Johnny sat there at Piazza Beaubourg, rocking back and forth, his voice reverberating off the Pompidou glass. A group of Belgian teenagers were amassed before him, boys and girls alike awed by his singular presence. “Jah!” he shouted wildly. “Jah!” He bashed that guitar with all the fire in his belly, the ancient strings buzzing and falling short of pitch. His beer spilled and trickled down the paving stones, and he didn’t even notice.
He had developed a singing style of broken reggae harshness, of a living booming instrument. The buttons on his coat scratched the pavement as he rocked, and he whistled through his teeth and clicked his tongue between phrases. This was the performance of the believer, of exorcism and total involvement. His head moved, his legs moved, his dreadlocks danced about like a mop in a plug socket. He mixed English, French, and pure soulful scat. He shouted, he spat, he felt his shades press the bridge of his nose. He was doing just what he was doing.
The Belgians watched entranced. The boys and girls sat wide-eyed, and teacher sensed this was not an appropriate moment to herd them onward. He wracked his brain to find an educational aspect to this lunacy, but, finding none whatsoever, decided to simply enjoy the sunshine instead, and leave his charges at it. His charges were in raptures, and were giving this bizarre African gentleman more attention now than he himself had received in over twenty years in the pedagogical profession. He smiled and de-fogged his spectacles.
Johnny finished the song and beamed widely. Glorious sunshine on his face, beads of sweat tickling. Where was this weather coming from in February? He’d abandoned the Pompidou early the last December, as had become his custom during the winter, and hadn’t expected to make a return till mid-March. But this – this was superb. The past two days had seen him leaning out the window on rue Leon, spitting down below and not believing the sun on the streets, until this morning he’d finally taken the plunge, concluded these splendid conditions were no illusion, and leaped over the Metro barrier guitar and all, Beaubourg bound. None of his associates were around when he got there, but, feeling the energy in his bones once again, he just started singing when he found a place, in love and alive to the glory of the voice, lifting.
The Belgians left. A few of the girls tried to give him money, but he didn’t want it or accept. They were only about fifteen, but pretty. He felt the burdening awareness of sex and beautiful women, noticed the spilt beer can, and struck up another tune. Pigeons were around him, portrait artists too, but Johnny was again removing himself, eyes closed behind the impenetrable shades, the lust-heat of the physical ceding to the sound.
January 26, 2010
Part 2: Aria (scene 2)
January 21, 2010
Part 1: Getting There (scene 3)
Johnny gets up, and God only knows what her name in that bed is, but he is out the door, with laces not yet tied. It’s seven or eight, an early workday morning, and the air is doing that tickling thing that makes you want to shake with joy. It’s a new day, and you’re in it. He turns up his collar and nearly trips over his laces.
Further down the street, which is called Alesia, he stops and ties them. Stops and ties them, looks like kneeling in a pew. Whatshername had clamped her leg over him when they finished, and left it there, grip-like, till morn. Between his shoulder blades throbbed slowly from the wriggling movements deemed necessary for extrication.
Whatshername was the latest in a long line of whatshernames. The most recent in his ever lengthening tights-ladder of less than twelve-hour courtships. She had kissed like she was thirsty. If he closed his eyes now on rue d’Alesia he could still be back in her room. Looking down upon her in her cramped orange bed, her face blurring, the smell of her skin. If he closed his eyes.
Johnny was 32, sometimes said 30, and others 35. Sometimes mumbled 33 – ‘like Jesus.’ Yes, behold!, the temporary Christ of the lonely single business girl, the ragged fucking Saviour, who rolled his own stone from the mouth of the cave come earthly break of day.
Every day for the past two years he had sat in front of the Centre Georges Pompidou and played acoustic guitar – not for money, not playing for the benefit of the tourists. How he fed and clothed himself was a mystery even to him, or at least was a mystery when he forgot about selling coke. He forgot as often as he could.
He arrived from Senegal three years before, known to all there as Jean, intimidated initially by choked Parisian sprawl. A room in the Goutte d’Or and the phone number of a distant cousin in case things got rough. He’d never called this cousin. Jean did become Johnny, and acquired a full-length leather coat, and lived predominantly on crisps and dry baguette, and cheap domestic champagne. He spoke English to Pompidou sightseers in a good mood, and scowled endlessly at nothing at all in a bad one. He sat there all day, was visited by many, and occasionally went entire weeks without playing so much as a note.
The darkness brought a hunger, and living things will feed. At night he walked into bars in potent places, and he knew the type he was looking for. The stylish attire, the make-up, but the bouncing of the dainty shoe on the foot and the demure dart-away glance betraying an at-heart office girl fed up competing with the boys. Where was her romance? her wistful lipcurl wondered, her mystery enigma – her knight in battered leather, whose breathing made hers fast. Well there he was across the floor, and he was looking at you.
He would wake up in the morning to another commentellesappelle.
He stopped into a bakery on rue d’Alesia and emerged a minute later with pain au chocolat. Stuffed the wrapping into a pocket and devoured. He didn’t think he’d ever been here before, but a sign said Denfert Rochereau up ahead, and that was on Ligne 4, and Ligne 4 went to Chateau Rouge, which was the closest stop to Johnny’s room on crumbling rue Leon. He could return and get the guitar, and be back at Beaubourg before today had even started.
Fishing in Beirut 