Sony Labou Tansi

The Shameful State

For AME LA YAO, H. LOPÈS, and U. TAM’SI

Together we shall fight

until freedom is no longer

a word buttered with sardines.

FOREWORD

THE SHAMEFUL STATE

OR THE PORTRAIT OF THE AFRICAN MONARCH

Alain Mabanckou

Sony Labou Tansi (1947–1995) is widely acknowledged as one of Africa’s most talented authors. Although he died at a relatively young age, the singularity, creativity, and pioneering qualities of his novels and plays shaped a generation of literary production and continue to influence contemporary African literature. A cursory glance at the work of such important writers as Kossi Efoui (Togo) or Koffi Kwahulé (Ivory Coast), both of whom have also published novels and plays, reveals traces of this inspiration. Sony Labou Tansi’s creative energy was channeled in multiple directions, at times toward the Rocadu Zulu Theatre Company which he founded in the early 1980s, at others toward the six novels he wrote, all of which were published by the prestigious Éditions du Seuil.

Sony Labou Tansi burst onto the French and francophone literary scene in 1979 with his novel La Vie et demie (Life and a Half, IUP), featuring the emblematic figure of the immortal rebel Martial before whom the relentless efforts of the ruthless postcolonial dictator to liquidate him prove futile. This marked a significant turning point in francophone sub-Saharan African literature in a more general manner, bolstering the importance of the African dictatorship novel. Sony Labou Tansi’s political commitment and oppositional nature were the source of constant difficulties with the authorities, but also afforded him tremendous respect and the opportunity to engage with audiences in Africa and beyond that listened attentively to his words.

In his next novel, L’État honteux (The Shameful State), published in 1981, the figure of the rebel is eclipsed by the dictator, the despot, the African monarch, whose name is Colonel Martillimi Lopez. One day, all his ministers seek private audiences and hand in, one after the other, their letters of resignation, because they can no longer bear the idea of leaving “the country to the children of the children of our children” in this “shameful state.” The nation is on its knees, and they don’t want to be blamed. The irony is palpable in this unusual turn of events in which the very people who had the most benefitted from the power structure now become conscious of the country’s collapse, after having enriched themselves and enjoyed its spoils while the masses languished in poverty. The political situation at the time is of course relevant, and observers were quick to equate the central protagonist in this novel with real-life megalomaniacs such as Mobutu Sese Seko, whose dictatorial rule over Zaire for more than thirty years was characterized by embezzlement, corruption, and widespread human rights violations.

Following in the footsteps of such Latin American greats as Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa, Sony Labou Tansi applied himself to the task of describing the most salient traits of political intolerance, to exposing the arbitrariness and whims of a monarch, while also highlighting the absurd nature of dictatorial rule. The Shameful State offers readers a historical insight into a grotesque and bloodthirsty monarch whose appetite for power proves insatiable. His degenerate behavior is comical, excessive, and ludicrous, but also tragic and apocalyptic when one takes into account the fact that so many African leaders, such as President Gnassingbé Eyadema (Togo), Field Marshal Idi Amin Dada (Uganda), and the self-crowned emperor Jean-Bédel Bokassa (Central African Republic), all closely resemble Martillimi Lopez. In The Shameful State, Sony Labou Tansi provides an inventory of the eccentricities of a leader whose acts of sexual debauchery prove to be limitless and who governs exclusively by responding to the urges of his “big herniated greasy balls.” Extrajudicial killings, murders, and imprisonment without due process are simply the order of the day.

The Shameful State was written at one of the most tumultuous moments in the history of the African continent. However, over time, this magisterial novel has lost nothing of its innovative merits and initial appeal and remains relevant to a range of political and social realities of the twenty-first century. Sony Labou Tansi has made it possible for us not only to understand better the complexity of Africa and the world today and the incessant ethnic conflict and competition for power, but also to reckon with the latest incarnation of the dictator-monarch who now exercises power in more discrete and discernible ways, perhaps because they too have read The Shameful State…

WARNING

I’ve heard it said that the novel is a work of the imagination. Even if that is true, this imagination must still have a place somewhere in reality. One could say that I write, or rather that I cry out, as a way of forcing the world into the world. Your shame of calling things by their name doesn’t apply in this instance. In my view, our so-called world is both a scandal and a source of shame, and I am only able to express this through several “ill-gotten words.” Ultimately, God alone can decide whether or not a book is great: in my book you will find me fighting for it to stand out. Life is no secret to any of us. The Shameful State is thus the summary in a few “ill-gotten words” of the shameful situation in which humanity has elected to live.

Sony Labou Tansi

THE SHAMEFUL STATE

~ ~ ~

THIS IS THE STORY OF COLONEL MARTILLIMI LOPEZ, son of National Mom, our very own matriarch of the nation, who came into the world holding his big greasy herniated balls and exited still holding onto them — National Lopez, younger brother of Lieutenant Colonel Gasparde Mansi. Oh dear! Poor old Gasparde Mansi, Supreme Commander of the Army, ex-President for life, ex-founder of the Rally for Democracy, ex-Commander-in-Chief of the Peoples’ Liberty, the late Gasparde Mansi, alas, just like Mom’s Lopez, born holding onto his hernia and still clinging to it in the same old filthy way when he died; such a pity!

We set off from National Mom’s village and took him on his first ever trip to the capital. He was greeted by a lively crowd, chanting, and saluting cannons; there he was, perched on his white horse Moupourtanka, singing the national anthem. Because white is the color of frankness, and if nothing else, as we shall see my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, he was certainly frank. My brother from another mother, National Oupaka, was galloping along proudly behind him, sharing a horse with Mom, who would probably fall off if she were riding alone on such a beast. To his left, Carvanso, to the right, Vauban. The crowds followed him on foot. We were all convinced that this president was going to be a good one. We carried his kitchen utensils, old fishing nets, machetes, fishhooks, domestic birds, seventy-one sheep, three cases of gourmet Benedicta mustard, eleven Sloughi hounds, his Argand oil lamp, bicycle, fifteen watering cans, slop pail, three mattresses, Arquebus, sieves…. And when our brother Carvanso said to him: “Don’t worry, Mr. President,” he responded: “I’m not so sure; I won’t put up with people saying that I embezzled funds.” His big magnanimous father-of-the-nation smile extended from ear to ear.

At first glance, you might have thought we were back in the age of caravans, because he’d refused to take an airplane, and so we had to walk, bent double under the weight of his belongings and you better make sure you don’t break anything…. We sang his praises. Spread our loincloths out in front of him. As he made his way in to the capital, an honor guard stretched out for over eight miles, almost three thousand feet of red berets, a hundred of green berets; he sidled up to brother Carvanso when he saw the soldiers and whispered: “What are they?”—“Infantrymen Colonel”—“Ah, Ok!”

We made our way to the city center via route 15, and once across the Alberto-Icuezo Bridge, reached District 45. Folks were dancing at Delpanso’s and he wanted to watch since the dances were different from those he was accustomed to in his tribe. But Colonel Vasconni Moundiata approached the dance floor and bellowed: “Cut the crap, can’t you see that the President is here?” Colonel Vasconni Moundiata lost his temper and started kicking the dancers, and five infantrymen charged in and lashed out with rifle butts. We then noticed his father-of-the-nation frown as he motioned to National Carvanso. Carvanso steered his mount over to the white horse and listened attentively: “Shoot these idiots, they’re disturbing the people.” We applauded loudly: this was the first time a president had done such a thing in the name of the people. We walked over all the dead bodies. One man ran up to him, kissed his national legs and then killed himself, screaming just before taking a nose-dive: “Ah, Mr. President, what a beautiful gesture!” “Go ahead and grant him two national days of mourning,” Lopez instructed Colonel Carvanso.

We took him all over the capital: up and down Valtaza, Dorbanso, and Corbanzo streets, to the Graci roundabout, the Opera…. Then on to Vatney, the seat of power. Later to city hall, to the Museum of the Nation, the military camps, the presidential port, the Place du 8 juin; we only made it back to the palace at dusk. We walked through all the rooms: the weapons hall, the diamond gallery, the corridor to the Companions of the Revolution, the presidential vault where only one of our eleven presidents had lain at rest because the other ten had been dumped in a mass grave for acts of high treason.

“What’s that?”

“That’s the map of the country, Mr. President sir.”

“Aha! I see! But what are all those blue serpents?”

“The rivers, Mr. President.”

“Aha! I see! And these smaller serpents?”

“The county roads, Mr. President.”

“And those serpentlets?”

“The borders, Mr. President.”

This is when we first heard his big fatherly laugh, and holding on to his sides, he pointed out just how stupid we all were: You’ve gone and left parts of the nation over in that shameful state in which those “Flemish” left them, you’ve left parts of the nation as if the pale power was still here. How shameful dear Mom, and you’re such a bunch of fools! Hand me some red markers. And he set about redrawing the contours of the fatherland: put those infantrymen to work, and he proceeded to join together four straight lines, leaving areas of the sovereign territory over to our neighbors and taking over some of theirs because, my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, that’s the sovereign decision of my hernia: the fatherland shall be square. How could you possibly expect us to live in a crater left behind by the colonizer! What kind of a people are we if we don’t even have the freedom to fabricate our own borders? He enlisted the support of the media for this decision of his hernia and that’s enough of this crap, and put those infantrymen to work instead of them spending their days mounting girls, clothed and fed by the state, and fucking up the shit and seizing power at the first opportunity…. And the sovereign decision of his big, big, big herniated balls was decreed in red ink, sending the infantrymen to the new borders, get the lot of them outta here, because an infantryman is made to fire old boy!

After delivering this first televised message on those god-damn TVs that keep teasing my hernia, he beckoned Carvanso, grabbed him by the shoulders, and gave him a couple of friendly taps: you’re going to be my right-hand man, you’ll be National Mom’s right-hand man, and then he lowered his voice and asked him if, well, you know, it’s not that easy being a bachelor these days: my appetite is up, go find me a hooker.

“Mr. President sir, you need to be more careful now with all the media around.”

“Fuck the media, my appetite is up. And don’t bring me one of those young ones. Those young ones aren’t ripe enough.”

He ate quickly, barely drinking. He called over the maitre d’ to ask him why his meat was bloody. “I’m not a fucking cat, you know!”

“On the contrary, Mr. the Presidente: this is civilized cuisine.”

“Well what on earth makes you think I’m civilized?”

“… Ah, Mr. the Presidente…”

“Just get the hell out of here if you don’t know how to cook like we do around here.”

We applauded when he appointed Mom as the national cook.

“What about the title National Hotelier, Mr. President sir,” suggested Carvanso.

“Why’s that?”

“It sounds better, Mr. President.”

He sounded out the title a few times and said, well, Ok then, you’re right, it does sound better. And then came the day when, in front of the parliament, the Chamber of Elders, the diplomats and military High Command, the Apostolic Nuncio, he swore in Mom’s name and mine, in the name of the fatherland, “You can trust me, I’ll be a good president.” He got down from the podium, sporting the colors of the nation, grinning from ear to ear, humming the national anthem, arms raised, hands joined together, escorted only by Mom, Carvanso, and Vauban, making his way through the cheering crowd, past the people dancing, covered in the fatherland’s flowers, past the children who wanted to touch his hernia, the mothers who laid down their loincloths on the ground before him, the elders who wept tears of joy: we’re going to have a good president, long live Lopez, son of National Mom, long live Carvanso! The air in the streets of the capital, Zappalo, Muerte, Grabanizar, Machinier, and in Passion Place was filled with the smell of palm-waving perspiring dancers and sulfurous gunpowder. He paused to eat and drink as my people do, joined them in my true dances, not like those assholes who imported everything from my colleague’s country; I’m staying as I am, I’ll eat what we eat here, drink what we drink here. He gathered one hundred and thirty nationals and fifteen former presidents living in exile in the country and I’ll show you how we do politics around here; he set about dictating to our brother Carvanso the seventy-five articles that would make up the new “Order of Command”: article 1: the fatherland shall be square; article 2: down with demagogy; article 3: National Mom is everyone’s mother; article 4: no strikes and no more bullshit; article 5: down with the death penalty; article 6: I’m the president but you can knock me off whenever you see fit…. He set about appointing the Council of Ministers. Raise your hand. Who wants to be Minister of Dough? Who wants to be Minister of Stamps? So, who wants to be Minister of Roads who wants to be Minister of Rocks who wants to be Minister of Medication in charge of the status of women? He appointed a Minister of Borders, Minister of Customs, Minister of Transactions, Minister of Debts, Minister of Crops in charge of the forests, Minister of Fishing in charge of wildlife, Minister of Trade Negotiations…. But I’m going to be Minister of Infantrymen in charge of the people’s freedom. My brothers and dear fellow countrymen, let’s get to work. And while they sang the national anthem, he whispered to Carvanso: please, I’m so horny: fetch me a chick.

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“And a real chick. How about a White one, I feel like a nice juicy White one.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

For five years he managed the nation and the borders and damn those Mihilis who had risen up in the western region. Carvanso will teach them the lesson of my hernia; as for the Bhas who refuse to pay a tax offering, go dish out my big greasy balls, and those Bhozos rising up in the south, go put a curse on them Carvanso! Yes, Mr. President sir! And to relax he had his griot National Thanassi come over, who recounts the famous story of our brother Louhaza who loved his own mother so much and gave her twelve children including Talanso Manuel, National Mom’s great-grandfather, a descendant of National Lakensi, founder of the fatherland, and tells the story of Lukenso Douma, founder of a vast kingdom that encompassed the Congo, Zaire, and Angola, and also how Manuelo Otha had founded Tamalassi… as well as the story of ex-Colonel Youhakini Konga, now that one’s a long story, but I very much want it to be handed down from father to son for eternity, exactly in the way I heard it from my grandmother, the late Gasparde Luna. As he listened, his eyes looked as if they were going to pop out of his head: my God, our ancestors were truly great.

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“They were born to shake things up.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“There aren’t a thousand ways of being in this world. We’ll muddle through somehow. Twenty percent Flemish blood running in our veins, not quite Black enough to be negroes, not quite White enough to be whites, but I’ll find a way to shake things up too…. There aren’t a thousand ways of being in this world.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

~ ~ ~

IT ALL STARTED ONE MAY EVENING at the Alberto-Sanamatouff stadium. On a Tuesday, at that time of day when the sun begins to set, striping the hands of nature blood red, as the nocturnal concert of pulsating insect wings gets underway announcing Africa to the tourists in my colleague’s country across the way. At that hour when you found out, as we all did, that Lieutenant Proserdo Manuelio had killed his brother-in-law Jolanso Amelia as he lay in a hospital bed: “After all the blood and sweat I put into making you a lieutenant! So apparently you want to take power? Well here it is: in the barrel of a gun.”

Mother of Lopez! He had summoned all my brothers and dear fellow countrymen to this first evening meeting (because there’s no time to waste: the nation’s business can’t wait), and so I’ll start by explaining, ah yes, because I need to provide some background and explain the real reasons that motivated my hernia to get involved in power. And no, no, and no, it was not a coup d’état! I rebelled against the central authorities because we couldn’t let you know who go on pissing on the fatherland, we couldn’t let him go on confusing the nation with the legs of his badly fucked mom, a real loser, uncultivated, a rogue like him. It wasn’t a coup d’état and he went ahead and pointed to a scar done by you know who, and then unbuttoned his fly and showed us another scar on the inner thigh, and several others as well, and then also his puckered ass and told us how, my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, Abbey Perrionni the son of his mother injured him there on the day he was caught with the ex-virgin Gléza Dononso: “This is truly shameful, Captain (that was my rank in those days), shameful that you can’t find a real woman to throw your juices at when the streets are brimming with them, and it would be so much better than preying on those nice religious girls.” He showed us what you know who did to his hernia the day he surprised him in bed with his daughter and well, what can you say, we’re only human. I have to show you all these scars so that you can understand that being in power was not some kind of personal ambition of my hernia. Ah my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, I still haven’t shown you the full extent of the injuries I sustained on the day when National Lou- toulla caught me screwing his wife…. And so out came his male junk, ravaged by pock marks and blemishes, and please, don’t go thinking I’m crazy: this is where the nation begins.

And that half-wit National Outranso who thinks this is all a big joke: I’m educating our people and all you can do is giggle from under Foni Sènso’s beret. You must take me for that ex-President Jlanso Zenno who used to throw himself in front of young girls, with joined hands and hernia: you’re a mulatto, mulatto girls drive me crazy. With Africa, clenched between their thighs. But let’s get back to the subject at hand and let’s not forget what a nasty world we live in: men, ah men! Always trying to conquer the world with their tools. But God rules, ah yes, my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, if we can still breathe this evening as we’re breathing it’s because God is with us. Because, and the evidence is clear, at two o’clock tonight, you know who tried to seize power with the help of a dozen or so little mechanics and a handful of demons who work with those god-damn TVs, what bullshit; do you really think, my brothers and dear fellow countrymen that you can seize power with big plans? But in that gang there was also a woman ah! Mother! And by all accounts she’s as beautiful as the Queen of Sheba. And he started fondling his big greasy herniated balls, gently massaging them as we applauded, as our cries made their way to the heavens: Long live Lopez! Long live National Mom! He stroked his hernia in a premeditated fashion, “But before I fully expose them to your anger, my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, children of my loins, let’s take stock of the situation: I’m no Gasparde Mansi who got his balls chopped off by some girl because he held sexual audiences in his office, I’m no Oustanno Ludia who killed people as one does a chicken, and I’m certainly no son-of- a-bitch Orenso Gemma whom you made a hero of the nation just because he left behind three hundred and twelve mulatto girls and seventy-five Black ones just like him; I am Lopez, National Mom’s son, five years at the helm, now tell me, who have I killed?” We all shouted out: “No one! Long live Lopez, long live National Mom, down with crocodiles.”

He was in full flow by now and these occasions meant a lot to his hernia. The story of my hernia is linked to the history of the fatherland, but don’t worry, it’s not a sad story. I am the spiritual son of Alberto Sanamatouff… and the story lasted until three in the morning and my brothers and dear fellow countrymen you come on back now at eleven tomorrow so we can discuss the fate of the mutinous rebels and agree on appropriate sanctions. In the meantime, my hernia is tired. Before we headed home, we overheard him whisper to brother Carvanso: “I’m thirsty, it’s tough being a bachelor,” and Carvanso saying:

“Mr. President, we have to watch out for the media.”

“Ok.”

He left on foot, shadowed by his aide Colonel Vauban, in charge of his personal security detail, and made his way up rue Felicio-Danarassi, avenue Panglos, past the Touré-Diakaté Market, then rue de la Pompe, Oreillidos Alley, and recounted the story of ex-Colonel Vadio who did what he did and no one did a damn thing about it, then the one about ex-National Loujango who got a long way in the science of looking the other way and what was done to him? When he reached the Corbanni-Suaze Bridge, he stood there for ten minutes watching the water running below: after all, I’m no Alvaro Diosso who for God’s sake managed to study for his thirteen diplomas while president. The people are stupid and will remain that way.

“Yes, Mr. President. But the shirt need not fear the hot water.”1

His heart filled with shadows, the heart of a prophet, the heart of a father, in the majesty of the human dream, from where you can contemplate our late General Also de Nonso donning his tiger-hunting gear, with full military stripes and plumes, gold tassels, exotic, magical medals heavy as gates, row upon row of military decorations across his chest because my people expect things to be eye-catching; ah Vauban, this is the country for people who are eye-catching. He starts telling Vauban the tragic story of our late brother Grabanizar during the shameful years of the Labinto regime that our people went and made a hero of the fatherland; we live in a nasty country and there ought to be a sign with gold-leaf lettering as you enter the port of Zouhando-Norta: Nasty country. That’s how it is Vauban, since there are no wars, our infantrymen wreak havoc. Havoc because we’re the world center for cowardice, the world capital for shame and sin, because we’re the masters of lying and maliciousness Mom…. As for Vauban, listening attentively to him, with his pale courage that tried to save the world, you can see how much he loves this land while National Lopez, kaki giant that he is, sporting the nation’s drama, the country slung over his shoulder, and that’s enough bullshit, up rue Nolavinto, rue Fantar, past the café Les Rate-Bonheurs, over to the other side of the Place de la Patrie, to the sound of Plazzinni Delaroux’s music, you’d think that Delaroux guy was French but he’s actually the product of racial mixing: French face, American manners, walks like an Arab, but with a body typical of our region; today, he’s performing in the Oulanso-Mondia Gardens, in heavily accented French:

Open your body

To this fear

Of the world

The earth is a public good

But your own turn is now

So make sure you don’t miss it

In life

Accomplish your part

In this flesh between heaven and earth

For us the future is now

Sing your nerves and dance your heart

There aren’t that many ways

Of being alive

Long live you and so long live me

“My people are so beautiful when they dance to my poems!”

“They are, Mr. President.”

Rue Fortio, rue Amela, rue Fontaine, this city, ah this city, rue Foreman, boulevard ex-Duchaillu…. He reaches the banks of the “Rouviera Verta” and God damn it this city’s stunning at this time of day! He then starts telling the story of how that pig Oxbanso, on the very day I appointed him Minister of Imports, tried to sleep with National Mom, but I didn’t kill him for that. You see Vauban, this is Satan’s village, only he whom you love can betray you…. His slippers are covered in mud. A dead dog has been abandoned in the middle of the road; doesn’t anyone work around here: he moves the dead dog out of the way. Zamba-Town, a city in the south, even hotter at midnight than at noon, with its muddy swamps, breeding grounds for mosquitoes, where those who’ve managed to escape the stifling heat of their hut make love out in the open which is why you can hear the darkness groaning panting weeping and coughing. Zamba-Town, its symbolic hand extended out in peace, rue Gaza and the lingering signs of the latest curfew (now lasting sixteen months). And on the opposite bank of Lake Oufa: the Cité-du-Pouvoir, as exquisite as a love dream, oh how beautiful my hernia is, a monument built to them: thirty-five million dollars and now a patrimony of the state, a valued possession for them to enjoy today and in the future when my hernia has passed away. Well done to the nation!

It’s still not quite that hour when the loudspeakers left behind by our late Colonel Pouranta Ponto start pouring my speeches into my people’s ears; this innovation is hardly new, it was National Laountia’s in fact, and Manuelo Sanka kept it up. Entire districts yelling because people have the shameful habit of changing stations when I speak, I ask Colonel Minister of Borders to install loudspeakers in every district, and to make sure they’re all functioning properly while my hernia is at work, because it would be utterly shameful for a people not to listen to their president’s speeches; make sure they’re installed, Carvanso, and blasting so that they can hear me in their shameful wild animal sleep, so that they can hear me as they mount their wives, curse me and plot against me, as they insult me; at least make sure they can still hear me and let my voice deflower them, if they won’t love me at least they can fear me, know me, smell me.

