Report to Grego by Nikos Kazantzakis Read Free Book Online

little pigs, don’t you feel sorry when we eat them?”
    â€œI do, my boy, God knows I do,” he answered, bursting into laughter, “but they’re delicious, the little rascals!”
    Every time I recall this rosy-cheeked old peasant, my faith in the soil and in man’s labor upon the soil increases. He was one of the pillars who support the world upon their shoulders and keep it from falling.
    My father was the only one who did not want him. He felt displeased when he entered his house and talked to his son, as though afraid my blood might be polluted. And when the feast was laid out at Christmas and Easter, he did not help himself toany of the roast suckling pig. Nauseated by its odor, he left the table as quickly as possible and began to smoke in order to dispel the stench. He never said anything, except once when he knitted his brows after grandfather had left, and murmured scornfully, “Pfff, blue eyes!”
    I learned afterwards that my father despised blue eyes more than anything else in the world. “The devil has blue eyes and red hair,” he used to say.
    What peace when my father was not at home! How happily and quickly time passed in the little garden inside our walled courtyard. The vine arbor over the well, the tall fragrant acacia in the corner, the pots of basil, marigolds, and Arabian jasmine around the edges . . . My mother sat in front of the window knitting socks, cleaning vegetables, combing my little sister’s hair, or helping her to toddle; and I, squatting on a stool, watched her. As I listened to the people pass by outside the closed door and inhaled the odor of jasmine and wet soil, the bones of my head creaked and opened wide in order to contain the world which was entering my body.
    The hours I spent with my mother were full of mystery. We used to sit facing each other—she on a chair next to the window, I on my stool—and I felt my breast being filled to satisfaction amid the silence, as though the air between us were milk and I was nursing.
    Above our heads rose the acacia; when it flowered, the courtyard filled with perfume. How very much I loved its sweet-smelling yellow blossoms! My mother put them in our coffers, our underwear, our sheets. My entire childhood smelled of acacia.
    We talked, had many quiet conversations together. Sometimes my mother told about her father and the village where she was born; sometimes I recounted to her the saints’ lives I had read, embellishing them in my imagination. The martyrs’ ordeals were not enough for me. I added new ones of my own until my mother began to weep. Then, pitying her, I sat on her knees, stroked her hair and consoled her.
    â€œThey went to paradise, Mother. Don’t be sad. Now they take walks beneath flowering trees and talk with angels, and they’ve forgotten all about their tortures. And every Sunday they put onclothes all of gold, and red caps with pompons, and go to visit God.”
    My mother used to wipe away her tears and look at me with a smile, as though to ask, Is it really true? And the canary in its cage used to hear us, stretch forth its throat, and chirp away with drunken contentment, as if it had descended from paradise, left the saints for a few moments, and come to earth in order to gladden men’s hearts.
    My mother, the acacia, and the canary have blended in my mind inseparably, immortally. I cannot smell an acacia or hear a canary without feeling my mother rise from her grave—from my vitals—and unite with this fragrance and the canary’s song.
    I had never seen my mother laugh; she simply smiled and regarded everyone with deep-set eyes filled with patience and kindness. She came and went in the house like a kindly sprite, anticipating our every need without noise or effort, as though her hands possessed some magical, beneficent power which exercised a benevolent rule over everyday needs. As I sat silently watching her, I reflected