One of the men in the smocks listened to Neil’s explanation, then told him that, in fact, he would have to officially request the documents all over again. The box disappeared below the counter. He would have to fill out the yellow form and the green form and get the stamp from the chief archivist again if he was ever going to find out if the monk from Rouen had stopped in Paris at the old church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie.
The next morning Neil snoozed his alarm four times, then woke in a panic and had to shower so quickly that the water never got warm. He’d meant to get to the station a little early so he’d have a chance to buy Magdute some flowers, but by the time he got off the metro at Gare du Nord it was already after six.
Neil would have skipped the flowers altogether—now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure they were appropriate—except that he’d been in such a rush, he’d forgotten to brush his teeth. He needed gum. A man walked past pushing a newspaper cart with one hand, holding a bucket of roses in the other, each wrapped in plastic. Neil waved for him to stop. He bought a rose, thinking that white was probably better than red, but when he asked for gum the man rustled through the candy bars and bags of chips on his cart and shook his head. There was a real newsstand at the other end of the station, but before Neil could get there he saw Magdute standing near the information booth with an old gray suitcase and a box under her arm, a stationary point in the flow of travelers. She raised her hand and waved to him.
“Hi,” he said when he made it through the crowd. He leaned in to do the cheek kiss thing. She leaned in too, and at the last instant Neil panicked, not knowing which way she was going. He tried to switch sides, which meant they almost ended up kissing each other on the lips, and so they abandoned the whole thing.
“Bienvenue,” he said and handed her the flower. It was already starting to be too heavy for its stem.
“Okay, so nice,” she said.
“I like your glasses,” Neil said. Starting off conversations with girls by complimenting them was a nervous tic Neil had. As usual, it just made him look like a jerk, because Magdute took her glasses off right away and put them back into a case in her purse, saying, “I only wear them sometimes.”
“Oh, well they look good,” Neil said. “I mean, they suit you.”
“Well, this is nice for you to say,” Magdute said.
“So how long till your bus?” Neil asked. “Should we get some breakfast?”
“Yes, I will have time for that,” Magdute said.
Her suitcase flipped over when he tried to roll it, so Neil picked it up and carried it back toward the trains, where there was a little café right on the platform. Magdute sat with her bag and Neil got them each a coffee and a couple of pastries. He didn’t know how Magdute liked her coffee, so he got a whole handful of sugar packets.
When he got back to the table, Magdute had her glasses on again, but she took them off as soon as she saw him. It was funny to think that she was shy about something like that.
“I wasn’t sure how hungry you were,” Neil said, putting down the pastries. “They have sandwiches too.”
“No, this is great, really,” Magdute said.
They took the first sips of their coffee, which tasted like it had been scraped right off the train tracks, and reached for the sugar packets at the same time. “I hope I got enough,” Neil said.
Sunlight filtered in through the yellow glass of the vaulted ceiling, making a web of shadows on the floor. Birds flew around and pecked at an old brioche. A German family at the table next to them was playing cards. Brakes hissed and musical chimes sounded as trains arrived, sliding into their slots at the platform like trained snakes. When Neil looked up, Magdute’s pain au chocolat was gone and she was licking her finger to pick up the crumbs. Neil wished he’d bought her a chausson aux pommes too.
“So you’re headed home?” Neil asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Actually I have been losing my job in Swindon, and it is not so easy to find another one, so, you know, I am thinking I will go home.”
“Gosh, that’s too bad,” Neil said.
“No, it’s okay, really, I think I am a little bit finished in England. My living situation is not so good there, and actually at home in Vilnius my mother is opening one pizza restaurant, so maybe I can help her for running it.”
“Oh yeah,” Neil said, since she brought it up. “Yeah, that Australian guy, that was definitely weird.”
“Which Australian?”
“That guy, Barry,” Neil said.
“No, he is not from there.”
“Oh, he sounded Australian,” Neil said.
“He is from Africa.”
“Really?” Neil asked.
“Yeah. You know, Rhodesia?”
“Sort of,” Neil said. “But he is weird, right?”
“Yeah,” Magdute said.
Neil wanted to ask her more about it, like what had happened after he told her about the camera, but he knew it wasn’t his business.
“So how long is it going to take you to get home?” Neil asked.
“Maybe one day and half, something like this,” she said.
“Boy, that’s a long bus ride,” Neil said, and they were both quiet for a little while. Magdute was still picking pastry crumbs off her napkin, even though there weren’t any left.
“I’m starving,” Neil said. “I’m going to get some sandwiches. What kind do you want? I think they have ham.”
“No really, it’s okay,” Magdute said.
Neil got a ham sandwich and one with egg and cheese and a chausson aux pommes and brought them back to the table.
“Look,” he said. “I really hope nothing I said about that thing, you know, that I found, made things too weird for you with that guy. I mean, obviously, it was weird, but I hope it didn’t, like, freak you out too much.”
“Well, no,” Magdute said. It didn’t look like she was planning on saying anything else.
