Booker Something That Rhymes: The Johnson Family Saga

By Tannie Stovall

BOOKER
By Tannie STOVALL
Summary

The actions begins in 1988 with a trip from Saint Petersburg Russia to France by Kasia Klucznicki and her daughter, Halina in order to visit their aging relative Jeannot who lives in a chteau in the Tarn Valley. A short time after that, Booker Johnson, the son of black Americans parents born in France who detains both American and French citizenship, flees France for the United States in order to avoid French military service. Bookers father Johnny, a sharecroppers son, who became wealthy in France in the early 1960ies, is disappointed with his sons action. Booker has an excellent French bourgeois education, which clashes with the working class background of his father. An appreciable part of the book is about the mending of relations between father and son.
In California, when the Berlin wall was crumbling in 1989, Roy McPherson, a specialist in fabricating high performing computer chips feels that his country the United States will become increasingly arrogant in the future and decides to send industrial secrets to Russia via the internet.
Booker quickly became disenchanted with the United States and moves to Mexico where he meets Halina. Halinas father, Vicktor Klucznicki is working with the Russian litigation but in reality, he is a KGB agent who assignment is procuring industrial technology from the United States. Halina deliberately becomes pregnant by Booker and then elopes with him. When the CIA becomes aware that Klucznickis daughter is married to an American, they exploit this fact in order to discover his real activities.
During a prolonged visit to Russia, Booker becomes a businessman in order to please his wife who accuses him of being a social parasite. Bookers father Johnny visits them. Before and after the visit Johnny supplies the CIA with enough information so that a CIA agent, Martinez, can deduce Klucznickis activities which leads to the exposure of McPherson plus the dismantling of a Soviet spy ring in the United States. However, Johnny became very fond of the Klucznickis and them of him. Klucznickis relation with Booker causes him some troubles on his job with the KGB. Booker opens a cabaret similar to one that his father owns in Paris, which causes him to have difficulties with the Russian underworld.
The Klucznickis were an important family in Galicia in the 19th century. All that is left of their grandeur is the chteau in the Tarn valley, which they want to preserve in spite of the large debts of its owner. Also, Halina is the last direct descendant of Marek Klucznicki, the most illustrious of their family and they would like for her children to carry the name Klucznicki.
In the end, very surprising solutions are found which save the chteau for the family, gives the name Klucznicki to Halinas children, save Booker from the Russian Mafia and save Klucznickis job with the KGB. McPherson ends up in jail.
On one level, the book is about Johnny and his son. Johnny came to Paris on his honeymoon after serving honorably in the Koreans war. He found life much more agreeable in Paris than in his hometown in Alabama so he decided to stay. He was a good soldier and a loyal American but after experiencing the difference in treatment between Paris and Alabama, he had a long during love-hate relation with the United States. The parts of the novel related by him are sometimes written in a crude language.
The books contain a fair amount of technical information about ciphering and deciphering information. It also explains the unique character of the French Stock market during the period it covers. And there are realistic descriptions of the life of the principle character, African American Booker in Russia and in rural France.
On another level, the interest of the book, is the interaction between Booker the Klucznicki family. Initially Halinas family had a gut racial hatred for Booker as they have for Germans, Russians of none Polish descent and

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 24, 2005
• ISBN: 9781462823437

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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27812

Crevant, Monday, March 15, 1988

In Moscow, Gorbachev was in power. For Kasia, the only thing of any importance that he had done was to make it easier for Russians to have passports. Now, for the first time in her life, she was outside of the Soviet Union. Strangely, life had not seemed to change very much from one side of the iron curtain to the other. Life was hard in Russia. However, there was enough to eat contrary to what many in France believed. There was enough, but it was usually not what she wanted to eat. The food shops were all full of canned beans and lard. There were very few apples, never any oranges and little of any other fruit. And housing everyplace was decrepit.

In the market at Crevant, the village in the Tarn valley where the Klucznicki château was located, there was everything, but neither she nor Jeannot had money to buy sufficient quantities of it. She should have listened to her husband when he told her to take enough food to France for herself and Halina for the week they would be there. Take food to France! What a ridiculous idea. Little did Kasia know, but Paris was full of Pole, Czech and Baltic nationals with sacks of food brought from their home countries. Store prices in Paris were too high and restaurants were impossible. However, thanks to old Gorbachev, they were at least able to travel outside of the Russia not to mention the Soviet Union for the first time.