“Yes, Mr. President.”

Rue des Toudonides, rue Whitman, rue Delaronzo: Eckerd Drugs, open till Midnight… his skeletal face starts to look like a mummy, he’s scouring the different districts, he can feel a tickle tickle in his hernia, hang in there Vauban and I’ll show you this country, fuck yeah: isn’t it great here! A light rain had started to fall, wetting his denim uniform, he shrugged his shoulders: ever since I got a taste of that White woman that’s all I want now, but tell me, old moldy dick Vauban: Why do you prefer men? And he launches into the anecdote about my war against Russia: eleven months in the rotten forest, without love, soulless, and I swear, Vauban, testicles are the next heart.

It was now Wednesday. The meeting got underway on time. You’re going to laugh, yes, for sure you are, because Colonel Martillimi Lopez made Africa and the rest of the world laugh too. No no and no again: I wouldn’t have seized your crappy power if my predecessor hadn’t taken it upon himself to piss all over the fatherland’s business, if he had just left you to starve to death rather than killing you off like rats, if he hadn’t squandered seventy percent of the budget on Russian scrap metal. Here, that’s the way things are — you visit any household you like at night and you’ll hear the story of the late Colonel Martillimi Lopez, Commander-in-Chief of love and fraternity, and each version will have its own tone, saliva, dates, places; each household will allow their imagination to run wild, but this is the true story of the life of Colonel Martillimi Lopez, the son of our National Mom, as it is told by those in my ethnic group, with their taste for myth, amidst gales of laughter, Mom’s very own Lopez who now lies in state in a stone casket in the National museum, his right eye permanently open, let him look at the fatherland for centuries to come, watch over us from his father’s rotting sleep, let him protect us from tyrants, his dead person’s gaze will continue to germinate in the memories of our children’s children, it is the very symbol of our past, God is great! And this dead eye that watches over us is a miniature of the nation. No more bullshit, my brothers and dear fellow countrymen: let us love Lopez. He was a hundred times better than Dolsano Maniana is today.

1. Sony Labou Tansi’s experimentation with language is a defining feature of his pioneering corpus of works. A range of devices are used, including subversions of well-known proverbs or translations of these from the original Lingala directly into French. Attempting to explain each and every translation choice would be futile. In this particular instance, however, the original French text read “L’eau chaude ne brûle pas le linge,” a direct translation from the Lingala “Mai ya moto etumbaka elamba te”—the closest equivalent phrase in English might very well be “Don’t let yourself be intimidated.”

~ ~ ~

“MY HERNIA IS SAD TODAY.”

He grabbed the sides of his baggy kaki shorts and hoisted them up toward his belly-button, rearranging his big greasy herniated balls in their sack that reeked of corn beer and mustard.

“My brothers and dear fellow countrymen, my hernia is sad today.” Not really sure why, but we applauded. That happens when you’re in a crowd: one person does something and everyone joins in. Long live Lopez, Long live National Mom! And he says it again: “My hernia is sad.” All of a sudden, I’m pretty sure, his handsome face looked much older.

“Ah, Mom! My hernia is sad. All because Cataeno Pablo, that shameful national, that sellout, but how could an insect like that Cataeno Pablo betray us in this way, how could he, how could he? Barely for the price of a tin of sardines, how shameful for us…”

Vauban, the head of personal security, stood at his side as he delivered his speech to the nation. His hernia was sagging, giving off a nauseating stench of eggplant and spices, scales were breaking out all over his body in protest at the sweltering heat, and there was also a hint of sugar and the aroma of wormwood, and a smattering of sour urine along with the musty vapors of his nocturnal juices, that kaki odor, a terrible noxious smell. He spoke loudly, our tricolor colonel did, barricaded off from his nights as national lover, conqueror of virgins! Let my people sing and dance: I adore them with the love of a mammal, Lopez one Tuesday night came directly into the world making mystical sounds, right in front of the Pope, and was then raised in poverty and total destitution, National Mom wiped his backside with a hemp rag, just regional Lopez at the time of Sanamatouff, then later Lopez of my ethnic group under Faramento, and today Lopez that my people sing and dance to, Lopez of my people who don’t want me to step down because of the prestige I embody, Lopez for peace, after all I gave the people back to the people, the world back to the world, Lopez aimed at swine like Cataeno Pablo, that miserable national who who who went into hiding with Laure and her mother, Cataeno Pablo whose meat we were going to distribute here today to those of you at this meeting, to you the national, and not to the you of expatriates who shamefully support the rebel command by handing them seventeen Mauser-52 rifles and eleven Sten guns. Come to think of it, is mister the diplomat in charge of the Belgian embassy and all its “flemishings” here today? Close down their diplomacy, close it down right now and take the first plane in the first direction, and if you don’t want to, in the name of Lopez, I’ll ship you to His Majesty of the shame of the “Flemish” who have always pecked at us, go ahead and close it down, and I’ll also ask the whole Flemish colony settled throughout my hernia to leave the sovereign territory and return to their native Flemishything, in the name of the Revolution, in the name of National Mom and in my own name too, and the same decision of my hernia goes for Italy, yes, my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, Italy has also been mixed up in Cataeno Pablo’s harebrained nationalist ideas, Italy, and Cuba as well: same crisis, same sanctions, and in two days time, my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, if you lay hands on a “Fleming,” Italian, or Cuban, you have my full p…, you have my full permission to waste him. To conclude, my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, I’m going to bring out five “Pablosard” rebels captured by the nation’s infantrymen, I’m going to have them come up to the mic, so that it’s not only my hernia making decisions. I’ll ask some questions, and you can decide as to the severity of their actions and the punishment they deserve. (A pause). My brothers and dear fellow countrymen, I’m being told there are in fact six and not five, bring them up. And my God National Mom, what do we have here? This young girl too? No no no: such a delicious creature, but why on earth mother? No no no this can’t be so! We’ve all witnessed his hernia swell when he gets angry, but the swelling quickly dissipated, now come closer my girl, but how on earth does a girl like that, barely twenty years old, with that kind of body, as juicy as they come, and those thighs my God, National Mom, oh my goodness, and those fleshy breasts, a girl who should be able to cage every man in her dreams, imprison every man in her vertiginous bodice and the magic of her thrusts, go figure my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, unless one has been badly fucked, as is often the case for most of the girls in the area near the lake. Just how is it that Flora and the Mona Lisa, brought together in this way, just how is it that such a beauty can come into the world… “Like this!” someone shouted out from the crowd. And just like that they were silenced for centuries upon centuries, and that’ll teach you to have big mouths and to use them as instruments of hate: get rid of the corpses and go ahead and tell your god-damn TVs that the President’s speech claimed several lives.

Under a sun that had become unhinged, in this very same Alberto-Sanamatouff Stadium, National Alberto Sanamatouff that the “Flemish” had incessantly pecked at, God rest his soul! Pecked to death through their local “Flemishings,” poor old Alberto, the former conqueror of regimes, Martillimi’s former father-in-law, former police chief of his hernia, proud member of the national bureau of hernia sufferers, former Special Representative of his very own hernia to the United Nations, the late-lamented Alberto Sanamatouff, national hero with no other heroism than his “herotic” capacities which, if truth be told, were closer to gushings, and the rumor goes around and around: what a horny devil! With his hellish aptitude for squirting, national tomcat known to all the country’s bitches and as you know, as we all well know: shameful lover of National Mom…

And he repeats the refrain: just how is it, that such a simple body, such a complete body, with the proportions of an angel, so physically blessed, a body that in the end is frightening because, my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, one can’t really tell where it begins and where it ends. He cradles his privates that are beginning to stir: easy now, we’re talking politics: you can’t chase after two sets of big balls at the same time. Check out that fine-looking ass won’t you, it’s as enchanting as a campfire. My brothers, such beauty is making me restless. He stuck his enormous hand into his pants and stroked his kaki sack: easy now, we’re talking politics. But “they” ignore their master’s instruction, and begin to undulate, trickle, to emit a smell because of this ready-made nudity before my eyes. And this is how far Cataeno Pablo has driven the nation: he wanted to turn our girls into weapons, “Over my dead hernia!” Ours is a land of peace and love, we’re a people made of love: don’t let them sell the skin from our hernias without having killed them first, and he cradles his hernia the same way he had on the day he asked Europe’s Cubans that are the British to go back to their small island of misfortune because you have become humanity’s biggest mark of shame, more so even than the Jews and the Armenians: you add fuel to the fire of my people. He stuck his hand back in his pants and unconsciously sniffed his fingers openly and for the whole crowd to see, come closer my girl: my dear sweet girl, in the name of the Revolution, in the name of the fatherland, in the name of all our mothers, you’re going to ask for the nation’s forgiveness. For the forgiveness of the earth that has given you everything, the forgiveness of martyrs and their families, of the Constitution and don’t let me forget a special forgiveness for France who helped us capture you, forgiveness also for Amerindia and for Poland, come closer to the mic because you’re going to ask for forgiveness as our ancestors did, your hands folded across your chest, your forehead touching the ground, I’m listening, and speak up so that Mom’s international news agencies who always misrepresent the events of my hernia can hear you loud and clear…

“But Colonel, she can’t speak.”

“What? Why not?”

“We cut off her tongue because that’s what the rebels do to us.”

“You’re teasing my hernia…”

“They cut off Colonel Touvanso Dieu’s, they cut off ex-Captain Honse’s, they cut off ex-Colonel Fouga’s mother’s tongue, they cut off the tongue of every soldier in Colonel Letanso’s battalion. And one day they’ll cut off National Mom’s.”

“My hernia’s blazing…”

“They cut off…”

“Shut the fuck up, Outranso…”

He flew into such a rage, just like he had last year when France celebrated July 14th right here and Mom’s my witness it’s the French who drove me to taking ex-comrade Armando Mundi! The same rage on November 11th when to my great shame the Germans slept with National Mom.

“I don’t understand the people around here: they all think they’re the President! Let me remind you: the President, that’s me. No no and no again: everyone behaves as if everyone were me, but why, why is that? Can’t you take the trouble to consult with me first?”

And he goes over to her: “Don’t worry, my dear girl, this earth is cannibalistic,” and he drapes his kaki jacket over her to conceal the nudity they’ve ruined but don’t worry I will take revenge. He tears up the supposed depositions made by your mothers; fear not, I will take revenge. He tears up your mothers’ official reports and the emblem of your mothers’ nation, and to hell with the support they’ve thrown out the window, I will take revenge. He rips up your mothers’ beret; I’m going to be a civilian again; he tears off his military stripes, plumes, and tassels, and Colonel Outranso where the fuck are you: present.

“You gave the order to cut off her tongue, I’m going to cut yours off too.”

“It wasn’t me, it was Darcanio.”

“Ah! Well, where’s Darcanio?”

“It wasn’t me, it was Lafondia.”

“Well, where the fuck’s Lafondia?”

“It wasn’t me it wasn’t me it wasn’t me ah ah ah!”

He began to strangle him. His eyes bulged bulged bulged. Then silence. Ever since everyone at the High Command thinks he became President… and now, what are you going to say to the foreign press, what are you going to say to the Pope and all those diplomats? What will you say to them? You’re going to, ah what a load of bullshit! He leaps at him again with that rage that pushes me to turn over power to civilians, he stamps on his testicles because you can’t be president after all and make those kind of decisions without my input and isn’t it those filthy beasts filling your head with these ideas, with your shameful business schemes but I’ll show you, you need people on this earth who know that a president, well, that a president can get angry too…. For God’s sake you should at least know what your male utensils are good for, at the very least, hold on I’m going to cut them off. But Colonel Carvanso steps in now, take it easy Mr. President sir.

“Ok, fine, I’m going to calm down but not before I’ve shown him how…”

He gently caresses his hernia. Soothes him. Hands him sugared almonds and he gobbles them down. Spoon feeds him a couple of scoops of mustard; easy now Mr. President.

“Ok Carvanso, I’m going to calm down.”

His chinchilla is brought in, he places it on his right shoulder and its tail sweeps the ground on the same spot where Lafondia drooled. They fetch his parrot Narka who is able to convert the rest of the speech into birdsong: “I oyo o io yo!” keeping the reference to his hernia in Mom’s mother tongue. In this same Alberto-Sanamatouff national stadium that the “Flemish” had pecked away at, still full to capacity, under the same broiling sun, the crowd still restless in that one section and the police should be doing their job rather than counting my big herniated balls before they hatch, with all those god-damn TVs aimed at his bitter writings, the sun warming his hernia my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, offering up for the mercy of my people this body the infantrymen ruined. Tears running down his cheeks. And we cry along with him because we know those tears.

“This flesh they have blinded.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“This body made of prime cuts of meat.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“It must be said that the world is a very nasty place.”

“Indeed, Mr. President.”

“But I’ll recast you as a monument… my dear tender girl, birthed into this world of the world, intoxicating girl who arouses my kaki juices. I’ll recast you woman, a place of worship, radiant flesh: that’s the decision of my hernia, you’ll be my wife. The bachelor life is over! The crowd at the stadium erupted in applause, but she started crying.

“Did you hear me, I’m going to marry her?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

An eleven-gun salute was fired across the capital and the city rose as one and shouted: “Yes, Mr. President.” And then silence. “Quiet, National Daddy is loving his wife.” No music. No traffic. The streets were empty. This lasted two days.

~ ~ ~

“WHY ARE YOU CRYING MY SWEET ANGEL? Here, have some mango, drink a little. You are in the palace. Wear this dress. Would you like to dance?”… He lavished her with jewelry and glee, showed her every nook and cranny of my hernia: he danced in front of her, sang her the songs of his people, and “I promise you I’ll love you just as I would have if you still had your tongue, here, have some of this fruit, drink some of this drink.” But she kept on crying.

He describes her: full mouth, savage mouth, aching, I’ll recast you as a monument, mother of the fatherland. He throws himself at her feet, go ahead and walk all over me if you like. I may be the President but my blood rushes to you: you see? And he tells her how they’ll never have a better president in this wretched world; I’m not like that Trimitti Lopez who used to hang them like poultry, or that Luigui Lafundia who used to skin them, and I’m not like Manuelio Samba who used to feed them to the leopards. He told her of the shameful day when Adamonso Liguas became a Pharaoh, but that, never, over my dead hernia. He started showing off my body that you can see before you with all the scars from my war against Russia, made sure the door was double-locked so that Colonel Vauban wouldn’t interrupt our afternoon nap. The metal bars. The columns. Impregnable stone walls. Cannons, tanks, big ball launchers. All these “utensils” you can see…. He gets out his fallacious hernia divorced from the salt and drool of his bachelor nights but there’s no longer any question of this. He bathes in eggplant, spices, roots, and leaves; they say it helps soothe hernias. He unloaded his father-of-the-nation juices on her, rotten juices that won’t give him a son: I don’t understand. He tells her all about Jacqueline Daras that the French sent to chop off his hernia but I forgave them. He explained how, and with whose support, my ex-right-hand man National Yallama attempted a coup d’état, but serves him right: he came up against the people. While he gives her the juices from my mother he explains how the Amerindians tried to throw power into the hands of the late Colonel Vanzio Pablo and my dear girl be good be goooooood. But she kept on crying. For three days and three nights he’s tried to console her with his cries and his juices.

“Hold on a second, I need to see National Mom or she’ll be worried.”

And Mom, here’s your child. He gives her a kiss and she starts crying. Don’t cry Mom, I’m safe. They aren’t going to harm me.

“Well they’re not plotting for nothing.”

“You know, Mom, I’m a good president. I was elected by the dead and the living, with 99.9 percent of the vote. Please Mom, no more tears. I’m in a hurry Carvanso, come and console her.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

He rushes back to her, tells her all about the national historic Colonel Fetranso, child of the nation, hero of the people, but the Germans really did a job on him, and ex-Colonel Fetranso almost became my wife, but you must be familiar with Vauban’s proverb: Live by herniated balls, die by herniated balls. I beg you, show me your teeth. As enchanting as a campfire. Show me your legs. Show me your heart. My God, you’re so beautiful. He tells her all about my first wife who cheated on me with everyone and I sent her on her way yes I did: I forgive everything except for indiscretions of the hernia. One evening I came home from the office and found her with Barbara Janco. “What are you doing here, Barbara Janco?” He turned around and I put six bullets in his hernia. He coughed up his traitor of the fatherland’s blood. But what about her, what am I to do with her? I’m out of bullets. I grabbed her neck and squeezed it, kept on squeezing, it was revolting and she puked up her dog’s life. Her corpse even crapped a big hot turd. But you, you’re a real hot one: let’s talk about your body, let’s talk about your teeth, let’s talk about that passionate throat of yours that unravels the world. He rushes over to the national radio station and announces his decision — I’m going to marry her—, he takes care of the invitations himself: France, the British Isles, the Russian president, those Flemishythings, the Pope. His guest list includes thirty-seven heads of state while my people start building the village of my hernia, I can’t get married in this great big shameful palace in which Tatarasho betrayed the nation by slaughtering all those people from my Ghozis ethnic group. He transfers seventy million to the newspapers and let’s talk about this event in historic terms. He signs an order proclaiming July 7th my official wedding day so that it is recorded that way in the archives, and then he comes back toward you my paradise, my heaven and my earth.

“You were there and no one wanted you. But now that I’ve chosen you, they will all want you.”

He tells her about Bamba Outificanso who betrayed me with a guitar player. And Léo Levourto who betrayed me with my cook. What is it you women are after? He told her how ex-Captain Canza had gotten the woman he loved like I love you pregnant. And do you know how I found out? One evening, when I felt like comforting her, I asked her to show me her breasts. I started fondling them and a white liquid came oozing out of her nipples. Aha! What are you going to name the child? Son of a bitch, what kind of a moron does she take me for? How did this happen, how: I haven’t seen you for thirteen months and now you’re pregnant. I was just back from my war against the communists. How did this happen?

“What are you talking about?”

My anger took over: I cut open her belly and showed her the umbilical cord.

“You women are all the same, that’s the truth; you don’t want us to confuse you with men. Do you know ex-Colonel Miguel Tournanso? What’s up with you, Carvanso, why do you come barging in like that unannounced?”

“Colonel, the nation is in danger: Ayelé Ayoko Tite has risen up and is bearing down on the capital.”

“How many men does he have with him?”

“No one really knows, Colonel.”

“Bring it on! My hernia is waiting for them. What’s a bunch of upstarts straight out of a shithole like Galzarra think they’re going do? Let them come.” Then he set off across the capital on his big white horse, dressed in the way Vauban dresses, his head held high, a hand held proudly across the chest. We prayed he would be killed during this military campaign and that our virgins would finally be safe from his hernia. Candles were now scarce in Zamba-Town: the people had exhausted the supplies. Cardinal Dorzibanso made a fortune from all the extra confessions he heard. I’m remembering all those huamani we burnt at night at all the crossroads, poor plant! We stopped eating meat on Fridays: “Let him die.” But he wasn’t going to die that easily.

He summoned ex-Colonel Carvanso to make it clear that he wanted the Zamba-Town — Maha railway line cleared for his big balls the week of the wedding; he called Cardinal Dorzibanso to inform him first-hand that you’ll be the one to marry us; he sent for his brother same father same mother to remind him to let the authorities know that highways 1, 2, 3, and 4 should be open for my hernia to use, let the Italians know while you’re at it that the Three-Continents Hotel should be at my disposal, as well as the beach at Valtaza-Diego; he instructed the Minister of Dough to give National Mom three hundred and twelve million for the catering and to set aside the same amount again for the wedding attire and consorts.

Now hurry up with the preparations. He paraded his hernia up and down the hallways of the presidential palace to check that everyone was hard at work. Hurry up now will you! Ha, if I was Darbanso I’d have you shot at the first opportunity! And what if I were like Manuel Lansio who took the precaution of having two cooked as a way to ensure the third was giving his all! But I’m a good president and you take advantage of that to climb in my pants. Where the fuck is Razo Fansa?

“Right here Mr. President sir.”

“I’ve never quite understood why that parking facility of yours never has the right number of cars available for my hernia to use, but if you stumble this time, you’re a dead man.”

He has a word with his cousin Martillimi Lavouza who’ll never fully understand why he isn’t president yet, but if you mess up this time I’ll shove the PA system down your throat. He has a word with the Minister of Audiovisuals and National Mom because I’m begging you Mom none of your mommy handmade official invitations, this is how you hold a fork, and the knife this way, the drinking glass like this, hold your napkin in this way and I’m begging you Mom no stuffing your face like a pig, and no grazing like a cow at the table: just remember you’re the President’s mom.

He drops in on Simone des Bruyères, my babe from Vauban’s country, to explain to her why I’m getting married but my heart is still with you I won’t stop loving you with an irreproachable love, you are as beautiful as the sun and as copper.

“I want to hear you say I am even more beautiful.”

“You are as beautiful as the papaya fruit in my garden.”

“Even more beautiful.”

“You are as beautiful as the day I was born.”

Mother from Vauban’s country. Who knows how she came into the world. Love me in the way people love in your country. He buries his face in her bosom and laps up the droplets that have started running. Show me that the world over is still in the world. Be good. And he plants his fallacious hernia in her.

“Gently now, Mr. President.”

“You can’t make love properly by being gentle. Be strong. Don’t be fragile like they are in my colleague’s country. I’m handling you in the way we do around here. You see, you see?”

He goes and has a few words with Colonel Isidro who spends the nation’s money like he sprays his juices about. He reviews his calendar: Thursday night: rue de la Buomba; Saturday night: Payadiso; Sunday night: the Arcades…. He goes to say good night to his little Indian babe you should have tasted her Isidro, sober as you are, you would have given up looking for other women: she handles you like no other. That Senegalese girl Sey is a good fuck too, if only you’d tried her…. He has a shot of sowassi to give him a little boost. This wedding’s the chance to get drunk like my people do. He eats and then vomits. Tell me what my people are saying, Comrade Carvanso, anything.

“They say you’re a good president. But you’re marrying the one who tried to kill you.”

“That’s true, Carvanso: she’s beautiful in a way no other woman has ever been. She’s the Queen of Sheba. Have you seen the hips on her?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“I’ll take her thrusts anytime.”

He turned away from Carvanso and took a nice long piss in a flower vase just like my people do, splashing urine on his kaki legs, fermented urine.

“You know, Carvanso, I don’t see how the consumption of pussy can possibly interfere with the smooth running of the affairs of the state.”

“You’re right, Mr. President.”

“You must have heard about Louis XIV, and you know Vauban — well, those guys had all kinds of mistresses, and I’m telling you, Carvanso, screwing is the next heart of humanity.”

“Yes, Mr….”

