Leroy Something That Rhymes: The Johnson Family Saga

By Tannie Stovall

The novel LEROY is the story of a young African American of the same name raised and educated in France. His parents are both African Americans. His mother is an international civil servant with UNESCO and his father is a successful cabaret owner in Paris.

The novel opened in the main square of Saint Tropez France where Leroy is convinced that his neighbor, Eric, has just made a homosexual overtures towards his adolescent son. Leroy overcomes reticence to make a scene and a fear that as a black he is helpless to provide protection even for his son. This leads to flashbacks in which Leroy family life and his education in France are reviewed. Leroy was raised in an upper class neighborhood of Paris and attended schools frequented by privileged children. He acquired refined manners plus a superior cultural education that contrasted with that of his parents. This led to problems of identity that are treated in the novel. Leroy received an excellent higher education and married a beautiful French woman with a similar educational background who come from a family with a left winged political history. With the help of his father, brother, son and wife, he became a successful businessman and mayor of a large French city. Yet he is haunted by the fear that his off springs will be intellectually inferior because of their race. He is greatly influenced by the book; The Bell Shaped Curved and much of the novel are reactions, not necessarily negative, to assertions made in the work.

As Leroy moves up politically and financially. Nevertheless, he discovers racism in France unlike that which he parents knew in the United States. Because he doubts his hereditary intelligence, he compensates by untiring hard work. He works very hard on his job and coped successfully with the problem of certain potential customers being reticent to deal with blacks. He surmounts all difficulties, shrewdly purchases stock options in the firm for which he works from fellow employees and eventually finds himself in reaching distance of acquiring a controlling interest.

Eventually he gains control of the French company where he suffered racial prejudice. With the help of the mysterious Swinborn Foundation, a non governmental organization whose manifest goal is to assistance the United States government with matters it approves but are too delicate for direct involvement. At Leroy fathers request, the Swinborn Foundation takes charge of making Leroy an important political figure in France.

There are two subplots. The first concerns Leroy 14-year-old son, Gaetan, who is putatively sexually abused by Eric, a 40-year old French scholar. Eric is arrested and discovers that his fate strongly depends on what will be most favorable for Leroy political ambitions. Gaetan is a particularly mature and brilliant young man who cooperates with agents of the Swinborn Foundation to best exploit his relationship with Eric in order to help his fathers political aspirations.

The second subplot involves Leroy father, Johnny, and his contribution to the breaking up of the Soviet Union. Johnny was a front man for a CIA operation to purchase various Soviet arms for use by forces fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. A surface to air missile that past through Johnnys hands was used to shoot down an American airplane. This led to Johnny incarceration which had a negative effect on his sons political aspirations followed by a very positive effects when friends of the CIA cleared him and tried to compensate him for his inconvenience by helping his son with his political and business career in France.

Leroy struggles is not only to succeed but also to belong, to be accepted by society. His feeling of non-acceptance is manifest by his feeling that he does not have a single close friend either among Frenchmen or in the African American community in France.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 14, 2005
• ISBN: 9781462823413

Tannie Stovall

Authors of the four published novels 'Two Centuries in Two Weeks' and the trilogy the 'The Johnson Family Saga', former research scientist, former urbanist and cofounder of the French cinematographic company SARL Miller Stovall, the parent company of 'Two Bulls on the Hill Productions', Tannie Stovall has lived most of his adult life abroad in Nigeria, Spain and France. He was born in Atlanta Georgia and received academic degrees from Morehouse College in Atlanta and the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis where most of this novel is situated. He currently lives in France between Paris and Saint Tropez.

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Copyright © 2005 by Tannie Stovall.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Saint Tropez, August 1994

Saint Tropez, July 1987

Paris, September 1975

Paris, May 1978

Paris, June 1978

Paris, May 1978

Paris, June 1978

Paris, June 1978

Paris, September 1980

Paris, February 1978

Bordeaux, Biarritz, 1955-1980

Paris, October 1988

Biarritz, 1993

Saint Tropez, August 1994

Saint Tropez, August 1994

Saint Tropez, August 1994

Crevant, August 1994

Saint Tropez, August 1994

Paris, August 1994

Paris, September 1994

Saint Tropez, August 1994

Saint Simon, September 1994

Paris, November 1994

Paris, November 1994

Paris, November 1994

Paris, November 1994

Paris, November 1994

Paris, December 1994

Paris, May 1997

Saint Tropez, August 1994

There were three factors that made Leroy disgusted with himself. The first was the caution, the hesitation that looked very much like cowardliness. The second was that he did not act earlier. The third was that he was afraid. He felt that he should have acted long ago, promptly and energetically with an outrage that smothered all fearfulness.

