I watched it with Nan. Afterwards I lay in bed staring up at the dark. Across the room Mike was asleep with the flu, now and then muttering stuff:
“That your bat?”
I wondered what Zorba would think of me.
He told Alan Bates, “A man needs madness,” meaning you’re too careful and scared to really live, live. Alan Bates knew Zorba was right. “Teach me to dance,” he said, and Zorba got up from the log: “Dance? Did you say … dance?” Then that wonderful music, starting slow, as they danced together side by side on the white beach, an arm across each other’s shoulder, Zorba chuckling deeply: “Boss, I have so much to tell you.” And as the music grew faster they separated and danced backwards facing each other, arms wide, smiling in the sun, Alan Bates fully into it now, fully understanding, the camera receding until they were two tiny figures dancing like mad on the vast white beach, the music continuing faster, wilder, happier, the top of my head coming off. Then the credits.
Lying there now, staring up at the dark, I felt certain that if Zorba ever met me he would sadly shake his head. Take tonight, for example. What had I done with this precious gift of Life I’d been given? I watched a movie with my nine-year-old sister, both of us in our seersucker pajamas and house slippers.
“Throw it ’ere,” Mike muttered.
I turned onto my side, facing the wall. “Books,” Zorba said to Alan Bates, with scorn, “you only know books.” I only knew movies.
There was a tap at the door.
“Yeah?”
Nan came in. “You awake?” she whispered.
I sat up and turned on the lamp. She was fully dressed. “What’re you doing?” I said.
“Shhh.” Our parents were asleep in the next room.
“Don’t be shushing me, Nan.”
“Some grounders now,” Mike said.
She looked over at him.
“He’s asleep,” I explained.
“That’s creepy.” She looked at me. “Wanna go out?”
I didn’t understand. “Out where?”
“To the park.”
“What for?”
“Just … I don’t know, go out there.”
“Nan, it’s eleven-thirty.”
“Right,” she said, nodding, meaning that was the idea.
I asked her point-blank, “This got something to do with the movie?”
She shrugged, embarrassed.
But she was right. A man needs madness.
I got up and pulled on my pants, right over my pajama bottoms—something Zorba would probably do in his haste to get out there and live, live.
“Bunt,” Mike said.
We tiptoed into the living room, went out the front door and headed down the sidewalk towards the park a block away. It was a warm summer night with swarms of wet-looking stars, like in Greece. We walked without speaking past the silent houses to the end of the block, then crossed the street, entered the deeper darkness of the park and walked out into the middle of it.
Then we both just kind of stood there.
“So,” I said. “Now what?”
She wasn’t sure. “Feel like dancing around?”
“Not really. But go ahead,” I told her.
“That’s all right,” she said.
We stood there looking around at the darkness, looking up at all those stars.
“Think there’s anybody really like that?” she asked.
“Like Zorba, you mean?”
“Y’think?”
I was beginning to wonder. “I don’t know, Nan. Maybe in Greece, somewhere like that.”
“I liked him, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, he was great.”
“What if he was here right now,” she said.
“That would be something,” I agreed.
“What would we say to him?”
“We’d say, ‘Hey, loved your movie.’”
“No, really.”
“We’d say, ‘Zorba? Will you teach us to dance?’”
“Right, and he’d say, ‘Dance? Did you say … dance?’”
I began doing the Zorba theme, “Dah-duh, dah-dah,” and so on, starting slow, Nan quietly joining in, both of us gradually speeding it up, louder and faster, louder and faster, neither of us dancing however, and after a minute we quit.
We stood there.
“Anyway …” I said.
“Great movie,” she said.
“Wasn’t it?” I said.
We headed back.