This god-damn country where the president is expected to do everything himself. He heads over to see National Thoulouse, also known as Vauban, head of personal security:

“Is everything alright?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

Since no one is currently engaged in anti-national activities, I head out to the districts to see my people. Without an escort: Vauban though isn’t far behind, but don’t let anyone see you. And he disguises himself as a peasant so that he won’t be recognized and to see what the people are saying about him. He mingles with a group of construction workers and shuffles along with them, trampling the mud and dirt under foot. No one takes any notice of him. He overhears them bickering, singing, and speaking badly about his hernia, saying awful things about National Mom for giving us such a shameful son, National Mom who’s still fornicating at her age; they talk about that bastard Colonel Carvanso, of his brother who stashed the National finances away over in Switzerland as if we had no need for money; they speak badly of the infantrymen who have no shame or modesty pissing on the nation the way they do…. Blending in with the masses, he just goes along with them, joins in the singing. He’s surrounded himself with a bunch of rascals. Nevertheless he sings:

If I were a little little mouse

I’d go digging in his big greasy hernia

If I were a little little cat

I’d go hunting in his hernia

If I were a little little flea

I’d choose his hernia…

He sings the chorus with them. His denims are now covered in mud, his heavy artillery dangling about to the pace and rhythm of the tune; those who come over to fetch the mud for the hut they’re building are picking up the tune.

“My people are beautiful when they sing.”

And he starts singing louder than the rest, introducing words from the national anthem. One guy bawls him out, because who the hell gets the mortar ready with work boots on. But he keeps on singing and steps on the guy who then hurls mud at him. He’s got mud all over him, in his nostrils, his ears, his hair.

“Who the hell told you to get the mortar ready with your boots?”

A big muscular guy knocks him down in the mud and they all laugh at him.

“What’s the deal with this guy, he’s dumber than a woman’s backside!”

And only then do they catch a glimpse of his hernia and they’re mortified.

“It’s… it’s the President!”

They see themselves at the gallows, facing the firing squad, the infantrymen on their knees with their rifles to the ready waiting for the order.

“It’s… it’s the President!”

That was enough to send them scurrying off in different directions shouting, “It’s the President!” Those who couldn’t run away threw themselves before him, on their knees, shaking, licking his big greasy herniated balls; they’re in tears, begging for mercy.

“This won’t happen again. It’s Larso Laura’s fault for misleading us, it was his song mercy mercy mercy for the sake of our children; it’s Larso Laura who’s against you…”

“You have nothing to fear, I’m the forgiving kind. Because I’m a good president. I’m not like Alto Maniana who used to hang you like monkeys. And anyway, that song is beautiful. And in any case, you can’t stage a coup d’état with clay. You can’t seize power with songs.”

And he massages his hernia.

“I’m not like Sadrosso Banda who put stuff in the eggplant. Nor am I like that Manuelo de Salamatar who drank your blood to make him feel like he was in the world. Almost a gallon of blood every night.”

They’re singing, but in his honor this time. He shuffles along with them until lunchtime. Then he heads back to his jeep, drenched in mud, and no way I’m washing it off, I’ll get married as you see me now. That’s my gift from the people. Where the hell are you, Colonel Thoulouse, oil-rubbed bronze, gray eyes, blonde hair, 5 feet 9 inches tall, lasting symbol of my long and tumultuous cooperation with Europe, 210 pounds of brain and muscle at my disposal, a pederast (every country has its own monuments), and goes home to give National Mom a kiss, you see Mom how the people love me. He teaches her the words to the beautiful song they sang in his honor. The heavens have not been good to him: but they did let him hold on to a lovely national male voice, the beautiful eyes of a wild animal, and his shiny white teeth and goatee. Then, without undressing, his boots still on, grubby, he pounced on his presidential bed and fell like a lion into a deep sleep, sleeping on his seventy-five medals from the war on communism, his hands tightly clenched, fly unbuttoned, a real muddy caiman crocodile, teeth poking out, right hand on his gun, stinking of eggplant beer, snoring.

“I want to get married in this outfit.”

National Carvanso tries to convince him otherwise:

“But Mr. President sir, the Whites will mock you. They’ll mock you for sure. Reporters will take advantage of this.”

“But Carvanso, the Whites can mock me as much as they like: their very own Louis XIV only washed a handful of times and that was the life of Louis XIV, and then there’s Vauban, and Frederic II. He fell into his historian’s laughter to describe Catherine of Russia who…”

“But Mr. President, I’m convinced they’ll mock you, it’s in your nostrils, all over your ears.”

“It’s the mud of the people. Let them mock me. Africa must remain Africa. Yes, Africa must give the world back to the world.”

And so, covered in mud, he walked the route past the invited delegations and their representatives. Everyone applauded. He shakes hands with His Majesty of the Flemish and embraces him in the way of the ancestors, leaving some historic mud on him; then the hand of Her Majesty the Princess of Denmark in the way of the ancestors, leaving some historic mud on the back of her royal costume; he embraced all the friends of the people in the way of the people and with the gift of his historic mud. Hey, it’s you, my colleague from the neighboring country, and he lets him have some of the people’s mud. You can see a faint smile on the face of the people with all these illustrious guests getting a dose of his hernia and local mud on them, on this historic day when I’m marrying the most beautiful girl on earth. And then the delegation makes its way to the exact site where National Mom buried my placenta and no bullshit: this is now a place of worship; then from there on to visit the cathedral my hernia erected thanks to the Good Lord. Next they boarded a plane and headed four hundred and thirty-five miles north of my hernia to see where I will be buried….

Cardinal Dorzibanzo, who’s refusing to marry me, is brought in. “Untie him and let him get to work!”

“Mr. President, Dorzibanso says he can’t.”

“Why the heck not?”

With his torn cassock, bloody eyes, hands tied, his mitre all wrinkled, they bring him before his hernia.

“I’ll cut your dick off if you fail me on this.”

Ex-Cardinal Dorzibanso asks if, for better, for worse, his hernia wants to take this girl.

“But Dorzibanso, the worst has already happened since the infantrymen cut off her speech utensil; they cut off her kissing instrument.”

He gives him his yes, his historic yes and here’s her yes, yes for me and yes for her.

“Historic Colonel, Your Excellency, I can’t bless this union.”

“Watch out Dorzibanso, my hernia is about to explode.”

He looked at him with astonishment and said it again: I can’t do this.

“You’re going to come up against my hernia. And believe me, it won’t be like banging on butter, so you’d better watch out: my intestines are growling. You’re stirring my kaki nerves and the shame I feel in front of the Whites who’ll think I’m no longer the supreme master in my own house. Now just get on with it and bless this union or be prepared to die from this national anger that I can feel swelling. Show some respect for my meat stick that’s bowing here before your God.”

“Mr. President, I can’t bless this union, not with this girl here who’s crying when she should be smiling. The Church would be ashamed, our Lord would die a second time of shame. Because, Mr. President, Christ is watching me and I can’t go pounding shit into the scars left by the nails; I can’t give him piss instead of water.”

“Dorzibanso, don’t go remaking the Lord in your image. No no and no again: there’s no trifling with the bites of a hernia.”

He kneels down as he would before the Lord, and begs him: “Dorzibanso, my cheek held out for you, for the love of thy neighbor, if you don’t want to chow down on my herniated balls in seven sessions,” and then he switches his tone: “You can’t do this to me; remember how you became a cardinal with the support of dick, ah, my hernia is sad! We’ve always been good friends, friends and brothers, try and understand.”

But there was nothing to be done, this leech won’t go along with him, he mimics the voice, he says things in National Mom’s mother tongue and amen! The people answer, amen. Folks didn’t seem aware this was a hoax. He paraded his hernia around, his chest tinkling with the medals he had won fighting Russia who came to sell my hernia ideas rather than feeding my people. Ha, my people: we have here the proverbial truth of that The voice don’t make the man.

Dorzibanso was locked away after the church ceremony to make sure no one would find out the secret of the Mass said in Mom’s mother tongue. Then came the big night and the gala where he danced with Princess Honglanni leaving behind his trail of strong sweat and smearing her with mud. He also danced with Colonel Domingo Pinto’s ex-wife and smeared the people’s mud on her too, as he did with the mayor of Zamba-Town’s ex-wife, and Her Majesty the Queen of the Flemish; he danced with all those invited by my hernia and smeared them all with the people’s mud.

“This earth will accompany me to the grave.”

He also offered General de Laborderie, my first wife’s father, the people’s mud. As he danced the dance of my people, he distributed mud to all the men. By three in the morning, his hernia really started to reek. Truly nauseating vapors. Enough to make you puke. Stomach-churning. The scales on his sweltering herniated balls secreted a revolting stench. Stale juices. As he danced the dance of my people, a loincloth fastened around the waist, his hernia began to stink in that historic way, giving off a rotten nitrous odor. His brochette of medals chimed away. He sang in honor of my colleague whose country came later than ours. After the big feast and binge drinking where he got loaded the way the people do, he collapsed in an armchair right there in the middle of the party, both hands gripping his hernia.

“Don’t disturb him.”

In shirtsleeves, buttons in the wrong hole, holding his socks, National Carvanso comes to let him know that Mr. President sir your new spouse has hanged herself.

“What do you mean hanged?”

“Yes, Mr. President, she has hanged herself.”

“I… I don’t understand. What language are you speaking, Carvanso?”

“She killed herself.”

“My herniated balls have dropped.”

He thinks aloud just how magical last night was. As enchanting as a campfire. We danced together. I listened to her heart beating against my chest. Ha, that tempestuous shape of a body. Tender and made in the likeness of a goddess. With lips that incite fear and lunacy. There she stood, well-calculated, designed in the very image of my hernia. With her milk-filled breath, child of my own knotted breath. What do you mean hanged? Is what you’re saying there true? He sheds real tears the way we do, and it was clear he loved her. He’s been bawling for the past six days, drowning in tears and snot, hasn’t touched his food, his eyes are covered because I can still feel but I would never dare look at her corpse. Three times now he’s tried to kill himself over your body that’s punishing me. Each time our brother Carvanso got there just in time. Colonel that I like to call Vauban consoles him. National Mom consoles him.

“I let her have the very best copy I had of my soul.”

While the infantrymen were busy handing out black armbands to the people at three hundred coustrani each for the period of mourning, ah National Mom I’m inconsolable: he sets off to Italy, France, and Gainesville on a journey of mourning, ah good God I’m inconsolable! He accompanies her glass hearse all the way to the foot of Mount Fuji…. Ah! Then he heads to Tahiti.

“What do you mean, but what do you mean hanged? I gave her everything: my hernia, the nation, my heart, my strength… I gave her everything, and I mean everything. I even threw myself at her feet like a big mistake.”

When he returned home, brother Carvanso brought Camizo Diaz before him, who along with thirty-six mutinous infantrymen revolted, such incredible cowardice. To attempt to take power when I’m away, you see how the mice play here? And who’s at the head of this mousetrap, no other than that Camizo Diaz whom I personally went and found at the other end of the fatherland, who didn’t have the slightest idea in those days as to how to eat a sausage. I promoted him to Sergeant, then raised him to Captain then to Colonel just like everyone else, and this is the thanks I get. And just look at him standing there all naked my brothers and dear fellow countrymen. What more does he have than my hernia?

That section of the crowd that always makes things harder than they need to be shouted out: “The hernia,” and Mom’s Lopez burst out laughing: “That’s it, I’m better now.” And he orders Carvanso to cut off Colonel Camino Diaz’s speech instrument, go ahead and preserve him in formaldehyde, and have him put up on the wall in my bedroom next to the portrait of Mom, just below the portrait of my late wife Atélu-Léa, who died for the fatherland, hanged by those fucking idiots who wanted me to believe that she hanged herself but what do you mean hanged? Now please, let’s get the investigation underway.

~ ~ ~

WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE if I’d been like Yao Tananso, who would call the Nation’s Council to an urgent meeting for just about any bullshit reason like when my cousin Zozo Portes Luna “slept” my other cousin Argento Comma’s wife? I’m not like Dimitri Lamonso who moved the capital to his mother’s village. I’m Lopez, National Mom’s son, nothing like Lazo Lorenzo who stuffed three cases of pre-filled ballots down the villagers of Yam-Yako to teach them how to vote. What I offer you is the only country in the world where democracy still means something. You get to ask all the questions, and I get to give you the answers; after all, you’ve had your Lan Domingo who hid the public treasury under Mom’s bed, and that faggot Cornez Caracho who gave all the ministers syphilis. Barça Baldi was the one who started all the financial crimes around here, and didn’t you go and make him a national hero? And I’m not like that Valso Paraison who took fifteen years in power to take hold of power. The soccer match opposing Juven National and Anzcox will take place right after the speech, or none of you shitheads would have come to the meeting. You love sport and that’s how I got you, and that’s enough bullshit for Christ’s sake! Then he makes his way back to the palace, on foot, to show everyone that the people have never been against him. Trailed by Vauban, a personal gift from my colleague, in charge of the investigation into the murder of my wife and head of security. He laughs at the thought of poor old Vauban who prefers men even though the whole country is swarming with women who want nothing more than my juices, Vauban with his worn-out backside, he laughs, never, I’ll never be like him. And he explains that if the Amerindians became what they are, it’s first and foremost because they knew how to handle women.

“What’s the latest with the investigation?”

“We arrested a certain Laure and the Panther.”

“Good.”

“But it would seem, Mr. President, that your life is in danger.”

“I want to see the prisoners.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

He takes a closer look at the prisoner: “I don’t recognize him.”

“But National Colonel, it’s him.”

Handcuffs rubbing against the bone. No skin, no eyes, no lips, no ears, and no more hernia. “I don’t recognize him.”

“How could you do this to him?”

“He would have done the same thing to you, Colonel, if he had taken power and things had been the other way around.”

“Ah, all right then! How are you doing, Campalousca?”

“I’m doing well, Mr. President sir.”

“Ah, all right then! But you’ve lost your skin. You should have known better than to mess with power.”

“Mr. President, you know as well as I do that everything on this earth ends up hurting you.”

“Why don’t you shut the fuck up, Campalousca: you’re hardly in a position to be giving lessons. And I never asked you to go off and fornicate with those Amerindians. You wanted to die, well now you’re going to.”

This is when Colonel National Jescani entered with some very bad news Mr. President. “Speak, Jescani.”

“Speak now, will you.”

“I need to speak with you in private, Mr. President.”

“Don’t worry about Campalousca; he’s a dead man.”

“Even the dead should not hear what I’m about to say.”

“Ok.”

And so he chased the Colonel he likes to call Vauban out of the room, and he chased National Mom and Carvanso out of the room too. He chased my griot National Thanassi out of the room; now speak Jescani, we’re alone.

“Mr. President, the good lord is preparing a coup d’état: because Cardinal Dorzibanso went underground with all those wretched demons from the Sixty-Five prison. Alas, Mr. President: they’ve gathered in front of the old Sáo Juano Cathedral, singing, and threatening to go on a hunger strike.”

“How many of them are there?”

“Maybe as many as sixty thousand.”

“They are anti-people: kill the whole bloody lot of them!”

“Yes, Mr. President. But keep a close eye on Carvanso: we came across a rough draft of a handwritten letter at his place. Here it is.”

Jescani hands him the piece of paper. He says my hernia is sad. Everyone wants to seize power. And he collapses into an armchair. Why are people like this in this country? Aha! That’s Carvanso’s handwriting for sure. But I’ll let him come to me. He lacks imagination: he wants to be a hero of the fatherland, but trust me, his imagination’s not worth ten coustrani. It’s always the same with these dickless idiots; they think they can solve every problem with a drop of saliva.

He gets up and walks over to the mirror, takes a long hard look at himself before taking another look at the letter that my hernia got hold of at brother Carvanso’s place. No no and no again: you should know better than to mess with words. He looked away quickly, almost as if the sight of his own face made him feel sick.

“I don’t get it: even Carvanso wants to overthrow me. He goes to stand in front of a portrait of himself, strokes his big shameful hernia that nature stuck there between my thighs. Fitted frock coat, top hat, medals, gold tassels. Cane in hand. The other hand resting on a child’s head. In his mind, this child symbolizes the nation.”

“What a damn fool.”

Even when I’m right there wearing the outfit of the people. With this body of the people. They can still take me out. Ah, what a load of bullshit. Guzzled by the nation and guzzled by these stupid big herniated balls that get in the way of my old hose. But I, Mom’s Lopez…. Any other time he would have instructed Vauban or Carvanso to bring him to me and have him explain what’s written here…. Have him come and explain it with his own drool. So that I could hear him first-hand with my own ears and see him with my own eyes. Ungrateful bandit I even trusted with managing my hernia, managing my conscience. And still, still he wants to overthrow me.

“What a damn fool.”

And if only I didn’t care for him. If I didn’t consider him the obverse of my hernia. But no, I’m not his colleague from the country across the way who sends his opponents off on a helicopter ride with strict instructions for the pilot. I’m not like that other colleague in the country across the way who fornicates with the ministers’ wives. I’m human. I respect you all. And that’s the thanks I get? You killed my National aunt and what did I do to you? I could have hanged the lot of you. You even killed my National wife.

“What do you think, Jescani?”

Brother Jescani shakes his head and says that Mr. President sir, you’re a good president.

“Fine, but what good is that, you still take advantage of me and go waving your male utensils in my face. Now things will be different and I’m going to fire into this mayhem and tough luck for those who perish.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

He adjusts his hernia and heads out in the direction of Yambi-City where I had a villa built for my little French lady, a nice White woman who’s turning out to be as good as two real Black ones in the business of my hernia. He sets out without any god-damn escort and go ahead and kill me if you so please, I’ve had enough enough enough! We’re not going to run the fatherland as you’d operate a dick. What’s wrong with this country in which people refuse to understand that they’re not the president? From now on I’ll treat you as you deserve to be treated. He spent three days and three nights over at Evelyne Ollayat’s place, French woman of my entrails, as spicy as they come; ah Jescani, if only you’d have gotten a chance to taste her. Ah, Mom’s Vauban, if you’d been able to taste her, old rusted Vauban who prefers men, what a load of bullshit that is! He tells them the story everyone’s heard before, long before my hernia, when a loser like Berthanio became a Pharaoh, and when he made up his mind in the full light of day that the national flag would be kaki. Ah dear Mom, this country has come a long way.

“Mr. President, we found poop in your bed; looks like Laure and the Panther was behind this.”

He rushes over to see. Mother of Mom! And there, right there for all to see, on top of the photo of the girl, right in the very middle of the bed, lay a steaming blood-stained turd, with undigested stems of wild fruits protruding everywhere. He stares at this odious turd, studded with peanuts and peppers.

“Am I dreaming?”

“I’m afraid not, Mr. President. What you see there is Laure and the Panther’s shit.”

“And what the fuck are the infantry guards up to? What in God’s name are they doing? Ah, this time I’ve really had it. And he summoned us all before him: the whole Council of Ministers of my hernia, the female representatives of the national unions for women, youth representatives, the representatives of the High Command of my hernia may God curse all of you. He summoned us all before this anger that’s eating me up, diplomats, the Apostolic Nuncio, representatives from the police as well as the gendarmerie, writers, musicians, painters, and no question of leaving anyone out, he summoned us before his kaki heart, and hurry up, the Companions of the People’s Action Committee, as well as representatives from friendly countries, along with the entire Supreme Committee for National Democracy. And he checks:

“Who’s missing?”

“Everyone’s here, Your Excellency.”

“Good. Now go ahead and take your damn power. I’m going back to the village to grow macaronis.”

He grabbed his eleven pairs of kaki pants, his eleven pairs of slippers, his other pair of work boots and his thirteen Phrygian caps; he picked up all thirteen hundred medals won fighting the communists, the machete Mao Zedong had personally given him and loaded it all into his small truck himself because I see how much you envy the President, he takes his gas lantern, his two mattresses that we had to keep in the palace library; he picks up National Mom’s mortars, I can see how envious you all are, the pestles, a millstone, his flask, a gas can, go ahead and take your damn power! He tied up his sheep, chickens, rabbits, hummingbirds, his parrot, his three ducks, go ahead and take your damn power, as he takes down the photos of the girl and those of Mom, he gathers his brooms, he tears up the official document from his oath of office! He tears up the decree that placed him at the head of this chaos of chaos, he tears down the portraits of all your mothers hanging all over the palace walls, he tears out all the pages signed by your mothers in the presidential guestbook. This is when we realized he really meant it, that this wasn’t a joke like when National Louvendo threatened to leave, and we threw ourselves at his feet, joined our hands together, and started begging him:

“Mr. President, Your Excellency, please don’t leave. You’re a good president. You’re the country’s honor and peace. We started licking his big fat greasy acetylene-drenched herniated balls. Mr. President, please don’t go. Please don’t go, Colonel.”

“Give me one reason why I should stay.”

“Yes, Mr. President. It has been said that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

And that’s when we caught a glimpse of him again, with Vauban right behind him, at daybreak, making his way down what we called Ofmybigballs Hill, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush for sure. We saw him again, Vauban right behind him, Vauban who still loved Africa in spite of his skin color, jogging along now, his fly unbuttoned, we watched him open the letter in which the new head diplomat from my colleague’s country across the way presented his credentials and you see Vauban they can’t do without us. He reappeared at Alberto Stadium, his fly unbuttoned, electrocuting the crowd and making his presentation with his hernia: “The earth will no longer be the earth; it’s up to us to get by and figure out how to live on it.” He started dancing the dance of my people, eating the people’s food, and no more bullshit: I’ll drink what they drink. And with brother National Robondia, the Minister of Zippers, shadowing him, we caught sight of him making his way over to District 45 and bringing down those shacks in which women were sprawled out on mats selling their wares. And you should all join me in this task; instead of selling yourselves on the black market, you should make an effort to ensure that men grant you a more honorable place on earth than in these brothels. But you can’t help yourselves, so much so that we all saw what we saw when my hernia decided the first time around to close down these shameful houses where you were all busy selling your butts. By will or by force I’ll make sure you end up where you belong on this earth. No no and no again: you are not politeness utensils, you are not mere items for consumption: the heart of the earth lies in your entrails, and so, throughout the sovereign territory of my hernia, no more giving women the meaning they give to their bodies.

He gives ex-brother Carlos as a striking example, who gave his life the meaning of his gonads and, well, you all know how he ended up. And he gave the striking example of ex-Cardinal Jullianno Moussa whose privates gave meaning to his life and, well, you saw how far that got him. And there’s also the example of my colleague in the country across the way who went and gave his queen gonorrhea and, well, let’s not get into that, and you all know how they took revenge…

It was at this time that we spotted several trucks heading toward Vatney, the seat of power. We assumed they were carrying weapons and ammunition from Amerindia. But nothing could have been further from the truth. They were in fact transporting mustard supplies. It took us quite a bit of time and science to figure this out: jars of mustard with his portrait on them, made by my new mother-in-law’s very own family in Haute-Savoie, because they’re going to poison me if I’m not careful. He had just taken Mom’s decision that henceforth I would only eat this mustard, I’m done with the dishes my people eat, done with those drinks your mothers prepare and with which you tried to get me.

