Zorba's Taverna: The Trouble With Goats and Mayors, page 19
Theodora’s wooden spoon clattered in the kitchen. Claude let out a sympathetic hiss.
Alex arrived, surveyed the scene, and muttered, “Well. That’s going to need wine.”
Outside, Andonis adjusted his sunglasses, muttered something about “resetting the energy”, and wheeled his luggage towards the guesthouse, leaving a faint trail of cologne and unresolved tension in his wake.
Lunch was a blur. Theodora served plates like a woman possessed, banging pots with the force of a small earthquake. Mary stayed busy at the counter, lips pressed thin.
When the last table was cleared and the tourists had drifted away in search of sunsets and Wi-Fi, Theodora wiped her hands on her apron, nodded to Alex, and said, “Sit.”
Mary hesitated.
“Sit,” Theodora repeated.
Alex poured wine and sat between them like a referee.
There was a long silence, broken only by the cicadas outside and a lone cat knocking over something fragile.
“You know why we are talking,” Theodora said finally.
Mary crossed her arms. “Because you want me to marry him.”
“No.” Theodora’s voice softened. “Because I want you to be happy. And because he came all this way. That must mean something.”
Mary opened her mouth, but Alex raised a hand. “Let her finish.”
Theodora sighed, staring at her hands. “I had doubts too. From the first letter. From the aunties’ visit. Even today, when I saw him step out of that car like he was arriving at a film premiere. I thought, ‘No. This is wrong.’”
Mary blinked, caught off guard.
“But,” Theodora continued, “I also saw his face when he tasted the baklava. For a moment, he looked like a boy. Like someone who had found something he didn’t know he had lost.”
Mary stayed quiet.
“Perhaps we give him a chance,” Theodora said gently. “You get to know him. See who he really is. I will accept any decision you make, but let us not throw him into the sea before we have even heard what he has to say. At least let him try to prove himself to you. To all of us.”
“Even Katerina?” Alex asked, half-smiling.
Theodora nodded gravely. “Especially Katerina.”
Mary groaned. “Fine. But if he uses the word ‘mindfulness’ again, I’m putting him on the ferry myself.”
“Fair,” Alex said, topping up her glass.
And so it was agreed, not as a surrender, but as a stay of execution.
That evening, Andy lingered after dinner, quieter than before.
“You know,” he said softly, “I haven’t eaten like this since my Yiayia died.”
Mary paused mid-polish. Theodora stopped wiping the counter.
“In Jersey,” he went on, “everything’s fast. Even when it’s hot, it’s cold. But this, the smells, the shouting, the way food just… appears… I miss it. I miss her.”
His voice was smaller now. Not performative. Not hashtagged. Honest.
Mary stared at him for a moment, then put down her cloth and walked over with a plate of honey cakes.
“You eat these with your hands,” she said.
He smiled – real, unguarded – and reached for one. Honey dripped down his fingers.
For a moment, there was peace.
Theodora watched, and though her face stayed stern, something in her shoulders softened.
There was hope.
Slim. Slightly ridiculous.
But hope nonetheless.
***
Andy’s first day began with a sunrise yoga session.
Nobody asked for it.
At 6:03 a.m., the village square was silent except for the cicadas, until an electronic chime shattered the peace. Andy stood barefoot on a woven mat, framed by the first gold of morning, playing “soothing whale noises” from his phone.
“Come join me!” he called to anyone within earshot.
No one did.
A single cat wandered over, sat on his mat, and washed itself pointedly. Katerina the goat watched from the terrace, chewing contemplatively.
Mary, bleary-eyed, walked past on her way to fetch bread.
“Good morning, Maria mou,” Andy said, beaming.
Mary raised an eyebrow. “You’re blocking the bakery.”
“Just breathing in the sunrise.”
“Breathe somewhere else,” she said, and kept walking.
