Zorba's Taverna: The Trouble With Goats and Mayors, page 10
Maria, sensing a scoop and smelling mischief, ran the story in The Telios Tribune under the headline, “The Start-Up Fiancé”.
No one verified it, but it spread through the village like wildfire, and by sundown half the tables were debating whether Andonis should be fined for “emotional capitalism”.
Step Three: Weaponise the Goat
Katerina appeared at lunch wearing a hand-stitched sash that read: #LetHerSayNo.
No one admitted to making it. Mary claimed ignorance.
Claude declared it a political statement and added a small beret, calling it “performance art”.
Katerina stomped pointedly on a pile of bridal flyers, then ate one. The symbolism was not lost on anyone.
Step Four: Provoke the Elders
During Friday lunch, Mary turned up the theatrics. She laughed too loudly. She flirted shamelessly with an Australian backpacker named Lachlan who’d come in looking for Wi-Fi and left with a limp.
He proposed, using a breadstick and half a bottle of house wine.
Mary declined with a smile.
“I prefer men who season their own olives,” she said sweetly.
Theodora clutched her pearls.
Spiros applauded from the bar.
Step Five: Deploy the Cake
Saturday night. Peak service. Tables full, sun low, wine flowing.
Mary emerged from the kitchen like a goddess of vengeance and ganache.
The cake was three layers tall. Chocolate sponge. Candied walnuts. A swirl of buttercream so perfect Zeus himself would have sworn allegiance.
And across the top, in flawless white icing, one word:
NO.
The taverna went silent.
The breeze gave up and went to watch from the shade.
Then Claude raised a glass.
“Magnificent,” he said, voice reverent.
Theodora muttered something that might have been a prayer or a curse – it was hard to tell over the sound of Spiros choking on his wine from laughing too hard.
The taverna erupted. Tourists cheered. Someone took a photo. Katerina tried to lick the frosting.
Only Alex remained still. Watching. Calculating.
Later, as the tables cleared, Alex found Mary in the kitchen, wiping down the counter like she’d just repelled a siege.
Alex handed her a glass of wine.
“You’ve declared war,” she said.
Mary took a sip. “One slice at a time.”
“You’re not going to marry him.”
“No.”
“You’re going to make sure the village stops asking.”
“That’s the goal.”
Alex nodded. “Need help?”
“Not yet. But keep your flamethrower ready.”
Outside, Stamos had taken it upon himself to start a fire, “for ambience”, and was toasting sardines with Dimitri using an old car aerial.
Father Evangelos wandered over, took one look at the flaming crate, and sighed.
“Every time I leave you people alone for five minutes, something catches fire. Do you know how many special prayers I’ve had to invent for this village?”
Then, almost as an afterthought, he made the sign of the cross, “And may the Lord protect whatever was inside.”
Inside, Theodora unfurled a catalogue of wedding dresses.
She was the last true believer.
Everyone else had started quietly buying more cake.
The wedding hadn’t been called off.
But it was slipping quietly into myth.
Mary had never looked more serene.
She adjusted her lipstick, straightened her apron, and muttered under her breath, “Let them try.”
The next chapter of madness was already taking shape.
Chapter Seventeen
The Old Man and the Sea
There are some mornings when the sea wakes first.
Before the taverna. Before the cats. Before even Eleni’s first coffee, which is brewed at a strength that could legally be considered a pesticide.
On those mornings, Zorba walks.
He doesn’t walk quickly.
Not like the pensioners who power-stride past the pharmacy in Lycra, tracking their heart rates and pretending not to check who’s watching.
No – Zorba walks like the sea now. Slow. Steady. A little more careful since the day he slumped forward and made half the village consider CPR training. But there’s still that faint air of irritation, as though time itself is an unnecessary nuisance.
He doesn’t tell anyone when he does this. He just disappears. Slips out before the bread van honks, before the fishermen return, before Alex has had a chance to command the sun to rise properly.
He walks down to the old beach.
Not the new one, with the umbrellas and the kayak hire and the Instagram people doing squats in front of sunsets. The real beach. The one behind the olive grove, past the leaning pine tree that looks like it gave up halfway through growing.
It’s just rocks now. Pebbles. Driftwood. The last few bones of a pier that once held up his first grill, a battered rusted frame that sizzled with ambition and the occasional anchovy.
This is where it began.
No menu. Only a cooler box, a grill, and a crate of tomatoes that refused to ripen in sync.
Zorba never advertised; he never needed to. The smell carried across the harbour, and the sea delivered the hungry straight to his tables.
People came. And stayed. And came again.
He had fewer lines on his face back then. Fewer stories too, but more hair.
Now he stands on the rocks, looking out at the water like it owes him something. But the waves are old friends. They bring no news, only the sound of everything staying the same – which, in this world, is a kind of miracle.
Zorba bends, winces slightly, and picks up a smooth, flat stone. He weighs it in his palm, tossing it lightly a couple of times to test its balance, before attempting to skim it.
Badly.
It bounces once and sinks like a broken promise.
He shrugs.
“That’s fair,” he agreed. “I’ve been heavy lately too.”