~ ~ ~

I GAVE THE ORDERS TO THE FIRING SQUAD that executed brother Esperancio. We had to get out of town. He was speaking. I didn’t want to listen to him, but I still overheard what he was saying. I can still hear those words. He started by saying: “God is not serious.” Then he repeated it over and over. Almost as if he was trying to convince me.

“Man, ah man, what a fragile creature. Armanda will find another man. They’ll live happily ever after. Without me. Far from me. I’m jealous of those who will live on after me. Without me. Far from me. It’s almost as if they’re taking something from me. But I’m not sure I would be able to say what exactly.”

It’s that time of day when the early morning fog appears. I went to his cell and handcuffed him.

“Ah, they chose you for this?”

Truth was, I’d chosen myself. Because I didn’t want them to chop him up into little pieces like they had done with Colonel Diégo Corso, I didn’t want them to tear him in half like they had Dorzibanso. I looked at him: he looked sad, with blurry eyes, a silly grin on his face.

“Are we there yet?”

“Yes, we’ve arrived.”

“Well get it over with then.”

He seemed distracted. Then he lowered his head. He said he was jealous of those who will live on. But this time he was speaking to himself. While his buddies were busy digging the hole he’d have to drop into I tried to think about something else.

“Why did they choose you for this?”

He had to ask several times. He needed an answer. But what could I say? He wouldn’t let it go. There was no ill intent: surely he must know that the dead are more fortunate than the living.

“Now don’t go telling me you volunteered for this?”

“But I did.”

“Well, I never!”

I have nothing to say to him. After all, he’s dying in a position of strength. I probably could have given him an answer. Have explained myself. That way he would have died in peace. Alas! How can I tell him now? I could have made him feel like a comrade right up to the very end. He asked for a cigarette. I’d never seen him smoke. Never. And in principle this wasn’t allowed. I let him have one anyway. He inhaled without looking up. I reminded him a priest was available in case he needed one.

“God is more serious than you are: he wouldn’t disrespect a comrade in this way.”

He asks for another cigarette, but this time smokes it with his head raised. He’s clearly enjoying it.

“So what are we waiting for?”

Does he expect a response or was this just a way of breaking the silence?

“By the way, that hole’s not deep enough.”

“Ah, Ok.”

He seems to handle his words differently than he used to. I don’t remember him being like this. He holds his hand out for another cigarette: we’re out of them.

“You know, it’s not that easy being the one sentenced to death. It’s much harder than you could ever imagine. And you can’t even tell me what I did to you. And of all people, you’re the one volunteering for this bullshit: what exactly did I do to you?”

The guys digging the hole signal that it’s now deep enough. It breaks my heart. I can’t do this.

“You gotta be brave. We’re all the same. If it were me I would have gotten it over with quickly. Most likely would have botched things up. Make sure you do a good job. Be brave!”

He climbed up onto the mound. I thought he was going to turn his back on us as his uncle had done, shouting out, “Shoot me in the back now, you bunch of cowards!” He stared down the firing squad. Do you want a blindfold?

“No, gentlemen.”

“How about a blessing?”

“Why do you insist on disrespecting God in this way?”

The guys are ready. All they’re waiting for now are my orders. I can’t get the words out.

“Attention! Ready: aim!”

Everything’s ready, my God everything’s ready. Goodbye Esperancio. I want things to be over with quickly. But I just can’t do it. I’ve lost my voice. Esperancio can see I’m choked up and smiles. He was the one to shout “fire” and the guys fired. He fell down. Blood everywhere. We’ve all seen blood before. But not this blood. All the bullets hit him in the heart. What an exercise! They left a big opening in his back. I closed his eyes. So shameful. So vile. I’ve killed in Algeria with Leclerc, I’ve killed in Lorraine, I’ve killed in Vietnam: that’s our god-damn job: to kill over and over again. Look at the blood disappearing. And now which war will you wage, old buddy? You’ll be old one day. They’ll send you packing with anachronistic medals. Your body riddled with gout. Unless they kill you like this: aim, fire! And you drop to the ground face down in the dirt. He feels like he’s about to puke.

“It’s almost cowardly to come into the world when the die is cast. Most of you were still breastfeeding when the real business went down. Those of us who are older asked for and obtained Independence, and you have no idea what sacrifices we made, and as thanks all you want to do is execute us. Take a good look at history. I’m the last of a dying breed. There should be a ban on people under fifty holding public office.”

Ah, on this September morning. He was having his morning dose of Bénédicta mustard, straddling his little French woman Evelyne Ollayat with his big kaki privates, as furry as ever, and those shiny white teeth we were all so fond of poking out. They announce the arrival of Colonel Juano Jeriano Ombra.

“Tell him to wait a few minutes.”

“Mr. President, he says it’s urgent.”

“He’s not the president, I am.”

Without warning he enters the room. And there he is: drenched in his hateful and angry sweat, no longer wearing his eternal uniform, his eyes bloodshot just like his father’s were when he was alive, disheveled hair, buttons undone, Colonel Ombra, a disgrace, standing in front of me with lint from his bedding and smears from last night in his beard, I don’t understand, and, Mom, his fly wide open but what on earth has gotten into you? You’ve even managed to put your slippers on the wrong feet.

“Mr. President, here’s my resignation letter.”

“But what’s going on Jeriano Ombra; why are your eyes bloodshot, but Mr. President, here’s my resignation letter.”

“But what resignation? I trust you, hold you in esteem and you have everything you could possibly hope for at your disposal: money, cars, villas.”

“There’s no going back, Mr. President, I’m here to hand you my resignation because one day, we will have to leave the country to the children of the children of our children.”

He sets the letter down and leaves. Fine: I’ll find someone willing to…. Then they announce the arrival of Colonel Fonsio, National Minister of Infantrymen, and I’m handing you my resignation because we will have to leave the country to the children of the children of our children. Then they announce the arrival of Colonel Tounga, and I’m handing you my resignation, and he sets down his letter and takes off without even turning around to check whether my hernia is about to leap on him, at which point Lieutenant-Colonel Vansio Fernandez enters to hand in his resignation because we will have to leave the country to the children of the children of our children but not in this shameful state, and even you my son Giovanno Lanza, followed by my son Fentas Manuello Couba, and you my son that I appointed general only the day before yesterday, and you, and you and you? One by one the whole government appeared before my hernia to leave the country to the children of the children of our children of my shame, what a woeful lot! And all the military leaders who want to leave the country to the children of the children of our children, same for my fourteen fortune-tellers, my twelve cooks, Aunt Outézo Jelia, both uncles, and my sixty-seven illegitimate children. His office now looks like a garbage can, every kind of paper, every color, crumpled, crossed out, chewed up, anxiously torn up, grubby, but we want to leave the country to the children of the children of our children. His throat swells with anger. I don’t understand the people around here. National Mom came to comfort him. But he sees Jescani enter: they close their eyes.

“No, anyone but you, Jescani.”

“That’s right, Mr. President. Anyone but me. You and I gave birth to the nation. I am with you.”

National Letanso appears holding onto a piece of wrapping paper dripping in sauce, stinking of butter and onion, covered in scribble done with an eyeliner pencil, and Mr. President I’m handing you a collective statement of resignation from the guards who’ve decided to leave the country to the children of their children. He pulls up his zipper so that his twelve mistresses can pass before him with their kids tightly wrapped on their backs, Glézani leading the way, her face flushed with anger, drooling, haggard, as if she hadn’t brushed her hair in years, hands shaking with contempt, a resolute look in the eye, she couldn’t stop the tears from running:

“Why are you crying, Glézani, my love?”

“Mr. President, here is our resignation. Here it is.” Soaked with snot, all chewed up by the rats that have infested the palace, she hands it over to him with the same hand she washes her genitals with. “Can’t you use the other hand?” No question of changing hands. This says what it says. And just like that, he was handed one resignation after the other all day long, and National Jérica came and threw a letter right in my face, but don’t worry, I will take revenge. Do as you please, I’m the one in a position of strength. If fifteen thousand guys have to be shot so that another fifteen thousand can live, so be it! “And you of all people, Jérica, that I picked up on a street corner. Alas, on this earth, no one owns anyone. You would have died of hunger and scabies out there in the bush.” Toutansio hands him the resignation from the mayor’s office. And Savouansi Luigi Portes comes in with the resignation that’s preventing us from getting electric power tonight. And yet, that’s also right when Carvanso came in with a handful of infantrymen who’d joined forces with Vauban’s men.

“Colonel, we’ve remained loyal to you and together we will subdue the traitors.”

“Ok.”

We’ve retaken control over the radio station Ok we’ve retaken the prison Ok we’ve retaken the armament store Ok we’ve retaken the June 11th camp.

“God is with us.”

We’ve retaken Gatansi Bridge we’ve retaken the train station and the capitol building.

He places his hand over his heart. Slowly moves it toward his herniated balls that are arousing his fleshy pole. But it’s time to go and see my people, and we saw him head over to District 45, guided by the sound of drums. He goes to bang their daughters to celebrate the triumph of his hernia over the forces of evil. He brands the fiancée of our poor old brother Yohassi Loma with his sour juices. And as he passes, the people ask:

“Mr. President, I haven’t eaten for three days.”

“Ah, Vauban, give him three hundred coustrani.”

“Mr. President, I want to purchase a plot of land.”

“Vauban, give the guy seven thousand coustrani.”

“Colonel, my wife left me.”

“Vauban, find him another wife.”

“Colonel, when it rains I have water running into my home.”

“Ok, I’ll send someone over to lay asphalt.”

“Colonel, the infantrymen raped my daughter.”

“Alas, there’s nothing I can do about that: infantrymen the world over are there to fuck. Tell her to wash herself and forget about it. That’s the only solution.”

“But Mr. President, she wants to commit suicide.”

“What? Just because of that?! Tell her to wash herself old man, and to use warm water if she prefers.”

“But she only got married yesterday and then they raped her. A poor guy like me. Where am I going to find the money to pay back her dowry?”

“Vauban, settle this issue.”

No no and no: I’m not like that ex-your bastard Sarnio Lampourta who drank muelocco all day long, and had to smoke cannabis before he had the courage to speak to the people. I’m not like Houtanansa who built stadiums as if the people could eat his mother’s balls, I’m not like Dartanio Maniania who left behind a country with neither head nor balls and that you went and made a hero of the people, who managed to rack up a foreign debt of some ninety-nine billion, but you still made him a god-damn hero of the nation just for hurling his shitty juices in your wives’ entrails, how shameful; I’m not like Caranto Muhete who gave all the members of his clan positions in the army so that he could hold on to the power to kill, I’m Lopez of the people and there aren’t a lot of ways of being president, there’s one way for God’s sake one way and he pointed to his zipper. We cheered loudly. And I swear on my hernia that I would never kill someone just for being reasonable and you can take my word for that, reason is sacred; and I’m talking about the reason of reason not that of folly, go figure my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, go figure how someone like Hugo de Lafundia that we appointed child of the nation, mourned for a whole month, even buried him three times over to prove to his mother’s dumbasses who asked for the return of his remains that we had buried him, yes, in this country of mayhem upon mayhem in which you can’t even be sure whether you’ll be buried; we buried him with all his military stripes and all his medals, we sang the national anthem and it was as enchanting as a real camp fire; now go figure why anyone would come and bother my hernia in the name of his death: well let me tell you, he hanged himself right when my hernia was about to find out that he was the one who killed the woman of my heart. And he shed real tears over this girl I had loved but that the “Flemish” pecked at. Brother Carvanso wiped away the drool and snot running from his face.

“Mr. President, be especially careful with the Amerindian press.”

All this is as sad as crab stock. As sad as a dick infected with bilharzia. He replaces the customary minute of silence with a minute of his hernia, because one must cry in remembrance of lost loved ones, instead of having a good laugh in private, instead of keeping quiet like some dunce. Ah, that national moment for crying, when cheeks glisten in the midday sun, let us give the juices from our eyes the same respect that we give the national juices with which we impregnate our sisters. And the eyes redden, the snot starts to run. The nation has to tighten its heart and soul. We cheered loudly. Long live National Mom’s Lopez. He shows us once again how he forgives those who massacred my aunt. He steps down from the podium and walks off rubbing his eyes. He clears his large nostrils noisily, flicks his snot on Colonel Carvanso, I’m sorry my brother, he passes his hands over his eyes then strokes his hernia and wagging tongues would have it that his heart had dropped into his pants. He walked back to the palace. Kissed Mom. Look at this bunch of grovelers but I’m not going to fall for it: if my hernia dropped dead you’d have a good laugh over me just like you did over National Salamanso, and I know it was you lot who just yesterday were licking his hernia. It’s written in your eyes, it’s written on your foreheads, it’s written in your blood: around here, no one likes leaders. He spent the rest of the day in bed crying over his dead aunt. Vauban and Mom bent over backwards to try and cheer him up.

“I loved her you know.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“So don’t waste your breath trying to comfort me.”

And so he cried over his dead aunt in the way that people here cry over their dead aunts. Unless you’re Satan, you can’t even hurl your own piss without it coming back to splash you in the face. But I love them. But it’s not always funny: sometimes they kill my people to thank me. Too bad for them: the fire next time.

“Lafonsia came to tell me that he had a dream that I would die on Monday.”

“Set his grave on fire, Colonel.”

“What kind of a world is this in which the dead return and bother the living? I buried him in the way I may one day be buried. I even handed some dough to his seventy-one mistresses…”

“Mr. President, those are state secrets.”

“I don’t agree — the best way to hide things is to show them. I’m going to tell you, my people: all those guys except for myself and Mom have stashed away a pile of dough in Switzerland, billions of coustrani they’ve sent over there to keep Europe moving. That’s why I’m going to reshuffle my hernia, right here, for all of us to see: who wants to be Minister of Trade Negotiations? Ok. And what about Minister of Infantrymen… now that’s democracy, and let’s be honest: Who wants to be Minister of Youth and Sports?… How about Minister of Diplomas?”

By the evening he was slumped down in his favorite official chair and the visitors kept coming: Mr. President, Vauban informs him, the French want to drill for uranium in Valanta.

“How much are they offering?”

“11 percent.”

“Ask for 29 percent.”

“The Italians want to fish off the coast from Watangotta.”

“What percentage?”

“21 percent…”

“That won’t do. Tell them we want one out of every three fish they catch.”

“The Russians are prospecting for oil in Moudan.”

“Out of the question: they’re far too dumb in any case.”

“But Mr. President…”

“Out of the question, I said.”

He shows his zipper to Jouvanso who’s busy gawking at power and stirring up the tribes in the south and I’m here to tell you in person so that you know that my hernia is angry. Our brother Jouvanso scratches his head. But he says it again: my hernia is angry because you still haven’t stopped confusing the fatherland with your way of pissing.

“Where’s my younger brother Ravou del Cosso?”

While he strides across the palace, Mom watches him, smiling: my son is so very beautiful. He’d be even more beautiful if it weren’t for that hernia swelling up his pants, without that smell of eggplant, and without all that mud from the people. He runs into National Yoha who tells the future using cowrie shells: everything looks good, Mr. President. Ok. Everything looks good, but from what I can predict, death will come on a Monday morning, on the leaves from a Kapok tree, and it will be a woman. An extremely beautiful woman.

“Are those predictions correct?”

“I’ve never been wrong. A very young woman will slit your stomach open while you sleep, all the way from the solar plexus to the groin, somewhere between nine and ten o’clock. She’ll cut out a piece of your large intestine.”

“If I was Dananso Lopez, I’d get rid of all the women.”

And National Yoha cries along with him, out of male solidarity, with their kaki hearts, those equally kaki juices leaking out, if that reading is correct, but I’m the guardian angel of women, and he tells him all that I’ve done for them, but who’ll take over my hernia, who will be in power after me? National Colonel, the reading says it will be a woman, and he starts barking like a real dog, ah how shameful, how shameful Mom, ever since the earth has been the earth, ah Maman, my hernia is confused, but I won’t respond like Tistano Rama who handed over power to a cow, I won’t do things in the way that shameful Larabinto did, who gave up power without so much as a tip, without even a sham election, he went and stuck authority in the mouth of a mute, a bonehead, a total loser like Zibanto of my hernia, he stuck it right in his mouth, here’s my body and here’s my hernia, go ahead, feast on them, he was speaking of the time when testicles were the national dish throughout the sovereign territory of my hernia, but I, Lopez, National son of Mom, came along and said enough with all this bullshit, over my hernia will I ever be like that ex-you-all-know-who, never will I be like that ex-National Levando who sold women by nationalizing all the brothels, and he told the story of that shameful ex-Levando, from beginning to end, but the people sing my praises in the streets, in stadiums, in their homes, and the different neighborhoods and districts, the countryside and the forests are abuzz with my name, for once that God has sent us a good president and the churches are packed, and we make our way over to him, en masse, some of us to catch a glimpse of his national hernia and a quick sniff of their sweet and spicy smell, others to admire his trademark leopard-striped costume soaked in the people’s mud, spread loincloths and palm leaves out in front of him, shower him with flowers and song and the poor lay down on the ground in front of him so that he can walk over them, up you get now my people, there’s a stampede to lick him, to drink his sweat and the juices seeping from his hernia, and he says all this is as enchanting as a campfire, as beautiful as the day I was born when Mom got all torn up pushing me out of her entrails, men, women, and children carry him on their back, he stops off at this little hut that looks like the one in which he was born, he asks to drink the people’s water, to eat what the people eat, that overly spicy soup with cockroaches swimming in it because it hadn’t been properly sealed, he sucks on the cockroaches before discarding them as the people do, he gulps down their beers, whips out his meat stick to piss like the people do, coughs and spits in the way the people do, ah good God that feels good, as enchanting as a campfire, everlasting beauty, he danced their dances, all of Zamba-Town is with him as he parades his hernia around in the ancient manner, he leaps on that girl, ah it’s Vauban who said it best: the Black woman knows how to turn her B-side into an A-side, and as always sings him his favorite childhood lullaby: be good, be good… be good for my little banger, with his big greasy hernia hollering for blood, that’s what happens after fifteen years of leadership under a loser like Almanzo who thought it was enough to have a bunch of infantrymen on the side of his hernia to be able to assert your authority, and “Go to sleep my little banger, go to sleep my sweetheart,” and the masses join in singing the song to my greatness, and they’re singing lullabies in the factories, in the garrisons, in the hospitals, as they carry him you can hear, “Go to sleep now my baby, go to sleep now my baby…” but that’s enough bullshit! He jumps off the person carrying him, my people the party is over, go back to work, we’ve quite a bit of catching up to do on the other hernias in this world, our breathing should be full gallop, our words full gallop, sleeping, eating, our poets should write and think full gallop, and where’s the Minister of Dough, right here National Colonel, now gallop! Enough with this bullshit of allocating half the budget to “firing utensils”; where’s the Minister of Infantrymen, right here, National Colonel sir, now listen carefully: the national weapon throughout the sovereign territory of my zipper shall be the machete, that’s enough messing around trying to sell Europe’s skin without having killed it first; Minister of Roads! Present! Now gallop, Minister of Purchases! Present! Now gallop, Minister of Rocks, Present, now gallop, Minister of Medication! Present! Minister of Society! Absent, ah, now there’s one who thinks he can… tough shit for him: I’m giving his job to Mom; she knows all those plants that heal, she knows what cleanliness is and the cost of prescription drugs, those who are absent will regret it, I’m handing over the Ministry for Primary Schools to National Carvanso, the Ministry of Stamps to National Lanza, my fellow comrade National Narso will be Minister of the Countryside in charge of water and hunting, now gallop my brothers, excavate, dig, rummage, leave no place un-turned my hernia is likely to visit or revisit; Carlos Pedro same father same hernia walks in crying his eyes out, covered in snot, disheveled, drooling; what’s wrong Carlos Pedro of Mom? His eyes redden, he furls his brow, speak, my brother, I’ve never turned down any of your requests, nor has my hernia, I’m on your side, you’re my little brother and, Mr. President, it’s so shameful: my wife is sleeping with some infantryman called Tannanso Hussoto, please, National Colonel, do something to get me out of this shameful situation! Ah, sex, sex, these matters are the toughest to deal with, but what do you expect me to do Carlos Pedro, this is what the country has become, our dreadful snobbery: everyone desires what their neighbor desires. And he reeled off the names of all the shameful couples who got together deep in my herniated balls, those bitter couples: National Captain Garcia Lorenso who’s sleeping with the wife of my National cousin Gabrielo Folo, my cousin National Darmansi who’s sleeping with the wife of my other cousin Isidro Martillimi Zola, ex-Lieutenant-Colonel Sarvanso Tiya who’s sleeping with the wife of the Minister of Shots, and as you can see for yourself, Carlos Pedro, the list goes on and on, seventy pages with the names of someone’s wife who’s sleeping with someone else and that’s only for Zamba-Town, and Colobra’s list, and all that you can see written here, but, National Colonel, I’m going to commit suicide if you don’t do something to get me out of this shameful situation, I’m going to kill myself just to get myself out from under this shame. The tone of his voice is tugging at my hernia, I feel sorry for him, really sorry, but I can’t go around ordering women to take their legs seriously, you can’t order someone to love you, ah what a terrible waste a dick can be! And he gets a call that evening: National Colonel, your brother Carlos Pedro has hanged himself, ah that’s too much. He goes to visit the corpse. The corpse continues to beg him: please do something to get me out of this shameful situation, his eyes bulging, fresh bloody tears, his tongue hanging out, blood leaking out of him, his balls exposed because he went and hanged himself naked, and his shit all over the place staring me down like no one has ever done before. All right then, I’ll have his rival executed, it’s ugly, real ugly, but if you want to live here, then you have to be tough in the art of looking the other way, and he adds: National Damanso, I’m appointing you minister, he looks at him, yes, you, Minister of Testicles, it’s ugly but we can’t do without such a position any longer, shut your eyes and nominate your advisory team, and make sure you impose stiff fines for adultery and that the proceeds go directly to the State, and he gives the personal example of his hernia that has never secreted anything but rotten juices but that always ends up being blamed for each and every pregnancy, and those women are birthing kids with no hair and no hernia, now that’s enough, things have gone too far this time! He tells him about the latest pregnancy Laura of my shame has gone and pinned on my hernia and when the child was born it turned out that it was a little “Flemish” lad, and no, he wasn’t kaki like me, and they’d had me go out and buy baby’s bottles and all that other crap for nothing.