Jeannot’s father said to him on his dying bed, My son I leave you in beatitude. I am leaving you a fortune and the Catholic faith. The faith was more important than he realized at the time, for without it he might have hung himself as many of his neighbors had done as their financial situation deteriorated. His first blow was the estate taxes. In order to pay them, he was forced to sell a large part of the family‘s furniture business in the Saint Antoine district of Paris. His father had rented a large apartment on the Avenue Montaigne, one of the most expensive areas in Paris. The rent plus the decrease in income from the business plus the increasing expenses of maintaining the château led to his losing his remaining part of the Klucznicki et Fils Furniture Company.

Because of a tremendous housing shortage after the war, in 1948 the French government enacted a stringent rent control law. It was so favorable to tenants that, in the years that followed, owners sometimes paid their renters in order to recuperate their apartments. Jeannot surrendered the Avenue Montaigne apartment for the equivalent of two year‘s rent and the right to maintain the servant‘s room. For Jeannot, having as his only Paris address, a 3 by 4 meters room without toilet was a bitter reversal of fortune.

There were three rented farms on the grounds of the Klucznicki château. Everyone who knew Jeannot considered his tenant farmers as the luckiest in France. Anybody could hoodwink Jeannot. Moreover, it was just a matter of time before he had only a rundown château with some beautiful furniture that he sold regularly in order to meet current expenses. When the furniture is all sold, he would not have any income at all.

Jeannot had seen his cousin Kasia only three times prior to her present visit. He had seen Halina once when she was a baby in Leningrad. Because of his great age, he thought that this would be the last time he would see them. So, he used all of the strength that he had left and his remaining resources in order to make their visit pleasant. However, the task was too much for him. Even the smallest wing of the château was too expensive for him to heat, which meant that his guests were always going out of warm rooms into cold and vice versa. He realized that this was disheartening but not as much for him as for Kasia. He had done this so long he had forgotten the effect that it could have on others.

In the market, he purchased the finest products for his cousin and her daughter, but he bought such small quantities that they were all embarrassed.

Jeannot clearly apprehended that he was loosing control of events. It was a feeling that he had experienced most of his life as he watched all that his father had accumulated evaporate. Rather than creating a favorable impression on his cousin, he was appearing pathetic. Their last two nights in France would be spent in his servant’s room in Paris. There he hoped that he would recuperate his image. He hoped they would notice the fine building in the splendid quarter where he lived and not the smallness of a room where the toilets and bath were shared with other tenants or servants.

On their last day there, in a desperate attempt to prevent the trip to the Tarn from being a complete loss he took them into the garden. He said to the two of them, ‘I have something I’m going to tell you. Then he showed them a particular spot in the garden and continued, When I go to meet Jesus, you will be my heirs. The government will steal the little that is left for estate taxes. But there is something they don’t know about. In this spot exactly a meter down is a box that contains 385 Napoleon gold pieces, about 6.45 grams per coin. I want these to go to your children, Halina. Now, this is all written down and you will be informed again at my demise. However, since you are here, I thought it appropriate to tell you. I hope Halina, that you will tell your children to leave at least an equivalent amount to theirs."

Late the next morning they arrived in Paris and immediately went about the serious business of shopping. They visited the big department stores, the small shops along the rue de Sevres and the rue Saint Honoré before finally going to Tati’s where they actually made some purchases. At Tati’s textiles and gadgets of all kinds can be bought at prices as cheap as can be found in Europe. Eastern Europeans often purchase a two or three year supply of low to medium quality clothing, bedding, curtains, drapes, gadgets and lot of other stuff that they discover they don’t need when they get back home. Most of the items can be found at similar prices elsewhere, but Tati’s has it all. More important, at Tati’s everything is placed in sacks that have the words TATI’S PARIS written in unavoidably visible large print. It does not matter that the hardly discernable smaller print says that this is the cheapest merchandise that you can buy. Besides, most of the neighbors in Saint Petersburg do not read French. However, they do understand the word PARIS in any language and that is all Kasia wanted.

In her frenzy to purchase abundant clothing for dozens of family and friends, she did not notice that Halina also purchased a plain white dress.

