Twenty Euro

Tom stood outside the bakery and watched the staff at work. He knew they might speak English, but there was no guarantee. Before entering, he repeated in his mind a few choice French phrases. He had practised them under his breath on the plane and in the hostel. In the event, he proved wholly unable to communicate his veganism, or much of anything else. He left the place with red cheeks and two very buttery croissants that he could not eat.

He walked to a large park in the centre of the city whose indecipherable name he could not remember. There he took a seat by a fountain and watched the other tourists circle around it. Their motion halted here and there as they stopped to take photos and selfies. Tom had come from a particularly cold Adelaide winter and so he reclined in the summer light and enjoyed its touch. For several years in between exams and classes, he had worked in a miserable video game store to afford a trip abroad, and Paris was his first stop.

A girl broke from the crowd and made directly for Tom. Her clothes were unusually well-worn and her hair unkempt, but her eyes were on him and they were so bright that he could see their colour from far off. He pulled off his headphones and struggled to remember what the Canadian at the hostel had said was the French for, “Sorry, I don’t speak French.” The words did not come to him, but it was no matter. Far from speaking French, the girl only smacked her lips and threw about her tongue in an emphatic imitation of speech that gave rise to no sound at all. Tom asked the mute girl if he could help her and she flashed him a broad smile.

She held a clipboard with a single sheet of paper. It explained in broken English that it was a petition for the benefit of the deaf-mutes of Paris. The girl pleaded with her bright eyes and motioned to Tom with the clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other. There were already half a dozen other signatures dated for that same day.

The night before, Tom had looked out the window of his hostel and seen a man in a sleeping bag across the narrow street. He had been lying alone by the light of an Italian restaurant that hosted scores of verbose Americans. Dozens of people had passed him by.

Tom took the pen from the girl. As he scrawled his name her pleading look disappeared and she flashed her shining teeth. She pointed to another paragraph of text in smaller type at the bottom of the paper. In even more broken English it explained that a donation of twenty Euros was necessary to ‘valider’ each signature. The girl held out an open palm and renewed her imitations of speech.

“I’m sorry but I really don’t have anything,” Tom said. “No money.”

The girl opened and closed her hand in an urgent motion. Tom gave her what few French words he could summon, but they had no more effect on her. Neither did his attempts to explain in improvised sign language that he did not have her twenty Euros. Still she held out her hand. Finally Tom reached into his pocket and retrieved the few coins he had received as change at the bakery. They added up to exactly two Euros and thirty five cents. He dropped them into her palm and said as clearly as he could, “No more. Nothing. That’s all. Everything. No more. I’m sorry.”

The girl looked at him and then the coins. Without another gesture or pleading look, she turned on her heels and took off. She joined a group of girls nearby who each held an identical clipboard and Tom watched them as they all skipped along the park’s central axis. As they went, they all talked loudly and quite competently with one another. Even among such gregarious company, the girl who had taken Tom’s money seemed to be quite talkative.

Tom made for the park’s main exit and just before it, alongside a colourful and carefully arranged bed of flowers, there was a ragged man attended by a swarming horde of pigeons. They thronged around him as he doled out handfuls of crumbs, the most courageous of the birds climbing onto his raised arm in order to eat directly from his hand. Two Spaniards with a little girl stopped to take a few pictures of the man and he guided one of the birds to land on the girl’s arm. It flew away and the girl bounced up and down, grasped her mother’s leg and looked up to her with glee.

The Louvre was directly adjacent to the park. Tom could not remember the name of the central courtyard within the grounds of the old palace. There was a large and well ornamented arch at its centre whose name also escaped him.

Tom raised his camera and took a picture of the arch and the incomprehensible French text it bore. In the background was the tremendous glass pyramid and former palace. He took several pictures and when he eventually lowered the camera, he found a man standing before him. There was a tremendous grin across the man’s face and a short length of red string in hand.

“I help you. I help you,” the man said. “I respect you. Let me show.”

Confused by the man’s sudden appearance and merry tones, Tom did not recoil when the man took a hold of his wrist and began tying the red string around it in layers.

“Where you from?” the man said as he went about his work. “America?”

“No, Australia,” said Tom.

“Australia. Crocodile Dundee, yes?”

“Yes. Australia.”

“Very good. Australia is my favourite country. Big knife.”

The man clapped his hands, gave Tom another uncommonly large grin and with that he was finished. There was now a bright red band tight on Tom’s wrist.

“Twenty Euro,” the man said.

“Twenty?” asked Tom.

“Yes, twenty Euro. For the bracelet. Good price, no?”

“I didn’t ask for this. I don’t want this.”

The man put his hands together and said, “Twenty Euro. It is for donation. Hungry people.”

“I’m really sorry, but I can’t afford it,” said Tom. “I don’t have any cash on me. No money. Nothing.”

Tom pulled at the red band but it was tight against his skin and he could hardly make it budge, let alone unfurl. He looked up at the man and said, “How about a croissant? Do you want a croissant?”

The man laughed and said, “Croissant? No, Twenty Euro.”

