Shades of Resistance: A Novel by Joseph Matthews

Author:Joseph Matthews
Format: epub

“This shit has got to stop.”

Jonas often spoke out loud to himself. “Hungry for intelligent conversation,” he would say if caught in the act. In truth, though, he spoke to himself as one speaks to a nervous animal, not to instruct it but to calm it and make it manageable.

“This shit has got to stop.” Jonas heard his pun but refused to be amused. He would need the energy of his anger: it would be no easy task in a strange city, in a strange language, to find a remedy for this unyielding dysentery.

Following the afternoon ipnos, during which almost all commerce shut down, he headed for nearby Omonia Square, the usually bustling crossroads. Today, though, the streets lay still, as if stunned from the heat. But the silence was more ominous than merely somnolent: there was almost no traffic, and tension strained the faces of the few people who ventured out.

Jonas found two large pharmacies near Omonia but, like almost everything else, without apparent reason they were closed. Passing the Polytechnic, he saw scores of students in the courtyard, others scurrying up and down a large building’s outside stairs. Two blocks away, Jonas saw squads of soldiers mustered in an otherwise empty street. He decided to circle back toward Omonia. As he entered the huge but now almost deserted square, amplified music suddenly blared from a parked car. The few people nearby leaped away as if to avoid being touched by the song.

Jonas recognized the music: Panastakis, the banned composer, one of the songs Kalliope and Alekos had played behind closed doors at the taverna in Glaros. The music stopped and a passionate, exhorting voice boomed from the car. Without the normal din of traffic, the amplified voice filled the square: faces appeared at windows and doors opened tentatively but no one came out for a better look.

Two policemen appeared and approached the car drawing their guns, threatening, shouting over the amplified voice until they realized the car was empty. They moved closer but were reluctant to touch it. The voice continued to echo through the square. The cops conferred, then one left on the run, the other training his gun on the car as if it might animate and try to escape.

Soon a squad of soldiers rushed into the square: faces moved away from windows and back through doorways; the few people outside on the square dove into buildings or down side streets. Half the soldiers encircled the car while the rest formed an outer ring facing away from the car and toward the buildings. After much confused shouting and positioning, an officer fired his pistol into the car. When it failed to explode, he ordered two soldiers to break in. They flopped around inside but could not stop the defiant voice. In a rage, the officer ordered the two soldiers out, then signaled the squad to open fire on the car. At the first burst, Jonas backed out of the square; from the next block, he could hear the voice still calling out over the sound of the automatic weapons.

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