Paris, Friday, August 18, 1989, 07:00 AM

The TV is on announcing the NBC news with Dan Rather. Booker watches it, as he does every morning. When it is over he switch to CNN to catch Moneyline with Lou Dobbs. The program passes on the East Coast in the early evening, a couple of hours after the close of the New York stock exchange, and it is rerun on CNN International across Europe in the morning. In Paris, Booker catches it at 7:30 AM. By the time it’s over, he is dressed and ready to go to the newsstand on the rue Lecourbe in front of the Prisunic. As usual, Monsieur Bedoir has prepared a small stack for him consisting of the International Herald Tribune, Les Echos, La Tribune, Liberation and the New Economist. Again he consoles Bedoir for not having won the Goncourt literary award the previous November and wishes him better luck on his next novel. This would take at least another two years so he could count on continuing these agreeable exchanges for some time. If Bedoir won the Goncourt, he would find a much better job. Booker picked up two croissants at the bakery and the first mail delivery from the concierge as he entered his building. He glanced at the headlines as his computer booted. He logged on to his broker and like every morning, demanded the position of his account. It was $1,235,587.43. Not bad for a twenty- two year old, he thought. Then he looked at the mail, about ten pieces of junk for either him or his father, and a letter to him from the French Ministry of the Army.

His heart began to beat rapidly. He felt that he always responded badly to stressful situations. It took all his moral courage to keep from panting. He could not control his heartbeat or the feeling of chaos in his gut. He was ashamed of his body reactions, but he did take pride is his ability to at least maintain a calm exterior. He grabbed his suitcase, packed it with two books, five shirts, a pair of khakis, a pair of jeans, a jacket, ten pair of socks, three sets of underwear, a pair of shoes, a comb, three tooth brushes, a box of bicarbonate of soda, a wash rag, a pack of throw away razors, two bars of Marseille soap and his lap top computer. Dressed in a suit and trench coat he presented himself at the concierge loge. Suitcase in hand he told the concierge that he was moving and not leaving an address and asked him if he would please return the letter with that mention.

The concierge looked at him as if he was a piece of shit. You know this is your induction notice. You’re suppose to report in three days.

I know, but as far as you are concerned I’ve moved and left no forwarding address booker said handing him 50 francs.

The 50 francs did not assuage his disdain. He refused to take either the letter or the money. He told Booker to drop the letter in front of his door and if he never saw him again he would return the letter to the post office.

It was 8:35 AM when he hailed a taxi on the rue Lecourbe and 8:55 AM when he arrived at the Maison des Anges in the place Saints Innocents. His father and Jean Louis were finishing off the night’s work. When his father saw him, he smiled and gave him his usual greeting ‘Hiya little rascal."

He greeted his father and Jean Louis and spurted out the emotions built up inside him. He spouted that he had just received his draft notice and that he was leaving France before the gendarmes got their hands on him. As long as the envelope had not been opened, he had not broken any laws. In a couple of weeks, the gendarmes would try to serve the notice directly, but he would be in the United States by then.

Booker Booker his father mumbled in disappointment. Then he uttered in a calm voice, You opted for double nationality knowing that you would have to serve in the French military if you continued living here.

I didn’t opt for any thing, you forced me to accept French nationality, remember? Booker said with a smirk. Then he noticed that the reminder of that painful episode in their lives hurt his father. His father had forced him to accept French nationality when he became 18. Booker resisted solely to annoy his father. However, he knew that his father was trying to look after his own good. So, seeing his father’s low spirits he took an obliging tone, Look, Papa! I’ll be all right. In the next year or so, the compulsory military service will be eliminated and I’ll come back to France. Besides you have always said that I should get to know the States better.

Johnny, everyone called him Johnny though his name was Rufus Breitwith Johnson, looked at his son and wondered where he had failed. He certainly had not produced the kind of child he wanted. He did not even have the compensation of having his son like him. His older son liked him; at least he had that. He understood his older son. He could predict fairly accurately how he would react in most situations. He felt close to him. Johnny had not felt close to Booker since he was eleven. Maybe he should have repaid him the loan, but it is too late to do anything meaningful about that now. To give his son back the $2000 now would send the wrong signal. At the time, he had accomplished what he wanted which was to teach Booker that he should be reluctance to trust anyone with his money. And as long as he didn’t pay him the lesson continued.

Already as a small child, Booker did not have a proper appreciation for money or property. He would even give his toys away. And marbles! His mother bought him a sack every week that were quickly won or stolen by or given to his playmates. Johnny’s campaign to toughen his son had worked over the years, but he was always haunted by the thought that the bad feelings engendered between them were too high a price to pay for the lessons.

Johnny was a wealthy man when he borrowed the money from his son. He lacked 10,000 francs out of more than 2,000,000 he needed in order to purchase cash a building in the center of Paris. All of his transactions were without financing because he believed that banks would not lend money to a black man. Most of the shop owners around the Saints Innocents square would have been delighted to lend him the modest amount he needed. But Johnny saw the opportunity to do something that he thought would pay his son dividends for the rest of his life.

