Zorba's Taverna: The Trouble With Goats and Mayors, page 8
It was 36 degrees before noon. Father Evangelos began his prayers with a small, heartfelt plea for air-conditioning, which, he assured us, was definitely in the Psalms somewhere if you knew where to look.
Inside, the icons glistened, the candles sagged like tired tourists, and the guests fanned themselves with service sheets while trying not to stare at the front pew, where she sat.
Irini’s mother.
She had come.
And she was magnificent.
Perfectly coiffed, perfectly pressed, radiating the kind of calm that says, Yes, I once dated the groom, and no, I am not apologising.
The village tried not to look at her, which of course meant everyone was looking at her. Maria’s pencil was moving so fast it nearly caught fire. Claude was already composing what he called “a discreet mural”. Spiros smoked with the air of someone who had seen this coming since 1987.
Irini looked radiant, though whether from happiness or heatstroke was anyone’s guess. Manolis looked like he had remembered all the details of his youth at once.
The Dance of Isaiah went sideways almost immediately. The couple were meant to circle the altar three times, led by the priest. Instead, Irini tripped over the groom’s cousin, Manolis stepped on a prayer book, and Father Evangelos said something un-priest-like under his breath. “This is why I prefer funerals. At least the guests sit still.”
By the time the rings were exchanged, with a brief scuffle and a whispered “Left hand, LEFT!” from the front row, everyone had stopped pretending they weren’t watching Irini’s mother.
She smiled serenely through the entire ceremony, as if she was enjoying her own private encore.
And then we headed for the reception.
Zorba’s Taverna had been transformed. Or at least, redecorated with a lot of fairy lights and blind optimism.
Theodora called it a “dry run”.
Mary called it “an early warning from God”.
Claude had been put in charge of “aesthetic atmosphere”. He had hung olive branches from the ceiling fan, scattered flowers over every surface, and painted a six-foot banner reading:
Love is Like a Goat: Loud, Stubborn,
and Occasionally on the Roof
He said it was romantic. Zorba said it was a cry for help.
Eleni ran logistics with the steely calm of a woman who had seen battle, or at least a school bake sale in Volos. She marched around with colour-coded seating plans, blowing a whistle, moving chairs as though re-arranging bureaucrats for maximum efficiency.
The real question, though, was where to seat Irini’s mother.
“Not near the groom,” Mary hissed.
“Not near the bride either,” Theodora said, “or she’ll start giving opinions.”
Maria suggested putting her next to Father Evangelos so she’d have to behave.
Claude suggested putting her under the olive tree “for drama”.
In the end she was placed at the far end of the table, close enough to watch, far enough not to comment, which felt like a victory until she began blowing kisses at Manolis every time the bouzouki hit a particularly emotional note.
The music started. The plates began breaking, deliberately at first, then accidentally. By the third smash, Claude had started a movement called “Smash for Love.”
Spiros remained in his usual spot, claiming he was “supervising from afar” while refusing to move closer than six metres to the dance floor. “Too much risk to the furniture,” he said.
The food arrived in waves: lamb, meatballs, trays of dolmades that could have fed a small island nation, and slowly, even the most dedicated gossipers forgot to whisper.
Then came Alex.
She arrived at the taverna like a godsent whirlwind of trouble and energy, scattering conversation and common sense in equal measure.
Her dress was red enough to alarm the icons, her earrings swinging like punctuation marks.
A child ran past with a sparkler. Alex grabbed it, produced one twice the size, lit it, handed it back, and said, “If you’re going to cause chaos, at least make it spectacular.”
She swept into the centre of the terrace, twirled once, and shouted “OPA!” so loudly that the goat jumped onto a chair, which everyone took as a blessing.
And that was it. The dancing started, the gossip stopped, and the taverna turned into something halfway between a festival and a controlled riot.
Even Irini’s mother was on her feet by the third song, clapping along and looking pleased with herself. At one point she and Manolis ended up opposite each other in the dance circle. Maria nearly fainted from the sheer journalistic opportunity of it all.