“So did you find another place?” he asked.
“What other place?”
“To live—you know.”
“No, I am staying all time at Barry’s house,” Magdute said.
At the table next to them, the German mother won the card game. Three army guards with assault rifles paced in synchronized steps along the platform. Neil thought of the archives with its long tables and the lamps with their little green shades, the cartons of yellowed papers tied up with strings and the old men sneezing quietly into their handkerchiefs, and wished he were there.
“Actually the camera isn’t working like you said,” Magdute said. Her sandwich was almost gone. Neil hadn’t started his yet. He pushed it toward her. He wasn’t really hungry.
“What do you mean?” Neil said. “Of course it was working.”
“Is working, yeah, but not for recording. I am checking, and the wires are going totally wrong. Barry is shit for installing electronics, he will even have to ask me how to turn on the TV.”
“Yeah, but he can still see you, right?” Neil said.
“Only if he is looking just at the moment.”
“Still, that’s illegal, what he did. It’s an invasion of privacy, did you tell him that?”
Magdute shrugged.
“Magdute, I’m serious,” Neil said. “He should be in jail.”
“Well, no, not for this.”
“Yeah,” Neil said. “For this.”
“It’s complicated,” Magdute said.
“No it’s not. He could have other ones. He could be making videos and, like, selling them on the Internet.” Magdute had finished the sandwich and the chausson aux pommes and was folding her napkin into the shape of a boat.
“This is the only thing what I know for making,” she said, creasing the bow. “I am one time making good roses, but I’m forgetting for how to start.”
“Look,” Neil said. “My mom’s a therapist and she deals with this kind of stuff all the time. You think it’s your fault or something. It’s not your fault. He probably h
as cameras and stuff like that all over his house. You need to tell the police. I mean, there are still other people living with him, right? Other, like, girls?” He was probably talking louder than he should have been, but he was getting worked up. He lowered his voice, remembering how his mom talked to clients when they called her at home with an emergency. “Magdute,” he said, “this is not your fault.”
“This is funny that you keep calling me Magdute. My name actually is Magdalena,” she said. “Magdute—this is, like, name for some little girl.”
Normally Neil would have been embarrassed, but he wasn’t going to let this go.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Magdalena. I think you should call the police. If you don’t, then I will, because I really think it’s sick that he’s, you know, filming in the bathroom.”
“I told you, this is not for Internet. I am really checking this good.”
“That’s not the point,” Neil said, taking out his phone as if he had the number for the Swindon vice squad programmed in.
“Don’t call the police,” Magdalena said.
“I think it’s my responsibility,” he said.
“Okay, Neil, that is not a good idea,” she said. “Calling police will really not help anyone and it will make a lot of trouble for Barry. Actually he is pretty okay guy sometimes and he have helped me a lot, so don’t do this, okay?”
They looked at each other for a minute.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Neil said.
“Yeah,” Magdalena said. “There are really a lot of things that doesn’t make any sense.”
After that the conversation was pretty awkward, especially when it turned out that Magdalena didn’t even have a ticket to Vilnius yet, and needed to borrow money from Neil to buy one. The ticket cost sixty euros, which was most of his weekly stipend from Professor Piot, and Neil knew there was, like, zero chance she’d pay him back. He was honestly pretty pissed. He felt like he was being taken advantage of, but he knew that, as usual, he’d be nice, say no problem, and it would ruin his day. So it might have been with a little more force than was necessary that he scooted his chair out from the table, not really caring if it made a big screech across the floor, saying he’d have to go find an ATM. As he did, he accidentally knocked over the chair next to him, where Magdalena had put the shoebox she was carrying. Neil tried to catch it as it fell, and ended up batting the box into a table leg. The top flew off, and a Ziploc bag tumbled out. Magdalena gave a little gasp and when Neil picked it up, the seam of the bag broke and powder started pouring out.
“Shit, I’m really sorry,” Neil said, cupping his hand under the leak.
“Oh my God,” Magdalena said. She dove under the table and started scooping up what had fallen down there. Neil dumped his handful back into the shoebox and ducked down to help her. He sneezed as a puff of fine white dust rose up.
Then the realization of what was happening hit him with all the weight of a cell door slamming shut: Magdalena suddenly leaving Britain with bags full of some kind of powder. Had Barry put her up to this? The powder was dirty white, it had a slight yellowish tint. Jesus, Neil thought. Words he didn’t know the precise meanings of, like horse and flake and dust and snow, started running through his head. Little cracks appeared in what had been his entire life up until that moment. The cracks grew and Neil’s future, all his hard work, his potential, the scholarships he’d won and his dreams of thick books with his name on them, all of it crumbled around him as he crouched under the café table with the cigarette butts and paper cups and pale dust all over his clothes.
