Johnny Something That Rhymes: The Johnson Family Saga

By Tannie Stovall

Johnny is the concluding book of the Johnson Family saga. Like the first two books in the series, Booker and Leroy, it deals with the life of the Johnson family, an African American family that lives in France.

The novel begins after Johnnys prostate gland has been surgically removed because of cancer. The prospect that he will eventually die of the ailment does not bother him as much as the possible permanent loss of sexual potency. However, the experience does remind him that he is mortal which causes him to review his life. He concluded that the greatest threat to his serenity during the time that he has left is the imminent lost of love and respect of his grand children. Johnnys goal becomes to transform himself from ghetto to mainstream.

The first part of the book deals with Johnnys early life. He is born in a small town on the Chattahoochee River in Alabama. His scholastically and religious education are described as well as his ambitions and frustrations. He is saved from a impending mediocre life by enlisting in the Marines. In Korea, he becomes a war hero that later enables him to find decent employment in his hometown. He marries Louise, a local girl and yields to pressure from her for a honeymoon in Paris. The couple like Paris so much that they decide to remain there.

After two children, Leroy and Booker, the couple falls apart. The social pressures leading to the rupture are described. In Paris, the couple is acutely aware of their relative poverty and low cultural level. Johnny feels that they should concentrate on accumulating wealth whereas Louise desires to improve their social status. Johnny becomes a dealer in stolen merchandise, mostly items stolen from the US army by soldiers.

He and a French partner later open a cabaret for African American soldiers in Paris, which expanded into a series of bars, and other small businesses in the Paris area. Louise becomes increasingly cosmopolitan while serving as an international civil servant with UNESCO. Their different situation and prospective gradually makes life together untenable. Louise abandoned him and their children to follow her lover to Miami.

Years after Louise leaves, the couple now has grand children in France and Johnny has a second wife, Fabienne a woman from Guadeloupe. The improvement in the quality of life for African Americans in the United States, especially increasing jobs opportunities causes Johnny to question whether it would not be better for the grandchildren for the family to return to the United States.

Parallel to Johnnys story is that of one of his grand children, Aurlien. Aurliens parents and grand parents arranged for him to grow up in an upper class white neighborhood. Aurlien only becomes aware of the black community as a teenager. He then notices that he is treated him differently from his white school friends. His first awakening comes when he realized that some of his friends have a problem with him and white girls. A second wake up came when some of his friends join a secret racist group, Fofew, that one of his teachers organizes. Finally, he was the unintentional victim of a racist attack directed toward Obafemi, a Nigerian street drug dealer.

The contrast between the perception and treatment of Africans and African Americans in Paris is examined in detail. The ramifications of Africans trying to migrate to Europe in order to find a better life are also treated. Obafemi unsuccessfully attempts to find work in France and finally settles on dealing in illegal drugs after refusing pandering is one of the subplots. A distance relative of Obafemi, Ogunlana, moving from drug dealing to the establishment of an African prostitution rings because it was safer is also related. The stories of many other colorful African American characters that haunted Paris in the later half of the 20th century are also reveled.

A recurrent theme in the novel is Johnn

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 28, 2005
• ISBN: 9781462823420

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

Paris, January 1999

Paris, March 1999

Paris, March 1999

Paris, January 1999

Paris, February 1999

Paris, March 1999

Paris, June 1999

Paris June 1999

Saint Tropez, April 1999

Saint Tropez, April 1999

Paris, August 1999

Paris, September 1999

Paris, December 1999

Paris December 1999

Paris, January 1999

The feeling was frightening. Johnny no longer had any sexual drive at all yet in a sense he felt better and freer than at any time in that part of his life that he could remember. It was as if he had been swimming in a thick molasses that had suddenly become fluid. The friction had greatly decreased. Now he would be able to do some of the things that he did not do previously because of all the energy he had devoted to sex. It was not the energy of participation but the energy dispensed in anticipation, preparation and contemplation. Now that the surgeon had removed his prostate gland and possible forever eliminated his ability to attain a sexual erection, his life started over. Before the operation, he thought like those around him that the lost of his potency would be the worst possible outcome save death at a not too distant date from prostate cancer. Now that he was emaciated, he focused on the positive aspects. Perhaps now, he would individually do something—which could be practically anything—in which he would have pride.