When young Booker, came forward and told him that he could give him the money, it was like a mule’s kick. Booker, he had reluctantly concluded, obeyed the adage that second son’s are unfathomable. He did all right in school, every year he was in the upper half of his class, but just barely. In his school were the upper crust of France, yet his closest friend, was an obnoxious Maghrebian boy named Mohammed, who lived in the neighborhood.

In addition to a top of the line laptop, Booker had an old IBM AT personnel computer that he seemed to always find some use for and a half room full of comic books which Johnny was more that once tempted to throw out. At eleven, he hoped that his son would be interested in Treasure Island, Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the English side or Le Petit Prince or something like Les Miserables on the French side. Instead of reading, he seemed to spend his time in the streets. Johnny wondered where, but he did not worry too much especially about drugs or sex. Both of his sons were prudish and earnest to point of being ridiculous and not very influenceable. Besides Paris and the French countryside were not like his native Doltan Alabama, here women and children could stroll anywhere even at night with relative safety.

Nevertheless, his son having 10,000 francs, the equivalent of $2000, was cause for concern. What in the hell is this all about? He thought while trying to suppress his fears, for he could not imagine anything except a disagreeable denouement. He knew Booker well enough to accept that if he said he had $2000, he had it. Booker never joked with him. He was always precise and cordial but never quite friendly. Johnny felt that he blamed him for his mother deserting them for a ski instructor who deserted her a few years later. He would have taken her back if she had asked. She hinted over and over that she wanted to return, but she wanted him to ask her. He refused. After years of a lukewarm marriage with her, he was not so attached to actively want her back. She did however, keep the apartment clean, cook pretty good meals and create a friendly family atmosphere. She was more like a friend than a parent to Booker and Leroy. They laughed and joked with her, which they rarely did with him. They loved her and she loved them. So, Johnny wouldn‘t have minded her coming back, but she would have to ask. She did not and Leroy took years to forgive his father for not taking her by the hand and leading her home. Booker was too young to understand the intricacies of their relationship, but if Leroy felt as vehemently as he did that daddy was wrong, there must be truth in the accusation.

The enmity between Booker and his father intensified because of the loan. When Booker imagine that his father was having a financial problem, he saw an opportunity to establish with his father something like the relation he had with his mother. Whenever he gave his mother anything, a ripe sweet fruit that he had purchased in Paris or filched from some farmer when they were in their country house, some flowers, a piece of chocolate, a drawing from a magazine that he thought would amuse her; she became immensely pleased and loving. Maybe, he could make this contact with his father. He eagerly put his computer on route. When the booting process was finished he gave an order and immediately announced that he had 26564 francs in money and comic books.

He explained that he had accumulated his small fortune by trading in comic books. He and Mohammed had been visiting flea markets, junk fairs, public auctions and comic dealers since he was nine. To be exact, he stated that it started about a month after his mother left. It started when he was strong-armed into purchasing a box of old comics that appeared worthless from a drunken homeless person. The man accosted him on the rue Lecourbe, box in hand, and told him that he was going to give him the whole box for only 50 francs. All these are going to you’re, he said repeatedly as he noticed a rising interest on the part of Booker. Suddenly his voice became more insistent that Booker give him 50 francs. Booker becoming mildly frightened attempted to put an end to the exchange by announcing that he did not have 50 francs.

How much do you have?

10 Francs.

Sold!

Booker was pleased with his purchase. He noticed that the original purchase price was more than 300 francs. The idea that he had purchased something that was worth over 300 francs for 10 francs pleased him. Instinctively he felt that his father would be pleased with the final outcome but would be very unhappy if he discovered that he had allowed himself to be strong-armed. He would not tell his father about it. But if his mother were there, it was the kind of experience they love sharing with each other.

His father had a friend, a French Jew who lived in New York and slept in their guess bedroom on his regular trips to Paris. Booker wondered how this white Jewish Frenchman who spoke with an accent from of all places the Berry region of France became friends with his father, a black from Alabama whose little French he did speak was spoken with a terrible American accent. His name was Ronald Cohen, but Booker always called him Uncle Ronald or Uncle Ron.

Ronald was in Paris when Booker made the involuntary comic book transaction. He noticed that Booker was fretting. Like a good uncle, he took Booker on his knee and asked what was wrong. Booker was trying to decide if and how he was going to tell his father about it. Ronald did not give him any advice on this but he did succeed in cheering him up. He told him that given the circumstances, under which the purchase was made, it might be possible that he could sell his merchandise for much more than the 10 francs that he had paid.

