To politiko krevati

The cicadas in the pines of Kaisariani Hill sawed away at the August heat. In her small, immaculate apartment, Myrto Zervou listened to them as she diced onions for yemista. The air was thick with the smell of dill and tomato.

Her son, Aris, lumbered in, the scent of sawdust and sweat clinging to his work clothes. “Another one, Mama,” he grumbled, dropping his toolbox with a thud. “Old Man Drakos on the third floor. Says his balcony door is sticking. Wants it fixed by Friday. For free, because I’m ‘like a son’.”

Myrto didn’t look up. “A guest and a fish stink after three days, but Drakos has been stinking up the building for thirty. Charge him half. He’ll pay.”

Aris grinned, kissing her cheek. “Where’s the logic?”

“The logic is in the koutalia,” she said, tapping her temple with the knife handle. “If you give the spoon away, you’ll eat with your fingers.”

The peace was shattered by a scream from the courtyard below, sharp as broken glass. Then shouts—panicked, overlapping.

Myrto was at the balcony before Aris could blink, her black dress a stark flag against the whitewash. Below, in the patch of dusty earth they called a garden, a crowd was forming around a prone figure.

“Panagia mou,” Myrto whispered, crossing herself.

It was Yannis Kaloudis, the building’s resident malcontent, a man whose politics were as loud as his voice. He was sprawled on the ground, a dark red bloom spreading across his cheap white shirt. Not far from his outstretched hand lay a kitchen knife, common and bloody.

A neighbour, Toula, was shrieking. “He attacked him! I saw it! Spiro attacked him!”

Spiro, a young, wiry man with haunted eyes, was backed against the wall, being held by two others. “He came at me!” Spiro yelled, his voice cracking. “With a gun! He had a gun!”

But there was no gun to be seen.

*    *    * *    *    *

The police came, led by Inspector Gavras, a weary man with a permanent five o’clock shadow and a distaste for neighbourhood dramas. He took statements in the shade of the mulberry tree.

“Kaloudis is a loudmouth,” growled old Drakos. “Always arguing about the elections, about the ‘traitors’ in government. Spiro’s from a lefty family. They were always at it.”

“Spiro’s a good boy,” insisted Toula, now less sure. “But Yannis… he was waving something. Metal. It could have been…”

The Inspector found no gun. The only weapon was the knife, which belonged to Spiro. A simple case, it seemed. A heated political argument turned lethal.

Myrto observed from her balcony, a silent sentinel in black. She watched the ambulance take Yannis away (alive, but barely). She watched Spiro being led to the squad car, his face ashen. She watched the neighbours disperse, their gossip already mutating in the heat.

“A bad business,” Aris said, joining her. “Stupid boys and their politics.”

“A wolf in sheep’s clothing is still a wolf,” Myrto murmured. “But which one is the wolf?”

“Mama, the knife was Spiro’s. They all heard Yannis shouting about ‘cleansing the neighbourhood’. Spiro snapped. It’s simple.”

“Simple is for recipes, not for people,” she said, turning inside. “Yannis shouted, yes. But did he attack? Spiro says there was a gun. So where did it fly? To Egypt?”

Later, she went down to the courtyard. Inspector Gavras was finishing up.

“Kyria Zervou,” he nodded, tired. “Don’t worry. We have it in hand.”

“The hand that rocks the cradle sometimes gets bitten,” she replied, peering at the chalk outline. “Spiro’s apartment. It faces the courtyard?”

“Yes. Second floor. Why?”

“And he says Yannis was waving the gun here, by this bench?”

“Yes, yes. A story to cover the stabbing.”

Myrto’s eyes scanned the building, the balconies strung with laundry, the potted geraniums, the satellite dishes. Her gaze landed on the third-floor balcony of Old Man Drakos. The one with the sticking door.

“Inspector,” she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial rasp. “A man is shouting he will kill you with a gun. You run to your kitchen, grab a knife, run back down three flights of stairs… and then you stab him?”