At an early age, a certain desire to prevail, to surpass himself developed about the same time as his interest in girls. When Johnny was 12 or 13, he saw many motion pictures where teenage boys put together hot rods. They were mostly B movies starring the East Side Kids and similar groups that were shown at the Strand Movie House on Fridays and Saturdays. Recent first run films were shown on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday were reserved for older films, art and foreign films.

Even before puberty, some of the films he saw on Wednesday gave him the dreams of constructing a raft and putting her afloat

on the Chattahoochee River outside his hometown. He had logs, a saw, rope, hammer and nails—everything necessary in order to construct. Yet he did not.

Johnny was young to envisage constructing a raft by himself. He was never able to interest his teenage friend in the project. However, interest in building a hot rod was spontaneous. Every time Johnny and his friends saw a hot rod movie, the desire to build one was rekindled. In Doltan at the time, all the necessary elements were readily present. The black neighborhood contained a closed blacksmith shop that the retired owner would have been delighted to see worked by some of the local boys. The town and surrounding area were full of abundant automobiles that were there for the taking. Everything was in place for the project to succeed. The Williams Street gang—as Johnny and his friends were called— planned it, discussed it and dreamed of it as their adolescence passed.

Then one day with consternation, they observed a jalopy obviously constructed from odds and ends rolling up William Street loaded with what appeared to be about 8 white boys. When Johnny saw them, he felt an atrophying action in his crouch. Johnny knew most of the boys in the hot rod and strongly suspected that he knew the one that was probably most responsible. They were good boys as whites go. He did not feel any animosity towards them as did some of his buddies, but from that day he would always think of them as the competition.

At nineteen when Johnny left Doltan for the Marines, he still hoped the boyhood friends he was leaving behind would realize the project. When he returned to Doltan on furlough about a year later, there was still no hot rod. Nevertheless, one member of his gang, Bomber, at least did start. When Johnny saw the unfinished hot rod, he practically cried. Bomber explained to Johnny that it was not as easy as they imagined constructing a functioning automobile. He also informed Johnny that the white boys who had made their, had considerable help from competent adults. The tone of Bomber voice as he talked conveyed certitude that one day the automobile would be finished. Two years afterwards, Bomber proudly exhibited a functioning automobile that he constructed in his recently opened auto and tractor repair shop.

Johnny was satisfied with Bomber’s explanations at the time. However, four years in the Marines had wrought considerable changes in his mental makeup. Before the Marines, he believed subconsciously that the white boys were more capable of making a hot rod than the blacks. However, every time the hot rod came into mind he made a virtual pray to be proven wrong. After the Marines, he thought that if white boys his age could succeed, he should have also.

In the space of one hour on a rugged Korean hillside, he lost all his subliminal beliefs in white superiority. With intelligence, ingenuity and courage he saved a white soldier’s life. A group of America’s finest white boys paralyzed by the rings of bullets around them and a momentary lack of mental agility watched in awe as he exploited the geometry of the terrain in order to pull to cover the wounded soldier that the Chinese were using for bait.

It was the most impetuous action that he would ever take. He did not think about it before he acted. When he tried to analyze his feat afterwards he was amazed at how brilliant was his negotiation of the landscape. He was perplexed that such resourcefulness could sprang from him but nevertheless after his exploit Johnny never again felt that whites were destine to be and do better than he. However, his Marine experience convinced him that as things were, though nothing indicated that he could not perform as well as whites, they were much better prepared than he by the knowledge and experience they had accumulated.