“I have two croissants if you want one. Nice and fresh. Fluffy.”

“No croissant. I say you. Twenty Euro. Is for children. Hungry. Need money.”

Tom again pinched at and fiddled with his new bracelet, but to no effect. Behind Tom there came a woman’s voice, American.

“He’s trying to scam you.”

Tom turned to see a young woman with her eyes behind an enormous pair of sunglasses. She leant in closer and added with a pout, “It’s all a trick. He got you. But don’t be afraid to walk away from this guy. You know, he’s basically trying to steal from you.”

The man laughed, unwilling to let his cheeriness waver.

“Twenty Euros,” he said. “Is for the church, yes?”

The American patted Tom on the shoulder, wished him good luck, and carried on. Tom wasted no time in following her advice. The man scurried along the gravel behind him, kicking up grey dust and pleading with him in both French and English, saying over and over, “I respect you.” Over his shoulder Tom apologised and said that the croissant was still on offer. The scammer gave up his pursuit as soon as Tom left the grounds of the Louvre.

He crossed a bridge and descended to a riverside path. There were people walking and cycling or else picnicking at the water’s edge, their feet dangling over the murky river. They distracted him from the scammers and put him in mind of what was to come. All his exams were behind him. Vector calculus, number theory, and algebraic geometry were all done. He now had a full four weeks during which he would explore little towns and hike around the Alps. Maybe he would even meet a girl.

These thoughts were thrown out of Tom’s mind as he passed below a bridge where the shadows smelled sharply of urine and the rotten walls seemed everywhere to be stained with the stuff. Nobody was picnicking there by the water. He quickened his pace and took the next set of stairs up away from the river and back to the gravel path along the road.

There was an odd man at the top of the stairs. He was alone and stood looking around as if he were lost. His head was as round as his bulbous belly and almost perfectly bald. Whenever he jerked it this way or that, his hanging jowls wobbled with an awful elasticity. Just as Tom was about to pass him, the man knelt down with some difficulty and picked something up. He rose suddenly to meet Tom, a golden ring in his outstretched hand. He said something in French that Tom did not understand but in the man’s gestures he knew that he was offering him the ring. Without very much thought at all Tom said, “oh, alright then,” and plucked the ring from the man’s hand.

“English?” the man said.

“Yes,” said Tom. “Can I help you?”

“You American?”

“No, Australian.”

“I find ring. Right here. Is lost. But you can keep. Is for my Austrian friend.”

Tom’s budding suspicion blossomed into distrust and all he managed to say was, “Alright.”

“You keep the ring, yes? You pay for ring. Twenty Euro.”

Tom looked more closely at the little metal band. It was unusually light and perfectly dull in colour, certainly no more than a toy made from some discount alloy. Tom tried to hand the ring back to the scammer. Instead of taking it, the man pinched his thumb to his fingers and gestured to his mouth.

“You pay for ring, yes? Is for food.”

“No. I don’t want it. Do. Not. Want. And I’ve got no money anyway.”

The man gestured again to his mouth.

“Twenty Euro,” he said.

Tom took a step forward and tried to place the ring in the man’s hand but the scammer jumped back with a grunt.

“Twenty euro,” he growled.

Tom tossed the ring as high and far as he could manage. It soared over the riverside path, the cyclists, and the picnickers. The scammer followed its trajectory, his jowls swaying back and forth. With a little splash, it dropped into the brown river below. Tom hurried off and the man hounded him for a little longer than the bracelet scammer had, but he did not turn to face him and before long he was alone again on the path in the shade of tall plane trees. There he took his Swiss Army knife from his bag and finally cut the red bracelet from his wrist.

There was a new arrival in the hostel that evening. He was a portly American with an enormous beard named Sam.

“I love this town,” Sam said. “The food is so great. Have you been to any of the bakeries? They’re all amazing. All of them. No exceptions. How is that even possible? You’d think there’d be at least a few bad ones. But all I find are great pastries everywhere. And I’ve really been sampling them. Believe me. What a town. Dessert game is on point.”

“Have you tried the croissants?” Tom said. “I hear they’re pretty great.”

“Dude, are you kidding me? Last time I was here I was eating those things for breakfast on the daily. Amazing.”

Sam parted the curtains and looked over the street. At first he breathed the same kind of here-at-last sigh with which Tom had greeted the city. Then his hands fell loose by his side.

“Hey, did you see the guy sleeping out there?” Sam said.

Tom joined him at the window. The man in the sleeping bag was there again across the road. He might not have moved since Tom last saw him. Even with the window closed, Tom could hear yet another group of loud Americans at the Italian restaurant a few metres from the man.

“I’ll be back in a sec,” said Tom.

A car blared its horn at Tom as he crossed the road but not even that roused the homeless man. His back was to Tom and his face hidden. If it were not for the rising and falling of the sleeping bag, Tom might have thought he was not alive at all. He bent over the man and tried to say something in French but the man did not respond. And so Tom reached into his backpack, retrieved the paper bag of still-fresh croissants and left them by the man’s head.