His neighbor, Eric acted inappropriately toward Gaetan his oldest son. The first time he noticed something, he brushed it aside thinking that the worst was unimaginable. The second, third, fourth and fifth time, he noticed the same sort of ambiguous slightly suggestive behavior of Eric, he rationalized that it was not clearly enough pedophile for him to make an issue of it. Now, Leroy felt that he was sacrificing his son for lack of smoking gun proof. Long ago, he should have told Eric outright that he thinks he’s a faggot and that he had better never come within 10 yards of his children. If he were mistaken and Eric was not responding sexually to his son, then too bad. It was better to falsely accuse Eric than to put his children at risk.

However, among the people Leroy knew in Saint Tropez, none had every hinted that they suspected that Eric was a pedophile or had any homosexual tendencies. Eric never said anything that would suggest he was. It was subtle. When Leroy was alone, Eric never spoke first to him. Moreover, Eric barely answered when Leroy spoke first. However, when Leroy was with Gaetan, Eric always wanted to chat. It was obvious to everyone that his interest was for Gaetan. It was only a question of the nature of his interest. At 40,

one would think that if he liked children so much he would get married and have some. Nevertheless, without suspecting that he was a pedophile, their common acquaintances felt that it was unlikely Eric would marry. He did not seem interested in women. He did not seem interested in sex period, yet there was an expression that could be interpreted as erotic longing every time Gaetan appeared.

On this balmy August day, Eric had gone further. Right in the middle of the Lice Square, Eric pretending that he was admiring the quality of Gaetan‘s pants, had rubbed his hand over Gaetan‘s fly. If someone in the crowd on the square had noticed the gesture, they would have taken it for an innocent act like smoothing out a wrinkle in Gaetan‘s trousers. For Leroy, however, this was the last straw. After a two seconds hesitation, two seconds for which he would forever be ashamed, he grabbed his son by the upper arms with his left hand and snatched him for Eric‘s presence at the same time, with all the force he could muster, he slapped him with his right.

A hard right to the jaw of the baffled Eric followed the slap. Three men subdued him before he could get in his third blow, which he was trying to figure out how to deliver because his hand was hurting tremendously from the last blow he gave Eric.

The crowd attracted by the fistfight was visibly hostile to Leroy. He was furiously attacking a man who seemed perplexed by the attack and who was not defending himself. „Are you crazy?" one of the bystanders yelled at him. But sympathy immediately swayed in Leroy’ favor as soon as he directed the term ‘P. D.’ towards Eric while he rubbed his son’s head affectionately. The sight of the boy and the term ‘P. D.’, which everyone knew meant pederast, graphically portrayed Leroy’ position. One look at Eric persuaded most that there might be something to Leroy’ accusation.

Some of those present knew the two men. All of these had a better opinion of Leroy than Eric. Eric was a forty years old secondary school teacher who visited Saint Tropez when school was in recess. He lived in a villa adjoining Leroy’, that his parents own. He, his parents and three sisters shared the villa as a secondary home. One man, a friend of Eric’s parents who had known Eric since his family came to Saint Tropez thirty years earlier suddenly realized that he had never known Eric to have a girl friend.

Although Leroy had only owned a villa in Saint Tropez for six years, a much larger number of the regulars in Lice Square knew him. So few blacks live in Saint Tropez that a large proportion of the local population knew all of them. Leroy was also noticed for other reason. His wife, Michelle, was a stunningly beautiful woman. Among the refined, obviously wealthy women of Saint Tropez, Michelle was a beauty to be reckoned with. At the same time, Michelle stood out among all those young gorgeous creatures that came every summer to prostitute, to look for a rich husband or both.