After the Marines, Johnny felt that he could also have gotten help from adults, probably from the same ones who helped the white boys. No, as far as the hot rod was concerned, there was something else holding back the African American boys in Doltan. Now Johnny strongly suspected that contrary to the popular notion that without the sexual drive, males lose their ambition and spunk, the sexual compulsion had actually held him back. In the twilight of his life, Johnny mused that if he had been as persistence and resourceful at piecing together a jalopy as he was at seducing girls, he would have succeeded.

Johnny had other disappointments after the raft and the hot rod. None would be as significant or emblematic as the frustrated construction of a raft or a hot rod in his youth. It is not as if Johnny’s life has been without distinction. He has two sons, both of which were thriving. While in the Marines, he was decorated with the Silver Star for his impetuous action. Later in life, Johnny rendered valuable services to the United States of America—services that have been recognized and made Johnny a hero in the eyes of the CIA, FBI, DEA and the US treasury department. He is a successful businessman in Paris where he is part owner of several successful businesses. Many think that he is the most successful African American in all of France in spite of his continuing to tend bar in his maiden establishment, the cabaret ‘Maison des Anges’.

Johnny did not feel that he had failed in life as many of his clients admitted after a couple of drinks. When he compared notes with other bartenders in Paris, they mostly concluded that men over 50 who regularly went to bars were looses. (Fortunately for France, most Frenchmen did not drink at bars.) Most of Johnny’s regular customers were very flattering to his ego with their comments. They constantly reminded him how successful and lucky he was to have such a fine family, to have a beautiful wife, to be financially independent and especially not to have a boss on his back.

However, those closest to him did not share the admiration of drunken clients and of all those United States government agencies that were chasing high level drug dealers or other persons they felt were seeking to do harm to the United States and its people. His two sons both had a sincere filial affection for him. This gave him tremendous satisfaction. However, their wives looked upon him with disdain. Michelle the wife of his oldest son, Leroy, was considerably more critical of him than Halina, the wife of the cadet, Booker. Johnny was not affected by their relative lack of appreciation for him. However, each of the wives had two children, his four grand children. Johnny saw that he was losing contact and respect from his grand children as they approached teenage. His older and probably more intelligent grand son, Gaetan had an altitude that was more tolerant than respectful towards him. Had not Gaetan been extraordinarily intelligent, Johnny thought that he would be ashamed of him as he saw his other grand children were becoming.

With his new energy due to his lack of sexual activity, Johnny thought that maybe he should try to improve his image. Overall Johnny did not care what anyone thought of him. His aloof altitude was one of the reasons his first wife left him but it was also the main reason he succeeded as an expatriate without capital in establishing a business in Paris. Had he worried about conventions and appearances he would at best be still paying rent and at worst roasting somewhere in jail. Now in the sunset of his life, Johnny wanted his grand children to love and respect him. It was a big change for Johnny, bigger than he would have every expected possible. Or maybe it was not a change, because he still did not care what adults thought of him and he did have memories of always wanted to be seen in a favorable light by children. Yes, he always cared about what children thought of him and now he realizes that he especially cares about what his grand children think. However, the hard fact was that his grand children’s appreciation of him was determined by what the community thought of him. They were not old enough to analyze character on their on, they took cues from the adults around them. If Johnny were to have the respect and admiration of his grand children, he had to get it from the entire community.

Changing direction as death came nearer was a big issue for Johnny. Johnny mildly despised those men who neglected their progeny until they were old, alone and sometimes poor. In the declining years of their lives, these men claimed all kind of sentiments towards their offsprings that were not manifest earlier. Johnny did not identify with these men because he had not neglected either his children or grand children. However, any last hour conversion was suspect for him. Johnny, who had never cared what anyone thought of him, nevertheless would not like it said that in his latter years he changed his mind.

Years earlier Johnny felt a sinking feeling when his stepfather suddenly found faith in His Lord and Master Jesus Christ a few months before he died. He did not have any qualms against religion; but he did think that his stepfather was weak.

