Mother-of-Pearl Buttons

You go down four stone steps into the Đerđef notions shop, from the passage between Ferhadija and Zelenih beretki Street, and anyone who does not know it is there can walk past it for a whole lifetime. Above the door hangs a brass bell that Mrs. Ilinka brought from Trieste before the war, and inside it smells of starch, cardboard and sewing machine oil. The walls are drawers from floor to ceiling. Some hold buttons, sorted by size and color, others thread, others lace wound onto cards. Mesud Pilav has worked there for eleven years and knows which drawer is where the way other people know the stairs in their own building.

That Saturday in May the shop was full. Graduation proms were coming, and mothers brought their daughters in with photos of dresses on their phones, asking for sequins exactly like these, satin exactly this shade, beads like the ones some singer had worn. Mrs. Ilinka, small and strict, sat at the register and took the money, while Mesud ran from drawer to drawer, cutting, measuring and wrapping. Around eleven Nadija came in. He knew it was her before he lifted his head, because only she closed the door behind her so carefully that the bell never got to finish its sound.

Nadija was twenty-four and had a small dressmaking workshop in one room of her family's house in Vratnik, where she sewed prom dresses and gowns for modest weddings. She came to Đerđef twice a week, always with a notebook in which she kept a list in small, upright letters. Mesud knew that notebook better than his own bills. He knew she wrote her sevens with a line through the middle and that she never bought the cheapest thread. He also knew that he loved her, roughly since the second of January two years ago, when she came in wet with snow and asked for two yards of white cord for a dress she had not managed to finish by New Year's. He had never told her. Instead, he saved her the most beautiful lace from every shipment in a box under the counter, marked in pencil with nothing but an N.

That morning the notebook stayed in her bag. Nadija stood at the end of the counter, away from the mothers and daughters, and asked for six yards of ivory satin ribbon, then changed her mind and asked for white, then ivory again. Mesud took down both spools and laid them side by side. "Who is it for?" he asked. "A girl from Koševo who is graduating. Her mom wants her to look like a princess, and she wants to look like she did not even try." She laughed, but briefly. Then she lowered her voice. "Mesud, can I ask you something? But seriously. As a man, not as a shop assistant."

"Ask," he said, and began unwinding the ribbon. She talked fast, as if she had been arranging it in her head for a long time. His name was Irfan, sixth year of medicine. They had met in March, when he came to pick up a dress for his sister's engagement. Since then they had seen each other almost every evening, walking the Wilson promenade; he bought her lemonade at the kiosk by the bridge and told her about his patients. "He says he loves me. He says I am the only person he can be silent with. But he has never taken me home. Last week we ran into his mother in front of the Cathedral, and he introduced me as the dressmaker who is sewing his sister's dress. The dressmaker, Mesud. Not as his girlfriend."

Mesud measured the ribbon against the brass yardstick set into the edge of the counter, once and then once more, though he knew it was six. "Maybe he is afraid of his mother," he said. "There are men like that." "There are," said Nadija. "But he got a residency in Graz. He leaves in September. When I asked him what would happen to us, he said we would see. That Graz is close, that there are buses every day. What does it mean when a man says we will see?"

At that moment Mrs. Ilinka called him over to the register, because a lady was waiting for silver sequins, number four. Mesud went, counted out two packets for her and came back, and in that time he thought up ten answers, not one of them honest. He could say that Irfan surely meant it. He could say what he really thought: that he would never tell anyone we will see, he would have seen long ago.

"Tell me honestly," said Nadija when he came back. "Will he marry me?" Mesud pulled out the card of mother-of-pearl buttons, the expensive ones from Italy, though she had not asked for them, and laid it in front of her as if the buttons might explain something. "Nadija," he said, without lifting his head, "a man who wants you to be his does not introduce you to his mother as the dressmaker. He tells her your name and waits for her to ask what you do. Your student will go to Graz. He will send you pictures of the Mur from the bridge, and then one day he will stop writing. And in two years you will be sewing a wedding gown for some doctor, because his sister will be telling everyone that you are the best dressmaker in town." He said it faster and harsher than he meant to. He heard himself and could not stop. "If I were in his place," he began, and there he fell silent, because Mrs. Ilinka was loudly asking whether there was any more of that gold cord.

Nadija looked at him, then lowered her eyes to the buttons. Mesud saw her eyes fill and saw one tear fall onto the card, right onto the biggest button, and stay on the mother-of-pearl like a raindrop on a window. Behind them stood three mothers and two graduating girls, and one of the girls was just craning her neck to see whether the drawer had any more beads.

Mesud took a step to the left, so that his shoulders hid her, pulled out the biggest drawer of lace and began laying the cards across the counter, one after another, talking loudly, as if at a market. "This here is French lace, miss, seven inches wide, it sits on a hem like it was poured there. This is guipure from Italy, a little heavier, but it does not pull. This is broderie, pure cotton, for summer dresses, it washes at forty." Between two laces he said quietly, only for her: "Not here. Look at the lace, as if you were choosing." Then loudly again: "This one with the little flowers is Czech, everyone wants it for proms now."

Nadija stood bent over the counter, her fingers on the lace, crying without a sound, the way people cry when they are used to being heard by their family through the wall. Mesud went on listing: borders, tassels, cords, velvet ribbons, glass beads and plastic beads you cannot tell apart until they hit the floor. Never in eleven years had he talked so much.

When she lifted her head, her eyes were red but dry. She took a handkerchief from her sleeve, wiped her nose and, as if nothing had happened, said she would take six yards of the ivory, two yards of the French lace and twelve mother-of-pearl buttons. "The expensive ones?" Mesud asked. "The expensive ones," she said. "The girl wants to look like she did not try, and that costs the most." She almost laughed.

Mesud cut the ribbon, measured the lace, counted the buttons twice and wrapped everything in brown paper, the way Mrs. Ilinka had taught him, with string tied crosswise. Nadija paid at the register and came back for the parcel. She took it in both hands. "Thank you," she said. "I don't know what I would do without you. You are the only one I can tell everything, you know? It's like having a brother."

The bell rang, and this time it finished its sound, because she went out too fast. Through the shop window he saw her take out her phone at the top of the steps, read a message and, for the first time that morning, smile with her whole face. Then she turned toward the Cathedral, where someone was waiting, and disappeared among the tourists and the pigeons.

"Mesud," Mrs. Ilinka called, "the lady is waiting for the Czech lace." Mesud opened the box under the counter marked N and laid in it half a yard of French lace, the extra he had cut, as always. He closed it and pushed it back, against the wall. "Two yards, ma'am?" he asked. "Take two and a half. You always end up needing more than you think."