To everyone’s surprise, the first day went well. Andy offered to help with lunch prep and turned out to be good with a knife, the culinary kind. He chopped tomatoes with surgical precision, humming softly.
Theodora hovered nearby, arms folded, as though ready to snatch the knife from him if he so much as looked at the garlic wrong.
Mary kept her distance, wiping down tables that were already clean.
At service, Andy carried plates to tables with the exaggerated reverence of a man presenting offerings to a minor god. The German tourists loved him. Claude applauded. Even Zorba grudgingly nodded when Andy refilled the olive oil without spilling.
That night, he sat under the fig tree with everyone, asking questions about the village and, more impressively, listening to the answers.
“This is the happiest I’ve been in years,” Andy said softly.
Theodora’s lips were pressed tight, in the look she wore when she wanted to smile but didn’t trust the moment enough to risk it. There was a flicker of something: the dangerous, impossible hope that maybe this match wasn’t doomed after all.
Day two was more… Andy.
He launched his drone over the beach, which caused three fishermen to throw stones at it and one yiayia to cross herself. Andy suggested renaming the daily specials “seasonal offerings of intentional nourishment”. Theodora said something about renaming Andy.
By lunch, Mary’s patience was wearing thin.
“He talks like an inspirational fridge magnet,” she whispered to Alex.
“Give him a chance,” Alex said. “He did peel fifty potatoes.”
Mary narrowed her eyes. “He peeled them with a smile. That’s suspicious.”
Day three: disaster.
Andy decided to “optimise” the taverna flow by reorganising the tables according to “energetic principles”. This involved moving table three closer to the olive tree and table six halfway into the road.
“This is not Feng Shui,” said Theodora, storming out of the kitchen.
“It’s energy alignment!” Andy said cheerfully.
“It’s blocking the delivery van!” she snapped.
Mary intervened, resetting the tables with the quiet efficiency of a woman who had endured many men with theories.
By the end of the first week, the charm had started to thin.
Andy was not unpleasant, but he was relentless. He followed Mary around like a well-moisturised shadow, offering unsolicited advice on sleep cycles, sea swimming, and why carbs were “emotional crutches”.
Mary did not throw anything at him. She simply began disappearing again. One extra morning off. A longer trip to the market. Walks on the beach that somehow took all afternoon.
She wasn’t being rude. She was being evasive, which in Greece is a much higher art.
Theodora noticed, of course. She had eyes sharper than a basil-stalk switch.
That night, when the last table had been cleared and Andy had gone to bed, Theodora gathered Mary and Alex.
“We need to talk,” she said.
Mary crossed her arms. “About him?”
“Yes.” Theodora’s tone softened. “I wanted this match. I wanted it very much. But I see you, koukla mou. I see you hiding.”
Mary said nothing.
Alex poured wine and sat like a mediator at a peace summit.
“Perhaps we should give him a real chance,” Theodora said. “Not only to hover around you. To prove himself. If he is wrong for you, fine. But let us be sure.”
Mary’s jaw tightened. “And if he is right?”
“Then I will dance at your wedding and fatten your children with loukoumades,” Theodora said, smiling sadly.
There was a silence.
Finally, Mary sighed. “Fine. One more chance.”
“Good,” Alex said, raising her glass. “Because I already have a plan.”
Mary’s days were carefully arranged to force “natural” encounters with Andy, and to make sure half the village witnessed them.
She was sent to buy flour (Andy carried the sacks).
To collect fresh eggs (Andy got chased by a rooster).
To deliver koulourakia to the priest (Andy accidentally rang the church bell and summoned half the village).
Each day ended with a small dinner under the olive tree, Theodora watching quietly from the kitchen window.
And slowly, almost imperceptibly, Andy stopped talking quite so much. Stopped posing for invisible cameras. Stopped calling himself a “wellness strategist”.
For a moment, the taverna was quiet.
But the village saw the writing on the wall before Mary did.