Johnny was religious himself in his own way. For about 10 years of his early life, his mother sent him to he William Street Baptist Church Sunday School. He learned enough about the Bible and the Christian religion during those years to be considered an expert by most Europeans Catholics who do very little biblical study even if they sometimes have extensive religious training. Slowly while Johnny was a member of the William Street gang, he stopped practicing. He no longer went to church or prayed. However, he did not quite stop believing. During one of his Sunday school lessons, his teacher mentioned a question asked by some German philosopher, „Why is there something, instead of nothing? For Deacon York, his Sunday school teacher the answer was obvious, „there is something because God created it. Johnny did not quite find this answer satisfactory. However, the question made him realize how naive he was. How stupid he had been all of his young life that he had never thought to ask that obvious question. Immediately, other questions that he had not asked came to mind, such as who created God? Deacon York had a response if not an answer to that question also. Deacon York told Johnny that the same as a dog could not bake a cake or calculate the number of pints in two and a half gallons; man was not capable of understanding the nature of God. If man could understand God, he would in some sense be equal to God, which is absurd.

Johnny wrestled with these ontological questions for years and finally came to the same conclusion as Pascal. If one believes in God and God does not exist then one loses nothing, the same as if He does not exist and one does not believe. If one believes He exists and He does, so much the better. However, the consequences can be quite disagreeable if He exists and one does not believe— especially if He is as jealous and demanding as the Bible says He is. Therefore, if one is lucky or daft enough to have the capacity to choose what one believes, it is better to choose to believe than not.

Maybe one does not have to believe; maybe living one‘s life as if one believes is sufficient.

However, when Johnny got to Korea, he discovered people that believed in many gods and others that seemed to be religious but did not believe in any god. The latter simply believed that there were certain rules of nature that had to be respected in order to have a good or happy life. Johnny was not arrogant enough to think that all these people were wrong and only he and Deacon York had the right handle on things. Nevertheless, Johnny steadfastly but involuntarily conserved his belief in God. However, Johnny‘s ideas on what was right behavior, was a recurring concern for him.

Johnny‘s Sunday school lessons introduced him to notions of morality that influenced him for the rest of his life. Johnny scrupulously never bared false witness against anyone, even if the person was not his neighbor. Fortunately, for Johnny, one could lie without bearing false witness. This left the path free for Johnny to lie and Johnny certainly took advantage of this opening in his life. Johnny was constantly unfaithful to his wife. For Johnny, adultery was having sex with a woman that was married to some one else. It seemed contradictory but those biblical patriarchs seemed to have had the right to have sex with any woman who was not married and not the daughter of some one important. Daughters of common folk that had sex out of marriage were whores and it was all right to fuck them. Johnny suspected that his morality was better than that of the patriarchs. He never had sex with married women but he treated the daughters or peasants and princes the same. Johnny stole and encouraged others to steal quite a bit in his life. He was never quite able to convince himself that stealing was not wrong but at times, he came close. When the coveted item was in his hands, his reaction was close to sacrosanct. „Look what the Lord has provided", he thought.

Johnny did not have any trouble with the rest of the commandments. He believed that he loved his God with all his might. The golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you did not present a problem for Johnny. Since Johnny thought it completely normal that people in difficulty lie, cheat and steal from him, he was not in contradiction when he did the same to persons who were much better off than he. As Johnny grew older and became more settle and prosperous in life, his life timidly approached a pattern that Deacon York would have approved. As soon as Johnny got on his feet, he stopped stealing. He also cut down on his lying but he fornicated until he began medical treatment for the cancer that had started eating away at his prostate gland.

