Witness

“Can you hear me?” Jesus, he’s a mess. This guy is hurt. He’s lying just off the street, not a very busy one, in a narrow alley or passage between two old buildings, somewhere between conscious and not. He has a gash on his forehead and his right hand is bloody, but from its own wound or from grabbing at the source of his pain I can’t tell. His left hand, pressed into the pavement and holding his weight against the wall, has turned gray from the pressure. Otherwise, he is African black. He’s not talking, but he is breathing and moaning. He moans a little and tries to talk. I can’t tell if he can hear me. At least maybe he’s aware someone is with him. I need to call for help.

Not carrying a phone in my pocket is part of being in Paris for me, away, time off. If you want to reach me, there’s a phone in the apartment or you can send me an e-mail. I bring my laptop—I’m never that away, that off—but it’s about as portable as you would be if someone stuck a handle on your head. And anyway, I don’t like carrying things, which may explain why I’m never quite prepared to write down lists or offer a spare hanky or call for help no less than a weakness for women with oversized handbags.

Two steps and back on the street, I see a few people, passersby or maybe badauds—people passing by, but going nowhere in particular, which ordinarily is my ideal of taking a walk. Does anyone have a cell? Un portable? There’s a hurt man here, he’s bleeding. People pass. A couple of them look into the little tight alley and keep going. I’m shouting now for a phone, for someone to dial 15 and get an ambulance. They keep passing, all of them, going their way or nowhere.  Who knows how long this has been going on when a man stops and takes a phone out of the pocket of his tweed overcoat. Without thinking, I reach for it. He steps away from me quickly and trots across the street, looking back at me. I turn toward the corner—the street there is bigger and busier—hoping for better luck. Does anyone have a phone? We need an ambulance.

Maybe it’s strength in numbers—a crowded street is safer. But yes, people suddenly have phones—and what’s the matter? I explain. Where is the alley? Down the street, twenty metres or so. A man’s bleeding. Could I see, please? And could I? Me too? I lead a flying, or rather a stately, wedge down the street to the alley. Who is he? I don’t know. Do you know him? No, I just saw him. This seems a bit perplexing to them until I say we need to call the SAMU, and a middle-aged woman puts down her heavy shopping bag and starts digging in her purse, staring down a man who has his out of his pocket already—diva to the rescue. She finds her phone. She wonders if I know how to unlock the keyboard. Yes I do and, having learned something, explain to her which key to press. She presses the release key, then asks if it’s 15 or 16 she should call. There is no 16, I tell her, but a man says there is: it’s for the coast guard. Oh, no, no, says a younger man, that’s 1616. Then what’s 16? Oh that, says a good looking thirtyish woman, tonalité d’occupation all the time, and busy signals is all I’m getting anyhow. The woman thinks it might be 18, but that we all assure her that’s the fire department.

Please, madame, appuyez sur le un et le cinq, and I will be responsible for the results. She presses one and five and tells the emergency operator there’s a man bleeding in an alley. “What? I don’t know. Wait, please.” She turns to us, asking what’s the street name. We all look up for a street sign on the building. She tells the phone, “I can’t tell. There’s an awning, you see.” The young man who knew about the coast guard bounds into the street to get a view over the awning, says there’s no plaque here, and sprints for the corner with the good-looking thirtyish woman following at a safe distance. At the corner he looks up, reads the name, and shouts it out to the young woman who relays it back to us at the top of her lungs. Thirty years into the digital age, we are relying on smoke signals. But the woman with the phone hears the name, repeats it into her phone, says a little more, than abruptly hangs up—well, no, she doesn’t, but that’s what we still say, thirty years into the digital age.

“They’re coming,” she says and, after a process of magnificent awkwardness, packs her phone into her handbag, picks up her cabas, leaves—and so do the others, singly rather than in a wedge or a unit. I crouch down by the man in the alley, try talking to him again, but he’s barely moaning. The pulse in his neck under my first two fingers is about forty, according to my sense of passing time, but not my watch because it has no second sweep, and the pulse could be a lot better. We both wait. When the ambulance comes, with the cops in its wake, the first man out asks me what happened. I don’t know and I don’t know him, either. I just saw him. Okay, and he and his partner shoo me out into the street and get to work.

A cop stops me. He points toward the alley and asks, “Who is he?” Again, I don’t know. You don’t know him? No, I don’t know him. But you called, didn’t you? Not exactly. What does that mean? It means I have no phone and I had to find someone with a phone and convince her to dial 15 and she did. Why did you have to convince her? Because this guy was bleeding and needed an ambulance. She didn’t want to call? No, she just wasn’t sure of the number. I told her 15. So she called? Yes. Who was she? I don’t know. Were there other witnesses? To what, the phone call?  There were several people who were watching. No, were there other witnesses to the accident or the attack? I don’t know. I didn’t see anything. I just found him here. Why were you in the alley? I wasn’t. I was on this street, right where we’re standing, looked over, and saw him. He couldn’t speak, so I went to get help, as I explained. Where were you going? Nowhere, I was just walking. Just walking? He frowns and writes this down in his little book just as he has written down everything in our idiotic conversation, having arrived by now on his third page.

Jean Cocteau said those who walk are suspect, and illustrated this thought with a picture of himself, standing bug-eyed and rigid on a lonely road staring at something out of frame—or maybe a tank, I’m no longer sure—but fearful and stopped in his tracks. Cocteau knew what he was talking about. Just walking, I say again. The cop frowns again and asks for identification. I don’t like this, but I don’t like cops a whole lot either and I don’t like getting on the wrong side of a cop, especially in another country, at all. He is not thrilled with my American driver’s license, and no, I do not have my passport with me—and decide not to add that I’m not stupid enough to walk around with it in my pocket. But I do have a photocopy of the first open pages, the only ones that count, good for getting the tax-rebate form in stores, and that somehow pleases him, even if the picture is growing old faster than I am. Yes, I have a local phone number and give it, mixing up at least two digits.

What about him, I ask, pointing to the man whom the SAMU men have strapped to a gurney and are wheeling toward the open doors of the ambulance. Their business, not mine, and not yours. You should go. If we need more information we will call you. More information about what, I wonder. Will they tell me if the guy lives? Who he is or was? What happened? I don’t bother to ask and push off wandering down the sidewalk a little way, then cross the street. Another cop, probably one who showed up with my interrogator, calls to me to wait. I stand where I am in the middle of the street, but he waves me back to the sidewalk.

Don’t you know that you are supposed to use the crosswalks? I look blank. Don’t you know there is a fine for crossing in the middle of the street? Nothing from me. Do you understand, monsieur? Yes, I understand that he’s about to ask me about the rules of pedestrian discipline and to produce some identification. In the worst possible French I can muster, I say I don’t understand, I’m a foreigner, what are you talking about? He waves me away and starts walking back down the street toward the other cop who is still writing in his little book. I wonder if he’ll compare notes with his partner. Not such a good idea? I hope he does.

© Joseph Lestrange

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