
pipe, leaned on the wall, got comfortable. My wish reverberated like a
bell for a moment; from where should I take the immortal verses?  From
the hot tar of Hell, from the cool flame of Purgatory, or to throw
myself straight into the highest floor of the Hope of Humanity?
Whatever I want I choose. I was holding the microscopic Dante, I was
joying my freedom. The verses I would choose in early morning would
give rythm to my whole day.

I bent into this very thick reverie to make a decision, but I didn't
make one; all of a sudden, worrisome, I lifted the head. I felt, I
don't know how, as if two holes were opening on the top of my head; I
turned abruptly, looked behind me, towards the glass door. Like a
flash passed through my mind the hope: "I will see again my friend." I
was ready to receive the miracle. But I was mistaken; an old man,
sixty-five-ish, tall, thin, with staring eyes, he had glued his eyes
on the glass window and was looking at me. He was carrying a small
pie-shaped bag under his armpit.

Most of all what impressed me the most were his eyes, inquiring, sad,
alert, all flame. Thus they appeared to me.

As soon as our eyes met, it seemed he became certain that I was the
one he was looking for, and he reached out his hand determinedly and
opened the door. He passed between the tables with a quick springy
gait and came and stood above me.

--- Traveling? he asked me. Where to, with my good wishes?

--- To Crete. Why do you ask?
 
--- Take me with you, will you?

I looked at him carefully. Sunken cheeks, thick jaw, sticking out
cheek bones, grey curly hair, eyes that were sparkling.

--- Why, what will I do with you?

He shrugged his shoulders.

--- Why! Why! he said with disdain. Can't a man do something without a
why after all? Just like that, from his whim. Here, take me, let's
say, as a cook. I know how to make some soups!...

I burst out laughing.  I liked his sharp-as-an-axe manners and his
words; I also liked soups. It wouldn't be bad, I contemplated, to take
him with me, this old big guy to the remote uninhabited seashore.
Soups, laughter, conversations...  He looked like someone who had
traveled a lot, who had lived his life fully, Sevah the Seaman; I
liked him.

--- What are you contemplating? he said to me while shaking his large
thick head. You are holding a balance too, eh? You weigh everything by
the gram, eh? Moreh, make a decision, to hell with the balances!

He was standing above me, big tall guy, bonny, and I was getting tired
of raising my head to talk to him. I closed Dante.

--- Have a seat, I said to him. Will you take a sage?

He sat down; placed his large bag on the next chair.

--- Sage? he said contempuously. Come over here, waiter, one rum!

He drank the rum sip by sip; he was holding it a long time in his
mouth to enjoy it, and then he was letting it gradually to descend and
to warm his innards. "A friend of the senses, I thought, full of
passion and yearning..."

--- What work do you do? I asked him.

--- All kinds of work; work of the feet, of the hands, of the head,
all of them. The last thing I need now is to be choosy.

--- Where were you working at, most recently?

--- In a mine. I am, if you want to know, a good excavation worker; I
understand metals, I can find ore veins, open underground galleries,
go down into wells, I am not afraid. I had a good job, I was the
foreman, I had no complaints; but the devil put his tail in.  Last
Saturday night I was in the mood, and one thing led to another, I go
and find the owner, who had come down on that day to inspect us, and I
beat him up.

--- But why? what did he do to you?

--- Me? nothing! Really nothing, I tell you! It was the first time I
saw the man. He even gave cigarettes to each one of us, the poor man.

--- Then, so?

--- Oooh, you keep asking! It was my whim, after all.  From the
buttocks of the miller's wife you are asking correct spelling.  The
buttocks of the miller's wife is the mind of a person.

I had read many definitions of the mind of a person; this one seemed
to me the most wonderful, and I liked it. I looked at the new comrade;
his face was full of wrinkles, sculptured, holed by moths, a face that
had been eaten by northeasterly winds and rain. Another face, after a
few years, had made the same impression on me, wood that had been
worked a lot and had suffered: the face of Panayt Istrati.

--- And what do you have inside the large bag? Food? clothes? tools?

My comrade shrugged his shoulders, he laughed.

--- You are much sensible, it appears to me, he said, and forgive me.

He caressed the large bag with his long rough fingers.

--- No, he added; it's a santouri.

--- Santouri! You play the santouri?

--- When I am squeezed by poverty, I go around the coffee shops and
play the santouri. I also sing some old rebel melodies, from
Macedonia. And then I show a begging tray; here, this hat, and I
collect dimes.

--- What's your name?

--- Alexi Zorba. They also call me Telegraph, to tease me that I am
like a long long monk and my head is flat like a pie. But let them
say, I don't care! They also label me Tsakatsouka, because once I was
selling roasted pumpkin seeds. And they also call me Needle-seed
fungus, because every where I go, they say, I mess things up and turn
everything to ashes and dust. I have other nicknames too, but some
other time...

--- And how did you learn to play the santouri?

Me, I was twenty years old. In a celebration of my village, at the
root of the Olympos mountain, I heard for the first time the santouri.
My breath was arrested. For three days I didn't put food in my
mouth. "What is it, moreh?" says my father, may God forgive his
soul. "I want to learn to play the santouri! --- Moreh, aren't you
ashamed? A gipsy you are? Musical instruments you will play? --- I
want to learn to play the santouri!..." I had some money in my secret
savings, in order to get married, when the time comes. A child, you
see, mad, the blood was boiling, I wanted marriage the poor silly man!
I gave everything I had, and bought a santouri. Here, this one that
you see. I left with it, went to Salonica, found a Turk full of
passion and sensitivity, Retsep-efendi they called him, the teacher of
the santouri. I fall on his feet. "What do you want, moreh, Greek
boy?" he asks. "I want to learn to play the santouri! --- Eh, and why
then do you fall on my feet? --- Because I don't have any money to pay
you! --- You have passion for the santouri? --- I have. --- Eh, stay,
moreh, and I don't need any payment!" I stayed with him for one year
and I learned. May God bless his bones, he must be dead by now. If God
takes even dogs into Paradise, may he take Retsep-efendi. Since the
time I learned to play the santouri, I became another person. When
emotional pain overwhelms me or when poverty squeezes me, I play the
santouri and I lighten up. When I play, people talk to me and I do not
hear them; and if I hear them, I can not talk. I want to, I want to,
but I can not.

