People use the ATMs on Friday at a bank in Athens, Greece. Uncertainty about the country’s future with the euro currency has led Greeks to withdraw $34 billion from banks since December. (AP / THANASSIS STAVRAKIS )

ATHENS, Greece -- Dorothea Lambros stood outside an HSBC branch in central Athens on Friday afternoon, an envelope stuffed with cash in one hand and a $43,000 cashier's check in the other.

She was a few minutes too late to make her deposit at the London-based bank. She was too scared to take her life savings back to her Greek bank.

She worried it wouldn't survive the weekend.

"I don't know what happens on Monday," said Lambros, a 58-year-old government employee.

Nobody does. Every shifting deadline, every last-gasp effort has built up to this: a nation that went to sleep Friday not knowing what Monday will bring. A deal, or more brinkmanship? Shuttered banks and empty cash machines, or a few more days of euros in their pockets and drachmas in their past?

On a street corner, a performance artist burned what he said were his last euros. Nearby, an Afghan beggar joked about how he should have gone to Sweden instead. A mother grabbed her toddler's hand as a dozen police officers rode by on motorcycles, heading to a rally outside Parliament.

In his neighborhood restaurant, Panagis Vourloumis -- a 78-year-old ex-chief executive officer, current investment banker, and survivor of coups, dictators and communists -- leaned forward and laid his worries on the table.

"We thought we had escaped the past, that we were a normal country now," he said. "But instead, we are living day to day.

"This, today now, is the worst I have ever seen."

For Greeks, the fear is that Monday will be deja vu, a return to a past not that distant. Before the euro replaced the drachma in 2002, the Greeks were already a European bete noire, their currency mostly trapped inside their nation, where cash was king and checks a novelty.

Since December, Greeks have been preparing for a weekend such as this, pulling more than $34 billion out of banks.

Week after week, the Bank of Greece borrowed banknotes from the rest of the continent to replenish this hoarding of the one asset Greeks still trust -- cold, hard cash.

Its liabilities to the rest of the euro area for the excess physical cash it has to put into circulation quadrupled between December and April, the last month for which there's available data.

Without access to capital markets, Greek lenders have to rely on almost $98 billion of Emergency Liquidity Assistance to stay afloat, subject to weekly boosts by the European Central Bank.

This time, it didn't last a week. On Friday, the ceiling of the assistance was raised by $2.04 billion, just a couple of days after a $1.25 billion injection. On Monday, the banks will be back, asking for more.

Everything comes together Monday. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, back from a visit with Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg, Russia, will spend his weekend coming up with a proposal to take to a Monday showdown with euro-area leaders.

A deal Monday is key. The bailout agreement that's kept Greece from defaulting expires June 30. That's the day Greece owes about $1.7 billion to the International Monetary Fund.

Without at least an understanding among the political chiefs, Greek banks will reach the limits of their available collateral for more central bank aid.

The country then may have to impose capital controls to stem the withdrawals, said David Mackie, an analyst at JPMorgan Chase Bank in London.

Before the European project, Greece had spent decades in turmoil.

Since the Nazi occupation during World War II -- still an irritant during 21st century bailout talks -- it has seen a civil war, a military junta, a tussle between Communists and anti-communists, and in the 1980s, an inflation rate over 20 percent.

A member of NATO since 1952, the 11-million strong nation joined a precursor to what became the European Union in 1981, allowing it, finally, full access to international debt markets.

Those very markets, coupled with an embrace of Europe, kick-started two decades of increased public spending on pensions and government jobs, and private investment in shipping and infrastructure.

"There was a general sense of euphoria -- you could get a job with the government, real estate prices kept going up," said Vourloumis, who has run banks and telecommunications companies and battled unions along the way. "And then, with the European debt crisis, the whole thing was revealed -- our economy was built on protectionism, on borrowed money."

"Monday will be difficult," said Lambros, the worried woman with the bundles of cash in Athens.

She planned to spend the weekend watching television news and worrying about the future.

If the country left the euro, she asked, "What am I supposed to buy food with?"

Information for this article was contributed by Nikos Chrysoloras and Theophilos Argitis of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 06/21/2015