The following Sunday, he and Mohammed took the comics, which after a closer inspection, neither were interested in reading to the flea market at Porte de Montreuil in Paris. After that, things moved very quickly. At the flea market, the two of them found people who had extensive knowledge of and passion for comics. For the most part, they were well educated and successful. Contrary to the tramp who sold him his first batch, they were earnest and also extremely eager to share their expertise. Quickly, Mohammed and Booker began collecting comics that started publication in the year of their birth. At first Booker was only interest in two French comics that started publication nine years earlier, for Mohammed it was eleven.

They became acquaintances of people some of whom worked at the Salvation Army or Emmaus stores. The property of poor people who had died often ended up at these stores in order to be sold to other poor people. Since their usual customers were not interest in old comic books, the managers would put aside comics that they thought might be of interest to Booker and Mohammed. By the time Mohammed was 15, the two of them had become experienced traders. They along with a few other adolescents were familiar to professional traders and auctioneers. Mohammed especially developed a fine esthetic sense. He could distinguish at a glance accomplished from sloppy artwork. Good from bad draftsmanship. Sometimes they skipped school in order to follow their interest in comics.

Booker‘s father gave him his first computer because that was the thing to do if you could afford it. He used it to forge messages from his father to his school explaining his numerous absences. As long as the teachers had a written note for their files and as long as Booker remain in the top half of his class they did not made an issue of his erratic attendance. His letters of excuse were always filled with grammatical and spelling errors so that they appeared genuinely to have been written by his father.

Uncle Ron showed him how to use database 3 in order to keep up with his inventory and his net worth. Every time that Uncle Ron saw him after he had taught him how to calculate the bottom line, his first question was „How are you doing?" To the surprise of people who might overhear Booker would answer with a dollar amount plus an exchange rate used to convert francs to dollars. A few years later, Uncle Ron would teach him how to speculate on real stock markets using a computer and a telephone line.

When it became clear to Johnny the life that his 11-year-old son was leading, rambling around Paris with that Mohammed, often times missing school, he decided for the first time since his wife left him that he had to make some serious decisions about his son. The $5000 that his son had amassed was even more disconcerting. „11 years old and over $5000 Johnny reflected „What in the hell am I suppose to think about this? What kind of parent should I be? And am I capable?

He decided that he was neither capable nor fit to raise his children. Leroy was six years older and seemed without problems. He did well in school, had a girl friend, went to church, had lots of middle or upper class friends and had very pleasant disposition. Booker with disdain referred to him as an average Frenchman. Though one would expect that most people are average by definition, Leroy and French people in general hate being referred to as average. Whatever Leroy was, it was too late in his life to change it. The mistakes had already been made; maybe with Booker some of them could be avoided. So, after much reflection and consultation, he decided that the minimum that he could do was to put Booker into a private school. He wanted Booker to board in, but relented when he saw the intensity of Booker‘s objections. Booker would receive his secondary educated at the Jesuit school Saint Aout on the rue Notre Dame des Champs in Paris.

Johnny took the 10,000 francs and never gave it back. On the hard disk of the laptop that he was taking to the United States was an entry of accounts receivable of 10,000 francs from Rufus Breitwith Johnson.

New York, Sunday August 20, 1989

Booker could not sleep. The time differential with Paris being six hours, for him it was 9:27 AM. He turned on the television and zapped for half an hour. Finding no relief to his boredom, he opened his laptop and played computer games until he fell asleep. When he awoke around 6:30 AM, he tried to figure out what he would do with his day. The only person in New York he felt he could call was Uncle Ron, but he decided that it would be better if called him only after he had been there a few days. He did not want Uncle Ron thinking that he was calling for help of any kind. So he visited the usual sites. He had seen them all on several previous trips either through or to New York, but this was the first time he was not led from place to place by his mother and more important, that he was seeing New York as an adult. He now felt a duty to comprehend the essence of this great city rather than simply marvel at it. The Fulton Street fish market, China Town, Soho, Harlem, Washington Square, The Cloisters, Broadway, 42 Street, Wall Street, the financial center, the Stature of Liberty, the Battery Park, Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side, Brooklyn, the Queens, the Bronx all left him unimpressed. However, he was awed by the majesty of the skyscrapers. He spent two hours staring at the twin towers of the World Trade Center. In his young but well traveled life, he had seen many monuments, the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Egypt, many of Europe, Africa and Asia. Only South America was missing from his trophy list. Until this visit to New York, the structure that most impressed him by its functionality and beauty was the Roman aqueduct in Segovia Spain. Now, he could not decide which he admired more: the twin towers, the view of the skyscrapers along 6th avenue or what appeared to be a midget 4th century Roman bridge.