He smiled his big smile because we’d arrived, and Vauban, get to your post! Standing outside his little French woman’s house, the woman God spent years crafting, he cleared a chunky appetizing glob from his throat and yelled out “Hurray for the fatherland!” then rang the doorbell, the door opened, he shouted “Long live you and long live me!” hide me in your body, National, you that throb in my heart and soul, it’s total mayhem out there hide me in your belly, are you ready? Yes, I’m ready, “Long live you, and yes, long live me!” he squirts especially for her this warm version of my juices, and right as he does this he exclaims, “Hurray for the fatherland!” all Vauban can hear are his national male yelps, his kaki father’s wheezing and be good, oh be good, all night long he hears the limpid croaking of a national toad clothed to carry out my duties as mammal of the nation, oh be good, be good, you can hear the hiccups and snorting between the sounds of straining bodies, then a meow, a moo, singing during the act, he asks her how she can be so wild and yet still be his at the same time, with all this chaos, double-locked, your belly as your belly punishes sabotages annihilates; call me “zipper-breaker,” yes Colonel, call me the “night-breaker,” yes Colonel; my dear girl the wind is in my sails, yes Colonel, handle me like you handle your lips, Ok Colonel, make me afraid scatter me all over like confetti, yes Sir, no no and no, over my dead hernia will I ever be like that Zalo who gave orders from his ass, I beg you take those words back, I’m taking them back, Colonel, oh yes be good so that I don’t have to come across that awful world of theirs anywhere on your body, that I don’t come across their shit in your entrails, ah the sun is about to rise, the night is for my hernia but the sun belongs to the nation, and he gets dressed in a hurry, where are you, Vauban, we’re leaving. They make their way back down the hill, he takes his hand in his, ah Vauban, that girl is terrific, she’s intoxicating, she adds a touch of flesh to the flesh, she really brings you into the world, into the world for good, what an art, what technique, she sets your heart and soul on fire, she dissolves your heart in the blink of an eye, that’s what having balls is like my friend, balls that turn into another heart, ah Vauban, not like that bullshit of yours preferring men, she irons her odor into your flesh, for eternity, let’s find a place to hide, I don’t want the people seeing the other side of my hernia. They hide long enough to let Reverend Father Jean Garbani pass on his way to say Mass to the patients at my National sister’s same father same mother Martillimi-Tezo Hospital, they reached my official village, him with his fly unbuttoned, the fatherland is waiting and he speeds up, he steps on a banana peel and falls on his belly filled with pleasure, gets up and quickens the pace until he gets to his office; the fatherland is waiting for me, he welcomes my colleague’s envoy with his fly unbuttoned, he welcomes Cardinal Ourvanso with his fly unbuttoned, he holds audiences for visitors up until eleven o’clock, then National Carvanso comes to inform him that Mr. President you’ve left it unbuttoned ah Mom and he zips it, stained by my shame, with leopard patches from the people’s mud, with my hernia reeking of acetylene and eggplant, a personal gift from my colleague. My brother, same hernia, Tino Garage Martillimi comes to tell him: Mr. President, you forgot to comb your hair, and shows him the armband I’m wearing in remembrance of the one who hanged himself and that my hernia can’t seem able to get rid of the shame that comes from dying like a woman, may God take your soul he was less of a coward than the rest of us, and he started telling the story that you have to write down without leaving out the smallest detail he started with the kaki era the national era when the Minister of Testicles transferred twenty one billion coustrani to the State because brothels make huge profits, and get a patent on prostitution throughout the sovereign territory of my hernia, that’s my supreme decision! We’ll impose a tax on polygamy impose a tax on homosexuality you hear me Vauban we’ll impose a tax on spending the night away from home and so on, because no no and no again sex is not an object of courtesy: it is the State apparatus.

Old man, we’re no different than other men on this earth, and so why should we specialize in the shameful consumption of women, and he parades his hernia around just like all those who will try their best to contravene the measures I’ve implemented; he parades his hernia around to let women know that it is for you that I’m doing this because you are women in the same way that National Mom is, and consequently I cannot accept that men keep you in this state; yes, it is for you that I’m fighting, I need your support in this war that even God approves of; he brought them all together in the hut reserved for women, and what happens with your legs is a top priority, he gathered them ah for God’s sake help me and he read aloud some poems by my official poet:

Be beautiful be beautiful

but it’s strong we want you

the very strongest of you

with a strong heart and strong eyes

beautiful but strong with all your blood.

He asks them to sing the hymn of praise especially for the women that until today had been little else than a stupid soul in a stupid body, but let us sing the hymn to women in its real version, not the one instituted by the enemies of our people.

To bring the world

into the world

now be a shapely woman…

Shit, people have got to stop speaking like that colonel of our shame who betrayed us by saying that the social place of women the political place of women is the zipper and the mattress. All the women applauded, sang his praises, they made him forget those kaki days when he used to say: “Only two people on this earth are friendly, my hernia and my mommy, the rest despise me, the rest betray me.” They spread their loincloths out in front of him, National Colonel, son of National Mom, they refer to him as Mom’s only son in spite of the rumors that go around and around again in that poor woman’s thighs, in spite of all those wicked tongues wagging and calling her the national whore, mother of twenty-seven illegitimate children all with herniated balls; they set off with him to tear down the brothels because down with shame, hurray for White hot women! And so it was the season when National Mom’s child went, with the Minister of Testicles Colonel Estanso trailing him, from district to district, from one township to another, smashing down buildings! But Colonel, don’t you know that sex is the poor man’s Bible — who said that? Shoot him, we’re here to destroy, so destroy! He was covered from head to toe in ash, snot, and drool. Destroy, destroy! All these shacks of my shame in which women sell themselves on the black market, going from door to door, he painted the legal notice himself: Tear down! And the infantrymen came along with him and helped him tear down the structures. He preached the Gospel according to his hernia: Thou shalt not sell your legs, and he gave them the following demonstration: the world shall become nothing but chaos, but screwing shall be the next heart.

Poor Colonel Martillimi Lopez: he invites them all in to show them the big turd I found in my special mug, and he has them all take a sniff; that’s the smell of the fatherland, inhale, inhale!

“Colonel, said National Torezo, Minister of Raw Materials, I also found a turd in one of my mugs.”

“Me too.”

“Me too.”

“Shut up!”

National Loyejo said: “Mr. President, I found a turd in my bed.”

“Me too.”

“Me too.”

Lajao found a turd in his caviar.

“Me too.”

“Me too.”

“Can’t you just shut up. You’re deafening me with your nonsense. Find those responsible; find them.”

National Vouna found a turd in his noodles — how revolting. Find those responsible; find them. Vangadio found a turd in his jacket pocket — find them; Mahoungou spotted a turd right in the middle of the dish his cook was about to serve his guests — find them instead of busting my eardrums. He asked Vauban to play his flute to calm me down. And National Vauban, excellent charmer of hernias that he was, played some tunes from the foggy country. One by one the members of the government withdrew, in silence. Only little Glemabar stayed behind, young and timid as he was he didn’t want to offend Mr. President, Glemabar the Minister of Rocks; my poor child you can go ahead and follow the others. But Vauban jumped on him to satiate his twisted balls that preferred men.

“Help, Mr. President, help!”

“What’s gotten into you, Vauban? Get out of here and go and court him in your quarters.”

But Vauban is deaf to the president’s call; he’s already off rutting. What are you doing? He grabs him by his pony-tail: and our brother Glemabar’s complaining in some kind of technical jargon: stop, Vauban, stop.

“Every country has its own monuments.”

“That may be so, but not this one.”

Glemabar comes out covered with bite marks from your dog who’s not ashamed to bite and I swear to you, Mr. President, sir, that one day I, Glemabar, son of my mother, I’ll make sure he curses his mother. Lopez laughed his big fatherly laugh. What, my old friend, can we do to Vauban? He’s not like us who have no other monument but our shit. Vauban is Vauban. The science of guns runs in his veins. Don’t waste your time, Glemabar: he’ll kill you. But Mr. President, I’ll have him curse his father’s juices. Ok: but if you kill him, I know my colleague won’t come asking me to settle things all because of some sexual misunderstanding.

“Now you choose to show up, National Zabouni?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

He grabbed hold of his ears in the ancient manner. I think it’s your racism that pushes you to do these kinds of things, but I’m telling you that 20 percent Portuguese blood hardly makes you a full-fledged Whitey. And come to think of it, what stops me from being racist too: I’ve got 11 percent “Flemantation” running in my veins.

There’s a termite mound of fecal matter on his bed. All over his bathtub and in every room in the palace. Find those responsible, for God’s sake, find them. For six months the town is invaded with your mothers’ shit but don’t worry I will take revenge. And still every indication is that Laure and her mother were behind this, but don’t worry, I will take revenge. Cardinal Zino.

“Present.”

“Please, come here before my hernia, and look at what your church has been up to. And in a country in which 80 percent of the population are Catholic? People turning our temple to shit. How can this be?”

And so, for nine months, every morning and every evening, he found his share of shit in every room in the palace. Find those responsible, find them. One morning, Jescani showed up with some scrawny kid, fifteen years old, in his birthday suit.”

“What does he want?”

“Mr. President, it’s him!”

“What do you mean it’s him?”

“Laure and the Panther: the crapper.”

“No way!”

He claps his hands and bangs his feet to try and scare the kid. The boy’s shaking like a leaf. He’s afraid, really afraid. The president smiles at him to reassure him. He hands him some candy, some cookies. Lets him stroke his big greasy herniated balls. Maman, this child is beautiful. He gives him some jam. He’s really enjoying all this food.

“Thank you, Mr. President.”

“So you do know I’m the President?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Now tell me: where do you get all this raw material from?”

“What raw material?”

“Where do you get all the shit from?”

“But what shit, Mr. President?”

“All the shit you’ve been sending us.”

“I really don’t understand what you’re saying, Mr. President. This is the first time I’ve ever been to this town.”

“At least tell me your name is Laure?”

“Laure and the Panther. I chose that nickname because it had a good ring to it.”

“What do you want me to do,” brother Jescani asks.

“Kill the child: but you’ll see, Laure will still be there.”

They hanged the kid, but the following day there was more shit than ever before all over town.

“That’s what I was saying: stop killing people for no reason.”

“Mr. President, we’ll bend over backward to…”

“Yes, but while all this has been going on, where exactly have you been bending over? Forget it, it’s too damn late now.”

He summons Cardinal Nola so that he can see things firsthand and tell his God that now, it’s too late. And you my colleague from the country across the way rolling in medals won ferreting around up young girls’ skirts, he summons Mr. La Huenta, Global Special Representative for Peace, and Cardinal Rabougla. And let’s hope this is the last time we have to discuss this. First you told me that it was my ex-brother, same hernia, so I had him shot on the spot, right in front of you, then that it was ex-Major Mourtani Diaz, and I had him hanged right in front of you. I slit National Darsano’s throat because apparently he was Laure and the Panther, and now you’re telling me you’ll bend over backwards: well it’s too late you’ve let the shit take over and so here’s my response. He pulls back the curtain to reveal one thousand two hundred and sixteen place settings with napkins in the fatherland’s colors. He shows them the spoons, the bread, and the forks, roaring, “Hurray for the fatherland.”

“Minister of Energy: please start. Let us make love, because hatred is far too expensive!”

The phone rings. Hello! My hernia is listening. Mr. President, Laure and the Panther has just blown up our colleague’s embassy. He remains speechless for a while. His hernia trembles with anger and shame. He smokes a whole cigar before reacting. Shit! He’s concentrating his efforts. Mom!

“Did you at least recover the body of the chief diplomat?”

“Mr. President, the chief diplomat is alive.”

“Ah, it’s better when they’re alive. Send him over immediately.”

He gets up as a way of showing compassion when Jean from my colleague’s country arrives. My condolences. But you need to know that you’re partially responsible: when I’ve asked for money in the past to improve security you’ve always been stingy with us. The phone rang again at that moment: Mr. President, Laure and the Panther just wasted all of your National Aunt’s family.

“What the fuck are the infantrymen doing? What in God’s name are they doing?” I get it: instead of watching over the fatherland, they’re busy mounting women. Now you’ll consume me in the state you’ve put me in, because he’s just found his dog Daorfa in the kitchen with a bullet in the ear. He fell into a fit of rage. “This time the fire. Tough shit for you: no more the Lopez you can sing to, dance to, and love. Now it’s Lopez in Greek sauce who’s off to my colleague’s country to learn to fly, smoked Lopez who returns to the country and summons the Minister of Ammunition: I’m demoting you from Colonel to Sergeant.” He proclaims the country’s flag kaki like his dick, makes arrangements for my beloved dog’s funeral, dead for the fatherland, gun in paw. “National Icuezo, what set of big balls have gotten you all in a huff?”

“Colonel, do you remember the fortune teller’s prediction?”

“What prediction?”

“Remember when you were warned you would die on a Monday after a dog’s death… Merline Amarco came up with the same prediction.”

“And why are you only telling me this now?”

“Because, Mr. President sir, in this country, only those who have nothing left to lose may speak the truth.”

“Ok, you need to be downgraded all the way to the end: I’m making you Petty Officer Second Class: who killed my dog?”

“Colonel Danielli Doutranso.”

“Why did he do that?”

“Remember Merline’s very first prediction: you were only a child at the time, running around with all the other kids from the village with your dicks out, your belly button filled with mud; Merline rolled his cowrie shells and predicted you would one day become president and also that you would die: after a dog.”

This is when the phone rang: “National Colonel, our ex-brother Jean de la Patio has taken up arms against the fatherland. He’s marching on the capital. He has already blown up Golbazdi Bridge and the Fosio train station. He’s recruiting civilians en masse. He’s taken control of the local radio station in Novaya Cierta.”

“Teach him the lesson of my hernia.”

~ ~ ~

THEN THEY TALKED ABOUT MERLINE. He heals the sick. He attends to mad people. He revives the dead. Mr. President sir, he’s the real deal. He can lay hands on the blind and restore their sight and help a paralytic walk again. Once a big man in a tiny little neighborhood in Zamba-Town, he’s known today as Merline throughout the city. Merline for the Whites, Merline for the Blacks. He owns a donations store and another that sells hallucinatory plants. He’s even healed real cancer sufferers, Mr. President. He can also tell the future. Fine then, bring him to me.

Colonel Jescani, where’s Merline? He’s right here, Mr. President. He laid his hands on the epileptic guy who came along with brother Corbanso, a direct nephew of Martillimi Lopez: now you are healed, Quatro Terozo. He laid his hands on Colonel Cabio Fourazo’s son, and on the Urban Commissioner of Zama’s three nieces. Ok, I can see you’re pretty good. He paraded his historic hernia in front of the prophet, shaking off the historic mud from his scales that he shows off as his proudest medal, a gift from the people. It soothes my nickel silver heart. On this Monday evening he’s parading it about delightedly; he decides to take Merline to the edge of Lake Oufa, over by the presidential village, and his hernia is giving off that smell of acetylene. He presents him with Mom’s version of this meat that’s eating me up. He tells him how brother Anafonso Louma died unexpectedly, and how brother Rodimos Sama died unexpectedly and how they’d found his corpse, they’d chopped off his dick and stuck it in his mouth and only then called to let his mother and children know, those nasty men! I don’t understand the people around here. He started telling him that other story that you must have heard before, the one about brother Yuda Wassamba who died unexpectedly. And the one about National Sanamatouff. And Darbanso that we made into a national hero, also died unexpectedly. How shameful it is to die in that way: but I, Merline, I want to know. Ah, Mom’s Merline, you must be happier than the President. You have your others. Your real others: all I have is Mom and my hernia. And he shows him his national marcher’s thighs. You want everyone to love you, but everyone is envious of you. You can go searching for a smidgeon of pity, the smallest touch of pity: but they’re all as hard as rocks around here. He tells him about his badly spread juices, there are no secrets between us, but oh how they treat me! Be gentle, Colonel, my hernia is yelling out “be good be good”! Come on, Colonel, don’t go blowing up my entrails and I’m ashamed, Colonel, you’re crushing me don’t break my ribs now. He tells him about the piece of ass he just had over there in that run-down neighborhood and who says I make her want to laugh. He shows him his fifteen pounds of malformed herniated testicles, but that’s not why I had you come over; what I really want to know now is how it’s all going to end. You revived Captain Lapourta, you healed Colonel Juani of his epilepsy, and Damouta the madman is no longer mad, Oufanso the deaf-mute is no longer deaf-mute, and Kamato the blind man is no longer blind. I’ll give you an official residence, official car, you’ll have an official body, and your mother shall be an official mother. But I want to know how, when and who… I don’t want anyone healing my hernia; it’s all I have in this world. I’d feel so alone without it, we love one another, we understand one another: it gives me sound advice. Not like those filii da puta who only love me so as to better blow me. He tells him how Mom could very well kill herself if someone goes and kills her child just like they killed my National Aunt; she loves me more than life itself. And he tells him about the sixty-three illegitimate children he sired and how they’ll probably butcher them just like they butchered our late brother Lola Dosmento’s children, and my son-in-law Gomez who’ll commit suicide if they kill me.

“Prevention is better than cure.”

They went and cut open the hernia that brother Zola got from stamping on Colonel Martinez Lahounto’s balls, and if you had seen how they dissected him you’d never eat meat again.

“National Colonel, hand me a ten-coustrani coin.”

Shit. The proverb will be fulfilled: The rich man can’t find a needle to pass through. He sends Jescani to search up and down the palace for a ten-coustrani coin. But no one has one. He sends him out to check in the stores but no one has one. He sends him to the markets. You’re just a bunch of idiots, get out of my way, and he makes his way all over town searching for one; but no one has such a coin, and the rumor starts: the country’s had it, the President’s looking for a ten-coustrani coin. Everyone starts hiding their coins because his hernia should just have produced several at a time. He heads over to the central bank and has them make one especially for him. Here’s one, Merline.

“Thank you, Mr. President. Now repeat after me five hundred and eleven times the prophet’s words: ‘Coulchi coulcha poumikanata,’ and then you’ll repeat the response from the gods the same number of times: ‘Kalmitana mahanomanchi lusata.’”

He repeats the words but it’s too complicated for him; he tries again but he just can’t do it. Try this, Mr. President, place the coin in my mouth, and now in yours, repeat God’s words, think of National Papa’s face, but I never knew the guy, Merline. Well then think of Mom’s face, Ok, I know Mom, now swallow the coin. Look for it in your next stool and bring it to me so that I can read your future on the coin.

“How shameful, Mom.”

He ripped his throat swallowing the coin. The coin gets stuck in the laryngeal inlet and he collapses and falls into a coma. His hernia gives off a sour smell. The top experts from my colleague’s country are called to his bedside. The people fill up the churches, every morning and every evening; they have but one single prayer: Please our great God, let him die. Colonel Jescani is secretly celebrating. He’s already scribbled down his list of appointees, he’s written a draft of his inauguration speech and of his oath of allegiance, instructed brother Darso Lamondia to prepare a new draft of the constitution. In short, he prepares a draft of his power…. He’s been in a coma for three weeks now. Then it’s six weeks, two months. And so Jescani decided to bury him. He had him placed in a marble casket, our French brother Jean de Rochegonde’s ultimate masterpiece. A golden shroud is draped over the body and diamonds sprinkled over him. The coffin is then moved to the cathedral in Mom’s home village, a few infantryman assigned to watch over him, and enjoy your death now, Colonel.

“But he’s not dead,” said Merline.

No one believes him. Because, after all, there aren’t a thousand ways to die. In spite of his second eye that won’t close, in spite of the occasional stirring of his hernia, there aren’t eleven ways to die. And brother Jescani divulges the new constitution, beginning with plans for a new palace, and I won’t be like National Lopez who remained a colonel: I’ll be promoted to Pharaoh. He pardons all thirty-nine thousand six hundred and twelve prisoners and sends all the students they drafted as infantrymen back to school. He gave Lopez Belinda to his cousin Sabrossa who’d always fancied her; he gave Oustano his wife back because Lopez had taken her in a shameful and inhuman manner; he distributed all the concubines because he’s no longer here to love you like a pack of animals. He renames the streets, markets, the university, National Mom Hospital, the traffic circle of my hernia.

“My brothers, we’ve been mucking around long enough: now it’s time to get serious.”

Meanwhile, in a heavy sleep, Mom’s Lopez continued to exhibit the splendor of his hernia. Over in a corner of the cathedral National Mom grieved bitterly over her puzzle son, ruler of his hernia, in charge of zippers, savior of legs. Let him parade it before God the Father, God who should have mercy on a poor old lady like me, from whom they’ve taken away all the chauffeurs and official cars, and cast off in the countryside. Poor National Mom, she has become dirty and bitter. Smelly, flea-ridden, blind. Riddled with gout and moth-eaten. Up until this day when the shroud stirred. Both eyes looked up again at the fatherland and at Mom, why are you crying?

She ran all over the village letting out cries of joy and went crazy.

He made for the airport on foot. People fled before him.

“Don’t run away, I’m your president.”

“Don’t run away, it’s the president.”

He shows them his big herniated testicles. You see, it’s really me. But they continue to flee. He boards a twin-engine plane and flies it himself all the way to Zama, where he holds a two-hour meeting: I’m not dead, I’m alive. Then he takes off for Zamba-Town with brother comrade Lobito who brings him up to date on the situation and explains how that gang of scoundrels seized power.

“Jescani made Mom cry, he hanged your son and killed sixty guards.”

“I’ll make him eat seventy versions of my hernia.”

“Outranso went out dancing the day of your funeral.”

“Sixteen versions.”

“Carvanso’s been sleeping in your bed.”

“He’ll eat eleven copies of my dick.”

He told him all about His Excellency the Italian Ambassador who celebrated his engagement the day of your funeral. Yes, Ok, I’ll set aside twenty copies of my prick especially for him. He hands them out right, left, and center. The twin-engine plane landed in Alberto-Sanamatouff Stadium, kicking up a cloud of dust on those brothers and dear fellow countrymen that had come to greet him. He jumps out of the plane, raises his hands, and the crowd goes wild. They start singing and yelling: “Long live Lopez! Long live National Mom!”

“The first thing we’re going to do is exact revenge on those traitors; there will be plenty of time for talk later. We’ll sing later, we’ll dance later, bring them to me. And no death sentences. How many of them are there — pick them up one by one.”