Andy had been “just visiting” for a week, which in village time is approximately three harvests, one minor religious festival, and two meltdowns over the price of fish.
He wasn’t exactly unwelcome. But villagers had developed the remarkable ability to look in the opposite direction whenever he approached, a collective facial-avoidance system, triggered by his sandals.
He wandered the square in white linen, calling feta “low-intervention dairy” and explaining to Zorba why his “aura reads dark”.
Zorba didn’t respond. But he did casually move his chair one inch closer to the kitchen knives.
So the decision was made, with a nod over coffee, a shrug near the mopeds, and one slow, deliberate blink from Zorba.
Andy had to go.
Enter Alex: the general, the strategist, the woman who once organised an entire olive harvest using three broken baskets and a teenager named Vangelis with no sense of direction.
“We’ll ease him out,” she said, over a bottle of wine and a plate of confusingly spicy tzatziki.
“No confrontation?” asked Maria.
“God, no,” said Alex. “We’re Greek. We’ll bury him in politeness.”
Suddenly, there was an about-turn in tactics. Mary’s “days off” became mysteriously filled with very solo social responsibilities: visits to sick aunts (real or invented), errands for the church, volunteer pastry testing for the village festival.
Andy offered to join once. She handed him a box of olives and told him to count them. In the sun.
Any time Andy tried to talk to Mary, someone else intercepted. Claude would swoop in with a poem. Dimitri would challenge him to a backgammon match (and cheat). Eleni would need urgent help translating the recycling schedule into “emotional language”.
At one point, someone asked Andy to teach a “yoga-for-goats” class. He said yes. Katerina glared at him, turned her back, and deliberately chewed the washing line until two pairs of underpants hit the ground.
Message received.
By week’s end, the entire village was in on it. The butcher offered him “meat for the broken-hearted”. The baker labelled a loaf “Closure”. Children started calling him “Uncle Maybe”. And Andy, bless him, remained cheerfully oblivious.
“This village,” he said one evening, sipping mountain tea through a stainless-steel straw, “is so healing. I feel seen.”
Alex nodded, smiling thinly.
“Oh yes,” she said. “We see you.”
They all did.
And soon, just as politely, just as softly, they would see him off.
But not yet.
First: the election.
Then: the departure.
And somewhere, in the distance, the goat farted, which, let’s face it, was the only endorsement that truly mattered.
Chapter Forty-Two
Welcome to the Resistance (Table for Two?)
We didn’t mean to start a movement.
Honestly, we barely meant to open on time.
All we wanted was to serve fish, grumble about the weather, curse the power cuts, and argue about whether the oregano was fresher last year. Our job was to keep the chaos safely corralled behind the kitchen door, not to accidentally launch a cultural rebellion.
But somewhere between the cracked plates, the overcooked lentils, and the way Zorba could command a room by adjusting one eyebrow, something happened.
People were still talking about us.
Not the usual gossip; we were used to that. This was stranger. Louder. Digital. Suddenly, photos of our uneven tables were trending under hashtags like #AuthenticityGoals. A visiting blogger called us “a love letter to the past”, which was flattering until someone else described us as “post-ironic dining with subversive undertones”, which made Theodora threaten to throw her ladle at them.
We didn’t understand it. We had done everything possible to put people off: no QR codes. No English menus (unless you counted Alex’s handwriting, which even the locals struggled to decipher). No Instagram-ready lighting, unless you considered a single dusty lightbulb swinging over table six “mood”.
But the more we resisted, the more they came.
Bloggers. Influencers. Self-described “culinary pilgrims”. One woman showed up claiming she had flown from Berlin to “experience radical imperfection”. She cried when Katerina stole her shoe.
The Global Gastro Guide sent another critic. Then a photographer. Then, inexplicably, a podcast team.
Somewhere along the way, we had become… a concept.