Johnny concluded that he could improve his image without compromising his religion or making any late day conversions on any front. He was not against someone changing his mind, including himself. It just that he thought that he had it all worked out in his mind and if he made changes he would have to completely review an intellectual framework that had taken him a life time to form. Johnny dreaded the prospect of having to reexamine philosophy conclusions that he had taken years to form. Philosophic ideas that germinated in his Sunday school classes at William Street Baptist Church in Doltan Alabama and blossomed through years of conversation and argument with other souls seeking solace on the other side of his bar. Making fundamental changes now would be a Herculean task that would require most if not all the energy he would recuperate due to his loss of potency. However, if it had to be, the love of his grand children would be worth it.

The more Johnny reflected the more he felt that there was only one possible down side to his having lost his sexual prowess. In the long run, his wife, Fabienne might leave him.

Fabienne will stay. She does not have any place else to go. Ah, it is unfair to insinuate that she is staying because she has no choice. She is holding steady because Johnny is her man and she is that way.

Every since she met Johnny, he has had trouble meeting his marital obligation. Well, it was a marital obligation even though during most of their life together they were not married. The knot was tied 5 years ago and they have been a couple for 12. Johnny’s prostate gland was removed over a year ago and he has not had a spontaneous erection since. The surgeon urologist that operated him told him that there was a good chance that all the cancer was gone and that in 3 months his libido would return. Four months later, there was no sign of an erection. His penis was so small that he realized that before he was always in semi-erection. He was not another Henry IV who thought that he had a bone in his penis until he was an adult because of a constant erection. Johnny’s semi erection was not strong enough for him to penetrate his wife, which caused him to curse it on many occasions. Now he has fond memories of his previous considerably larger but ineffectual sex.

Johnny’s surgeon told him that in about 40% of prostate ablations, erection nerves are severed depriving the patient of normal potency. He assured Johnny after the operation that his sexual functions were intact. Three months later with no sign of erections, the doctor informed Johnny that in some cases it took a year for normal sexual functions to return. Would Fabienne wait that long? Of course, she would because she was in love or because she could not decently leave her husband under the circumstances. It was also possible that his impotency did not matter to her. In fact, knowing that he could not be unfaithful might more than compensate for the shortfall.

The truth was, her loss was insignificant. It has been years since she moaned, groaned and scratched under a man’s embrace. Fabienne hoped that such passions were forever relegated to the pass. The price she paid for them was too high. She sacrificed all of her pride and most of her earnings. Only men she thought scoundrels were capable of making her figuratively walk up walls. This was her misfortune. From the time her sexuality manifested, when she was 14, only bad boys provoked wetness between her legs. Johnny was a compromise between the men to whom she responded with an intense sensuality and those that she respected.

Rufus Breitwirth Johnson, alias Johnny was a barely washed unrepentant thief. He lacked the viciousness, the cruelty that Fabienne required for passionate sexual satisfaction. Fabienne was not masochistic; she did not enjoy or crave brutal treatment, but her body just would not succumb to concupiscent vibrations unless she could imagine that her lover had these qualities. In her not too profound subconscious, she believed that her favors should be exchanged for protection. Ideally, they would go to a unique man that was capable of assuming this responsibility. This man could not be decent because decent men were weak; they were not strong enough to be bad or to protect her. Unconsciously she believed that only those men who were capable of acting recklessly, impetuously and without any consideration for their personal safety or social conventions could protect her from other men like themselves. Such men were usually stupid and cruel. Nevertheless, these were the men to which her body reacted. Johnny was not one of them but Fabienne imagined that he once was. Johnny had become somewhat domesticated by his first wife, his financial success and the friends that he made after he arrived in France.

Still, for Fabienne sex with Johnny was a pleasure. It was a civilized pleasure rather than the beastly soul consuming pleasure she had enjoyed with some of her lovers before him. With Johnny, it was the pleasure of knowing that she was having normal relations with a man and the man was satisfying his sexual needs with her. Johnny would never make her scream but there was nothing she could do about it. It was outside of her control. Moreover, it was a good thing. She liked feeling Johnny inside of her. She enjoyed a feeling of power when she thought that Johnny was on the verge of ejaculation and unable to control himself. Her greatest happiness came when he ejaculated and she immediately faked an organism. Johnny knew it was faked and she knew that he knew. She also knew that Johnny appreciated her faking it week after week more than he would have the real thing.