By the time dessert arrived, most of the village had stopped whispering. By the time the last plate broke, they were laughing.
And by the end of the night, everyone, even the mother, even Mary, even Spiros, admitted it had been a good wedding.
No one was arrested, which is always the mark of a successful reception. Only one person fainted (for dramatic effect) and the only casualty was a chair that Katerina had claimed as her throne and eaten the armrests of.
The pergola now leaned at a hopeful new angle. The banner sagged slightly. A few glasses had vanished, possibly into the sea.
But the taverna had survived.
The marriage had happened.
Even the scandal had survived, now softened into a story that would be retold every summer, growing slightly more dramatic with each retelling.
“This,” Zorba said, refilling Mary’s glass as she watched the last guests drift into the night, “is what love looks like. Messy. Loud. Full of ghosts. And worth it.”
Mary smiled, a small smile. “Still terrifying.”
“Good,” Zorba said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t remember it.”
Chapter Thirteen
Courting and Campaigns
Mary was still serving lunch like nothing had happened.
As if a digital proposal from across the Atlantic hadn’t detonated between the lemon trees. As if Theodora hadn’t announced it to three tables and the vegetable delivery man. As if the taverna wasn’t now being used as a staging ground for a wedding that, technically speaking, only existed in one auntie’s WhatsApp group.
“We might be having a wedding!” Theodora beamed, with the confidence of someone who’d already picked out a dress and secured a discount on the bunting.
The tourists were delighted. Mary was not.
She moved with her usual composure – calm, elegant, unstoppable – but now with a slight tightness behind the eyes, like a pressure cooker ready to blow. Her tray was steady. Her smile convincing. Her mood? Homicidal.
Theodora, meanwhile, had entered campaign mode. If love was an election, she was handing out flyers. Printed photos of Andonis, or “Andy”, were distributed like religious pamphlets.
“This is him near his apartment.”
“This is him with a kombucha.”
“This is him doing yoga. Very flexible. Still Greek in the heart.”
Claude asked if flexibility was now a marital requirement.
“Only if you’re serious,” Theodora replied, solemnly.
Wherever Mary went, someone was “just wondering”.
“Is it true?”
“Will it be a summer wedding?”
“Do we need to clean the goat?”
“Can I be in charge of sugared almonds?”
Mary’s replies ranged from dry sarcasm to disappearing mid-conversation. At one point she left a table so fast that the olives were spinning.
By Wednesday, Katerina the goat had been fitted with a floral garland, and someone (probably Claude, definitely wine-fuelled) had made a “Just Engaged!” banner out of napkins. Theodora called it a divine sign. Katerina ate it.
Things escalated.
A package arrived from America. It was a handwritten note in calligraphy (we assume he paid someone) with the phrase: “I see your soul, and I honour its journey.” Mary read it, frowned, and filed it directly into the bin. Andonis hadn’t shown up yet, but his campaign certainly had. He was an idea now, more than a man. A concept. A lifestyle brand. Greekness rebranded. Still, Theodora adored him – or rather, the idea of him. To her, any man would do, as long as it resulted in grandchildren.
But Mary wouldn’t fight it, not openly. That would’ve meant giving it power. Instead, she served. She smiled. The sort of smile that makes strong men check their insurance policies. She polished glasses, cleaned tables, and waited. I watched it unfold from my usual table: a tangle of family, fantasy, and unwanted futures being woven between sips of wine and the smell of grilled sardines.
There hadn’t been a campaign for marriage this intense since Eleni’s cousin tried to marry off his son to a Cypriot belly dancer with an allergy to goats.
But here we were again. Only this time, the bride wasn’t budging.
Still, the wedding machine rolled on. The village had spoken. And though the vote was informal and mostly comprised old ladies and people with opinions on curtains, the result was clear: Mary must marry, and Andonis must arrive. And nothing would ever be the same again.
