Marie-Jacques peered round my rain-soaked inexplicably curled mop of hair and once she pursed her lips and spouted nonsensical poetry in broken french I knew she wasn't going to leave me alone. Cicero was lost, I jotted down absolute rubbish about Chalcolithic pottery in the hopes that my writing would be so small they'd just give me the points anyway and I begged her to hold still.
"Why are you here?"
She shrugs bony shoulders. "Pourquoi pas."
"Mais pourquoi maintenant? I was writing last night, you could have come then."
"Il faut commencer 'il était une fois...'"
"You're taking the piss."
"Tais-toi!"
"Tais your own toi."
I scribble notes about the French Revolution from lectures I've missed.
"Et il faut finir 'ils se marièrent et eurent beaucoup d'enfants'"
"Shh I'm very busy and important."
I started writing about enlightenment. Which was just lists and lists of philosophers and thinkers under various headings. David Hume was one of the Scottish Enlightened ones and with a spasm my hand creeps to the top of the page and writes she's searching for the missing shade of blue.
"Oh come on. You want me to write a philosophical fairy tale in french? Where were you in sixth year when these things were fresh in my mind. I'll be stuck on wikipedia with foreign dictionaries on my lap. You know I'm lazy with the grammar."
"Je t'aime." She knew ideas were planted in my head and need say no more. Needless to say it was difficult to pay attention in class despite such discussions as "But Catherine is a girl" (nice of them to notice) and bluffing my way through things I barely read the night before.
And my little Parisienne tortures me with something too perfect for me to recreate on paper. And I'm left trapped in my own limitations.
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