When one considers the shear excess of a mezze, one has to consider the possibility that the digestive system of many Cypriot men is probably in a bad way. This, at least, was the thought uppermost in Zeus’s mind as he studied the menu presented to him by the waiter at the Taverna Kyklos.


That he was going to go for the mezze was not in question. He had tried it the previous year and had discomfited himself so much that he had ended up being dragged off to private clinic by Aphrodite and Athena, regardless of the protestations of Hera.


“It could be his heart,” Aphrodite had proclaimed with the confidence of absolutely no knowledge either of the patient or indeed of any medical training.


“We should get him checked over, just in case," Pallas Athena had declared with the certainty that only a daughter can have, regardless of her mother’s protestations that her father was all right and that he had simply over-eaten the night before.


The old man himself, who was quite capable of telling them that he was simply dehydrated after over eating and having carried a granddaughter for over a mile on his shoulders in the cloying heat of the previous late night, had somehow found that his opinion was neither wanted nor relevant. Instead, he had meekly followed instructions and had gotten into the car despite the withering looks from Hera who, it seemed, was to remain behind to look after the grandchildren.


It had actually helped that the doctor in the clinic had confidently declared that he had gastroenteritis; that he needed to be kept in overnight; and, that he needed antibiotics and a saline drip. That was the point at which the old man had found his voice and with a simple “No” had got up off the couch on which he had been lying.

Everyone had been discussing him from a position of about three feet above the level of his head as he lay there. It pleased him to observe they were so engrossed in their conversations that they didn’t notice him move. He simply walked out of the treatment area, into the air conditioned reception and then out through the door into the warm air outside. It felt good.


At least it did until Aphrodite and Athena caught him up and started on him once more. No, he was not staying in the clinic overnight. No, he didn’t think that he should go to the local hospital about his leg. Ok, if they wanted to stop by a pharmacy and pick up some Dioralyte he was fine with that. In the end, it proved impossible to find a parking space at the pharmacy and so they decided to abandon that also. About an hour after leaving, they arrived back to Hera’s caustic and guarded greeting.


That, on the other hand, was last year and now they were alone, just the two of them ready to take a second stab at the dreaded mezze.


“Are you sure?” he asked.


“Yes, why?” Hera replied.


“Well, it’s a lot of food to get through,” he continued.


“Not if you don’t eat it all,” she replied patiently.


As usual, he was behaving like a child and so, as usual, she was treating him like one.


“Look,” she said, “you just have to keep count of the dishes they bring out. There are twenty-seven apparently,” Hera continued as she scanned through the first page of the menu. “Pace yourself.”


Zeus zoned out a bit as she was explaining this. Not because it was the kind of thing she usually said or that he had heard it all before. He was distracted by her lips. Somehow, in that light and in that heat or just because it was a play on his perceptions, they looked fuller and inviting and erotic. It occurred to him that he hadn’t watched her lips for a while now, rarely looked at them, even more rarely noticed them. Usually when Hera was talking to him he watched her mouth or her face or her eyes, sometimes he didn’t even watch her at all. Now he found himself staring with a growing sense of arousal (mental if not physical) at her pink lips. And that was another thing. They were a richer colour, a deeper colour, a more enticing tone to them.


“What are you looking at?” she challenged.


Suddenly, like rain droplets falling from a tree, the moment was gone.


Then, for the first time that evening the waiter saved the moment, albeit unaware of his participation in the courtship display of these two gods, when he returned to take their order. Zeus toyed briefly with choosing something a little safer like a kleftiko or perhaps even an Italian option as he noticed several pasta dishes were also on the menu. However, just before he could say anything, Hera spoke out.


“Mezze for two, please,” she said, “and a bottle of white house wine.”


“Right then,” said a slightly crestfallen All Father, “game on!”


“Don’t be foolish,” was the response that he received from her but he was saved once more from more severe words when their waiter returned with a bottle of wine.


“Would you like to taste?” he asked.


Zeus waved his hands in a loose gesture that was meant to suggest that he just got on with pouring it but frankly it could have meant anything and to the man, who proceeded to fill their glasses, it meant absolutely nothing.


In truth, Zeus wanted to get back to watching his wife and the ministrations of the young man were simply a distraction to this more serious issue. Of course, Hera was now in a more watchful mood. Something about her husband’s behaviour has annoyed her but that was not unusual. She felt that he was being a little weird, something that she couldn’t quite put her finger on, as it were, but something odd nonetheless.


Zeus for his part could see the wariness in his wife’s eyes and he knew that he would need to tread carefully if he was going to avoid some harsh words at some time in the evening. It didn’t really help that a part of him had already accepted that there were probably going to be disagreements between them during the meal. These days there always were. For a short while, he tried to look back over their history but for some reason his perverse memory was being rather selective and all he could recall was Hera’s compliance.


The Goddess, for her part, was picking up on some of the confused messages that he was putting out but she was too busy watching the other people in the taverna to invest too much into it. Instead she asked him directly.


“What are you thinking?”


It was a phrase that had been a major part of their long lives together, a form of intimacy beyond intimacy. He remembered dancing with her once with their heads close together as if by the proximity they could have heard each other’s thoughts.

Now, although the feeling was still there it was something different: a slight edge to it that, as a man, he was unable to identify. Perhaps he should have asked her.


“Oh, nothing much,” he lied, “Just people watching.”


“Hm,” she grunted, confirming their pact of petty deceit.