All of the regulars in Saint Tropez had heard rumors about how Leroy and Michelle purchased their villa. The previous owner, an Arab looking playboy who claimed he was a surgeon but actually connected in some way to American gangsters, purchased it in the mid 1980ies. He hardly ever visited his property but he spent a fortune improving it. Then suddenly he sold it for less than a third its value to Leroy and Michelle. The rumor was that he was forced to sell by Mafia types from New York. The New York gangsters arranged the sell in order to reward Leroy’ father for unknown services he had rendered them. Such rumors are abounding in Saint Tropez and usually, they were regally ignored. However, these rumors were spread by lawyers who live in Saint Tropez while playing pétanque in Lice Square, and were known defenders of politicians caught with their hands in the till, bankers accused of money laundering and more rarely some immigrants who were obviously being railroaded by the French justice system. Avid pétanque players are known to exaggerate but they do not outright lie more than anyone else. They are usually too intelligent for that or so they think. The activities of the lawyers making the allegations were known because their exploits were periodically reported in the news media. They made their assertions consistently with very little provocation but they gave few details.

Once, Leroy and Michelle confronted one of them, Attorney Thierry Borges as he was talking about the matter with some bystanders watching a pétanque game. Leroy, interrupted him with the statement, Master Borges I defy you to offer any proof what so ever to the effected that the previous owner of our villa was coerced into selling it to us under unfavorable conditions.

Borges retained his superb and gave Leroy a mocking smile. Then he said to Leroy, «Tell me, you know that in France when one purchases a property, there is a title transfer tax that has to be paid. If the government feels that the sells price was unrealistically low, they assume that some of the sells price was paid under the table or in some other way and they demand that the buyer pays a title transfer tax supplement.»

Leroy gestured impatiently for Borges to continue.

«Tell me Mr. Johnson, did you receive a bill from the tax bureau to pay a title transfer supplement?»

Michelle interrupted, «That’s none of your business.»

Leroy gave his wife an affectionate gesture and answered Borges, «Yes, we had to pay a supplement. The tax office appraised the value at double the price we paid. However, this doesn’t mean that the seller was coerced. He wanted to sell quickly and we negotiated the price. It was not fixed ahead of time. We offered him as much as we could afford and he accepted. We could not have offered him any more.»

The small crowd was impressed with Leroy’ candor. They believed him, Borges also. Borges thought as he let the matter drop, «how stupid can you be?» thinking of both Leroy and the bystanders.

Leroy’ right hand was so obviously in pain that his family doctor, Veldagio, who was among the bystanders, examined it. He touched Leroy’ hand and forearm in various places asking if it was sensitive. After requesting that Leroy displace his fingers one by one, he pronounced Leroy sane and told him he would be all right in a couple of days.

After Veldagio had finished with Leroy, he looked at Eric who seemed in better shape than his attacker. He was bigger than Leroy and had a muscular body toned by regular exercised. There was little doubt that had the fight continued Eric would eventually have bettered Leroy. Eric, however, was muscular and soft at the same time. He looked like a caricature of a homosexual body builder though there was nothing effeminate about him. He was dressed very neatly and he had an appearance of being clean and well groomed. He seemed out of his element in the macho pétanque playing atmosphere in Lice Square. But just barely, which accounted for Leroy’ reluctance to confront him and the sympathy or at least lack of hostility he was receiving at being accused of making a play for a 14 year old child. He helped his case by calmly informing Leroy that he was not molesting his son. He spoke in such a tone as to convey that he fully sympathized with Leroy’ reaction but Leroy was simply mistaken. Leroy watched Eric slowly backed away. When he was about 10 yards from Leroy, he turned and took the road towards the Salins Beach. Most of the bystanders silently applauded Leroy when they noticed that he did not make any conciliatory gesture towards Eric.

When Leroy suddenly became aware of their approval, he thought that he ought to tell them that he did not deserve it. He did not. How could he tell them that when his only consideration should have been his son’s wellbeing during two long seconds before he acted he weighted the consequences of his action on his social standing in the community? Yes, his first reaction was to what people would think. It took him two second to decide he did not care and only afterwards, he thought of his son.

Nevertheless, there was an iota of satisfaction. Leroy had struck someone other than his younger brother in anger for the first time in his life. Ordinarily Leroy argued that fistfights were for the vulgar, but now that he had actually engaged in one he felt a profound relief. Leroy feared that he might be one of those weak individuals who would surrender everything in order to avoid physically fighting for it. Up to this point in his life all of Leroy’ aggressive behavior was verbal, excluding, of course, scrimmages with his younger brother, Booker.

Several bystanders in Lice Square looked inquisitively at Gaetan wondering what was his reaction to the commotion. It was evident by his air that he understood perfectly that his father was accusing

Eric of pedophilia. Gaetan was old enough to understand the implication of such an accusation, so some thought that it would be appropriate for him to express himself. After all, if Eric had made an indecent gesture toward him, he would be the first to know. Gaetan did not say a word. As his father continued conversation with the onlookers, he walked away to join a group of teenagers who were drinking soda pops at a one of the stalls in the square. Some of those who were spontaneously convinced of Eric‘s guilt began to have doubts. Later when a gendarme friend of Michelle and Leroy‘ did a police file search on Eric, he discovered that Eric had never been questioned by the police on any matter.

