Myrto Zervou adjusted her black shawl and peered through the lace curtains of her Kaisariani apartment. Across the street, two men in ill-fitting suits lingered near the kiosk. They weren’t locals.
“Ari,” she called to her son, who was sanding a wooden chair leg in the kitchen. “Those men, they’ve been there since morning. Who waits that long for a newspaper?”
Aris wiped sawdust from his hands and joined her. “Maybe tourists?”
“Tourists don’t wear shoes that cheap,” Myrto muttered. “And they keep looking at old Manolis’ building.”
Manolis, the retired bookseller, had been acting jumpy lately. Just yesterday, he had pressed a foreign magazine into Myrto’s hands at the market, whispering, “Hide this.” She had tucked it between her groceries, but now she wondered, was this why those men were here?
* * * * * *
That evening, Myrto knocked on Manolis’ door. No answer. She tried the handle, unlocked. Inside, the apartment was ransacked. Books torn from shelves, drawers upended. And in the corner, Manolis sat slumped in his armchair, a bruise darkening his temple.
“Manoli!” Myrto rushed to him.
He groaned. “They took them… the magazines…”
“Who?”
“Security police. They think I’m spreading… lies.” He coughed. “But I just wanted people to know the truth.”
Myrto clenched her fists. “Don’t worry, old fool. I’ll fix this.”
* * * * * *
The next morning, Myrto marched into the local police station, where her nephew, Lieutenant Dimitris, sipped bitter coffee.
“Thea Myrto,” he sighed. “What trouble now?”
“Manolis was beaten. His things stolen.”
Dimitris shifted. “It’s… complicated.”
“Complicated?” She slapped a wrinkled hand on his desk. “Since when do police let thugs attack old men?”
He leaned in. “Orders from above. Those magazines, anti-regime material. Dangerous.”
Myrto scoffed. “Dangerous? A few articles?”
“People get ideas.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Who took them?”
Dimitris hesitated, then scribbled a name: Kapetan Stavros.
* * * * * *
That night, Myrto and Aris crept through the back alleys of Exarchia, following whispers of a secret police stash house. Aris, nervous, whispered, “Mama, this is crazy.”
“Quiet,” she hissed. “A fox doesn’t announce its hunt.”
They found the building, a crumbling neoclassical with a broken lamp. Inside, voices argued. Myrto peeked through a window. There, on a table, lay stacks of foreign magazines.
Aris swallowed. “Now what?”
Myrto smirked. “Now we remind them that grandmothers know best.”
She threw a rock through the back window. As the men inside shouted and scrambled, she and Aris slipped in, grabbed an armful of magazines, and vanished into the night.
* * * * * *
The next day, Myrto distributed the magazines to trusted neighbors, whispering, “Read fast, then burn.” By afternoon, the whole neighborhood knew but no one talked.
When the suits returned, they found nothing. No evidence, no witnesses. Just an old widow sweeping her doorstep, humming.
Kapetan Stavros glared at her. “You’re hiding something.”
Myrto smiled sweetly. “Me? I’m just a grandmother. What do I know of politics?”
As the men left in frustration, Aris exhaled. “We did it.”
Myrto patted his cheek. “Of course. As the ancients said: ‘The mouse laughs when the cat’s away.’”
And with that, she went inside to make coffee, the last of the magazines already turning to ash in her stove.
THE END
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