When the bread arrived, Hera told him to leave it alone in tones that might have been more appropriate to his dog. It had the same effect though and indeed he left the bread in its basket where it would remain throughout the meal and then be removed just before they were provided with their dessert. Uncharitably, the old man wondered what happened to the untouched bread. Or for that matter, the untouched food.


As he recalled, the earlier mezze dishes on the last occasion had been the more flavoursome. Also, they were presented with a kind of flourish by those bringing them to table. It was only as the meal progressed that the arrival of the dishes started to be considered more as an effort than an appetiser. Even the waiters seemed to lose heart.


At seven dishes, they were going strong although Zeus, uncharacteristically, had decided to keep his wine intake to a minimum. This was for no other reason than to facilitate the consumption of the food to come. Hera was less of a purist in these matters. He suspected that she already knew when she would be calling a halt to her eating and was pacing her own consumption of wine accordingly.


All in all, it didn’t really matter. Dishes continued to arrive and they continued to eat, talking excitedly about some of the flavours and occasionally shuddering at some. The stuffed onions, Zeus thought, were surely an acquired taste.


In the restaurant at tables nearby, other couples and family groups were also wresting with the surfeit of flavours and of quantities. What surprised the old man was that a number of these families sounded Greek and he wondered how it was that the mezze was apparently a novelty to them. He doubted that the whole idea was new to the adults in the party and the younger children, he noted, were mostly eating chips.


Something seemed a little ingenuous in their behaviour. Their protestations at the next series of dishes or the puffing out of cheeks and the patting of their distending stomachs. The laughter and the excited words and phrases repeated again and again. It all seemed just that little bit artificial. Zeus felt, almost, that he was simply part of a huge and artful window display for the benefit of all those holiday makers who were flowing up and down Protaras Avenue on that particular evening.

“Well, not here that’s for sure. Probably hanging around the pool in the morning and the beach in the late afternoon.”


“Exactly,” she said as though this made her point. However, she went on.


“And this time next week?”


“Home,” he replied unsure if he felt good or bad about it.


“And yesterday?” she continued.


“Paralimni,” he replied obediently.


She paused now and looked at him. He looked back in her direction but he avoided her eyes. He didn’t know why he did that but something inside him told him that it was the thing to do right now.


“You see, none of it is real is it. It’s there for the moment and then it’s gone.”


Although she paused for him to comment, he had nothing to say. He chewed on his lamb shank. It should have been a thoughtful look on his face but it was not. It was blank. It was empty. It was far away.


“Just like us,” she then said but he had already taken flight.


Far above the Troodos mountains, above his favourite Mount Olympus, an eagle soared effortlessly on mid-morning thermals as he watched the ground far below. He wasn’t looking for prey. It was the simple pleasure, the mastery of the thing and when he shifted his feathers and the warm air caught their resistance he rose with absolute grace. Grace abounding to this chief of sinners…


“You are listening,” Hera asked.


“Indeed,” replied the old man, “Just like us.”


And that was where that conversation passed away.


The meal continued uneventfully until the barbecued pork. Until that time the only thing that had offended the old man was the fact that a number of people were actually smoking at the tables in contravention presumably of European Laws that didn’t necessarily apply to the Cypriots.

He had been a little non-plussed at Hera’s brief discourse on the fickle nature of time. Such conversations about his father were never popular with him. He didn’t like to dwell on the avaricious and mean nature of the sire that had spawned him. Quite apart from what he believed must be the natural course of things when it came to fathers and sons, it was a bad memory.

Contrary to Hera’s linear argument in favour of time, the Titanomachy lived forever in the mind of the All-Father. All pervasive and omnipresent. Or, perhaps, more accurately, a beardless Zeus lived forever within the ten-year struggle itself.


In an effort to free himself from the captivity of his memories, he reached out and touched Hera’s arm.

Caught unawares, she looked up at him and smiled before her own demons stepped in and challenged his motives.


“Nothing, my love,” he replied to the sudden look of displeasure, “Nothing.”


By this time the pork had arrived. At dishes twenty-five and six, the old man was forced into submission. A large platter of dry looking flesh was tabled alongside an equally dry and actually quite unpalatable bowl of other white meat that was in fact tasteless.


“Choirino,” said the waitress as she plonked the heavy dishes down on their table without waiting to move the plates that were already littering the surface.


They only had her word for it that it was pork. Nothing else about the rendered meat gave even the slightest hint of the origin whether four legged or feathered.


Zeus looked briefly at the dried flesh and then at his wife. He was not sure if he was going to manage it. A feeling seemed to rise in his stomach that he recalled from the last time he had done mezze.


Hera, for her part was in no doubt.


“Go ahead,” she said laughing slightly, “if you dare. I am not going to take you to hospital tomorrow if you find that your system has locked up or that you are radically dehydrated.”


She paused a moment.


“Although the others might like the excitement.”


Gingerly he picked up a piece of the meat with his fingers, sniffed it and popped it into his mouth. Had he started with this as a meal and had it had some tzatziki, yogurt or even mayonnaise to accompany it, he could had demolished that plate. But at the end of a robust feast and completely dry with not even a little olive oil, there was absolutely no way that he was going to attempt it.


“No,” he said, “I’m done.”


With as little fuss as possible, he spat the flesh into a serviette, rolled it up deftly and placed it on his plate. He then reached for his wine glass, still relatively full and downed the warm liquid in one.


“Finished?” asked his wife in a tone that might easily have been said in a bedroom.