At the Renaissance cinema in the middle of Lice Square two film were altering, Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction. Leroy had already seen both films in Paris. Their appearing at same time in the only movie house in Saint Tropez during a period when he was presence was a good omen. Both films presented an America with the presence of blacks living in harmony with whites. The character Forrest Gump in the film with the same name told his story to a black girl in one of the lovely wooded Squares in Savannah Georgia including the fact that his best army buddy was a black man. Pulp Friction portrayed blacks as completely integrated into the American underworld. Both films made an effort to indicate that blacks are present in the United States, which most older Hollywood films did not. Though there were conflicts between black and white characters in the films, it was not racial. For Leroy, it was clear that the new message coming from the States was that in America, ‘blacks are moving ahead’.

This message would come to France like everything else from America. For African Americans living in France, it will be beneficial. Leroy and Michelle constantly debated whether they should move to the States or remain in Europe. While the debate went on Leroy hedged his position by requesting French nationality. The United States had recently changed its policy and allowed American to become French without losing their American nationality. In the United States there was greater social mobility than in Europe but the question was whether or not improvement for blacks in America were significant enough to make life better for them there than Europe.

Leroy knew his country, The United States of America, mostly from Hollywood movies and dubbed reruns of American sitcoms that monopolize French television. Leroy thought it laudable for the American entertainment industry to promote racial harmony and to some extent aid in the continuous social and financial progress of blacks in the United States. In other countries with a large black population, few blacks are seen on television except for those that appear in the ubiquitous American sitcoms. But Americans, with all their faults, do made an effort—maybe urged on by fear of black protest or maybe sheer human cupidity—to be fair and impartial. They do not always succeed at being impartial but they are at least apologetic when they are caught cheating.

As Leroy was admiring the United States for her moral stance and noble intentions, he thought about how the previous incident would be presented by the television and movie industry of the country. The scene appeared to be that of a berserk black man suddenly attacking a white man without any obvious provocation in the middle of a group of fifty or so white men, many of them holding pound metal spheres in their hands. Many of the men were playing pétanque, which accounts for the metal balls.

Because of the basic honesty of the American media, it comes across strongly that in large portions of the United States Leroy risked being brutally manhandled or maimed. Leroy was suddenly thankful that, at the moment, he was in this pretended fishing village on the Mediterranean coast of France. The debate would go on as to whether they would be better off in Europe or the United States. For the moment Leroy and Michelle wanted to get Leroy elected to city council of Saint Tropez at the next election two years hence. And the fact that the Cosby show was seen somewhere everyday on French television and Movies like Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction were very popular would help him get his foot in the door.

Leroy turned from the cinema and faced the crowd in the square watching a group of pétanque players. He exchanged greetings with several of them. With a small group, he chatted a few minutes about local politics and property taxes. Saint Tropez is a city that lives completely off tourism. The tourist brochures issued by the local tourist proclaim Saint Tropez is a picturesque fishing village. This blatant untruth persist because it serves everyone, the tourists who come, the workers who serve them and the large populations of retirees, writers, artists, idle rich, would be rich and want to be rich that maintain homes there. Leroy was solidly entrenched somewhere between the would be‘s and the want to be‘s. This intermediate state was recognized and understood by the group of pétanque players that he joined because they were mainly of the same category. Leroy lingered watching the game long after he and the men he was talking with had concluded as they always did that the transit tourists should pay a much higher proportion of the city’s expenses as oppose to people who maintain homes there, some of whom live year round. Temporary visitors to the city are protected by municipal police; lighted by city lights at night; and city sanitary services clean up after them when they dirty the streets and beaches. Local residents felt that they paid a disproportionate part of the expenses and they constantly petitioned the municipal government to reduce it.

Leroy’ comments were particularly vehement against the city government. If a year and a half hence, his candidature for a place on the city council were announced, some of these same men will give wry smiles and say, «That’s our Leroy."