Not realizing there was a hole in the bottom, Magdalena was frantically scooping the stuff back into the bag—which, by the way, was one of those gallon-size freezer bags, it was not small, and it was mostly full. The German mother grabbed her nearest child and pulled it away. A guy with a laptop next to them was standing to get a better view. Magdalena was crying and Neil realized for the first time in his life how quickly the tables could turn, how somebody who took honors seminars and was extremely conscientious about not bringing so much as a ball point pen into the archives could become, tout à coup, a fugitive from the law. He found himself scooting backward. He banged his head on the underside of the table. Dust puffed off his shirt when he stood up. The guards in their pincer formation hadn’t noticed yet, but they were headed in Neil’s direction, their gaze sweeping across the station like a pendulum with each step they took. In a moment they would see. Every instinct in Neil’s body was tensed to run.
Magdalena, on the other hand, seemed totally unconcerned by the fact that the whole world was watching her scoop up a shoebox’s worth of the stuff. She had stopped her frenzied sweeping and was kneeling under the table with her face in her hands, sobbing. There were smudges of it in her hair. A crowd was gathering, and the three guards with their giant guns were coming toward them, now at a quicker pace. Neil, as usual, was totally fucked.
“Magdalena,” he hissed. “Magdalena, get up,” but she was crying, keening, with her feet bent under her at funny angles and a string of spit hanging out of her mouth.
“What’s happening here?” one of the guards said in French.
“I don’t know,” Neil said. “She had this box and it fell.” The guard looked at him oddly, and Neil realized he’d said “helmet” instead of “box.” The guard squatted down and asked Magdalena what was going on. She just went on crying.
“Does she speak French?” he asked Neil.
“I don’t think so,” Neil said. And he had an idea. “I just met her,” he said. “I’ve never seen her before.”
“Lina, Lina, Lina, Lina,” Magdalena was saying. Another guard came over. His finger rested on the trigger of his gun.
“What’s this?” the second guard asked. The first guard dipped his finger in the powder, the way they did on TV.
“Cendres,” said the first guard.
“Oh là là,” said the second. “A member of the family?” he asked Neil.
By the time Neil remembered what cendres meant, the first guard was giving Magdalena some napkins and helping her scoop up the last bits, including one or two largish fragments of what looked like soup bones.
When they had gotten most of it, the first guard said something to the second, who went and got a trash bag from a janitor’s cart that was standing by. He wrapped the torn Ziploc bag in the trash bag and knotted it tight, then put it back in the shoebox and helped her up. “Apology and condolence,” he said to her in English, with a little bow, and he and the other guards went on their way.
Magdalena wiped her face. Neil wanted to die.
“It was my fault,” Neil said.
“No, is totally okay.” Magdalena had gray smudges around her eyes. Neil hoped it was makeup. “I am hearing her in my head right now saying, ‘Magdalena you are big fucking idiot for not making the box closed better than that.’ ”
“Mm,” Neil said, not exactly sure who she was talking about.
Maybe Magdalena realized he was confused because she looked toward the shoebox, whose top didn’t fit right anymore because of the garbage bag inside, and said, “She is my friend who is dying last year.” Neil felt himself inclining his head a little toward the box, as if saying hello.
“I’m so sorry,” Neil said. “I just had no idea.”
“Well, I am not really wanting to tell you, it is a little bit not-so-happy, you know?”
“Yeah, I know,” Neil said. “It was last year?”
“Like over one year ago,” Magdalena said. “We are living in London together and then she have some problems with one man, and well, with some other things also, but she accidentally deathed herself on some apricots.”
“What?” Neil said.
“Here you want to see?” Magdalena took some papers out of the shoebox and handed them to Neil. It was an autopsy report. Presence of cyanmethaemoglobin. Marked dark cyanotic hypostasis, petechial haemorrhages, pink mucosa. “There,” she said, pointing to where it said Cause of de
ath. “She gets one big juice machine and like totally stupid person she puts in all those fruits with still having the seeds.”
“Oh my God,” Neil said.
“Yeah, is fucking one in the million, they are telling me,” she said.
“That’s awful,” Neil said.
“Yeah. She is my best friend,” Magdalena said. “I am thinking now it’s time already I should bring her home.”
Obviously, after that he gave her the money for the bus ticket. She asked for his address, saying she’d send it back to him when she got home, and Neil said, “Okay, but really, whenever,” because he was pretty sure they both knew she never would. But he wrote it down on a napkin anyway and gave it to her.
She lifted the napkin up close to her face. “This is your name?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Usually you say it ‘Neil,’ like, to kneel, but I like the way you say it too.”
“No, I mean this. This is also name of your father?” she said, pointing to Neil’s last name.
“Yeah, didn’t you know?” Neil said, then realized there was no reason a person from Lithuania who wasn’t some kind of book freak would have heard of Inga Beart. “My dad usually makes it seem like a big deal, so I figured your mom would have heard all about—”
“And your father’s other name is Richard?”
“Yeah. Or Rick,” Neil said. “It’s funny he’d tell your mom Richard. Pretty much he just goes by Rick.” But he could tell Magdalena wasn’t listening. She was tracing her finger through a bit of sugar that had spilled as if she were trying to think of how to spell it.
Indelible Page 15