He takes a seat on the old jetty stump. It creaks. Everything creaks now. Chairs. Knees. Expectations.
And he remembers.
The early days. When tourists still asked for permission. When menus were suggestions, not contracts. When a table by the sea wasn’t a violation, it was a gift.
When he built the taverna with his own hands. Well, mostly his own. And Spiros’s back. And a bottle of ouzo that served as both payment and anesthetic. He didn’t plan to build a business. He planned to build a place. A place where people could sit. Breathe. Eat. Argue. Laugh. Drink too much wine and forget why they were angry. A place where the fish was fresh and the gossip fresher.
And for a long time, it worked.
But when the rules came, Zorba didn’t argue. Not really. He just stopped. He closed the taverna. Folded it up like an old tablecloth. Sat by the sea and waited for the silence to feel like peace.
But it never did.
Because the taverna wasn’t a job. It was a song. And when you stop singing, the silence doesn’t soothe. It stings.
He runs a hand through his hair, or what’s left of it, and sighs.
He doesn’t say he misses it. He wouldn’t. That’s not how he talks. But he hasn’t missed a morning at the taverna since the day it closed.
And now it’s open again. Different. Messier. Louder. Run by a committee of chaos and caffeine. But alive. And the sea… still close enough to salt the glasses.
Zorba reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small coin. Old. Worn smooth by years of handling.
It was the first tip he had ever received. From a Belgian couple who had asked, with halting Greek and nervous smiles, if he could make something vegetarian.
He had given them bread, olives, and tomatoes.
They had wept.
He had kept the coin ever since. Not for its value – it wasn’t worth enough to buy an onion – but as proof.
Proof that feeding someone well can mean more than speaking their language. Proof that a taverna can be church, therapy, and revolution if you do it right.
He holds it a long moment, thumb brushing over its faded face, the metal heavier now, not because it has changed, but because he has.
Then, with no drama and no witnesses except the sea, he kisses it once, like a priest blessing bread, and throws it.
It sinks instantly, without even a ripple.
And Zorba smiles.
Because some things don’t need to come back.
They just need to be released like smoke from a grill, like a stubborn grief, like a man who has finally remembered why he loves to cook. And whatever comes next, an acknowledgement that his grip on the taverna, like life itself, is not eternal.
Chapter Eighteen
The Paper Trail and the Persistent Whisper
One day, a letter arrived. It was folded three times, stamped twice, signed once, and delivered with the kind of solemnity usually reserved for court summons or bad news from Athens.
“New ordinance,” said the courier, a pale young man who looked like he had been seconded from a Volos office against his will and hadn’t seen the sun since 2020. “Article 14B. Concerning the lemon grove.”
He placed the envelope on the taverna table like it might explode, then fled before anyone could ask questions.
We opened it.
We read it.
And we wished we hadn’t.
Nine pages. Printed on paper so thin it was practically translucent. In summary, our lemon grove had been “provisionally designated a Heritage-Adjacent Eco-Cultural Space” and must now be “brought into visual harmony with contemporary visitor expectations”.
“They want us to standardise the lemons,” Alex said flatly.
“Standardise the lemons?” I repeated, sure I’d misheard.
“Yes,” she said, tapping the document. “Page three. All branches must conform to a ‘sympathetic curve ratio’. Undergrowth must be removed. And spontaneous growth…” – she looked up, deadpan – “is prohibited.”
“Spontaneous growth is the only kind of growth we have!” Maria exploded, snatching the paper.
Claude leaned in, scanning the text. “They’ve even got a section on ‘emotional resonance’. What does that mean?”
“It means,” Maria said darkly, “someone in Volos thinks they can tell our lemons how to feel.”
That was when Eleni arrived.
She took one look at the document, turned the colour of a ripening fig, and snapped, “Give me that.”
What followed was a masterclass in righteous bureaucratic fury.
Eleni sat, spread the pages flat like a teacher about to mark the worst exam papers of her career, and read them line by line, hissing comments under her breath like someone personally offended by every comma. “This clause contradicts itself,” she said, stabbing the page with one finger. “This section was never properly gazetted. And here – here – they have cited the wrong subsection entirely!”
Maria, meanwhile, had already begun her own counterattack. She flipped open her notebook, eyes gleaming.
“‘Villagers Outraged at Lemon Grove Sterilisation Plan’,” she murmured. “No. Too soft. ‘Telios Faces Cultural Cleansing’. Perfect.”
“They can’t cleanse a grove!” Eleni snapped.
“They can if I say they can,” Maria shot back. “And everyone will believe me.”
Thus began the Great Telios Divide: Eleni, armed with regulations, and Maria, armed with gossip.
Eleni marched home and returned with a stack of old permits, coffee-stained and dog-eared, dating back to the 1970s. She spent the afternoon cross-referencing obscure land-use maps and criticising “administrative overreach”.
Maria marched through the village, interviewing everyone she could find. “How do you feel about the grove?” she asked.
Kyria Sofia declared that the twisted branches brought good luck to her goats.
Little Yannis said the lemons told him secrets when he was quiet.
