Kaisariani codex

The Athenian sun, aged and weary as the concrete it beat upon, filtered through the lace curtain of Myrto Zervou’s small balcony. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of strong coffee and simmering gigantes beans. Myrto, a permanent silhouette in widow’s black, her hair a tight steel-grey bun, peered down into the dusty courtyard of her apartment block in Kaisariani.

“Three hours,” she announced to the empty room, her voice a low rasp. “Three hours that ‘government’ van has been sitting there. Since when does the Ministry of Culture send two men in shoes that shine like a hairdresser’s mirror to a neighbourhood like ours?”

Her son, Aris, a bear of a man with sawdust perpetually clinging to his clothes, looked up from his newspaper. “Maybe they’re checking for… historic cracks, Mama. This building has plenty.”

“Historic cracks, he says.” Myrto snorted. “The only history here is Mrs. Papadakis’s feud with the man who sold her the rotten olives. And those men didn’t even look at the building. They went straight into old Manolis’s basement.”

Aris shrugged, a gesture of surrender honed over thirty years. He knew the look in his mother’s eye—the same one she’d had when she’d deduced who’d been siphoning oil from the neighbourhood cars, simply by the pattern of drips on the pavement.

Her observation was interrupted by a frantic pounding at the door. It was young Katerina from the ground floor, her face pale.

“Kyria Myrto, they took him! They took Papa!”

“Who took him, child? Speak.”

“The officials! From the Ministry. They had badges, papers. They said his basement storage was an ‘unauthorized archive,’ a national security risk. They said he had to come for questioning. They were so… polite. But Papa was terrified. He looked at me like he was saying goodbye!”

Myrto’s eyes narrowed to slits. Old Manolis, a retired librarian, a man whose most dangerous possession was probably his first edition of Cavafy’s poems. “Did they show a warrant?”

“They waved a paper. It looked official.”

“A paper can be dressed in a uniform too,” Myrto muttered, an old proverb surfacing. “The wolf most often poisons the stream where the lamb drinks. Aris! Get your jacket.”

“Mama, we should call the police.”

“And say what? That two polite government men did their job? No. We will pay a visit to the ‘Ministry.’ I want to see the colour of their lies.”

Using the number on the van (which Aris, with his carpenter’s eye, noted had mismatched plates), and Katerina’s description, Myrto began her own investigation. It was a web of local gossip, of favours owed. A call to her married daughter, Mary, whose husband knew a guy at the utilities office, revealed the van was registered to a defunct furniture company. A visit to the local kafenion, where Myrto loudly lamented the “shameful way they treat our old people,” yielded a crucial detail from the waiter: one of the “officials” had a distinct tattoo on his wrist, a serpent coiled around a dagger, peeking out from his crisp white shirt.

“A civil servant with a prison tattoo,” Myrto said to Aris as they walked back. “The state’s recruitment policy has changed, it seems.”

The trail led to a shabby-genteel office building in Neos Kosmos, with a freshly painted sign that read “Hellenic Cultural Heritage Protection Directorate.” It smelled of fresh paint and fraud.

Inside, a young, nervous receptionist greeted them. Myrto, switching from sleuth to loudmouthed, traditional grandmother, was magnificent.

“Where is he? Where is my cousin Manolis? I have his heart medication! Do you want his death on your hands, you bureaucrats?” She brandished a bottle of aspirin like a grenade.

Flustered, the receptionist stammered, “The interrogation… I mean, the interview is in the basement archive. But you can’t...”

They already were. Aris led the way, his broad frame an unstoppable force. They burst into a damp concrete room. Old Manolis sat shivering at a table. Across from him were the two “officials,” no longer polite. Their polished shoes were planted on a stack of Manolis’s precious antique books.

“Who are you?” the taller one, the one with the serpent tattoo, barked.

“I am the plague of dishonest men,” Myrto stated calmly. She looked at the books. Not Cavafy. These were older, leather-bound. One was open, showing intricate diagrams and text in an old dialect. “Ah. So this isn’t about security. It’s about a treasure map.”

The man’s face confirmed it. They had stumbled upon Manolis’s real secret: a coded family heirloom, a codex, rumoured to chart the location of a small hoard of Byzantine coins hidden by an ancestor during the Ottoman era. These men, con artists specializing in impersonating officials to pressure and rob the vulnerable, had caught wind of it.

“You have no authority here,” the second thug sneered, moving to block the door.

Aris cracked his knuckles. “My mother wants to talk to the old man. You’re in the way.”

A scuffle ensued, brief, brutal, and decisive. Aris’s carpenter’s hands, used to swinging mallets, made short work of their pretensions. Myrto, meanwhile, called not the police, but her network. She called Mary, who called her sons, who arrived with three of their large football-playing friends. The imposter “Ministry” was soon surrounded by a very unofficial, very angry Greek chorus of grandsons.

When the real police arrived, summoned by a neighbour, they found the two criminals tied neatly with telephone cord, and Myrto serving everyone spoonfuls of sweet glyko tou koutaliou from a jar she’d brought “for strength.”

“They dressed in the costume of authority,” she explained to the bemused police captain, “but forgot to learn the lines. The donkey may wear a saddle, but it remains a donkey.”

The codex was authenticated and donated by a grateful, relieved Manolis to a real university archive, on the condition that any found coins would benefit the local community. A small article ran in the paper.

That evening, back in her Kaisariani apartment, Myrto watched the sunset paint the concrete a faint gold. Aris nursed a bruised knuckle.

“You were right, Mama. As always.”

“Not always,” she said, stirring her coffee. “But when the smell is wrong, too much polish, not enough honesty, an old woman’s nose knows. The devil doesn’t only come with horns, Aris. Sometimes he comes with a badge and a lie.”

She looked out at the peaceful, messy, vibrant neighbourhood, her kingdom. All was once again in its proper order. The beans were ready. The mystery was solved. And her black dress needed mending. Case closed.

End