Except, of course, it probably would. Because that’s the magic of the village. It builds catastrophes out of breadcrumbs, dances around them with wine and folklore, and somehow, always somehow, ends up back where it started. Slightly confused. Mildly intoxicated. Utterly itself.
But something was shifting. Not loudly. But certainly. The storm hadn’t broken. Yet.
Chapter Fourteen
The Battle over Sea-Facing Chairs
We don’t mind change.
Let’s get that clear up front.
We’re not some grumpy archipelago of hermits clinging to a rock because we can’t bear to leave behind our chamber pots and dial-up. We understand that some changes are good. Penicillin? Wonderful. Roads that don’t collapse every February? Helpful. And, under very specific circumstances, we’ll even accept traffic lights, provided they’re ignored with precision.
But here’s the thing: when something’s already perfect, why change it?
That was the question on everyone’s lips, usually between bites of grilled sardine or while arguing over who left the fishing net in the kafenio again.
Telios was, is, perfect. Not in a shiny, brochure way. But in a slightly-cracked-tile, lopsided-table, goat-on-a-bench kind of way. The kind of perfect that doesn’t need fixing. The kind where the sea is close, the wine is nearer, and the only form of punctuality is sunrise.
It came from Athens. A notice printed in official Athenian grey. Folded by someone who had never sat outdoors with grilled sardines. And posted, naturally, on the side of the kafenio where no one ever looked unless they’d lost a cat.
It read, “New regulation: no chairs may face the sea, to ensure unimpeded pedestrian flow.”
This, combined with the rule that started off the trouble in the first place, was beginning to get really silly.
It caused a ripple. Then a wave. Then a full-blown village tsunami. Because here, chairs don’t face walls. Chairs face the sea. They always have. Since before the Persians decided to take a detour, since before the Turkish occupation. Since before the road was paved. Since before Dimitri stopped hunting boar and started brewing his own tsipouro (which, frankly, was far more dangerous).
Chairs face the sea because that’s the point. You come to the taverna, you order something you didn’t mean to order, and you stare at the water until the sun tells you it’s time to go home. This wasn’t just tradition. It was a right. A spiritual necessity.
And now, they wanted us to sit with our chairs turned away from the sea, or worse, at an awkward angle along the shore. Like naughty children in a corner.
The cooperative was baffled. Then amused. Then furious. Alex, to her credit, tried to understand the reasoning. Something about visibility, something about traffic flow, something about “urban harmony”. None of which applied to a village with no actual pavements.
Maria immediately declared it “a cultural assassination”. Claude wept into a napkin. Theodora baked skull-shaped koulourakia “for morale”. And Eleni started drafting letters so scathing they had footnotes.
But the one who took it hardest was Spiros.
Spiros didn’t have a chair.
He had a bench.
His bench. His throne. Positioned perfectly in the shade, beside the outermost table of the taverna, angled like a philosopher’s perch with a full panoramic view of the sea, the boats, and whoever happened to be trying to park near the bins.
He had sat there since before we took over the taverna. Since before they had electricity in the kitchen that didn’t require two kicks and a prayer to Dionysus. And now they wanted him to turn his back on the water.
“They’ll have to pry the view from my cold, tsipouro-soaked hands,” he said, lighting a cigarette as if he was preparing for siege.
It was a quiet Thursday.
Which, in Telios, meant that only three things were on fire, Theodora was making pastitsio big enough to feed a battalion, and the cats had agreed to a temporary ceasefire.
But peace never lasts long here, especially when someone brings out a clipboard.
The mayor had sent an “observer”.
Clean shoes. Eyes like photocopiers. The kind of man who had never eaten a proper tomato, or if he had, he’d filed a report afterwards.
He arrived with a measuring wheel, a notepad, and a faint but detectable dislike of joy. His job: to check their two favourite rules, that no tables were within five metres of the sea, and that all chairs were obediently pointing away from it.