Spiros assured us that if anyone touched the grove he would personally glue himself to the biggest tree.
By sunset, Maria had enough material to publish a special edition of The Telios Tribune titled, “Voices of the Grove: A People’s Testimony”.
When Eleni saw it, she nearly fainted.
“You can’t put this in an official filing!” she protested. “This is just… feelings!”
“Exactly,” Maria said. “The people’s feelings. Do you know how many tourists cry under those lemons every year? This is heritage.”
“They are lemons, not heritage!”
“They are heritage lemons,” Maria snapped. “And I have quotes to prove it.”
For two days, the campaign raged: Eleni firing off letters, citing obscure case law, threatening counter-complaints for “procedural vagueness”; Maria pinning bulletins in the kafenio, stirring public sentiment, feeding gossip to passing bus drivers.
On the third day, Alex intervened.
“You’re both right,” she said. “And you’re both unbearable. Eleni, use Maria’s stories in your next filing – call them ‘unrecorded cultural narratives’. Maria, cite Eleni’s research so your headlines look official. If we’re going to fight Volos, we need everyone throwing stones in the same direction.”
Reluctantly, they agreed.
The final letter was a masterpiece: part legal brief, part village manifesto. Eleni’s precise language was sprinkled with Maria’s testimonies, rephrased for maximum gravitas:
The crooked tree by the taverna became “a site of recurring intergenerational gathering”.
The wild undergrowth was “botanically significant spontaneous flora”.
Even Katerina was listed as “an unofficial custodian of the grove’s integrity”.
Maria pinned her latest Tribune to the kafenio wall: “Lemons Under Attack – Village Unites to Save Sacred Grove”.
By the following week, the verdict arrived.
“After careful review,” the letter began, “the enforcement of Ordinance 14B is deemed impractical at this time due to overwhelming public sentiment and procedural ambiguity.”
Translated from bureaucrat-speak: Fine, keep your messy grove. But don’t tell anyone we gave up.
Eleni folded the letter, smug but dignified.
Maria read it aloud to the taverna crowd, embellishing heavily, announcing that “The grove is now officially protected – by decree of the people.”
That night, we all drank under the lemons, which, in the glow of the fairy lights, looked particularly smug.
Katerina headbutted the notice into the sea.
No one stopped her.
Even Eleni smiled.
And Zorba, who had been silent through the entire campaign, finally raised his glass.
“It was never really about the lemons,” he said. “Paperwork or no paperwork. What matters is that everyone knows they’re ours. The trees, the grove, the stories that happen under them. That’s what we’re protecting.”
And somehow, that made the lemons taste sweeter.
Spiros lit a cigarette, exhaled slowly toward the grove, and muttered, “Good. Now the lemons have more legal protection than the road.”
Claude nodded, topping up everyone’s glasses.
“Excellent,” he said. “Next week, we get them voting rights.”
Chapter Nineteen
The Reluctant Messiah of Municipal Chaos
Spiros had not agreed to run.
That fact was repeated and shouted over three meze platters and a flaming saganaki. He had, in his own words, “no interest, no time, and no intention” of becoming mayor. He had other plans. These included sitting on his bench, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, and dispensing unsolicited life advice in riddles so obscure that even Plato would’ve asked for a translation.
And yet, somehow, unbeknown to Spiros, he had already been nominated. He was running, officially.
Alex blamed Eleni. Eleni blamed the misfiled “Community Engagement Form”. Claude blamed the stars and Mercury in retrograde. Maria blamed the spirits of the ancestors, who were clearly bored and meddling again.
But the truth was simple: the village had decided.
Spiros, like moussaka and pointless arguments, was essential. He was Telios. And if Nichos, with his sock spreadsheet and noise-cancellation policies, was the future, then it was up to Spiros to remind everyone of the past. Even if he refused to stand up for it.
At the taverna, the “accidental campaign” quietly shifted gears.
We didn’t ask for permission. We just… started helping Spiros win.
Quietly. Cunningly. Like all great Greek endeavours.
Mary printed new menus with “Vote Spiros (or Else)” hidden inside the list of starters.
Claude updated the drinks board with a slogan that could be read as either a call to civic duty or a threat, depending on how much tsipouro you’d had:
Today’s Specials:
Wine
Fish
The Last Hope of the Village
(served cold, like revenge)
“He won’t change anything,” Maria told tourists. “That’s what makes him trustworthy.”
Even Dimitri got involved, carving “SPIROS 4 FREEDOM” into a large watermelon and displaying it like it was modern art.
Spiros, of course, noticed nothing. Or pretended not to. He simply grunted more often, which in Spiros-speak meant something was definitely happening. He remained firmly rooted to his bench.
And while Spiros refused to participate, Nichos was already preparing leaflets, brochures so painfully beige they may have been printed on actual toast. His slogans included:
“For a Cleaner, Quieter Telios”
“Vote Nichos: Organised by Nature”
“Let’s Modernise Telios (Without Emotion)”
It was like watching a well-manicured parking inspector campaign against a bonfire.
But that didn’t matter. Because what we were building wasn’t a campaign.
