There used to be a video clip on YouTube which, picking up from where the opening scenes left off, shows Basil, the buttoned-up young intellectual, meeting Zorba on a rained-out day inside a taverna on the Piraeus waterfront. Unfortunately, it's gone.
It is my favourite scene of the whole movie, as I myself had spent many such rained-out days in perhaps the very same taverna when I lived and worked in Piraeus, and on every cold and overcast morning - and certainly every rained-out morning - at "Riverbend" my thoughts go back to that glorious time even at the risk of making me feel even more melancholic.
Perhaps it's due to my failed upbringing as a Lutheran that makes me indulge in such mental self-flagellation - after all, the old Martin Luther is said to have whipped himself until the blood flowed down his body - and so I read the first few pages of Nikos Kazantzaki's famous book again:
Padma has driven to the Bay and it's all quiet but also cold inside the house. Perhaps I light the fire now, draw up my armchair, and listen to the audiobook right to the final dance while sipping on a glass of retsina.
Η δόξα που ήταν η Ελλάδα !