Sex with Johnny was not grounded in the sensual. There was not a strong physical urge to satisfy. Perhaps because of this Fabienne accepted that if Johnny lost his sexual drive in honorable circumstances—an accident, an illness or just old age—she would be satisfied if he simply held her in his arms in bed for a while every night.

Fabienne would not be a problem. If there was going to be a problem it would be himself. Some Greek once said, «Know yourself.» Johnny never tried; he always figured that it would not be worth the effort. At any rate, it was much better to enjoy one’s self than to know one’s self. Knowledge could interfere with enjoyment, which was much more important.

Unfortunately, for Johnny, ignorance like love was not something that he could bring forth on command. Some of the things that he knew, he could not forget. He would love to be able to forget some of the things he had done, but he did not have the power to forget selectively. More than thirty years earlier, he had approved and financed the murder of a man. No matter what he did or what he thought, he could not forget this episode in his life.

The victim was a young man that was extorting him. He insisted on regular payment from Johnny in exchange for his not killing Johnny or at least bombing Johnny’s business, the Maison des Anges. The murder was never solved but all the shopkeepers in the neighborhood of the Maison des Anges assumed that Johnny was responsible and saluted him for it. Johnny never had second thoughts about it until 30 years later. Thirty years and one day later, Inspector Niemann visited Johnny at his bar. Inspector Niemann was the police detective that investigated the murder and who strongly suspected that Johnny was responsible. Niemann who later became Johnny friend, informed Johnny that the statute of limitations for the murder was attained; therefore, he could not longer be pursued for the affair. Niemann wanted Johnny to confirm his suspicions, but Johnny continued lying to him claiming that he had nothing to with the murder. Niemann did not believe him. He thought that come what may Johnny would be Johnny.

However now with all threat of punishment removed Johnny began to react to the incident. Whether the assassination of Lulu (Johnny could not even remember his real name) was justified became a philosophical problem for him. To solve it, he had to know why he had condoned Lulu’s death. But this implied ‘knowing himself’.

Johnny had never talked to anyone about his involvement in the murder except his accomplish and business partner Jean Louis. The two agreed that they had no choice. They protested to the police that they were being extorted. The police did not seem interested and as much as told them to come back after the bar has been bombed. Johnny later learned that the police station in his district was so undermanned that they could only investigate the most pressing affairs or those cautioned from high levels in the justice department. Someone walking into the station claiming that he or she is threatened has very little priority, as the large number of murdered women will testify. When Johnny had learned the ropes, he knew that he should have gone to the parliamentary deputy from his district, the mayor of his arrondissement or some other important figure and requested him to inform the police. However, Johnny was new in France and new in business, so he did not know the routine procedures. On the other hand, even Jean Louis, who had never been outside of France, did not know either. It takes time to learn. The lack of time to learn might have been the double undoing of Lulu. Later both he and Johnny might have acted differently.

Had Lulu been a little older he might had realized that his actions were more dangerous than he thought. It never occurred to him that Johnny would consider his elimination as a solution to the problem. In France, there is a certain amount of strong and angry verbal exchange before such actions are considered. You give your adversary warning that you are a formidable foe and offer him an opportunity to retreat, much as animals do when competing for sexual favors. Johnny never acted aggressively toward Lulu when he came demanding money. Lulu found this suspicious—even the weakest man makes some kind of feeble protest. Nevertheless, Lulu acted as if he were weak and ready for plucking or that since he was black maybe he did not have any choice. Indeed, Johnny never protested the principle of the payoffs; the only objections he made were to their constant increase. He gave the impression that he would pay if the sums were not too high.