Leroy sensed that the men appreciated his position on various local political issues. He was experiencing a long moment of exhilaration. He had successfully survived his first fist fight, had a rush on discovering that two very popular film that were currently showing might be favorable to his being elected to the city council and he had sensed a strong feeling being appreciated which was also conducive to that end. For a moment, he was carried away to the point of contemplating informing them that he had applied for French citizenship and that he plans to run for a place of the city council. However, he hesitated; he thought that he should discuss with Michelle what his position should be on his American citizenship, which he intended to maintain. The United States sometimes deprive citizenship of it national who accept election in foreign states, but that’s usually for places like Russia not England or France.

Leroy called his son and they walked crossed the square and took the rue Francois Sibilli towards the Saint Tropez port. They passed the very expensive shops that Michelle visited frequently but never made a purchase. Leroy was plotting strategy as he strolled. He wondered if he should join a pétanque group. Just his presence on the square playing once a week would bring him at least 50 votes. In a city where less than 1000 votes are cast, 50 votes count. He could find people in the square with whom to play. All he had to do was bring his balls and wait for the people standing around to ask him if he wanted to play. When the weather was nice, there were always people standing around balls in hand, ready. Furthermore, if he regularly performed this ritual, a clique would form that would frequently play together. But this is not what Leroy wanted. He could form a clique, but it would not contain the people he wanted. A good number of those stepping forward for a match would be passing through tourist that Leroy would never see again. The rest would be mostly people who work in the local tourist industry or modest income retirees. These were not the people who paid wealth taxes, who in some sense had made it or who at least were making it.

Leroy did not look on the masses with disdain. He had extensive satisfactory cordial even friendly relations with a wide range of people he considered below his social level. Some of these thought he was a phony because of his apparent need to convince people that he was rich by pleading poverty. However, none considered him a snob or that he talked down to them. Leroy sincerely appreciated his friends. He just did not want any more of them if they were poor. He felt that he qualified for friendship with people who owned villas in Saint Tropez, drove Mercedes Benz automobiles and were yacht owners. Besides, it was wise or cost-effective, as his brother would say to socialize with people who in addition to being agreeable could eventually facilitate the acquiring of material advantages. In France, families whose total wealth exceeds about eight hundred thousand dollars are obligated to pay a tax on their wealth in addition to taxes on their income. Payment of the ISF or wealth taxes for Leroy and Michelle was a reasonable level threshold for the accumulation of new friends.

Leroy‘s attitude was nurtured by resistance to a certain social pressure that urged him into the arms of the oppressed, the Negroid population, the socially ostracized or the primitive. How frequently had he been looked upon to explain the actions of rioting blacks in America or Africa to an interlocutor who had exactly the same background as he? Even in secondary school, it was often assumed that he understood the mentality of servants, Gypsies and non- white people of every conceivable origin—not only to understood them but also empathize with them. „You have made it; it is honorable of you not to forget where you came from. Two generations back your family suffered extreme poverty and the humiliation associated with racial segregation in the United States. Further back in history, your ancestors were slaves. Now, you have a Mercedes, a white wife and a villa in Saint Tropez and you are not even 40 years old. It would be magnanimous of you to commiserate with those who are still suffering social injustice." To this discourse Leroy always replied silently that further back in history most Europeans were serfs, which were nothing other than slaves. But Europeans don‘t like to remember that less than three centuries back the overwhelming majority of them were bought and sold, did not have freedom of movement, freedom to marry and were subject to arbitrary disciplinary actions by their masters. Often the person dressing him down did not seem to feel any particular need to be charitable towards all the homeless people in their own country. Rather then telling Leroy to sympathize with the unfortunate, Leroy thought that it would be better if they did something for their own poor.

Leroy thought of the film Fatal Arm and imagined the character portrayed by Dennis Glover having some commitment to the ‘hood’ as they call it in the United States. In the occidental world, he would not be a sympathy character if he did not. Leroy thinks that such an attitude is commendable but he hates the force nature of it and the tendency for it to be expected of him. He reacts the same as when asked if he plays basketball. He is reminded that as long as he is black he will not be perceived the same as a white in a white society. Members of the little group he just left are never asked if they play Basketball and at least half of them are as tall as he. Basketball and black charity are not the same but both were examples of the disparity in society’s expectations of blacks and whites.

Leroy’s next endeavor was to purchase a yacht. Friends had invited him and his family on day cruises on many occasions. It wasn’t an activity that particularly enthused him, but he was urged in that direction by Michelle who loved being at sea and his father who acquired a taste for the pursuit on a trip to Vintimiglia with his girlfriend. With all his debts, a yacht was the last thing he needed but his father and brother had indicated that they would greatly relieve the financial burden. When he learned in an informal conversation in Lice Square that a candidate for municipal office could pick up as many as 250 votes by being a yacht owner, his resistance waned.

