“I’m sorry,” the man said in English, “I don’t speak—”
Magdalena put her glasses back on, just for a moment, and she saw that the man couldn’t be from Lithuania; all the other words on him were English. She scanned his face quickly. There were details of his retirement accounts and a life insurance policy: She could see its payout date printed below his ear. At the corner of the man’s eye were descriptions of things from his childhood: a matchstick castle, a secret, a time the gate of the chicken coop was not shut tight. On his jaw a marriage, mentioned briefly. Magdalena didn’t want to be caught looking too closely, so she took her glasses off.
The man was bending over her suitcase. “I’m afraid you’ve lost a wheel,” he said. He lifted it back onto the sidewalk, and she had to explain that it wasn’t his fault, the wheel had been lost a long time ago and that suitcase was always flipping over.
The man turned back to the shop window. Magdalena wondered if maybe her mind was playing tricks and she had imagined seeing words in Lithuanian.
“Do you know what street is for the station Montparnasse?” she asked. He turned to say he was sorry but he didn’t know, he was only visiting; she put her glasses on and read again, high on his cheek, Akys nemato, ?irdies nesopa. Magdalena could hear her mother’s voice saying it, and it even looked a little like her mother’s handwriting on the man’s skin. If the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t hurt. It was her mother’s all-purpose answer to everything, her way of explaining the things one couldn’t know and might not want to understand.
The man said something about the shop he was looking in. There were little figures in the window and the man started telling her about his son, who liked that kind of thing. When he bent to point inside the shop she read that he’d come to Paris for a reunion with his family; it was written on his cheek just below her mother’s words.
“So you are here together?” Magdalena said.
“My son? No, no he’s not here with me,” the man said.
It was a risk to ask him anything more. But she could see that the k in the word akys on his face was made like a Russian character. Magdalena’s mother still made her k’s like that, the way she had been taught in school. Magdalena suddenly missed her mother—the sound of her voice and the spot of perfect comfort between her mother’s chin and her collarbone, where Magdalena’s head could still fit when it needed to.
“So, you come for—reunion?” she said. She wasn’t quite sure how the word was supposed to be pronounced, but she wanted the man to keep talking.
He looked at her strangely, and Magdalena knew she’d made a mistake.
“A reunion? No, did I say that?”
She shrugged as if he had, and though the man looked uneasy he seemed to believe her. He went back to talking about his son, and she nodded, reading the words again. She was tired, her arms and legs were tired, her feet hurt, and it was restful to see letters arranged in familiar patterns. Akys nemato, ?irdies nesopa. That old phrase uncluttered by articles and prepositions, so that four Lithuanian words did the work of nine in English. If the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t hurt.
“But you know, those things,” the man was saying. “Sometimes they don’t work out.”
Magdalena nodded again, though she hadn’t really been listening. “Things usually can be like this,” she said.
The man cleared his throat and picked up his luggage as if he’d suddenly remembered he was in a hurry. She would have liked to keep him standing there a few minutes more. Next to her was the shop window he had been so interested in, and she looked inside. But before she could come up with a polite way of making him turn his cheek to her again so she could get another look at her mother’s words, the man was picking up his suitcase and turning to go. He’d been carrying a city map, better than the one she had, and he gave it to her, saying, “Here, maybe you can ask someone else about the station.”
“For me?” she said. “Okay, thanks.”
The man tilted his head to say good-bye and Magdalena stood looking in the window of the shop. The gum Neil had given her was hard and tasteless. She blew a tiny bubble.
Inside the window the shopkeeper was hanging up his apron. He sat to put on a pair of leather boots. When he was done he turned to the window, nodding to Magdalena when he saw her standing outside, and started clearing a place among the dusty figurines on the display shelf. After a moment he got a box out from behind the counter. He took something out of it and set it in the space he’d made on the shelf. It was a tiny saint, its features pressed into leather so soft it looked almost alive. Magdalena turned to see if the man on the sidewalk was watching too, but he was already gone. She looked back in the window and noticed that the saint’s body was covered with tiny shells. The shopkeeper took out a note written in French and taped it to the glass.
The shopkeeper went into a back room and Magdalena stood looking at the little saint. She blew another bubble with her gum. Then the lights in the shop went out. The window display got dark and she had to lean in closer and cup her hands around her face to see inside. They were real shells on the body, each no bigger than a fingernail. Underneath the little saint the shopkeeper had sprinkled a bit of sand. She got too close. The bubble popped against the shop’s window and stuck to the glass. The door opened and the shopkeeper came out.
She thought he would be mad about the gum, but he didn’t seem to have noticed it. He said something to her in French and began to lock the door behind him. He lifted an old knapsack onto his back and nodded again to Magdalena, then started walking up the street.
Magdalena looked back at the window. She couldn’t read the words on the note the shopkeeper had left, but at the bottom he’d drawn a shell shaped like a Chinese fan. The shopkeeper was only a few steps away. He was old, but the boots he was wearing were strong and he had a long staff to lean on as he walked. Magdalena remembered what Neil had said about the pilgrims leaving Paris around that time of year.
“Excuse me,” she called after him. “Please tell me—what is this saint from the window?” The shopkeeper stopped and looked at her, not understanding.
“Very sorry, but English, not,” he said.
Magdalena tried again. “This little man,” she said, pointing back at the window. “With shells?” She cupped her hand along her arms. She tried to remember the name Neil had told her. “Saint Jack?” she asked.
“Ah oui. But no for sale,” the man said.
“Okay,” Magdalena said. “But where? Where is this happening?”
“No for sale,” the man said.
“I want to go there,” Magdalena said.
The man shrugged. “Very sorry,” he said.