--- But why? Zorba?

--- Eh, love's yearning.

The door opened; the roar of the sea entered again into the coffee
shop, legs and hands shivered. I snugged myself deeper in my corner,
wrapped my coat around me, felt an unexpected cheerfulness. "Where
could I go? I contemplated; I am fine here. May this moment last for
years."

I looked at the strange newcomer in front of me; his eye was nailed on
me; small, round, black; with fine red veins on the white part; I was
sensing it, it was piercing me and searching me unsatiably.

--- So? I said; and then?

Zorba shrugged the bony shoulders again.

--- Never mind! he said; can you give me a cigarette?

I gave him. He took out of his vest a flint and a wick, he lighted
it. His eyes half blinked with pleasure.

--- Have you married?

--- Am I not a human being? A human being means blind; I fell too
head-first into the pit that the ones in front of me had fallen
into. I married. I went rolling down. I became a householder, built a
house, had children. Troubles. But at least I had the santouri.

--- You played the santouri to swallow the bitterness?

--- Eh, moreh, it shows that you don't play any instrument. What kind 
of bagpipe talk is this? Home is full of worries, wife, kids, what 
to eat, what to wear, what will become of us? Hell! And the santouri
needs a good heart. If my wife tells me an extra word, what kind of
heart can I have to play the santouri? If the children are hungry and
crying like cats, you come and try to play. The santouri requires that
you think only of the santouri --- you understand?

I understood that this Zorba was the person I had been looking for all
this time, and I couldn't find him; a heart that is alive, a warm
talkative throat, a great psyche that has remained in the natural
condition, that has not cut the umbilical cord from its mother yet,
the Earth.

What is the meaning of art, the meaning of love for the beautiful, of
purity, of passion --- this layman was explaining it to me in the
simplest human words.

I looked at these hands that knew how to work the hoe and the santouri
--- full of knots and cracks, contorted and nervous. They opened the
large bag with care and tenderness, as if undressing a woman, and they
took out an old santouri, with lots of strings, with bronze and ivory
ornamentation, and with a red silken tassel at the end. The thick
fingers caressed all of it, slowly, passionately, as if caressing a
woman. And afterwards they wrapped it again, in the same way that one
wraps a dear body not to catch a cold.

--- This is it! he murmured with affection, and placed it carefully 
back on the chair.

The seafarers were now clinking their glasses, were bursting into
laughter. Someone patted gently captain Lemoni on his back.

--- Eh, you were scared out of your wits, captain Lemoni, tell the 
truth! God knows how many great candles you promised to Saint
Nicholas! 

The captain shrank his thorny eyebrows.

--- Moreh, I swear to you, guys, in the name of the sea, when I saw
Charon in front of me, neither Mother Mary nor Saint Nicholas did I
think of. I turned towards the rounded island Salamina, I thought of
my wife, and I shouted: "Eh, moreh, Katerina, if only I were in your
bed!"

The seafarers burst into laughter again; and so did captain Lemonis. 

--- Moreh, what a beast is a human being! he said. The archangel is
standing on top of him with a sword, but his mind is there, right
there! May he vanish, the shameless!

He clapped his hands.

--- Waiter, he shouted, come and offer drinks to the guys!

Zorba had propped his large ears and was listening. He turned, looked
at the seafarers, and then at me.

--- Where "right there"? he asked. What is he talking about?

But all at once he understood, he moved abruptly.

--- Moreh, bravissimo! he said in wonder. These seafarers know the
secret; because they wrestle, you understand, day and night with
death.

He waived his large hand in the air.

--- Let it be, he said; that's another priest's sermon. Let's come 
back to ours: Shall I stay? shall I go? Make a decision.

--- Zorba, I said, and quickly I checked myself not to grab him from
his hand, Zorba, okay; you will come with me. I have lignite in Crete,
you will supervise the workers. At night the two of us will be lying
on the sandy beach --- wife, children, dogs I don't have --- we will
be eating and drinking together. And afterwards you will be playing
the santouri.

--- If I'm in the mood, you hear? If I'm in the mood. I will be
working for you all you want, your slave! But the santouri is another
thing. It is a beast, it wants freedom. If I'm in a good mood, I will
be playing; I will be singing also. And I'll be dancing the
Zeymbekiko, the Hasapiko, the Pentozali --- but I need to be, no
bargaining! in a good mood. Clean agreement; if you push me, you will
lose me. In these things, you must know, I am a human being.

--- A human being? What do you mean?

--- Well, free.

--- Waiter, I shouted, one more rum!

--- Two rums! interjected Zorba. You yourself must drink also, let us
clink the glasses. Sage and rum do not make in-laws; you yourself will
drink rum also. In order for the relationship to stick.

We clinked our glasses. The boatman who had taken my suitcases to the
ship, came, he motioned me. I got up; I touched Zorba's shoulder.

--- Let's go, I said; in the name of God!

--- And of the Devil! added calmly Zorba.

He stooped, took the santouri under his armpit, opened the door and
went out first.