In the election, voters vote for a political party ticket. Each political party gets a number of council members roughly proportional to their share of votes cast. The candidates are numbered on a list, so that those at the top of the list have a greater chance of being elected. So, Leroy’ task was to get on a list in a position that pretty much assured election. Owning a yacht would go a long ways in assuring that he has a good position on the slate. Leroy’ father and brother promised a substantial sum to any political party that he selected, which would also help. Enough money could assure him a place on at least half the tickets. He and Michelle had concluded the contribution plus his being black and American plus the yacht, should clinch him a place on the upper third of a list.

His trip to the port was to look over a yacht that was advertised in a local throw away newspaper. He wished he had some one with him, a confidant who knew much more about boats than he— which was nothing—to help him. It was two years before the next elections so he had that time to learn the difference between the bow and stern of a boat. He had lots of friends or acquaintances that had experience in purchasing yachts or lesser sea crafts but none that he considered as a buddy. It was a bitter truth for Leroy that among the scores of people that he knew in Saint Tropez there was not one that he felt comfortable with asking for advice and assistance in purchasing a yacht. He knew that he could without risking any embarrassment to himself. However, he had a gut feeling that though he would be received with courtesy and giving assistance his request would be considered an imposition. He would have stepped outside of the rules of the relationship that operated between them. The kind of friend he needed was a buddy. What was a buddy? Marcel Pagnol said that a buddy was some one with whom you could cheat at cards. Leroy would settle for someone that would volunteer his help without being asked because he knew that Leroy would appreciate it. Leroy sadly did not have a buddy by either definition with anyone except his parents and wife. Not even with his brother.

Leroy would never be tempted to cheat at games especially with his children. His father cheated at games with him and his brother and Leroy felt that the results were abysmal. He and his brother received an erroneous idea of how society operated from their father which neither ever completely eradicated. However, the idea of having a friend that could catch you cheating and not think of you as apiece of shit from then on was appealing. Leroy tried to analyze the pros and cons of such relations, but decided that it was a useless exercise.

On many occasions, as he had just done, Leroy stood lamely around Lices Square hoping to make a contact that would become a buddy who as such would introduce him to the nautical society of Saint Tropez. To gain entrance to this group, which was not closed, it sufficed to directly ask several of the people he knew that owned yachts for an introduction. Most would be delighted to have the chance to show off their expertise and to patronize a deserving neophyte. But this initiative, Leroy definitely would not and probably could not engage. Leroy had a psychological block against making a request from those with whom he wanted most to associate. It was not decent to act towards them as if he were an insider; he was an outsider.

Leroy wanted acceptance into the group that he considered his peers. These were men with whom he had casual relations. He crossed them in church and on the beaches; he ran into them at art auctions and in restaurants in and around Saint Tropez. Offseason, when there were few tourists around, in Lice Square he discussed with them taxes, politics and real estates values. These men could be described as well educated, successful and rich, but few were so rich as to be within the first 5000 or so of France. Individually they had no exaggerated illusions about their personal capabilities. Each knew that he was unlikely to perform any significant feats in his life. Nevertheless, they believed that that which was grand was more likely to come from persons like themselves. They were men who had dreams. Leroy wanted them to recognize that he too had dreams. He dreamed of crossing the ocean alone with his family on his personal yacht, of inventing something significant, of writing a memorable literary work or simply climbing Mont Blanc. Leroy wanted them to know that it was his nature to want his children to have the proficiency to do great things and that he disposed of the necessary resources to help them realize their dreams. Leroy wanted them to know that he was what he imagined them to be.

However, an invisible barrier separated Leroy from these men. Leroy might well have imposed the barrier himself. In spite of himself, he might have felt that he was not worthy of associating with them. More likely, he could not belong to the group because it did not exist except in his mind.

If the group that he wished to join imposed the barrier, it was done unconsciously. This was the most frustrating condition for Leroy because he had no idea how to attack a barrier maintained by persons that did not know it existed. Moreover, it was humiliating for him to proclaim that he felt excluded. He felt silly trying to explain to people who truly believed that they thoroughly accepted him that their attitude towards him was such that he did not really belong. He hardly knew what he felt himself, how could he explain it to someone else, let alone complain about it.