He began pacing the taverna patio like a surveyor of dreams, tutting softly and drawing little diagrams that would almost certainly be used later to justify tearing something up. Then, as though called by an invisible tape measure, he veered off towards the lemon grove, talking to himself about “unregulated trellises” and “possible encroachment”.
It was in that pause, with the inspector’s voice still faintly audible from the grove, that the plan was hatched, quietly, decisively, and with just enough mischief to qualify as civil disobedience.
Maria lowered her sunglasses and watched him disappear.
“He’s measuring happiness,” she said darkly. “To see how much to remove.”
Claude poured wine with the gravity of a priest at communion.
“He will need a very long ruler.”
Theodora sharpened her ladle with such focus it was unclear whether she was preparing for lunch service or for battle.
Claude leaned on the bar. “How long do you think we have before he comes back?”
“Ten minutes,” Maria guessed. “Fifteen if he stops to measure the goat shed.”
“Then we’d better think of something quick,” Alex said, eyes narrowing, as if sheer glare might summon a solution out of thin air.
Eleni arrived mid-conspiracy, clutching a printed copy of the new directive, laminated to within an inch of its life. She stood at the edge of the patio and cleared her throat like a woman about to deliver a verdict.
“For reasons of public safety, spatial uniformity, and pedestrian access integrity,” she read with all the drama of a courtroom climax, “no persons may sit, dine, or otherwise remain seated for the purposes of eating, drinking, or social congregation within five (5) linear metres of the sea’s edge at any point deemed a coastal access point, scenic promenade, or tidal-adjacent eating establishment.”
She lowered the paper. The silence that followed was broken only by the faint sound of the measuring wheel clicking in the grove. There was a pause.
Maria narrowed her eyes. “No persons?”
“Correct,” Eleni confirmed, smug.
Claude raised a brow. “What about goats?”
Eleni smiled, the terrifying smile of someone who’s found a loophole and intends to sprint through it in heels. “It doesn’t say anything about goats.”
At that moment, Father Evangelos leaned in and murmured, “Then may I suggest we set a table… for one particularly non-person guest?”
Then Spiros spoke. Or rather, growled. “One table, one chair, one guest. Put it in the five-metre zone.”
That’s when Father Evangelos leaned forward, eyes twinkling. “And we seat Katerina.”
It made perfect sense. To us.
Ten minutes later, Katerina, our unofficial village mascot, mother of kittens and occasional menace, was seated at a perfectly dressed table, her chair facing the sea. She wore a sunhat. She had a glass of water, a menu in her hoof.
The inspector returned from measuring something tragic and stopped dead.
“What is that?” he asked.
“That,” said Father Evangelos with saintly calm, “is our honoured guest.”
“She’s… a goat.”
Claude gasped. “Sir! That is species profiling.”
Maria stood. “She identifies as a diner.”
The man blinked. Took notes. Blinked again.
Katerina bleated politely.
And for the first time in Telios’s long war with rules, we watched as bureaucracy hesitated. Truly hesitated.
He flipped through his notes. No mention of goats. Nothing about animals with a preference for seating. And as for the Five-Metre Rule with Sea-Facing Chairs, it had clearly never been tested against a determined goat with a taste for tablecloths.
He took a photo, muttered something about “unusual compliance”, and walked away.
We exhaled.
Katerina exhaled.
Then she ate the menu.
Father Evangelos raised his glass. “To resistance, in all its unexpected forms.”
And we toasted the goat who saved the sea view.
The next morning, every chair at Zorba’s was not only facing the sea, it was leaning into it. A rogue wave could’ve taken half the tables, but no one cared. Claude brought paint and turned each chair into a tribute: tiny waves, little suns, the words “Freedom Faces Forward” scrawled in Greek, French, and, unintentionally, something that looked like Aramaic.
The regional official sent another letter. Eleni sent him back a recipe for lemon cake and a list of famous Greek uprisings.
