Yanis Varoufakis said, “There are times when you say, ‘I’m not going to sign something I disagree with. And stuff the consequences!’ ” Photograph by Davide Monteleone / VII

On July 4th, the night before a referendum asked the Greek people to decide how far their debt-ridden government should accommodate the demands of its main creditors—the “troika” of the European Union, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund—Yanis Varoufakis, the country’s minister of finance, sat outdoors at an Athens restaurant, wearing a T-shirt with an outline of Texas on the front. In January, Varoufakis, an economist who had been teaching at the University of Texas at Austin, abruptly entered Greek politics, becoming the public face of the country’s defiant negotiations with European leaders. After months of fatigue, he had slept for much of the day, and he was in a good mood. Varoufakis, who is fifty-four, had the peace of mind of someone who was certain of an election result and already savoring the satisfactions to follow. His government, the left-wing Syriza party, would lose. The people would vote “yes”—that is, in favor of making more concessions than Varoufakis and Alexis Tsipras, the country’s forty-year-old Prime Minister and the leader of Syriza, had said that they could stomach. Varoufakis would resign as a minister, and would never again have to endure all-day meetings in Brussels and Luxembourg, listening to other European finance ministers scold Greece for its disobedience. And he would no longer need to marshal scant supplies of discretion to disguise the fact that he and Tsipras had, in recent weeks, lost significant faith in each other. Varoufakis had not given up his hostility toward the troika, or the economic arguments underpinning that hostility, but he spoke as if Syriza’s weeklong campaign of slogans and street protests in support of ohi—“no”—were already archived in Greece’s long history of resistance to external aggressors. A “yes” vote, Varoufakis declared, was “inevitable.”

He was with his wife, Danae Stratou, an artist whose work mainly involves installations and photography, and his friend James Galbraith, an American economist who is a professor at the University of Texas. Galbraith had been acting as an unpaid adviser on an informal international team that included Jeffrey Sachs, an economist at Columbia University. According to Varoufakis, Sachs had been sending “missives for the past two weeks, saying, ‘Demand debt relief. You need it. If it’s not granted, then default.’ ”

It was ten o’clock. Far fewer tourists were about than on a typical July evening, and at the restaurant Greek voices were low. When a passerby took Varoufakis’s hand—the minister preferred a right-angled bro-shake with Greeks—he kept shaking it with an almost violent intensity. It had been a disorienting few days, during which Greeks often described an event or a conversation as having taken place a while ago, before realizing that it had happened only yesterday. Aristides Baltas, a philosopher of science who is currently serving as the minister of education, told me that time had become “dense.”

At the end of the previous week, negotiations between Greece and its troika creditors had stalled, and Tsipras called the referendum. On June 28th, the European Central Bank declined to increase the level of day-to-day credit available, under a program called Emergency Liquidity Assistance, to Greece’s ailing private banks; they were almost out of cash, after months of a slow-motion bank run. Greeks were hoarding euros at home. Varoufakis set in motion what he called “a tragic mechanism” to restrict withdrawals. (The next night, a Monday, he told Stratou, on returning from work, “Honey, I shut the banks.”) Greeks could now withdraw from A.T.M.s no more than sixty euros a day. A shrunken economy shrunk further, although it was still possible to make unlimited electronic transfers within Greece. Determined to empty bank accounts, for fear that deposits would be devalued or lost, Greeks paid their bills: Varoufakis spoke of “huge” sums flowing into the tax office.

The government had made contingency plans for a temporary alternative currency, in the form of electronic I.O.U.s. On June 30th, Greece missed a payment to the I.M.F., joining three other countries in arrears: Somalia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. Three days later, Klaus Regling, the head of the European Stability Mechanism, which was managing the debt that Greece owed to the countries of the E.U., e-mailed Varoufakis to remind him that, because of the missed I.M.F. payment, the European Financial Stability Facility had the option of asking for immediate repayment of E.U. funds. “I personally owe €142.6 billion,” Varoufakis said. “It’s my name on the contract.” He recalled that his response, delivered with war-weary humor, and some contempt, was a two-word quotation of the King of Sparta: “Molon labe,” or “Come and get it.” On the night of July 3rd, Varoufakis was mobbed as he passed through a crowd of tens of thousands of Greeks, to a final rally for the “no” cause. Walking behind him, I saw a man in his seventies kiss Varoufakis’s shoulder.

After months at the center of a global political spectacle, Varoufakis still carried himself as an outsider: informal, ironic, somehow alone on the stage. This demeanor had sometimes given his tenure the air of a five-month-long ted talk. At the restaurant, Varoufakis’s commentary on the recent tumult, and on the likely catastrophic events to come, sometimes seemed amused almost to the point of blitheness. He asked after Galbraith’s children, then noted that, a few hours earlier, a member of Germany’s parliament had visited his apartment, confessing, “I don’t believe in what we’re doing to you.” The legislator was a Christian Democrat—the party led by Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, who had it in her power to ease Greece’s crisis. On departing, the legislator said, “I know you’re an atheist, but I’m going to pray for you.”

Varoufakis made a call. Speaking Greek, he greeted Euclid Tsakalotos, a colleague and friend, as “comrade,” then speculated about Tsipras’s behavior in the event of a “yes” vote: “The wise guys in Maximos”—the Prime Minister’s residence—“have become nicely settled in their seats of power, and they don’t want to leave them.” Varoufakis seemed to be suggesting that Tsipras would not resign after losing the referendum. There would be a “strategic restructuring,” Varoufakis said, and then elections. As for himself, he said, “After tomorrow, I’m going to be riding into the sunset.” He spoke the last four words in English.

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A Roma boy came to the table, selling roses. “Varoufakis!” he said, amazed. “I saw you on the news.” Varoufakis allowed himself to be teased for his habit of carrying a backpack, which, he was told, made him look like a schoolboy. He laughed and paid five euros for a rose, which he gave to Stratou. As the boy left, he shouted “Varoufakis! Varoufakis!” at a vender’s volume, and, a few tables away, the minister’s plainclothes security detail—two chic young men who bore a resemblance to George Michael at the time of “Faith”—turned around.

Galbraith told Varoufakis that his instinct was wrong about the referendum results. “No” would prevail, despite the bank closures. Many Greeks had nothing left to lose, and many others had hedged their financial assets, perhaps by buying a car. “Maybe,” Varoufakis said.

Stratou glanced at her phone. “Jamie, you might be right,” she said. She showed Varoufakis her screen. A survey was showing “no” with a lead.