Gavras paused. “He could have had the knife on him.”

“A carpenter’s son, I know tools. A knife for filletting fish is not a knife for a walk in the courtyard.” She pointed to Spiro’s balcony. “You see? His door is open. If he was in such a panic, would he close it? No. He heard the shout, grabbed the nearest weapon from his kitchen, ran out here.” She walked a few steps from the bench towards the building entrance. “This is where he would have met Yannis. Not over there by the bench.”

“So?”

“So the gun,” she said, as if explaining to a child. “If it existed, where is it?”

She turned and marched into the building, Gavras, surprised, following. She didn’t go to Spiro’s. She climbed to the third floor and knocked on Drakos’s door.

The old man opened, eyes wide with false concern. “Kyria Myrto! A tragedy!”

“A great tragedy needs a great liar,” she said, brushing past him. His apartment was a museum of clutter. She went straight to the balcony, to the sticking door. She examined the frame, then got on her hands and knees, ignoring Gavras’s protest.

“Aris said you wanted your door fixed by Friday. Why so urgent? The election rally is on Friday. In the plateia.” She ran her fingers along the bottom track of the sliding door. With a grunt, she pried something loose. It was a small, oily rag, wedged deep. She unfolded it. Inside was a key.

Not a house key. A small, safe-deposit box key.

Drakos paled. “That’s not mine!”

“When the fox preaches, look to the hens,” Myrto said, standing up. She looked out from Drakos’s balcony. The view was perfect. Directly down to the bench in the courtyard.

“You saw everything,” she stated. “Yannis came to meet someone here, by the bench. A private meeting. Not a shouting match. He was agitated, yes. He showed them something. Something small. Not a gun. A key. Perhaps to a box holding proof of some dirt, a political bribe, a secret. The other person wanted it. They argued. They grabbed Yannis’s own knife, he was a cook, wasn’t he? Always had a little tool for olives in his pocket—and they stabbed him.”

“Ridiculous!” Drakos spat.

“Then,” Myrto continued, her eyes hard, “they saw Spiro come out of the building, knife in hand. They saw their chance. They threw the key up here, to their partner watching from above. And they took Spiro’s knife, pressed it into Yannis’s wound, and dropped it. They made it look like Spiro did it. A perfect political crime: a leftist killing a right-wing loudmouth. Who would question it?”

“Partner? What partner?” Gavras asked, now fully alert.

Myrto turned to Drakos. “The one who needed the door fixed. To retrieve the key before the rally on Friday. Before Yannis’s associates went looking for what he had on them. You weren’t fixing the door to open it easier, kyrie Drakos. You were fixing it to close it quieter, so your nephew—Yannis’s young ‘comrade’ from the same party, the one who visits you every Tuesday—could sneak in and get the key without you ‘hearing’.”

Drakos’s defiance crumpled. Gavras radioed for backup.

*    *    * *    *    *

That evening, the yemista was perfect. Aris ate in awed silence. The news had spread: Yannis would live. Spiro was released. Two men from a minor political party, one old, one young, were arrested for attempted murder and blackmail.

Inspector Gavras stood in Myrto’s doorway, holding a box of baklava. “A small thanks,” he said, embarrassed. “How did you know about the nephew?”

“A lonely old man has a nephew who suddenly visits every week? Either he is dying, or they are up to something. And Drakos looked too healthy to be dying.” She took the sweets. “The snake may shed its skin, but it is still a snake.”

After he left, Aris shook his head. “Mama, you should have been a detective.”

Myrto sat by the balcony, watching the first stars appear over Athens. The cicadas had quieted. “Pah,” she waved a hand. “In a small building, everyone’s business is written on their laundry. I just read the lines.”

She sipped her coffee, a contented, sharp-eyed widow in a black dress, the mysteries of Kaisariani safely tucked away for another night. The real crime, she thought, was never the knife or the gun. It was the lie wrapped in a flag. And for that, there was an old proverb for every occasion.

End