In affairs of extortion, there is the big showdown when the load on the pigeon becomes so heavy that he can no longer fly. Lulu considered himself a reasonable man, he knew that there was a maximum that Johnny would be able to take. He would know what it was when Johnny objected more vigorously. At that point, Lulu imagined a scene where he magnanimously back down demonstrating to Johnny that he could be reasonable and kind.

After Lulu was dead, his partners were certain that Johnny was responsible. They also felt that Johnny had acted unethically. They believed that Johnny was very happy that Lulu had given him an excuse to kill him. They believed that Johnny decided to murder Lulu when he made the first payment. Had Johnny just firmly said no on their first visit and told them that they did not know what they were doing messing with an American that would have been the end of it. Johnny by acting as if he were weak, soaked them into a position where he could satisfy some obscene desire to kill with a good conscious. Johnny was the worst creature they had ever dealt with. However, they did not follow their own code of conduct and retaliate against Johnny. Criminals offering to sell them protection insurance never again bothered Johnny and many of the other surrounding shopkeepers.

Many of Johnny reactions to certain situations had been condition early in his life. He responded differently in certain circumstances to whites and blacks. Often, he was not aware of his discriminating reaction. Johnny did not know that if Lulu were black, he would have told him on his first attempt to extort him, «Boy, get your ass out of here.» That probably would have been the end of it. At any rate, Johnny would have waited until Lulu had made a move before he acted. Maybe then, the police would have listened. But at that time Johnny’s style was to act subserviently towards whites. This false external facade eroded somewhat as Johnny grew older but it was prominently in place the first few years after he left Alabama. He was able to reestablish it, however, at any time for the rest of his life. He never ceased to believe that playing the idiots with white men gave him a psychological advantage. He had been told as a child to never contradict a white man. His mother was particularly attentive to crush all deviations from this conduct. She felt that his safety depended on it. However, her efforts were hardly necessary. Blacks being subservient to whites, was the only conduct he saw during the first 18 years of his life in Doltan.

Johnny, however, sincerely believed that this brain washing had never influenced him. In Paris, his African American friends tried to tell him that around whites, he sounded like a real Uncle Tom but he vehemently denied it.

„I‘ll tell a white man to kiss my ass quicker than a black one. But you‘ve got to be slick with whitey. He‘s smart. If your pants slip down in front of him, he‘ll fuck you in the ass every time. Not letting him see you hole card is not being an Uncle Tom. Believe me, I‘m not an Uncle Tom; you can count on me."

Johnny had to believe that he was not fawning towards whites; otherwise, he would have to admit that maybe Lulu death was avoidable. Louise, his wife at the time, read an account of the affair in a popular detective magazine. The article made it very clear that Johnny was responsible for Lulu‘s death. The article went on to portray Lulu as an insignificant petit criminal, the kind who hardly had the statue to snatch purses from old women in the streets. There was testimony from his friends who admitted that Lulu had done a few stupid things in his life but that he could not hurt a fly. Neither he nor his friends knew anything about explosives and none of them owned a firearm. Photos of his first communion and his military service illustrated the article. It hypothesized that the only conceivable reason that he tried to shake down Johnny was a mistaken belief that a black could not or would not defend himself. Johnny had over reacted. He was bringing to France operating procedures that should stay in Chicago. When Louise finished it, she was convinced that her husband had murdered a poor helpless child.

As long as there was a risk that Johnny could go to jail for murdering Lulu, he did not think about it much. There was a risk. Jean Louis could have confessed and implicated him. Johnny began thinking about the affair as soon as Niemann told him that he no longer had anything to worry about. He really began to focus on the matter about a month after his operation when he began to fear that he had forever lost his sexual potency. There was a thought that kept trying to push itself forward. Johnny resisted. He rationalized. But he always wondered if instead his sexual impotency being a blessing in disguise it was also Divine punishment for his sins.

