up

Suspect

by Juliette St Jacques

"Do you speak English?"

"Yes."

I thought she was just another American tourist lost in Paris, making sure she had not gotten on yet another metro heading in the wrong direction.

"I'll bet you can sympathize with a struggling writer..."

"Um...yes, actually."

Not what I had expected. Unusual. What was she up to? And how had she known that, indeed, I would sympathize with a writer?

"Can you spare a few francs?"

Her voice broke when she said this. The way she looked at me told me that this question embarrassed her, but desperation made her ask it. The words had come out of her mouth in a hurried manner, as if she wanted to get over with it as quickly as possible. She looked scared; like a child who knows she has said something that might get her in trouble. And yet there was a glimmer in her eyes which showed that she was mildly amused by her own audacity. She awaited my response.

"Sure."

I gave her ten francs. She looked almost surprised that her daring attempt had been successful. A smile came to her face as she watched my coin drop into her palm. I knew she was grateful.

I was a bit confused. She was obviously not in the habit of begging. She was clean, dressed a bit shabbily but certainly not in the style of a homeless person, she was not drunk or on anything as far as I could tell. She looked at me eagerly, as if she had something more to say.

"If you know any sponsors or patrons of the arts, maybe you could show them this for me. It's a sample of my writing."

She handed me a sheet of paper folded in thirds with four paragraphs photocopied on to it.

"I'm afraid I don't know anyone like that."

"Oh."

A palpable disappointment.

"Well, you can keep it and read it yourself anyway."

A half-hearted and slightly nervous smile.

And she moved on through the metro car until she was almost out of my field of vision. I didn't dare read it while she was still around, for fear of having to discuss it with her afterwards. I had no idea what this page of writing would contain.

So I waited for her to get off the train, which she did at the next stop. I saw her running away down the quay.

She hadn't spoken to or solicited money from anyone else in the metro car. And she wasn't getting on to the next car to work her way through the entirety of the train, as people asking for money usually do.

I had the eerie feeling she had picked me out specially.

Did she think I was some sort of publisher or movie producer? She couldn't possibly. Although I did find the thought extremely flattering.

I unfolded the mysterious sheet of paper.

Centered above the text was the title: "Inside Africa -- A New Nation Formed by Private Investors". In parentheses under this heading was marked " a new idea for a cinema production". It was the story of a bunch of entrepreneurs (spelled incorrectly in the draft I was given) who set up a new nation in Africa (presumably after buying the land from some despotic ruler), and run it like a business, the members being called "investors".

The author discussed advertising to attract new investors, setting up boundaries and a powerful military, and "the creation of wealth not to be followed by the loss of it". The capitalist dream!

In the final paragraph I discovered that certain elements were banned from this new nation: the Communist Party and the practice of psychiatry, as well as any person "under the direction and care" of a psychiatrist.

This struck me as rather strange; particularly the fact that the author seemed to be quite familiar with psychiatric jargon, as if she had had first-hand experience in this domain. A whole quarter of the text, the entire last paragraph except for the incidental mention of communism, was devoted to the question of not allowing people with psychiatric problems into the new nation.

I thought of the way she had picked me out of the crowd on the morning metro, and then run away. If it was money she wanted, she had gotten it. If she was really a writer, this was, to say the least, a very unusual way of distributing her work. I thought that there had to be some other factor involved. It gave me food for thought as I arrived at my stop and headed for another day of work at the office.