Zorba’s was no longer a restaurant, or a taverna. It was a manifesto. People began writing about us like we were some sort of edible protest movement, with headlines like, “Zorba’s Taverna: The Last Bastion of Resistance Dining” and “No Menu, No Mercy: Why Greece Is Leading the Anti-Foodie Revolution”.
We hadn’t set out to be revolutionary. We just didn’t want to serve anyone tofu.
Claude, of course, loved it. “We are no longer simply a taverna,” he announced one evening, draping himself dramatically over a chair. “We are the beating heart of the gastro-resistance.”
Zorba grunted, which we took as approval.
Theodora crossed herself and went back to stirring the beans. “God help us,” she said. “Now we’ll never get rid of them.”
And she was right.
By sundown, there were two food critics, three bloggers, and a pair of earnest documentary-makers camped out under the lemon tree, waiting for something profound to happen.
And all we had was fish.
One day an email arrived from Bologna. “We are filming a documentary about anti-establishment gastronomy. May we visit your taverna to capture the philosophy of refusal?”
Alex printed it out, read it twice, then, in one fluid motion, walked outside, set it on fire in the ashtray, and returned without comment.
For half an hour, she didn’t speak, which was how we knew we were in trouble.
Then came the Dutch man. Quiet. Polite. Dressed like a weathered librarian. He ordered lentils and grilled bread, took no photos, made no eye contact, and spent the entire meal writing in a cracked leather notebook.
At the end, he stood, nodded at Zorba, and said to Mary, “What you’re doing is showing that everything is pointless. It’s beautiful.”
She said thank you. Then she threw away his tip.
It was already too late.
The article appeared three days later. Not in a travel blog, not in a food column, but in a philosophy journal. With footnotes. “Zorba’s Taverna and the Ethics of Anti-Hospitality”.
They quoted Zorba. (“No substitutions.”)
They quoted Spiros. (“What square?”)
They even quoted me, though all I’d said was, “Can I clear that?”
And once again, we weren’t just a taverna. We were a destination. Just not the kind with overpriced sunbeds or laminated menus in six languages – we’d done that dance already, survived the bloggers, endured Philippe, and terrified a generation of influencers into never asking for “deconstructed moussaka” again.
This felt different.
This wasn’t fame.
This was… philosophical.
People weren’t just coming to eat. They were coming to ponder. To sit under the lemon tree and discuss life, death, and whether the goat was a metaphor. An agora, they called it, in one of the reviews.
Not a place to eat, but a place to think.
A place to swirl your wine and wrestle with life’s big question, like the futility of modern romance or why Theodora refuses to measure salt.
A place where chairs faced the sea not just for the view, but for “existential alignment”.
Which, irritatingly, we agreed with. Not because we’re philosophers (though Claude started wearing his most flamboyant scarf and quoting Plato for a week), but because it sounded exactly like the sort of pretentious nonsense we’d probably write about ourselves if left unsupervised.
Claude offered to design a mural titled “Epiphany Over Aubergine”.
I sat very still and wondered how a taverna we’d reopened purely to give the village somewhere to argue and eat in peace had become a site of culinary enlightenment.
A statement. A symbol. A hashtag.
Guests were now arriving not just for lunch, but for answers.
“What would Zorba do?” one asked, when faced with a choice between grilled halloumi and moussaka.
“Would Mary be interested in opening a retreat?” asked another, mistaking her stern silence for spiritual wisdom.
Even Father Evangelos was approached, mid-souvlaki, and asked if he offered table blessings. He blinked, pointed at the salt, and said, “Use this liberally.”
At some point, someone left behind a notebook titled “Thoughts I Had While Eating Lamb”.
Another visitor mailed us a handwoven tapestry embroidered with the phrase “Eat. Think. Repeat.”
And the worst part? We didn’t do anything to cause it. We hadn’t changed the food. We hadn’t staged a single photo. Alex had banned slogans, and the menu still lived on a chalkboard so unstable it fell over if you breathed near it.
