In Magdalena’s wallet, behind the thirty euros and some expired top-up cards, was the piece of paper the woman at the yellow church in Swindon had given her, with the outline of a scallop shell stamped in pink ink. She took it out and showed it to the man.
“Ah, Compostelle,” he said.
“Yes?” Magdalena said.
“Okay,” the man said, and he pointed down the street. “Venez.” He motioned for Magdalena to follow him, and seeing her heavy suitcase with its one wheel he shook his head.
“C’est mieux comme ?a,” he said, pointing to the old sack on his back and tapping his walking stick against the boots he was wearing. He looked at Magdalena’s sandals and shook his head again. He turned back to the shop, unlocked the door, and went in. He came back out in a moment with a package of rubber insoles and a roll of tape. He handed them to Magdalena, nodding toward her feet. “You come,” he said. She adjusted the shoebox under her arm and followed him down the street.
After only a block or two they stopped next to a construction site. “Okay,” the man said. He looked around. A group of people had formed around a backhoe at one corner of the lot. As they got closer Magdalena saw five or six nuns in hiking boots filling water bottles from a big jug, and several older couples with backpacks and matching parkas. “To Compostelle,” the old man said. “Pèlerins.” He held out his arm and walked his first two fingers through the air.
“We go by feet?” Magdalena asked. The old man didn’t say anything, but his fingers were still walking. He held up six fingers, shrugged, then held up seven.
“Weeks,” he said.
“Okay,” Magdalena said.
She took the miniature bow and arrow from Neil’s father out of Lina’s suitcase and put them in her purse, along with the rubber soles the man had given her and anything else that would fit. She tied a jacket around her waist, then shoved the suitcase under the fence, next to a shed full of construction equipment. She was so used to life without her glasses that it was only then that she thought to look up. It might have been Neil’s tower above them, or it might have been another place covered over with white boards and scaffolding. She used some of the tape from the shopkeeper to close the shoebox tight and tied a pair of shoelaces together to make a loop so she could carry it over her shoulder. The nuns looked at their watches, and church bells chimed.
“Okay,” the old man said to her. “We go.”
{RICHARD}
Paris, June
When I’d finished with the microfilm, satisfied that the French newspapers hadn’t covered Inga Beart’s loss of her eyes in any greater detail than the papers had back home, I left the library and walked back along the river. It would be evening soon and all up and down the banks of the Seine young people were sitting in groups, tearing off pieces of bread, and passing bottles of wine because no one had thought of bringing paper cups. I might have felt disappointed at what I hadn’t found except that I’d never seen a crowd so lovely, clinging like that to the edges of the river, dangling their bare feet out over the water and stretching their toes toward the night.
I imagined my son in with all those young people, leaning on the shoulder of a girl with a ring in her lip or tossing a bit of bread to the ducks. He has the kind of courage I never had, going off to school half a world away. When I was his age there were unspoken boundaries; people didn’t think to do those sorts of things. But the rules that were unspoken by my generation went unheard by his, and it turns out that a boy from our little town can go off to college anywhere he likes and learn the things that would make him fit right in among the city kids toasting the sunset in London or New York or Hong Kong or Paris.
I could see my church tower wrapped in scaffolding on the other side of the river and I walked toward it, knowing my hotel was just behind and to the right. According to my map, there was Notre Dame in front of me, and I thought I might go in and have a look, but music drew me back along behind it. I listened to an accordion player, and when the song was done I gave him some money and walked on. At one end of the bridge a man was making a puppet dance while he played the harmonica without any hands, and at the other end a little group had gathered around a young fellow singing “Bye Bye Miss American Pie.” When he didn’t know the words he filled them in with “wa wa wa-wa wa wa wa-wa whiskey and rye . . .” and the crowd just loved it.
As a little boy Neil and his cousins used to like to jump off the haystack in the barn down at the ranch. Pearl’s kids would hurl themselves off, so certain that I’d catch them. And I’d brace myself, calling out, “Ready! Set!” with more confidence than I really had, watching their little bodies fly over the edge and praying to God I would. Neil always faltered for a moment. He would start to jump, my heart would tumble, then he’d stop and start all over. But he always jumped, hollering all the way down, then he’d race Carly and the twins up the ladder to do it again. I ought to give his mother a call, I thought, find out where I can reach him now that his classes are finished for the summer. I don’t like to be a bother, but I was remembering Neil as a child, a tiny missile hurtling off the haystack and into my arms back when things were no more complicated than that. I imagined how surprised he’d be to hear from me. “You’re in Paris??” he would say, not believing. “Sure,” I’d say. “Beautiful city.” I would have done it too—they sell prepaid calling cards in the tourist shops—but I remembered our last conversation. I figured I’d wait until I had something to show for my being there.
My landmark disappeared as I went down one street, then reappeared not exactly in the direction I’d expected. The sunset lit up the windows of the buildings around me with such an orange that each one looked like it was burning on the inside.
I was nearly back to my hotel when I found myself on the same narrow street I’d taken my first morning in Paris. I went along until I came to the shoe repair shop again, and I half-expected to see the girl with the suitcase still standing out in front. But this time the street was empty.