And he heads off to find Jescani who’s supervising the construction project for the new palace: you don’t even watch the news, you dumbass! You didn’t even know I was back. Jescani can’t believe his eyes. He walks over to him, kneels down, places his head against his hernia; he must be dreaming. But then there’s all this historic mud. And that terrible smell and noxious air and that acid burning away on those big kaki herniated balls. It can only be him. What will become of me? Help! Help me my people, help me prisoners! His calls are met with silence and he starts to snivel: please, have mercy on me, Colonel! Spare me, I’ll be more loyal than ever. He licks his hernia and his boots, quakes with fear. He runs his tongue over the tip of his hernia.

“Show me your male utensils.”

He drops his pants. Here they are, Colonel. I don’t want to die.

He licks his medals.

“Please, Colonel, let me live.”

“Fine, but I’m taking your male instruments: it’s for them you seized power.”

He chopped off his bat and balls. Now open your mouth nice and wide: and he ordered him to eat them raw right there and then if you don’t want me to fetch my PA system. Eat ‘em up, old boy. How do they taste?

“They’re sweet, Colonel.”

Thanks to you, Merline, I know who my friends and enemies are. I can’t thank you enough. He gave his shit a good rummage but still couldn’t find the coin. He splashed around, blowing, searching, sniffing: where the hell can it have gone? It’s got to be lost somewhere in my hernia. He squeezes out another turd. Still no sign of it. He calls Merline: “Where has it gone?”

“Don’t worry, Colonel, it’s a good sign: if it’s taking it’s time to come out that means your story is unprecedented.”

He continues searching for it in his historic turds for three years. Ecstatically. With his big old sensible head. All his visitors, minister so and so, His Excellency, the top diplomat, left with the smell of acetylene on them. They suspect it’s the aura of “the one that sleeps in that big old prick.” But you’re mistaken gentlemen: that’s the perfume of his historic dung, but don’t say a word to anyone: it’s a State secret.

“Now, Merline, I want to know how much time my hernia has left.”

“All right, Mr. President. Shall I recall the coin?”

“Well, let’s give it a few more days.”

What you see over there, that glistening layer in the distance, well that’s Lake Oufa. He’s deep in his tropical sleep. God is great! Here comes Vauban: he prefers men. Your women are out of the question. He listens to the badly tuned flute played by the toads on this July evening. You can see the lights from Mom’s village reflected in the thick grass where they haggle at night. Crazy Mom is singing our songs, mimicking the animals. She throws her loincloths at her son: let me show you where you came from. Mom! She calms down. Everyone forgets she’s gone crazy. Except at this moment during dinner when she pokes her hand in her plate. The people witnessing this think that God is great. The television serves up other images of crazy Mom’s face, after Lopez has spat out the yolk of his sludgy saliva, compared with the newspapers from my colleague’s country that make all kinds of wild claims.

“Mom, wait for me, I’m just going to have a quick chat with Liz Traomar, ex-Captain of cruelty Farfaro Mundi’s daughter. He shows her the wound, you can see ah a cat scratched me when I was a kid. That’s why I kill every cat I come across, the same reason why I accidentally killed ex-Captain Vacha Gonzalès who was trying to steal my cat. Chit chat, chit chat, and more chit chat before he finally presented her with his father of the fatherland juices. Then he left, trailed as always by Vauban, down rue Loumaza, rue Ourtani-Gento, across Jescani Place — change that name and get a move on! Ah, Vauban, how hideous ignoble of you to prefer men: men trampled by your penis. Do you think you can create a third sex?”

Merline Amarco, my hernia’s going to jump at your throat if that coin doesn’t come out soon. But Merline’s not listening to him. He’s saying his prayers, but there are no Our fathers nor any In the name of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Only other names. God Améliana, God Bourkanazar, Cabornica Donso, Vatourios Alimatès, Bonilo de la Cuenta, Mourdiba Fananso…. My hernia’s going to jump at your throat. But he goes into a trance.

“Merline, quit playing the fool. Stop acting like a child.” He jumps at his throat.

It’s raining this morning. This is the first time it has rained like this during the month of April. And Merline shouts out: “Everything is swaying, everything is swaying.” Lopez gets up and goes out into the rain. No more. No no and no. No more killing people. After thirty-nine years in power. He walks on. The rain drops look like silver pellets on his mustache hairs. No more. That’s what he was saying when he got to us. He pulled up a chair in front of the fire place. He asked for some hot water. He mumbled to himself as he sipped it: no more. He looked up and saw Krachna. Mother of Mom: who does this beautiful thing belong to? He caressed her legs and started singing her this beautiful song:

If what he wants is your body

first we’ll head

over to the palace to pick up my hens

and then roam the crowds.

But if he’s left wanting more

from this bodily fusion

then we’ll go off and sing those profound songs

in a tune that will mine the map of the world

He told him the story of National Voldani who was president-for-life for fourteen weeks. She’s beautiful, Mom, she’s so beautiful. He touches her lips. He feels her breasts: you’re trembling. I’m leaving now, but I’ll be back. He leaves her the money of his hernia that never managed to give me a true love but I’ll be back. He strokes her chin. Stay right here: I’m going to bring you gifts. My God how beautiful she is. She warms my entrails. She ignites my blood. He rearranges his hernia and rushes off.

The next day we saw him come back, bowed down under the weight of a massive pile of flowers, with Moupourtanka close behind pulling a wagon stacked with gifts and Vauban, grinning:

“Where is she?”

“In prison, Mr. President.”

“No!”

“She came here to hide but the infantrymen found her.”

He grabbed hold of his hernia like he always did when he got mad. Maman of my mom, no way! He drops the flowers and tell me, is there a phone in this place?

“No, Mr. President.”

“They’re going to ruin her again, this poor girl that warms me up. They’re going to ruin her. He runs off. Maman of my mother, if they ruin her I’ll blame the nation. He raised the alarm. Get those god-damn TVs over here so that I can address the nation.”

“Mr. President: she was the one who hanged your girl-spouse with the tongue cut off. It was her sending over all that shit. Mr. President, she’s Laure and the Panther we’ve been looking everywhere for.”

“No way. She turns my heart white hot. Where is she?”

He hands him Court order number 425/71/LMZ of November 21, 1971. What’s this bullshit, and he tears up the piece of paper. What a bunch of dumbasses: you really are stupid: the soldiers, civilians, the whole lot of you. My hernia’s the only ones to reason in this country. And Mom’s Carvanso arrives with some good news:

“Mr. President, we put in call to the execution squad. She’s still alive.”

He drops to his knees and starts praying: God is great, God is God. Tears of joy. God is God. Next to his kaki dick his herniated balls have started to swell. And brother Carvanso that had planned everything introduces him to Vermoz Diaz’s other daughter, in the end they are almost identical, and in any case, in front of women, his hernia’s blind. She is covered in gold for the introduction to make her glitter, her breasts laden with diamonds: here she is, Colonel. He takes one look at her and smiles: do you mistake me for the legs of your wives?

“No, Mr. President.”

“Well then where the hell is she? Where is the real girl of my white hot entrails? Are you trying to keep her to yourselves?”

“No, Mr. President.”

“Have you killed her?”

“No, Mr. President. But she has become ‘a stupid soul in a stupid body.’”

“Ah? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“The infantrymen don’t always behave like gentlemen, Mr. President.”

“I want to see her.”

He couldn’t believe his eyes. Mother of Mom: man has become a butcher. I can see that it’s her, but what on earth have you done to her? Where there had once been skin he now saw bone, and where’s all the flesh gone? He saw bones where there had once been breasts, where’s all the flesh gone? Instead of a vagina all he could see was a big blue gaping hole. She had no lips, no eyes, they had peeled away the skin from her head and back. He spent the next three days in his room staring at her and crying over those bones that kept breathing thanks only to the will of God. All the while a battalion of doctors and assistants did all they could to patch her back together again, attempted to reconstruct her as woman:

“I don’t understand the people around here.”

They grafted some of National Loutanso’s muscles onto her; after all, he was the one who supervised the torture. If you need more muscles take his wife’s, and if that’s still not enough take his mistress Adinonso.

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Make her beautiful, as beautiful as she used to be.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Her body is a temple for me. Make her as beautiful as the sunset. Make her eternally beautiful. Give her eyes as blue as the ocean is at noon. With long, thick black hair, just like a campfire. Give her the breasts of the most beautiful girl in this town.”

“Yes, Mr. President sir.”

“Give her the longest, brightest, whitest teeth in the world.”

He stayed at her bedside for seven long days. Once she starts showing signs of recovery he gets up: the nation needs me. He kisses her and off he goes, with Vauban right behind.

He has the shameful Colonel Juano Maturias brought in to ask him how much were you making when you were a shameful instructor and how much are you making now that my hernia made you a colonel; I went and dropped sixteen thousand coustrani your way instead of the forty or so pebbles you were bringing in as a sorry-ass instructor. You were born an instructor and you were likely going to die one without National Mom’s pity. And what the fuck are you doing hanging out with those chumps from the union you gather every night at Darlanso’s. He had Henri Delapour brought in, my cousin who’d better think twice before handing me his resignation that smacks of his wife’s juice: but I’m keeping you on in your position and quit your bullshit. And the next time you fuck up I’ll pull your pants down and spank you like I used to when you were twelve years old.

“Yes, uncle.”

“Now get lost and quit betraying your tribe. And don’t forget, the fire next time.”

Then Colonel Dani Jango is spotted coming in with all his responsibilities as Minister of Dough wiped away by his hernia, you can see him carrying his pile of college degrees: “I got them at the University of Paris III, and then there are those I got in California.” He’s all wet and sticky from the tears and snot, Mr. President sir, have mercy on me: because I’ve got a White wife, and how on earth am I going to hold on to her if you deny me your love. Mr. President sir, you’ve had White ones before, you know what they’re like. Stop crying, Dani Jango, he ripped up his diplomas because it’s with those useless pieces of paper that you’re ruining the fatherland, now stop crying: I’ll take your White woman off your hands and I’m going to pass her on to your cousin National Yosua who can take care of her because you don’t want those women thinking we’re poor. He tells him the great story of my late fellow Marco who came to Dilolo when I was still only Regional Lopez: he handed me five thousand coustrani now find me a woman Lopez find me a woman for the five nights I’ll be in this shit-hole of a town where the only distraction is pussy. I look around a bit and come up with Lola Pinto, give her five hundred coustrani and let her know the president needs you. She let him have five nights of gonorrhea and I’m the one who ended up in prison. He adjusted his historic mud. That’s right when Colonel Darso Lopez was introduced, in tears, fly unbuttoned, hair disheveled.

“Why are you crying my brother same mother?”

He wipes away his tears. He wipes away the snot and buttons his fly. Why are you crying? And answers, a quaver in his voice:

“The rebels have taken National Mom.”

“Oh, shit!”

He fell into the nearest chair and Carvanso go fetch my pain killers. He grazes on them, grinds his teeth. Get me some mustard. He scarfs down twelve jars.

“Our Lord Jesus Christ, what have I done to deserve this? I’m nothing like that Toutanso who pilfered and stashed away all that dough in Switzerland. I’m not like that Carlos Dantès who killed off half the Khas tribe in two years of my hernia.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. President, we’ll find her.”

“Yes, but they’re going to rape her. How shameful for me.”

He gnashes his teeth and starts crying because I’m sure they’re going to rape her. And that shame will be part of me. He summoned the ambassador from my colleague’s country and told him about this shame they’re going to rape her. He summoned the top diplomat from the country that’s staring at me over there: you must have heard all about my shame; now it’s up to you to do something. He summoned the Apostolic Nuncio so that you can tell Jesus Christ’s father-of-the-nation that the fire is now. He has Vauban come in with your three thousand Cubans of Europe and for the first time in the history of my hernia he’s wearing his armor, asks the General Treasurer to join him because, in case there’s a coup d’état, then let the people eat shit. I headed for the bush. But first he closed the palace gates himself because in this country you can’t trust anyone. The gates will be closed on the government and all those in the High Command for the entire time the war against the rebels lasts. He takes the keys with him. And if anyone so much as flinches, National Lavotou, blow the whole fucking thing up. Yes, Mr. President sir.

The generals’ wives express their relief. They’re all there: Armando Liz Agonashi, Sobra Ikesse, Laura Paltès, Lavinia, Flaura Nantès, Mryama… together they piss the juices from his hernia in the flower pots as revenge for all the scorn heaped on their legs. They get crazy Mom out of the place they’ve been hiding her and dress her in the clothes of her wretched son who makes them suffer so. They make her wear feathers in her hair and dance her wretched son’s dances. Glénazar has her wash her sanitary towels because those are your son’s juices. They’re all busy jabbering away. They talk about his big herniated testicles in front of her. They ask her to sing as they burst into laughter. They hide her under their dirty laundry, get her out again, lock her in a cupboard, dress like her son and “Come on National Mom, be scary! Dance those ancient dances for us.” They strip her clothes off and stare at the trail that produced such a shameful son. They paint her completely red and then smear her with the mud from around here so that you too can be historic. “Come on, be scary, National Mom, be scary!” They tie dolls around her waist. They make her tell the shameful story of her son. They make her wear the medals won in her war against Russia and repeat her son’s speeches as if we were in Alberto Stadium. Then one day he came storming in, followed by Vauban and Carvanso, thanks to his talking parrot Narka who kept squawking “My aunt Léonidas that the women have hidden away in the palace in a cupboard in a cupboard in a cuppppbbbboooaaaarrd!” Riding high on his savage anger he swings open the palace gates and there they all are right in front of him, Mom busy washing your mothers’ dishes and sanitary towels. Just you wait and see what warms my hernia. Ah, this anger that cancels out my father’s hearts. He screeched like a wild beast. Muddier than usual, covered in grass, roots, bark, sap, smelling of musky backwaters, crabs, minnows, and leeches crawling out of his armor, cobwebs and multicolored bird droppings in his hair, he honors Vauban because you have been historic throughout this campaign but you lot, just you wait and see. He honors Carvanso my loyal right hand man but you lot, just you wait and see. He wrote a check out for eight million coustrani for my colleague who just lost his mother but you lot, just you wait and see. Toussia the French woman came to let him know that she wasn’t the one who hid National Mom in the cupboard. Ok, but just you wait and see. He tears up their laundry and even their sanitary towels he tears up their bras and orders them to lie down on their backs, right there, on the carpet. He has six hundred infantrymen brought in and six hundred others from the palace staff and to wash away my shame please go ahead, right here in front of me, now sleep these bitches! Warm them up until they’re white hot: you have one week. And that’s how the palace was soon filled with joyful juices, with cries of pleasure, men clamoring, “Be good! Be good!” while the women screamed from pain and from shame. He summoned my little Russian girl Donia Lissounaia and I’m not quite sure how to pronounce your name but you need to know I’ve got six months worth of juices built up in my veins. He summons the ambassador from Vauban’s country and the one from my colleague’s country.

“Your countries provided support for my hernia; please let your people and presidents know I am grateful.”

And he suggested something that’s been trotting around in my hernia for a while: the heads of state should consider creating a worldwide federation such as the Organization of African Unity did, because Mom God knows only too well how our populations can hurt us. Finally he makes the decision of hernia: Mom shall be Minister of Customs, she will be the one to pay tribute and pronounce sentences.

That’s when someone came to inform him that, Mr. President, some White guy has invented a machine that can tell the future; well, bring him to me instead of having me waste my time in the shitter digging through my turds for Merline’s coin. Bring him to me. For God’s sake. What’s his name?

“Jean Aknin de Rochegonde.”

“Is he Flemish?”

“No, Mr. President. He’s from our colleague’s country.”

“Offer him the nationality of my hernia, you never know with those people. And while I’m thinking about it, what ever happened to the girl of my entrails?”

“She died, Mr. President.”

“I have no luck: I swear I’ll die a bachelor. Because all the ones I want to marry snuff it. Tell my griot to piece together her story; I’ll listen to it with the government on Sunday.”

Fully clothed and all muddy, he jumped into his big bed, the one shipped in from America. The leeches were busy at work in the lower part of his armor but we was fast asleep, fists tightly closed. Vauban watched over him, seated on the floor at the foot of the bed. He was snoring, lost in dreams of those wild areas he spent six months in searching for Mom. As always, he slept with his eyes wide open, his mouth ajar, his hernia hanging out, and if it weren’t for the sinister snoring and the continuous flow of drool fermenting in his mouth, you could be mistaken for thinking he was engaged in some kind of serious thought. A small vapor mist hovered above his hernia, a sort of halo of slime splashed over his thighs. You can see his fingers, raw after eleven years of excavating his shit I’ll never find that coin ah Merline. You can see his bedside books: Salvation Games, Eleven Years of Spoken Power, Artificial Liberties, Behind the Coup de grâce, Care of God…, Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

“Aknin de Rochegonde has arrived.”

“Have him come in. But I want to receive him in the presence of the Minister of the Future and the Minister of Pornography. Invite the Minister of Infantrymen as well.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

And so the nine hundred and sixty-seven components of the machine that could tell the future were brought in, three hundred and twelve for the reading rooms and ninety-three for the light chambers, and then the listening chambers and we started looking at the future of his hernia. And here was Martillimi Lopez, son of National Mom’s future, as we read it in our brother Aknin de Rochegonde’s chambers. I’m retelling it for you right now down to the last detail and without so much as omitting even a single comma. We saw it up on a big screen. I can’t explain the various sequences, I’m not capable of that: I’m just sharing some of the images with you. Without spending too much time on specific details because we saw his future in every detail. My feeling is that only the important points of what we were going to live through in the immediate future were clear, because we could see from the most fundamental forecasts some rather vague events in his life. I should also say that brother Jean Aknin de Rochegonde’s machine was silent. However, as events unfold my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, it has become increasingly clear that the machine was spot on, at least as far as the main events are concerned.

A theater company from the town of Yambi-City came to perform in the presidential palace to mark the forty-ninth anniversary of the day when we went to pick him up from National Mom’s home village, reenacting the entry of his hernia into the capital. The company was called El Commedia de la Outa. But you can call him El Commedia Lopez. He watches this girl who’s dancing like a goddess and that is presenting his hernia with the greatest dilemma it has ever faced and I mean ever faced. Stop laughing: when I say ever I really mean ever. And he parades it about. My God, how beautiful she is, how fleshy. But Mr. President sir, Maria Leontina Chi is the mayor of Yambi-City’s wife.

“He can go fuck himself: surely we aren’t going to build walls deep down in our hernias just because of some piece of ass, ah Mom look, Carvanso, look how alive this flesh is, how her rump has become a heart, a heart instead of that shameful thing it had always been: I want her, I must have her, or you might as well rip off my prick.” “But Mr. President sir, that’s brother Yambo-Yambi’s wife.” He has the Minister of Inter-Civilizational Dialogue come over. “Now sort this out immediately. I can’t sleep. I’m not eating anymore: am I to blame if my heart is telling me to love this dancer? It’s no longer just a matter of the zipper; I swear Daninso my heart has fallen into her legs.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

He writes a three-thousand-page poem in honor of her lips. I can’t sleep, I’ll never sleep again. I no longer even need your shitty power. No more of that bachelor heart and soul!

They came to fetch the prisoner and ordered him to confess everything. Then he’s handed over to “Master Kidney” just so that he understands how deadly serious we are, Master Kidney squeezes his male utensils, crushes his nuts. A thick whitish gel squirts him in the face: his foul salty juices are spurting all over the place. My God, you Bha really are a filthy lot. He slashes off those male instruments that drive you to hatch plots; you want to be in power so that you can help yourself to all the women’s legs, to satisfy those tools of yours, but I won’t let you have them. He peels off his flesh deep enough so that it won’t grow back. He’s yelling: “I don’t understand.” Really? What is it exactly that you don’t understand? You were the mastermind behind the grand plot, weren’t you? He’s tortured using every known technique: the Zourmana and Jean Moulin technique, and all those left behind from the colonial era. Are you going to confess or not? They try the Master Kidney technique. But his screams are too loud. Try the Cabine technique instead: the screams won’t be so loud. And it’s better anyway since it doesn’t leave any physical traces. It works well on elephants and little runts like him. And you’d better start being more cooperative. Who masterminded the plot? His body was in tatters, his flesh and soul all torn up: “I don’t understand.” Those are the only words he was able to get out. Well you’re going to understand, and right now. They shove a big lead ball in his mouth so that you can’t start screaming like that again. They work him over real good. If you believe in God, don’t go asking him to punish us under the pretext that we don’t know what we’re doing. I know what we’re doing, I do: it’s because of pigs like you that my wife has to go and be mounted elsewhere while I’m busy looking out for coups d’état and plots against me; and I know what I owe that kind of pig who’s responsible for such a state of affairs. And he punches away. And I love my wife, you know! I should be sleeping at her side at this hour. Doing the thing with her, all night long. But I have no time for humping and then when I can hump, I… I’m stiff like one is with a woman. That’s how I exercise my male function. Too bad for you: if this is the way you want things to be. He plunges his claws into the prisoner’s throat with such force and pleasure you might very well consider it sexual. Plots every day, fine, but when you’re in power we all know what you get up to: the women, the cars, the villas, a real civilization of sex, and I’m snatching all these things away from you. And I’d be willing to bet that with an instrument like that you’ve probably popped a few cherries in your time; well, I’m taking it away from you. For the simple reason that you won’t need it in your coffin. Ouama na chrachi! (My God). Now I want you to give me the names of the others in your gang. You’re Bha, and the Bhas have a reputation for being caught up in just about every coup. Maybe this will help you understand why when I lay hands on a Bha, I get a “Bhanana.” Let’s begin with the official report: and hurry up and talk. I’ve got a list of fifty people I have to interrogate. Well, what did you want to do? Kill all the members of the government, is that right? Well, that’s not very nice my brother now, is it? After all, there are seventy-six of them. And what did you plan on doing with the three Bhas in the cabinet? Were you going to spare them? My God, Bha tribalism really is something else! Who masterminded the plot? It was Yambo-Yambi, wasn’t it? Ah, that one, he should be killed ten times over, made into soap, or chopped into pieces and fed to the dogs. Now, which infantrymen were going to “bump off” the president? Let’s start with the officers: ex-Colonel Pamo? Ex-Colonel Domitri Diaz? Lieutenant-Colonel Suampo, Captain Alonso Rodriguos Nandi? Del Fuenzo or those bastards Sayonso… Ourni Toulazo, basically all those “Bhananas,” right? And weren’t there a few Mihilis traitors in there as well, like that bastard Oursondo Manuel? And what about Proseido Sanchi? And a few of those shits from the south? Tazos Pueblo, for example? Wow, really! And Nouany Eustacho, Zackario Foundou, Toko Marino Mene Marino; well you’ve certainly made it easy on my hernia as Lopez would say; now sign here. It’s your statement and you don’t want to sign?

