It was still raining, but Neil was tired of thinking about his childhood. He was almost guaranteed to get lost trying to find his way back to the Uzdavinys’ apartment, and Renate was expecting him for dinner. So he zipped up his sweatshirt, put his phone in his pants pocket, where it had the best chance of staying dry, and dug around in his backpack for the map of Vilnius that Renate had given him. But he must have left it at the pizza place, because he got all the way down to the bottom of his pack without finding it. He did find that he’d accidentally brought his Latin dictionary with him from Paris, which explained why his backpack was so heavy, and underneath it was the bag of Magdalena’s mother’s Christmas presents for his father. He’d forgotten all about sending them after he left Magdalena at the bus station. The wool socks were going to get wet and the photos of Magdalena’s mother were already a little bent, though the coffee in its vacuum pack was fine. Neil thought of his dad waiting for those presents since way back in December, checking the mail, maybe even calling the post office to see if a package had come that was too big to fit in the mailbox, and felt awful. He needed to buy a new map anyway, so he put the shopping bag under his shirt to keep dry and went out into the rain, heading back toward the post office where he’d bought the phone card.
The post office was farther from the phone booth than he’d realized, and by the time Neil got there he was soaked. He found a map of Vilnius, but the clerk just stared at him when he asked if she spoke English and kept staring as he mimed putting the things for his father in a box. Finally she got up and went into the back. Neil waited a long time. He heard a kettle boil. The woman came back sipping a cup of tea and holding a box that was way too big. Neil put the presents in and then, because he had to have something to keep them from sliding around, he ripped out most of the blank pages from his notebook and crumpled them up for padding. Since he didn’t know whether Magdalena’s mother was Dijana, Nellija, or someone else, he didn’t know how to say who the presents were from, or how to explain why they were coming with a Lithuanian postmark. He used another notebook page to write Hi Dad—Here are those Xmas presents from your friend. Sorry it took me so long. He threw the note away and wrote it a couple more times, trying out a few different explanations for why he was in Lithuania, but it all seemed too complicated. He didn’t know which would make his father feel worse, not getting anything or getting a big box in the mail and then opening it to find only coffee and socks and a crappy note. So he scrapped the whole thing. He’d send the presents when he got back to Paris. The lady made him pay for the box anyway; she gave him his change and went off to find the sugar. Neil said thank you, though she was already gone, put the presents back in his backpack, and walked out into the rain.
The next morning Kazys Uzdavinys told Neil how to get to the Lithuanian State Historical Archives, and he took the trolley bus to the outskirts of the city, past markets where old ladies set handfuls of tiny strawberries out for sale. He got off the trolley and followed Kazys’s directions until he came to a medium-size building with thick curtains drawn across the windows.
The reading room of the Lithuanian archives looked like an orderly classroom, with rows of school desks facing front. He had a reference number and a note from Kazys; he gave them to one of the archivists, and she took him to a section of the indexes.
“Polish?” she said.
“No, American,” Neil said.
“But you speak Polish?” she said.
“No,” Neil said.
The archivist shrugged, and she flipped through the index to the number Professor Piot had written down.
“This?” she asked. The description of the documents meant nothing to Neil.
“I guess,” he said. “I don’t know Lithuanian. I’m just supposed to get this file.”
“This is Polish,” the archivist said. “If it is before 1795 it is Polish.”
“Oh, right,” Neil said. “What does it say?”
The archivist shrugged again. “I don’t speak Polish.” Then she said, “So you come tomorrow?”
“Well, I’m leaving tomorrow,” Neil said.
“The documents are ready only tomorrow.”
“Oh,” Neil said. “Well, okay.”
There wasn’t really anything else for him to do, so he asked the archivist if she had a phone book. She gave him a newer one than he’d seen in the phone booth, but still no Bikauskait?s. “Is there anything like a registry for phone numbers?” he asked when he went to return it.
“If it is public, it is in the book,” she said, not looking up.
“Just, there’s someone I know who lives here, but I can’t find the name,” Neil said.
The archivist looked at the paper where Neil had written down the spelling of Magdalena’s last name, and then at the page in the B section of the phone book.
“Here,” she said. “Bikauskas is father. Bikauskait? is just for unmarried girl.”
“Oh,” Neil said. “I’m looking for her mother actually. Her father isn’t around. I don’t think.” What if his father’s friend was married? He hadn’t asked Magdalena, he’d just assumed her parents were divorced or something. It could be pretty awkward if her mom had a husband Neil’s dad didn’t know about.
“So it will be Bikauskien? for the mother,” the archivist said, pointing to Dijana and Nellija, the same numbers Neil had called from the phone booth, and pronouncing them slowly as if she were talking to someone very stupid—which was a good thing, because Neil hadn’t realized the j’s were pronounced like y’s.
“That’s great,” he said. “That’s really great. Thanks.”
The archivist gave him something that was almost like a smile.
The next morning he was going to call both Dijana and Nellija again, but he never got to Nellija, because when he called Dijana Bikauskien?’s number, a woman answered.
“Hello, Dijana?” Neil said. He was a little nervous and his throat was dry. His voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.
There was a pause, then, “Yes?” she said in English.
“Hi, my name is, I’m Rick Beart’s—Richard’s—” Neil had forgotten to practice what he was going to say beforehand. But it didn’t seem to matter, because Dijana made a sound like she was happily surprised.
“Ah, hello!” Dijana said. “This is great to hear you.”
“Thanks, it’s really nice to talk to you too,” Neil said. He cleared his throat and wished he had some water.
“How are you?”
“Good,” Neil said. “Actually, the crazy thing is, I’m here in Lithuania. I had to come here for, ah, work stuff, and so I’m in the neighborhood and I was just wondering if—”
“You are here? You are in Vilnius?”
“Yeah,” Neil said.
“Great, this is great! So you will come to see me?”
“Well, sure, that would be nice,” Neil said, amazed it had been so easy.
“I am almost not believing this. Really, you are here?”
“Yep. Yeah, it’s a little crazy.”
“No, not crazy. I am—ah, I forget English.”
“It’s okay,” Neil said.
She invited him to come for dinner that night and gave him the address, saying again, “I am really not believing.”
Neil couldn’t believe it either. Magdalena must have said some pretty nice things about him because her mom seemed genuinely excited he’d called. Neil had been expecting Dijana to pass the phone to Magdalena, but it was probably just as well that she hadn’t, because Neil had no idea what he would have said. Or maybe her mother wanted Neil’s visit to be a surprise. That was okay by him. In his mind he started rewriting the scene in the pizza restaurant, changing the setting one more time to Magdalena’s mother’s apartment, but keeping all the most important details the same. He called Professor Piot to tell him he would be staying in Vilnius an extra day, and then he took the trolley bus back to the archives to look at the documents.