Nevertheless, a sense of belonging with those he considered his peers was in essence what Leroy craved—his peers being the successful, the influential, the moral and the wealthy. Leroy only doubted that he was influential. Success, morality and wealth, he had acquired with his merits but influence depended on others. Influence was the pleasure of others; it depended on persons on which Leroy did not have leverage. Leroy felt that this was because of a lack racial sophistication among those whom he wanted to bond. They were not astute enough to realize that in spite of his dark skin, he was one of them.

For them, it sufficed that Leroy had all the rights and privileges they enjoyed in society, they did not understand what else he could want. Sometimes they felt that Leroy acted like there was some kind of non-existent secret society or anonymous white conspiracy that precluded him from his rightful place.

Leroy was well aware that the liberal whites around him felt that they had evolved to the point where they treated a man, any man according to his merits and they hardly noticed the color of his skin. Leroy, however, felt that they had predetermined notions that they were not consciously aware.

Leroy somewhat empathized with these views of the black man that he unsparingly attributed to whites. Looking around in space and back in time, it would not require a bigot to conclude that Negroid people were the most unsuccessful. Right-wingers, whom his prospective peers were not, would simply say that Negroids were inferior. No place had they build an indigenous civilization. The great Songhai Empire of Saharan Africa between the 11th and 16th centuries was an Islamic civilization. The Ashanti Empire in Ghana was European in the sense that its pinnacle was reached under the influence of the white dominated Atlantic slave trade. Except possibly for Meroë on the Nile River near Khartoum nowhere did Negroid people produce a written language. Swahili, Hausa and several other African languages were initially written with Latin or Arabic characters. Blacks contributed virtually nothing to astronomy, mathematics, and the naval sciences. All the great people of the world have left ruins attesting to their former greatness. Blacks have left very little.

Compassionate whites do not consider this lack of black accomplishment as something to dwell on. It serves no useful purpose. Even if blacks never did anything of note, it is nothing to dwell on. Bringing it up in the name of truthfulness is like informing someone that the fart he just made stints terribly. Airing the fact will not take away the smell, nor prevent a recurrence; its only effect is to make the farter feel bad. The same with telling blacks that they are inferior, it does not change them or gives the narrator any advantages—it only makes the blacks feel bad. Any action whose only effect is to make some one feel bad is bad.

Moreover, looking around the world rather than back in history, one finds the black man on the bottom everywhere. Everywhere he is the poorest, the least educated and the less healthy. In his competition with other people, every one surpasses him. Ignorant penniless Asians who arrived in the United States following the Vietnamese War have already left him behind. Of course, at all times there have been black scientists, statesmen, historians, artists, writers, adventurers and academics of all sorts who are second to none. However, their numbers are so few that the conclusion of the global inferiority of their race is not necessarily unfounded.

The alleged pervasive unconscious denigration of the black races made finding a buddy among whites a difficult task for Leroy. One of the blacks he admired most, W.E.B. Dubois tried for a lifetime to find grounds for genuinely friendly relations between black and white Americans. Late in his life, he gave up and migrated to Ghana. He concluded that even the best-intentioned whites retained subconsciously a more or less mild repugnance of the black races. Leroy thought that he was rediscovering something that Dubois knew over a half century ago. Unlike Dubois who lived in racist America, Leroy lived in the more tolerant France. Also, Dubois probably never gave much credence to those who say, «Just look around you. It’s obvious that niggers ain’t shit.»

Leroy biggest problem of existence was that he was not completely convinced that they were wrong.

If there was something inferior with the black races Leroy did not personally feel concerned. He was convinced that he personally performed better both in his social and work life than most of the people around him. His appreciation of himself was reinforced by most of those around him who were mainly upper class whites. However, the thought that his genes carried the vector of substandard performance for his descendants haunted him. Was the pitiful state of black people in the world a historical accident or was there something structural that forced the outcome? In a recent book, ‘The Bell Shaped Curve’ by two university scholars Murray and Herrenstein, it was argued that intellectually blacks were genetically inferior. On the average, the authors of this book claimed that on the average the intelligence quotient of blacks was 15 points lower than whites on a scale where average intelligence was 100 points.