“But I haven’t said a word…”

“You never interrupted me once: silence means consent. You’re going to sign this… you don’t seem to understand that if you don’t I’ll rip out your kidneys. So, be wise: do you really want me to slash open your belly just because of a silly little signature?”

“I can’t do it.”

“Ok, so be it. Have you ever seen your kidneys?”

He rummages rummages and rummages. He insults your badly fucked mother who should have done a better job of raising you like the real mothers around here do. Do your job in God’s name, do your job! Around here, doing your job means allowing yourself to be disemboweled. And he does nothing to stop himself from being disemboweled. I’m just doing my job; all you had to do was do yours.

“I fought in the war of liberation.”

“Why should I give a fuck about that?”

He wrung him out like an old rag. Opens him up, tears him apart, closes him up again. Man is worthless. It reminds me of the day when I visited some slaughterhouses in California. It was so horrible that I haven’t eaten meat since. But you have to be wise around here: because when you make them mad, they just put a bullet in your brain and the official version is that you attempted to flee. That’s the version the national radio station will talk about and that’s the version your friends will discuss: “How incredibly naïve to think he could run away from those monsters!” And one by one they’ll make their way back into their little corner and will soon forget about you: death only happens to others. But I think such deaths condemn humanity to resurrection; for, without resurrection, then creation is nothing but a crime.

Master Kidneys was pacing up and down like a caged lion, dripping with blood, why don’t you take a break for a few minutes and then I’ll try out a few Pedro Moulinars on you, Blacks have a thick skin, you can’t hold anything back, Blacks are like crabs: you can’t tell where the head is, so to find it you’ve got to pound away all over; smokes a cigarette. Throw some water over these dunces! Freshen them up a little for the next session, and you’re reminded of Diaz’s words in Hell at Close Range: “The fundamental contradiction then becomes man’s barbarism against man, and this barbarism appears as injustice, exploitation, and through all forms of physical and mental torture….” Someone has poured water over a group of men sleeping; a few of them woke up, others the national radio will say attempted to flee, but in reality, they merely saw their kidneys; but over there, are you still able to look beyond the national radio? Those who fabricate other versions of the story can come over and see their kidneys unless they attempted to flee from over there, and Sarcomata, Karnansar, Laminondo, Famo Rodrigues, Damanta, the universe’s monologue, the light’s monologue, already there in the horrifying monologue of all matter that enters the world. They deflower you, each taking their turn, and you catch Yambo-Yambi smiling at you, you haven’t guessed that he’ll soon be looking at his kidneys and you smile back at him, “You do know there was never a plot, right?” Yes, I knew that, and he smiles at you again: that’s how we die around here, reluctantly, but with a smile on our face, that’s the shameful way in which you join forces in the shameful cause of those brought down for high treason, treason of treasons, but who was betrayed? I saw Master Kidneys a few years later. “You remember that whole business about seeing the mote in your brother’s eye, but not seeing the beam in your own eye? For the most part my bosses wanted results, and in police work good intentions aren’t enough; to get results you also needed a good imagination; I mean who, when it comes down to it, hasn’t at least once dreamed of having beautiful women, fine wines, nice cars; who hasn’t dreamed of having a great life? I was searching, and since things first went to the police chiefs, I just did my best to please them so that things would go smoothly for me. You really have to have fallen pretty far to have the right to rise up again, so I thought about it and threw everything away and left, because my son there is no greater salvation than choice, and barbarism can only end in demise, destruction, and misery….” I continued speaking but I had already left. Yambo was sentenced to death posthumously because, thanks to Master Kidneys’ report, the national radio decided he had committed suicide in his cell, and Dr. Nourmandi Santos prepared the medical certification of cause of death: Lopez of my hernia stopped off at Alberto Stadium to publicly condemn the man of our hatred mixed in with this heavy anger that’s eating me up, Yambo of my bitter entrails, whose plot was to deprive Mom of her national son, Yambo of the legs of every badly fucked girl, who’s just gone and killed himself from shame in his cell, and make this long list of curses available to him. I make this other selection available to Mom, with a few left aside for the “Flemish” because once again my brothers and dear fellow countrymen the “Flemish” were pretty useless at hiding their intention to wipe me out so that they could hand power over to my shameful brother Cataeno Pablo; the French have also chosen their man, and so have the Russians and Mom’s Latins as well, the whole world wants my demise, and if the head diplomat from the French embassy is here among us today, let me make it very clear that the people’s power I incarnate will never leave this sovereign territory of my hernia to go off wandering the hallways of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Quai d’Orsay and then return and trip over some swine like Cataeno Pablo, and don’t let anyone deny me the right to arrange my hernia as I see fit in the spirit of the constitution; he parades it around and coughs up a ball of mucus right into Colonel Vasco Nomini’s face who’s grinning as I’m talking. And he administers ex-Major Douma do Sabato a slap followed by a spank who’s busy staring at a group of high school girls while I’m educating the people, he grabs General Fatassio by the ears who seems to have forgotten that I’m the one around here who hands out military stripes, and then he parades it some more before warning my brother, same father same mother, that I’m gonna make his wife swallow sixteen versions of my dick if she doesn’t stop jabbering while I’m delivering my speech; then he turns his attention back to Yambo the biggest bastard ever born into the Bha tribe, national bastard, unfortunate national, civet in perpetuity, traitor from his toes to the hair on his head, and there aren’t enough adjectives, my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, him, nourished by my hernia, housed by it, enriched by it, spitting in the hand that feeds him, but he came up against it, he felt ashamed and now he’s gone and killed himself with this shame, oh! I’m pretty sure I would have forgiven him, because my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, I am and shall remain a good president, misunderstood, always misunderstood, but I am and shall remain a good president, and to prove this I’ll pardon all those condemned to death who plotted against me who hand me a written request for mercy, and he parades it up and down; I said a written request. This was met with cheers and a standing ovation, because my brothers, you won’t get another one like me, you won’t get another Papa father-of-the-nation, and they applauded, the part of the crowd that always annoys my hernia starts to stir, they’ve never quite grasped National Mom’s son’s good will, he talks about the only real difference between humans and animals: animals don’t know how to be appreciative but humans do! Animals will forever be ignoble, but not humans. And we’re gathered here talking about the request for mercy when Darkans says he won’t kneel down in front of his hernia because I want to die with my head held high, Léa also wants to die with head held high, Pereira wants to die with head held high, and I won’t go grazing on his big sour herniated balls, that’ll never happen; then number fifteen came up: you won’t believe me but I’m going to die with head held high, then number twelve: keep talking so that we don’t for even a second consider this bullshit. Then number eleven: Lansa Marta, how on earth did you manage to get hold of National Dorsonto’s wife? With her of all people, the rectangle was squared, a former nun if you can believe it! Oh, and mark my words, a total waste of time: so frigid it hurts your thing. You know the type, girls that are like a cold dead fish in the sack. The ones you have to rough up a little to get something out of them. Then there’s number eight who hasn’t uttered a word, give him a minute: now come on children, give your souls a minute, and number nine burst out laughing: we should be thinking of our remains that they won’t return to our families, my mother will be forced to cry into emptiness, my wife, my children, my friends, it’ll last two or three days, my buddies will stop by for a quick look, Floria will bring something over, condolences for mom, perhaps a little something as well for the kids, but nothing for Elsa because Floria can’t stand Elsa, my sister doesn’t care for my wife: it’s absurd of course, but she wanted me to marry Drobando; Guilliano will also die, he’ll fold his arms on his chest because: “I told him to steer clear of those things,” poor guy just doesn’t get it, he believes everything he hears on the radio, he’ll be thinking about it before he heads off, I had a drink with him on the eve of the arrest, we danced quite a bit, and then went to our respective homes around four o’clock in the morning, the roosters had already started crowing, “How could he have…,” he’d never fully understand how the national radio reported it; I owe Morna a thousand coustrani, he was going to drop by and pick them up and since he never listens to the national radio, he’ll drop by, they’ll tell him I’m dead, he won’t believe it, but they’ll tell him to turn on the radio, he’ll shrug his shoulders. Madra, what do you think death is like? Shut the fuck up, I have no specific views on the question, but it’s probably something immense, that’s all I know. Do you really think it will be immense? I don’t really know, but immense was the first word that came to mind; one person’s life is worth the same as the whole world’s. Cataeno, you who were once president, how does it feel down there in your balls when you’re right there? Who cares about all this, why don’t we listen to number thirteen’s story, the only serious thing in life is ass; men make you spit, let’s talk about women, all their brains have gone into their legs, the first one I slept with tasted of cookies, that was back in my dorm in junior high…. Keep your boarding school stories to yourself and quit interrupting Cataeno; some guy came in to clarify some of the conditions for a pardon: you have to write down all the reasons that drove you to work with that traitor Yambo-Yambi and don’t leave anything out, write down what you think of the president who’s agreed to pardon you, and don’t leave anything out, and he takes the opportunity to add a few words: you lot that go looking for democracy in your mothers’ pussies, it’s right here in front of you, but you have to learn to handle it… number eleven cried out “Mothers’ pussies,” and the guy snapped back at him that the way to answer the dead was through silence; then he took off, and Lansa Maria said: democracy my ass… and you can tell his rotten decomposing hernia that… Lansa Maria, don’t speak in that way, some of our comrades might decide to ask for a pardon; and Agostano started screaming like some lunatic: let them go ahead and waste us, let them get on with it. I couldn’t hold on any longer, so at around two in the morning I let Lansa Maria know that I wanted to ask for a pardon; he looked at me for a long time, and then said: I pity you; he looked at me some more, he asked me if it was the fear of death that was pushing me to do this, and then his voice thundered: Is it fear or what? But I didn’t respond: then I looked at him and said: It’s not fear. Well what is it then? The need to speak out! I see, the need to speak out, because you think they don’t know we’re innocent, let me tell you, my brother, around here, everyone has found a way to get by in the pretend world, to believe in all the pretend things that go on, and they live pretend lives, and in any case you know they won’t bother to read your statement, no, my brother, you can’t let them start thinking that we need them in order to die. No, my brother, you’re going to get us into a shameful situation, you’ll bring shame to all those who know we’re innocent, but do as you please: in the face of death we all have the right to do what we like with the time we have left: you can’t force people to be heroes. You think about all this some more: and then you decide to write: “Mr. President, these are the words of a dead man, and dead people don’t know which language they speak and they’ve no other polite form of address than the smell of death, and in any case it’s awful to have to die because that’s what people ask of you, but that’s not the question, it didn’t take us very long to learn the business of death; you who are not the president of the dead but rather the president of living; I hope you will read these lines all the way to the very end. This would help you see why you must not only pardon us but also make sure that justice is served; death is not harrowing for us wretched folk that have already been written off, we barely feel its touch, and in any case, I’ve already said so much in my books, my conferences, during my stint in office and at this hour I should probably remain silent, but I’m speaking here in a different voice, yes, Mr. President, you will notice that I’m speaking here now with the words of a dead person. I’ve always spoken of love, fraternity, understanding… but today I realize that those things can’t just be spoken, they must also be lived. But today, Mr. President, this is about us, us and this shameful state (by which I mean state as condition) in which we find ourselves. It is our country, continent, race and finally the Black man in general that is speaking through me. The Black man and mankind in general, mankind in the face of the eternal struggle against natural barbarism, mankind in life with its human dimension, and you have to listen to this voice, setting aside preconceived notions. You know how those racists present us in their humanitarian dealings: Blacks are made for emotion, not for reason. And this charge is historically serious. We’ve been made to plunge into a wholly shameful historic situation. As we see it, it is for us to meet the challenge. Only our particular experiences will tell us whether those prejudices were right or wrong. Ambivalence, Mr. President! Our most sacred duty is to get rid of our ambivalence before it destroys us. We entered history after a series of bad dice rolls, and I’m no longer interested in questioning the image we have of our own minorities as we spend time deploring the White minorities, I’m no longer interested in questioning the image we have of our own helmets as we bury the colonial helmet, I’m no longer interested in questioning the peculiar way in which we handle freedom, even if the definition is straightforward: He who knows how to handle freedom is human. As things stand today, I no longer need to breathe to be alive, I’d like to remind you that we condemned Malcolm X’s death…, we condemned Lumumba’s death as well as Biko’s, while we were busy applauding Yambo’s assassination. But who knows the truth about his death, except for my friends and a certain Master Kidneys, who will ever know, who will ever know that Yambo was assassinated? Torture, Mr. President, is torture revolutionary? Is inhumanity somehow humanitarian? Of course, our national radio that treats our people like a horde of forty million toddlers just announced that Yambo had committed suicide in his cell, but I saw what happened, and my brothers saw what happened, and we loathe the national radio. So the big question we’re left with is the following: If we are indeed helpless in the face of mankind’s fall, just how much longer do we have left as humans? Why condemn the Africa that kills Steve in order to free the Africa that kills Yambo? Am I to conclude then that freedom is not worth fighting for? That the Black man is a false problem? Well if that’s the case, then the slave trade probably was as well, and while we’re at it, hats off to Hitler and Pizarro, hats off to Auschwitz and to Hiroshima! But in death, Yambo showed me how to see things differently: now I believe in freedom, as the ultimate human dream, as a basic prerequisite for progress, peace, and happiness. Let’s not turn freedom into some kind of fool’s trap, let’s not turn our respect for human flesh into a farce, for in so doing, we would inadvertently be praising Pizarro and Hitler. And Mr. President sir, I know that you’re neither Hitler nor Pizarro, that you were averse to the sacrilegious bombing of Hiroshima, I know that you condemn Auschwitz. But Yambo was assassinated: I have no doubt you will hunt down his assassins and bring them to justice, so I’m here to plead the case of all those who were tortured to death, convinced as I am that barbarism will never be humanitarian, convinced as I am that Pizarro was not human. Us Blacks have been historically christened with insults; we have more reasons than others for being human, and we must not only breathe but also function, function so that the race of crocodiles that came into History covered in scales of shame can function. The force of circumstance, everyone knows our origins, and here we are, shepherded along by prejudice. If, on the other hand, you do not resolve to shed some light on Yambo’s assassination, it will become customary for people to kill with impunity. And I wanted to avoid raising, Mr. President, my brother, the key question of….” Listen my friends, Cataeno Pablo has asked for a full pardon for all; tear that up, said Zenouca, no, don’t, said Lansa Marta, let’s at least read it first, then we can decide whether or not we can leave it as a gift to his hernia. Junitas read the fifteen pages while the others listened attentively. Some liked what they heard, others did not; now listen up children, we’re going to vote on this so that we can enjoy freedom one last time; if the vote is negative we’ll tear up this nonsense, and if the outcome is positive we’ll all add our signatures to lend weight to it, and you get it, the dead don’t rip each other up like the living do; and the voting begins: nineteen yeas, eleven abstentions, nine nays, you could say the yeas pretty much won, and Lansa Marta has everyone sign the letter. Number sixteen goes ahead and signs, but not without first voicing his displeasure: those people from the area near the lake have such a high opinion of honor, they say that a promise is a heart. And we send the letter. Do you think he will grant it, Junitas asks his older brother Lansio, and Lansio blows up: I don’t need it anymore, they’ve already killed me, they busted my balls. And Agoranti, what will you do if they do grant it? I’d move up north; it’s more peaceful there, I’d find some nice quiet spot and plant some corn, I’d tear up all their filthy licentiousness, but why wouldn’t you head for the mountains, corn grows well at high elevations; I’m not so keen on mountains, I find them too imposing for my small frame. The preacher abstained on the vote but nevertheless signed the letter, and he said as he was signing, I no longer believe in life, this life! What time do you think it is? Four forty; just twenty more minutes, twenty minutes is nothing, and Junitas says: We still have twenty centuries ahead of us, we’ll clear a sinister hole in the matter, an emptiness that’ll throb across the centuries, and he starts spewing out names: Oudramani Motès; Larbacho, Louvoursak, Pedro Mandezo, Henri de Salmata, Patani, Goya: those are some of my ancestors; I’m off to see them.

~ ~ ~

FOLKS IN MY TRIBE WERE FOND OF SAYING that you got the President you deserved. It was back in the day when we were building the village to which the seat of power was moved, on the exact spot where National Mom had buried my placenta. I’m tired of this rotten place, and I’m sick of this group of Mom’s people who keep muddling up the presidents. He’d made our brother Digomar gulp down three dozen bars of toilet soap because you’re starting to confuse your presidents. He’d also spat a chunky ball of spicy spit onto the military High Command of my hernia who no longer seem to know in spite of everything that I’m the President; and well, now I’ve got to keep on reminding you. He was forced to spank the Minister of Trade Negotiations because I’m the President. He’d instructed the Minister of the Media to kneel down right there in front of the people and my hernia because you seem to have forgotten who the boss is around here. He’d hurled a bowl of crab broth all over the minister from my colleague’s country who just doesn’t seem to grasp that when it comes down to it we’re all presidents; during an official dinner he’d tossed a jar of mustard at the head of protocol but, the monkey having skillfully dodged it, alas, it smashed my host in the face. Right in the poor presidential face of Nicolas Laroux Bissi, I apologize, I apologize in the way our ancestors would have done, I’m terribly sorry, here, you can have the head of protocol, take him with you as a political prisoner and do with him as you see fit, because my brother, it’s bedlam around here: and we already have our share of people who are a pain in the ass around here. He’d thrown his chamber pot and all the leftover odds and ends from the years of rummaging through his shit for Merline’s coin, here, take that in the face with all my roundworms and consorts, Colonel of my weenie and I’m going to have you operated on to see whether you’ve swallowed one of those pamphlets; he had his ninety-three secretaries operated on for the exact same reason, and you too, National Toussia, for the same reason, get over here so that I can rummage about in you, and he’d really dug deep inside her, and when he pulled his hand out of her vagina he was holding onto a piece of her small intestine. But he still kept boasting about his thirty-seven years in power and going on about how he’d never harmed so much as an ant.

He came over and offered Yambo-Yambi’s ex-wife the beautiful poems that my hernia wrote in your honor:

Let me be

that beast

who knows how to succumb

to the murmur of things

let me become a land of recall.

Let me love you the kaki way. He tells him about Mom who went crazy because of the fatherland, but this earth looks out onto my heart, I love it just as I’ve come to love you. Our brother Issa Traba came to tell him: Mr. President, the Comedia de la Outa says they can’t go on without her.

“That’s fine, from now on you’ll be the national theater company. You need to know that the President is a mammal just like everyone.”

This was at the time when Vauban and he, disguised as Arabs, went into the slum, on foot, and asked around: “Where does Cataeno Pablo live?” “We don’t know, sir.” Then to a bunch of kids playing in a puddle left over from the morning showers: “We don’t know.” The young girls sitting in the sand, busy showing each other their privates answered in the same way. Did you see that Vauban; they’re already fiddling with those procreation instruments of theirs. He smiles at them but the young girls scurry off, repeating, “We don’t know, we don’t know.” Their parents most likely warned them about Arab merchants selling off girls. And he’s there scratching his hernia: My God how beautiful they are. They ask the women busy doing their washing in the Traori Baba Issa rapids the same question, but we don’t know, they answer. He asks the woman who’s washing some dishes a little further upstream but I don’t know she tells them. So he asks the group of men swimming in the green and languid waters, but we don’t know. Vauban’s eyes lit up, Yum! What a feast, all those nice bums! What ineffable bodies! He swallowed another glob of saliva. He asks the woman who’s harvesting her peanut plants on the community plot: “I don’t know….” And yet I was told that he lived in this god-damn slum. All the stuff they’re carrying prevents them from going any further. Ok then, we’ll come back tomorrow. The following day they return to the slum and ask the whole neighborhood the same question again: “We don’t know, sir.” He hands out three thousand coustrani: “Where is this hut I’m looking for?” “Take a right, then two lefts, you’ll see a large palm tree overlooking the lake; make a right, keep to the right until you get to a pile of manure in the middle of the road, you’ll see a small pond, take off your pants because the water will come up to your waist, head to the left until you reach the breadfruit tree, you’ll see a hut under construction, someone around there should be able to show you the place you’re looking for, but who are you? What do you want him for?”

“We’re his friends.”

They make their way to the hut under construction and ask a young girl who’s doing her chemistry homework: “Where is Cataeno Pablo’s hut?”

“There’s no one by that name in this neighborhood.”

He hands her fifty coustrani but Mister there’s no one by that name around here. They walk on and ask a group of women, braiding each other’s hair, nattering about loincloths and husbands.

“Where is Cataeno Pablo’s hut?”

“Right in front of you.”

They come across his cook.

“Where is Cataeno Pablo?”

“He’s taking a nap, sir. If you don’t mind waiting.”

“I don’t have time to wait, go and wake him up.”

“But he’s going to start bitching.”

“Wake him up: I’m the President.”

And they wake you up. You come before my hernia. You rub your eyes. Hey, Cataeno Pablo: they say you like women. And she claims it’s you she loved. I don’t get it. After all, you were there when I took her from Yambo-Yambi. And you were there when I went and delivered all those bottles of wine to her father. Are you challenging my hernia? Fine, if that’s how you want things to be. Take him Vauban: we’ll be better off back at the palace. And for me to be loved I have to throw in a car and a villa, but you dare to be loved effortlessly, what do you have that I don’t? I think you’ll be better off back at the palace.

My parrot Narka is singing the national anthem. In order to honor the beast, Moupourtanka will be crowned “National Beast.” Brother Armane Suaze said: “Mr. President, that really is the last straw.” What, how dare you question the decision of my hernia? He produced a forty-eight-page document to prove that your hernia is making a big mistake, ah hang him; that’s enough and leave his corpse on display until he’s completely decomposed so that the people can see how their enemies end up. Rodriguez Lopez Lavouza will also be hanged for the same reason. And the same goes for Monsignor Mallavra, now send his body over to Jesus Christ’s father-of-the-nation so that he can see how I deal with the likes of him.

“Yes, Mr. President.”

Shut down all the convents and consorts, move all the nuns into the army at the rank of corporal, and all those bloody priests as well at the rank of sergeant. Let them learn to handle my prick instead of spending their days lounging around. No more blah-blah-blah.

He received fourteen trunks filled with messages of support; now this is the real national literature, enough of that bullshit other stuff.

“Yes, Mr. President.”

As the saying goes, You have to run with the pack, ah how shameful. But brother Jolango who wanted to leave the country to the children of the children of our children comes to lay Mr. President his congratulations on the table, bowing down to the ground. His eyes are red with shame. But congratulations! He is drenched in sweat. But you have to run with the pack. My ex-wife who wanted to leave the country to the children of her mother’s children entered, with all those resigning shamefully lined up behind her, but in reverse order this time. Ladies and gentlemen, you cannot change Africa as one does a wife. General Dordobanni, and Fentas Manu, Giovanno Lanza, Vansio Fernadez… please accept our warmest congratulations, Mr. President. They all brought gifts for National Moupourtanka, Beast of the Nation, and also for Mom.