What he liked most about New York was that contact with people was much easier than in Paris. On his third day there, he stopped in ‚Under the Staircase‘ on Columbus Avenue for lunch. While reading the green Michelin guide to New York in French he attracted the attention of some African-American university students. His lost look, benign veneer and expensive but styleless clothes gave them the idea that he could safely be approached and that he would appreciate it. There were budding movements at the time advocating black solidarity, which also motivated their friendliness towards him. They gave him intermittent glimpses until finally a young man said, „Hey brother what‘s happening?"

„Nothing, I‘m just trying to get oriented in this big city."

„Come on over and sit with us."

For a second, Booker was hesitant. His instincts told him that such friendly and spontaneous invitations usually had a dark side.

But no, not here, this is what is meant by the informality of Americans. In France, you had to spend at least five minutes using very refined rituals, sizing each other up before making such a move. Here, he did not look like a panhandler, he had the age of a student, he did not look rough, so bingo.

„Say brother, wasn‘t Mike great last night?"

„Mike, Mike who?"

„Brother, where did you come from?"

„I came a few days ago from France?"

„And you don‘t know about Michael Jordan over there."

„Oh, Michael Jordan. What did he do last night? Is this basketball season?" Booker asked with a confused look.

„Brother, you obviously need some Big Apple education."

Booker laughed at himself and said, „Yes, I guess I do."

They introduced themselves. There was Donald, who was a graduate student in psychology at Columbia. He was the first to address Booker. David was a music student at the Julliard School. Judy, in whom Booker immediately exhibited a vivid interest, to David‘s obvious discomfort, was in the Columbia University business school. The last person at the table was Priscilla, who was an entry-level manager with a telecommunications company. She had a degree in foreign relations from City College. They lived in the area around Columbus Avenue and 92 Street. At the ‚Under The Staircase" and a few other bar-restaurants along Columbus Avenue, Booker met many people in the days that followed, most them African-Americans.

Except for relatives from Alabama, his father‘s home, and Mississippi, his mother‘s, he hardly had any contact with African- Americans. This first contact was pleasant, yet the warmth with which this little group received him, disconcerted him. There really was a feeling that he had come home. These were his people, the people with whom he had both blood and cultural ties through his parents. Both his parents always spoke somewhat disparagingly of African-Americans. Influenced by his parents Booker had subliminally formed impressions of African-Americans as Uncle Toms because they had to be in order to survive, or as drug addicts or religious freaks, also because it helped them to survive. Judy, Priscilla, David and Donald were articulate, handsome and dynamic. They did not fit the mold of African-American put forth by his parents.

„Come here to make it in New York or are you just here on vacation? Booker thought of telling them the truth, that is, he was in New York as a draft dodger from the French army but decided against it. Instead, he said, „I‘m just hanging out. During the following weeks, that‘s what he did. through the following days, his life smoothly evolved into a routine of pleasant small talk with friends, delicious lunches in quaint restaurants along Columbus Avenue and a little stock trading in order to keep the coffer full. He began to think that he could settle down in New York. After he explained to his recent friends the real reasons he left France and informed them that he would not be returning in the autumn, their attitude towards him cooled. Neither he nor they articulated the change, but everyone felt it. Several people took the pain to point out to Booker that, when the school summer vacation was over, he would see much less of them. Besides, come winter, if he remained in the United States, he probably would want to migrate to Florida, if he could afford it.

In the evening, there were always parties of which he became quite fond. They were much less formal and less expensive than the receptions he frequented in Paris. It appeared to him that he was the only black in New York who couldn‘t dance. Even more amazing to him, it was such a rare occurrence that no one noticed. At least, so he thought.

Booker was popular. He was a new face, he had a habit of picking up the tabs in bars and he was different. He was viewed clearly as an African-American. However, his refined manners, which sometimes seemed feigned, his excellent knowledge of classical art, music and literature, his knowledge of Greek and Latin set him apart. In his speech, there was a residue of African-American slang from the 50ies and 60ies, which gave him a certain credibility within the group. He viewed himself, however, as the Jesuit educated son of a black hooligan. And with a certain incongruity, he noticed that it was those elements he inherited from his father, those that his Jesuit education was supposed