Leroy purchased the book as soon as copies were available in Paris bookshops. For weeks whenever he had a secluded moment he studied it. When he was not reading it, he kept it locked in a drawer in the desk in the study of his Paris apartment out of the reach of his children as if it were pornography. The drawer was where he and Michelle kept their important papers—copies of titles to property, insurance policies, passports, birth certificates, etc. Michelle had a key to the drawer but she never used it. Leroy dreaded that for some reason one day she would open the drawer and find the book. He thought of keeping the book in his office where he worked but between his colleagues discovering the book in his possession and Michelle, he preferred it be Michelle. After all, she was his wife.

Leroy read every refutation he could find of the Murray and Herrenstein hypothesis. It was discomforting for Leroy that none of the disclaimers argues that indeed the evidence shows that blacks are just as intelligent as whites or Asians. They only argued that there were errors, unsubstantiated claims and misinterpretations in Murray and Herrenstein’s work that rendered their conclusions faulty. Leroy was left with the impression that when the research was done properly, many of the refuters believed that the conclusions would prove true.

However, Leroy believed that the refutations were less convincing than the arguments of Murray and Herrenstein. They were mostly nitpicking and appeals to social justice, which Leroy felt, had nothing to do with the original hypothesis. The denials he read that were the most scholarly and most creditable never went further than concluding that the MH hypothesis was not proven without venturing to state that it was false.

If indeed, there were something inherently inferior in Leroy that he had propagated to his children and they would propagate to theirs, Leroy would have to make some hard decisions about his future.

Leroy and his son arrived at the port and took a table on the front row in the Seneguier Café. The waiter knew him so he asked from a distance, express? Leroy raised his left index finger slightly above his head giving the signal for the affirmative and he pointed his right index towards Gaetan. The waiter brought Leroy a coffee and Gaetan a hot chocolate as he always did. After placing the drinks, the waiter shook Leroy’ hand and chatted with him for a few minutes informing him of the personalities that had recently visited the café. The scene did not go unnoticed. Leroy could feel people around admiring the attention he received from the waiter and wondering who he was. There was no doubt that he was a person of consequence. For a minute, Leroy felt really good. He was thinking of purchasing a yacht, he was rich, people respected him, and he had a beautiful wife and two healthy sons. Most people in the world would envy his situation. However, these elements did not quite compensate the fact that he did not have a buddy and two American eggheads claimed that his descendants in the long run would lose the advantages that he had acquired because they would not be unable to compete successfully with pure descendants of the white race.

Paris, May 1985

Who owns this place?

I do.

You’re kidding.

No, I’m not. I’m really the owner, said the man behind the bar to the man sitting at it.

What’s your name?

Johnny. What’s yours?

Marko.

Christian name from the Middle East somewhere.

Marko looked at Johnny with some respect when this remark was made. Most people took Marko for a Maghrebian or an Arab or maybe an Iranian. But for any of these, his skin was relatively dark. Marko’s skin was almost as dark as Johnny’, who probably had between three to six eights Negroid ancestry with a lesser mixture of Caucasian and Native American, Cherokee to be exact.

Give me a double Scotch and water.

How about a coke light?

I tell you what. I’ll take a bottle of champagne, if you will share it with me. Let’s face it, there is no one here and no one is coming. I don’t see how you stay in business.

OK, I’ll take a glass of your champagne, but you don’t want to hear my story, you want something. So what is it? A girl, a boy, horse, hash? What’s your pleasure?

Marko was visibly stung by Johnny’s unsubtle language. But there was a smile of satisfaction that immediately covered his face. Yes, he was at the right place. With greater assurance, he then asked, Do you know Inspector Jean Marie Niemann at the police commissariat of the second arrondissement?

"Of course and you know I do. He’s been trying to pen a murder on me for twenty years.»

Murder, but he said . . .

He said you could trust me. I don’t think he wants put me in jail, he just want to prove to himself that he’s smarter than me. He ain’t. What’s your problem buddy?

I need someone who can give someone else good lesson.

Why?

Let me first say that I happy that Inspector Niemann recommended you.

Listen, I’m sure that Inspector Niemann didn’t recommend me for anything. At most, he told you that you could talk to me.

Yes, you right. But what I was saying is that I’m black like you.

Johnny laughed, wondering who was this idiot that Jean Marie sent. While he was laughing, Marko put a Guinean passport right in front of his nose, with his picture and made out to Marko Ouise. Johnny looked it over. So, you were born in Guinea?

So, I’m more of an African than you, Marko retorted with obvious irony.

Marko went on to tell him that he also held French and Lebanese passports. His mother and father were of Lebanese descent that had taken French passports right after World War II when it was relatively simple for rich Lebanese to