Whether or not he had committed an enormous sin depended on him. If he had approved Lulu‘s assassination, knowing that it was not necessary in order for him to protect himself, his family and his livelihood then he had committed a heinous sin. Johnny realized immediately after the statute of limitations was attained that Lulu‘s death was unjustified. The question that gnawed at him was, did he know it at the time? He could only find the answer by knowing himself. But this could lead to permanent sorrow. It was better to just put up with the irritation that the attainment of that statue of limitations was causing him. With a little luck, in a few months it would be gone.

Paris, November 1998

The days often seemed long for Aurélien. He was not opposed to school but he did pine for the day when he would be free of it. Sometimes he completely lost interest in French language, literature, history and grammar along with those interminable exercises in mathematics. His grades dropped and his father scolded him. Then he would concentrate on his work for a few weeks, considerably improve his performance, receive the congratulations of his teachers and then began to neglect his work again.

Michelle Johnson, his mother suspected that he was bored most of the time because the work was not challenging enough for him. She tried to get Aurélien enrolled in a class for gifted students. Aurélien sat for a battery of tests and it was concluded that his capacities were in the middle of the average category. She tried to force the school authorities to admit him in the gifted sections anyway. In spite of her being the wife of a prominent politician and her pushing her request into the highest level of the school administration, she was finally refused by the director of the school board in a very unceremonious manner. As she left his office, she heard him exclaim to his secretary, «don’t ever let that pushy bitch back in here again." When Michelle told her husband, Leroy, about the rector’s refusal to accept Aurélien into the gifted section and the insult she overheard, Leroy took her into his arms and grimly told her that he would take care of the rector. Shortly afterwards they both had forgotten about the affair.

Aurélien did not wish to be in a gifted class. There were not any at his school and the nearest was 2 kilometers away at La Muette. He would be studying in foreign territory, the prospect of which did not please him. He would be in class with kids that he did not see after school and on weekends. Besides, the kids at La Muette were practically all of pure European extraction. Aurélien having visible traits of Negroid ancestry felt uncomfortable around them. If there were more non-Europeans or mixed blood students in the school, he would have been less reluctant.

Aurélien became slightly anxious on some occasions when he was the only person that did not appear pure European in a small unfamiliar crowd. It was an anxiety he did not experience in large crowds of pure Europeans or with individual Europeans. Aurélien imagined that small groups of Europeans, especially young European males, behaved like dogs. Individually they were quite friendly but in a pack, they could become threatening. In the neighborhood where Aurélien lived, there were always one or two kids that were Jewish—who for reasons that Aurélien did not understand were treated by most as if they were non European— and others that were Negroid, Oriental, Arab or mixtures. Aurélien was not particularly close with the non-Europeans but he noticed that their presence made a difference. Sometimes when some of the class went on a cultural, rural or athletic trip, he was the only non-European. When this happened, he felt a discomfort. He thought that he would be asked to justify himself, to present appropriate credentials or to explain what gave him the right to be there. Though his interlocutors were not necessarily hostile, it was an exercise that Aurélien dreaded and one that he feared he would have to confront more often at the La Muette school.

In the Auteuil area of Paris where Aurélien lived, he had a dozen or so close friends, all pure Europeans. The group was eclectic compared to others that had formed at his school. Aurélien’s group included three very European looking Jews who also frequented another all European Jewish group. There were other Jewish groups that usually consisted of a mixture of Sephardim and Ashkenazim. Excluding Aurélien, the remainder of his group including the Jews was French for several generations except for a rich wife brought in from America, England, Russia or some other exotic place. The parents of the Jews were three medical doctors, two lawyers and a shop owner. The parents of the rest included a dentist, seven engineers, two journalists, two bankers, three corporation executives, five civil servants and a domestic servant.

Stephane’s mother, Helene, was the housekeeper for a wealthy Greek. He and Helene lived in an apartment in the mansion where she worked. In spite of a certain disparity in his social position, Stephane was as solidly installed in the group as