Dressed as a prince, the animal was breathing heavily, up there in its official cage, amidst all the gold and diamonds. He was so healthy, majestic, regal, we all thought he’d live for at least two centuries. On this special day, he must have been thinking about the Spanish hills on the mother’s side of his lineage, or perhaps even of the village of Loupiac. Mr. Jean Perrier, who prepared his resumé, spoke of Loupiac and the Auvergne region, places where the beast had spent its childhood, in this country where Europe ran like Africa. He spoke of Florence Mensah who watched the beast grow up, and who welcomed me in the same way we do in Africa, and we spent six lazy days together in the same way we do in Africa, to the magical tolling of cow bells, listening to old guys talk about their hemorrhoids in the same way we do in Africa. The only person we were still waiting for was Cardinal Marcinni; I still don’t know why he expects me at his age to have to court him, and I’m not Vauban now, am I?

“Mr. President, he’s refusing to come.”

I really don’t get it, his mother went and slept with Mussolini and the offspring ended up a fucking cardinal and if he doesn’t want to bear the full brunt of my anger he’d better get his ass over here and bless me! Does he not know the motto: He needs to come and run with the pack whether or not he agrees with my hernia.

“But he won’t come, Mr. President sir.”

“Fine, then bring me his balls.”

Here’s Cardinal Marcinni. Execute him. And he thunders: “Lord. I die facing this shame.” Bang! Eleven cartridge clips to the groin and he drops like a lump of lead into a pool of his own blood. National Yosuah crowns the beast. Then, as always, came the great big feast, followed by dancing, the true dances of the people. Then there was a violent rainstorm. No one left, we’re not made of salt after all, and the celebrations continued. God may well challenge us, but we’ll hold on tight. So for three days and three nights they drank and ate and danced in the torrential downpour. There was never any mention of giving up. The water came up to their ankles, the water came up to their waist, and still, they kept on going. They danced in the mud puddles, and those who slipped and fell over got covered in the people’s mud. He cursed and cursed the rain over and over again. But you could see them all dancing: the ambassadors, the cultural attachés, the military High Command, the people. They all danced in the mud. The Ameridians, who if they so much as balk I’ll withhold the oil supplies of my hernia, the Flemish whom I’ll eject from the game if they so much as balk… the Russians, the Japanese, the folks from my colleague’s country… they dance the dance of the century, the horse dance… the national dance. And you there from my colleague’s country that I made Moupourtanka’s godparent. They ate and danced until that moment when, Mom I’m dying, Colonel Tuenso shot the beast and ran off shouting, “Hurray for the fatherland!” He left with three jeeps, firing into the crowd and at the infantrymen and shouting, “Hurray for the fatherland!” They headed toward Rouviera Ourta.

“Colonel, they’ve taken National Mom and that girl.”

Colonel Tuenso, you’re really pissing me off, but your day will come and you’re going to pay for this. In the meantime I’m going to take care of your brother, your mother, and all your loved ones because infringement is hereditary in our culture. And with this vertical decision of my hernia, that’s it, enough with this Good President shit, and too bad for you.

Do you understand Carvanso? When you see these human shits fornicating with your mom, fucking her poor old lady’s heart out, fucking her crazy woman’s nerves, how can you not think the world is a nasty place? And he cried over my national horse poor old beast dying for the nation, the world is a nasty place Carvanso because the lot of them and I mean the lot of them except him Colonel Tuenso that I picked up from the sidewalk, washed, cleaned up, dried off under the sun of my name, ironed up nicely, I had to blow into his lungs to inflate them, he had no idea how to munch on life, I spoon-fed him, showed him how to use his jaw, the correct motion, and all that was left for him to do was to crunch down and you see the thanks I get; the world is a nasty place Carvanso, everyone but him, but no, you must know Mom’s proverb: The finger you nurse may be the one that ends up pulling the trigger that kills you…. And he cries over this nasty world, he cries because I’m beginning to believe in the existence of sin… God is right: men are good for nothing but starting fires, century after century, and he parades it about! God is right: we need the Last Judgment, because my hernia cannot understand why you put them on earth and how it is Mom that they’ve started mentioning your mother’s privates, they’ve started mentioning your father’s legs ah my hernia is smoldering loving you and what filthy dog of a response you have for my entrails, what filthy response you have for my fatherly intentions. What an awful brand of meat we are; without me ordering all the shopkeepers and consorts to buy copies of my portrait, where would all the money you have in your cash registers right now have come from, without me ordering all of them to buy copies of National Mom’s portrait at the price you all know, without my hernia that is so strong in the art of looking the other way, what would you have in the country’s cash registers?

He jumped out of bed and where’s that telegram I want to show it to my hernia, the Pope under my hernia, ah what a pleasure, the Pope, Jesus Christ’s father-of-the-nation, let him come in God’s name let him come and see for himself, and he made his way into town to see the guys fixing the potholes on the public roads, removing the refuse from the middle of the road, draining the backwaters left by the latest tropical storms, and bury that dog won’t you, because we don’t want Jesus Christ’s father-of-the-nation thinking we’re rascals, pick up this dead chicken, move that piece of scrap metal, take this away, dig here, fill that hole over there, and by order of my hernia, so that the father-of-the-nation of the Christians doesn’t take us for the last of the rascals; he surveyed every corner of the city, from north to south and from west to east, with national fellow Vauban of my trust following right behind the whole time, and by order of my hernia: paint all the huts white, paint the roofs red and the rest white, let’s show the world we’re an advanced people, and to prepare for the arrival of the father-of-the-nation of Paradise, he ordered only white horses, five hundred stretch Mercedes, five hundred two-door sports cars, we have to save face even if my hernia runs out of money, what would become of us if the father-of-the-nation of Christians took us for a bunch of losers? He invited all the journalists to the Hotel des Carillons and, ladies and gentlemen, go ahead and ask me anything you like about the functioning of my hernia, the functioning of the ministers and the functioning of the people, at this very moment when we’re preparing for the arrival of the father-of-the-nation of worshippers, come on, now, the floor is open…. Mr. President, National Colonel sir, what do you think of human rights? Aha, now that’s a good question, I’ll answer that one: Man’s first right is his hernia, because ladies and gentlemen it may be shameful but it’s the truth, and it’s no joke that my emblem is the zipper, and take my word: it is the hernia that make the man, and don’t be fooled: when the White man speaks of mankind it is to his hernia that he turns, so don’t be fooled… your shitty power that I have just seized, have a look how it is hand-stitched with pricks; I think I’ve answered that question, so go ahead and ask Mr. National Lopez another one…. He interrupts him to say to him, dear boy, address me like real people do or get the fuck out of my country, and while you’re at it take your hands out of your pockets ah you look like you’re proud to be White, but my hernia is laughing at you, because the White man’s merit is to have brought the world to the ground… and that’s not a good question anyway, someone ask a different one; Mr. President, sir ah ah let’s not have the same people asking questions all the time, you there, ask a question: Mr. President, sir, why the Pope? That’s a good question, I’ll answer it: because he at least does not spit in the hand that feeds him, the Pope is a good president, there is no better president than him on this earth, trust me on that, remember how National Tonso gave himself to the Russians and how the Russians wiped him out, and National Matos that had entrusted himself to the Amerindians and they didn’t think twice about wiping him out, and Juarioni who went and turned himself into a utensil for the French and they didn’t think twice about wiping out, but I’m an instrument of the people, that’s it, period, I’m not like that Dartanio Diaz who went and gave a chunk of his bald head to the citizens of that Flemishything and poor old Dartanio Diaz, God rest his soul! And he motioned to Vauban of my mom, check out that girl, isn’t she something, as beautiful as four women; and Vauban’s already extending his officer of prey’s claws, I want her tonight, yes Sir! but I want her perfectly fresh and with no scratches on her, yes you old devil sir! No bullshit and yes National Colonel, ah Vauban, you see, out of bad comes good, I don’t really care for their questions but each time they come here there’s always one that’s as beautiful as four, who arouses my blood and activates my balls, eh! National Vauban, this beast (he points at his prick) this filthy beast is our next heart, imagine that! And he points at Edouardo Maunicka from the Tomorrow My Hernia newspaper, now ask your question, yes, Mr. President sir, what do you think of the financial situation…. Ah just the other day I was thinking, no, stop, that’s a bad question…. The economy is a drink concocted over there in that Flemishy place, what do you expect my hernia to do about it? And Mr. President sir, people are saying that you have purchased several châteaux in Europe? Aha, now that’s more interesting, this is a question of space, the Flemish have land under my big sovereign hernia, so we have to have people owning land over there too, and Mr. President sir, what do you think of the death penalty? Lots of good things actually, old chap, do you read the Bible? In any case, the death penalty was discovered by God and he condemned Adam and his concubine, what was her name again? In any case, the death penalty is for women, and for our part, we’ve replaced it with the male sentence or the sentence of my hernia; it’s more refined, more humane, and that makes one hell of a ruckus, because our civilization is a civilization of ruckus, the modern world is above all about making a ruckus; go ahead, ask your questions, this is a democracy and I’ll answer them…. Mr. President sir, who killed Tarsansio Ahendio? Ah, I’m not quite sure: it was either bilharzia or malnutrition, anyway, let’s not worry about our dead buddies: there are still plenty of people alive. Mr. President sir, why do you offer gifts to rich countries?

“Yes, I was expecting someone to ask that question. I give to Vauban’s country to show that I too have hands. The hand is a machine for politeness as opposed to the heart and the prick that are political utensils. The hand does not think: it gestures.”

Then he took off to repair the potholes, drain the backwaters, pick up the dead chickens, while waiting for Jesus Christ’s father-of-the-nation to arrive.

But on the day the Pope arrived in our capital, at dinner time, as he was dancing with the Christian’s father-of-the-nation and was teaching him some local moves no not like that Monsignor, like this, with your butt in the air and your thighs unintelligible, as he laughed his big historical laugh because, Monsignor, you’re stubborn your rump should be lighter, brother Carvanso, right at the very moment when the service was offered to His Holiness, lifted the national flag that had been draped over the banquet table to reveal a roast. The guests all jumped to their feet and screamed: Oh my God!

Right there on the large plateau were National Mom’s legs and head. The legs were crossed and two big red peppers had been placed into the empty eye sockets, and in red ink, on a piece of cardboard, you could read: He who uses his big herniated balls will perish by them. Lopez read the words and started crying.

“Death is so shameful.”

Rivers of tears started arriving from every corner of the country, measured in cubic feet, dear Mom if only you could have seen, I wish you could have seen how your people love you, death is so shameful. His three-piece denim suit, stained with the people’s mud, was now soaked with snot, and his eyes all bloodshot. Don’t go bothering me with your crocodile tears. He toppled over the twenty-eight thousand six hundred and forty cubic feet container holding all the tears contributed by the people of the fatherland, the one thousand and forty-nine contributed by friendly countries, the two thousand six hundred and forty-eight contributed by the ambassadors and consorts, the five hundred and twenty-nine from the women, now don’t go bothering me with your crocodile tears, he gave a great big kick to the saintly amount contributed by the Pope, toppled over the sixteen barrels gifted by my tribe. She loved you all and look how you go about thanking her. Dressed in that anger we had seen him in back at that time when he had crossed the rue Tarvanso saying out loud: Your Cataeno Pablo, I proclaim him a hero of the nation, your Vermoz Diaz, I proclaim him a hero of the nation, your Yambo-Yambi, I appoint him Minister of the People, just like with your Jango Sunn, Mr. President sir give him the Ministry of Finance as well; ok, fine, why not Justice too, and while you’re at it Defense, now those are stories you can run! Defense belongs to Vauban. He cuts off his right hand and gouges out his left eye as an outward expression of grief. Now we’ll see what kind of a monster I shall become. And too bad for you: you’ll waste me just like you fucked me.

~ ~ ~

THE SUN IS SETTING OVER MY OFFICIAL VILLAGE, a light rain is falling, deliciously moistening the raincoats the infantry guard are wearing, these guys are the real deal, they know how to protect me, they’ve often died for me, and thanks to the late Raondo Hugo ex-major of my hernia, child of the fatherland, national hero, who died taking fifteen bullets meant for me. Thanks also to the late Taranos Pourtanso, child of the nation, Commander in the Order of my prick, killed by flying shards of glass from a bomb that was meant for me. Thanks to my late uncle who absorbed the blast from a grenade that was thrown at my hernia, may God rest their souls, may God rest the soul of my sweet little Polish girl Potiask… Mom! I have no idea how to pronounce their barbarian Polish words. But Carvanso comes to remind him that Mr. President the traitor Sarmazo Yarmouna’s hearing will be held today, the man who threw pamphlets at your hernia, yes, today, a closed hearing in the palace’s courtroom, but he says no Carvanso, I’ve changed my decision, because of Mom’s journalists who don’t seem to be able to understand the aspirations of my hernia, things will no longer be done behind closed doors this is the century of starkness, we are the black and white generation, no closed doors in my hernia, we will hear him tomorrow before the eyes and the ears of the journalists, before the eyes and the ears of the television, because this is the century of enlightenment, and he parades his hernia about deliciously, turning it over lifting it up stroking it up and down gently, releasing that noxious odor into the air, with that love for the people that is stuck deep inside me, that squeezes my gut, National Carvanso says: Mr. President, you must be prudent, Sarmazo is insolent, he will do all he can to ridicule us, he will take advantage of your kindness and throw his meat at you, he’ll do it, and if he gets a chance to speak, even for five minutes, he’ll blow up the nation, he’ll get people to take to the streets, let’s not take that risk Mr. President; but Carvanso, my son, power thrives on risk, let him speak, in the name of democracy, because you can’t have a country brother Carvanso where people shut up, summon the Nation’s Council, summon the ambassadors, summon the journalists, all for eight o’clock and good night Carvanso, it’s time for me to have my daily portion of mustard. As usual, he takes his mustard with plenty of spices, he drinks his daily eggplant ration, says his short prayer which is really little more than a sigh: “Dear God, was it you that made me kaki” and he leaps onto my little one from my colleague’s country, kisses her with the only real hand he has left, stares at her ravaged body with the only real eye he has left, before serving up “the thick yoke of my big herniated balls” in the midst of the thrashings of this tempestuous flesh that becomes tumultuous, with the smell of my presidential sweat mixed in with the odors of the local nights, he serves her the yoke of his tropical heart deep in this love that you know my girl, my child, my little White girl who alas will never be equal to two Black ones when it comes to these things, because around here testicles are built starting in childhood, they’re anticipated, and while the mothers in my colleague’s country are busy flattening out their daughters, our mothers are rounding them out, encircling them, that’s why my dear those White girls are so flat whereas the Black ones are rounded. His face disappears into the hair of my girl oh be good for daddy, be tender, soft, foaming, be “picassoesque,” don’t be like those filia da puta who go fishing for coustranis in my hernia, and he tells her the old story about his prick, he tells her about ex-so-and-so that you must have heard of, he tells her about the late Magloire de Lantana that I found one day deep in my hernia, I asked how he made such a filthy mistake, and he said: “Mr. President, I apologize if I have offended you.” But there are no sorrys when it comes to the business of zippers: to each his own pair; he sees himself again body and hernia before the full Nation’s Council; take every historical example sleeping deep in my hernia, before listening to this scoundrel who doesn’t understand that I’m not like that Jancio Marti who blew half the Public Treasury on parties and Carvanso I’m going to appear on television to explain to my people why I cannot let Darvanzo Manuel whistle at the nation, but National Carvanso tells him that Mr. President sir that’s not prudent. Maybe you’re right Carvanso, but I’m a good president and I must do what my people want, that’s my duty, that’s my life, and he parades it about in that delicious manner, brother Carvanso, we must teach our enemies a lesson, a lesson in freedom, a lesson in understanding, we can’t be like Luis de Lamoundia who mistook the nation for his mother’s legs, and, in front of the national press, in front of the international press who have never stopped blowing me, he parades it on his desire to teach the world a lesson in democracy, he parades it in front of those god-damn TVs, in that special way, while it emits that noxious ammonia smell and oozes sticky sap; brother National Carvanso come and read the indictment because he needs to be judged in the way we judge traitors around here, you need to roast him in the way we roast traitors around here, and stand up Sarmazo and repeat after me: “I swear by Almighty God that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” But Sarmazo just stands there smiling. Now here’s one who’s going to clash with my hernia if he’s not careful. But Sarmazo continues to smile, dignified, and he’s watching him, whispers to the representative from my colleague’s country: You see how awful people are around here? He winked at the defense counsel, and whispered to my brother whom I like to call Vauban that the real tragedy here is that these people confuse the president with their mother, because how else can you explain, my dear friend, that some guy who started chewing on your hernia can start laughing when you come to settle the score. Sarmazo says, “Mr. President, it’s time to grow up,” he looks over to the diplomats, now gentlemen, it’s time to grow up, he tells the journalists, now gentlemen, it’s time to grow up, he is greeted with a series of standing ovations in every district, uncontrollable crowds have gathered and stormed the nation’s palace where the hearings are being held, and everyone’s chanting: gentlemen it’s time to grow up, and he thinks this is the end of my hernia. For three days and three nights they laid siege to the nation’s palace chanting gentlemen it’s time to grow up, a significant branch of the army has joined up with these losers who show no regard for our institutions or the rule of law, who are making my hernia boil, but, Mr. President, it’s time to grow up, he speaks to them from the podium, he appeals for restraint and good sense, to the secular traditions of our people, but, Mr. President, it’s time to grow up, he calls my colleague: my hernia is in danger, the rule of law is in danger, and my colleague, same hernia, sends him some green berets, nourished with the cadavers of these scavengers who mocked the rule of law, a good week of cadavers, and then things were calm once again and my people must understand why I’m hanging Sarmazo, international opinion does not understand our efforts to safeguard unity, civil harmony and peace, what are you supposed to do with a man who mistook the nation for his mother, my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, Sarmazo is a ferocious beast, even his mother asked us to hang him, his children asked us to hang him, his wife asked us to hang him, because he brought down the nation, what would you have wanted us to do with such a man? And he heard the unanimous clamor from the multitude gathered in the stadium: “Hang him!” Yes my people, you sure know how to appreciate the simple things in life, you are a people made of iron not of lead, and you’ve made it perfectly clear that I’m not anything like that Mario Lafundia who buggered off to Europe with the National Treasury, I’m National Lopez, Lopez the loved one, praised by all the people, the son of National Mom who is just as loved and praised by all the people, we are the children of forgiveness, but you can’t forgive someone like Sarmazo, national vagabond who crisscrossed my hernia in every direction, a Sarmazo like you see him there, right in front of you, an ape of the state, standing naked before you, and the whole stadium shouts out, except for that section that always asks questions, “Hang him!” I hear you my people, but hanging is for barbarians, I can’t stand the sight of blood, I hate death, so no death penalty throughout the sovereign territory of the fatherland, we shall only have the “penalty of the hernia.” He climbs down from the podium, takes the knife a virgin hands him on a gold platter, places the knife on another gold platter, takes the gloves, ex-Monsignor Lamizo blesses the knife, then he approaches the prisoner and tells him that in the name of the Revolution and in my own name I’m chopping off your weenie. He severed it with one sharp downward blow, right at the base, taking a few hairs off at the same time, and blood squirts in his face, madre de dios, what a filthy brand of male you are, you are a brothel, your blood is spicy, he washed his face in a basin one of the virgins was holding wearing red like the others are. He brings the ceremony to a close and parades it around a little to make it clear that the death penalty is for women, what men need is the penalty of my hernia, because it is their shameful male function that is at the origin of all things, it is their hernias that drive them to betray the nation. The death penalty is abolished for all men throughout the sovereign territory of my prick, I’m replacing it with this national penalty. And since then, once a month, he returns to the always packed National Alberto Stadium to hand down the penalty of my hernia to all the apes covered in hair; sometimes there are as many as ten, twenty, thirty, one hundred of them, and he hands them out to them, in front of the eleven virgins who are there to watch the ceremony swallowing their saliva and the old girls who pity all these weenies that are being wasted in this shameful manner, and some of the women hang around until the stadium has emptied out and pick up two or three of them as keepsakes, immersing them in formaldehyde, drying them out, or smoking them.

“My God, you’re beautiful!”

For three days and three night he served up the most exquisite versions of his prick and national juices. My God how beautiful you are! He opens her up and closes her again. He gets lost in her hair from here, climbs onto her knees to admire her big eyes and My God how beautiful you are! He shows her the seven hundred and twelve scars on his big herniated balls from fighting the rebels and from the war against the tsarists. He lifts her up onto his shoulders and sets off into the streets, singing her local songs and the national anthem. He also sings the Marseillaise and La brabançonne, songs from my childhood. He runs off the list of nicknames the kids have given his hernia: Alpine Sea Holly, National Almond, Louise the Fat One, National Anselmo, Little Eggplant, Stinky Blue Goulande, She-National…. He tells her how they killed his national parrot because he kept repeating the code name for a secret plot against me. He declared for everyone to hear that I’m giving myself over to you body and hernia. You’re beautiful, white hot, you will move to my country and you will be matriarch of the nation. But how can I reveal my heart to you, all my heart in just one word? And they head off down the street, with her up on his shoulders, him walking and singing the Marseillaise and our songs from back home. Paris, ah Paris. Down the avenue Foch, then the Champs-Elysées, past the Clemenceau metro station, over to the Place de la Concorde, through the Tuileries Gardens, along the Seine River, into the twelfth arrondissement and back along the boulevard Raspail all the way to Montparnasse, and on to Saint-Michel, Paris, ah Paris! The Seine River again, the quai des Orfèvres, Notre Dame Cathedral. They’re all choked up. But he keeps walking because you are more beautiful than anyone has ever been, and you’re a hot one too, and he starts singing his hernia’s anthem in which for the first time, and I mean the very first time, the White woman can bark about being equal to two Black ones. And he contemplates this miracle of concrete and fire, Paris by night, unsuspected navel of the world. A night made up of names and signs, witchcraft names from the world over, Vincennes, the eighth arrondissement, boulevard Masséna all the way to the Porte d’Italie, and these grape bunches of crazy names, salacious names, who reveal their sex thing to him, Gentilly, but the real Paris is in my hernia: he gives her some juices from back home to drink. Paris-Ceinture. Adolphe Pinard. Porte de Versailles, the Seine of Roosevelt, Saint-Cloud, Boulogne, Neuilly, people turn their heads to observe this monster armored with military decorations and covered in mud singing and carrying this very beautiful girl with big green eyes, blonde hair, hazelnut skin, and oval-shaped face on his shoulders; some whisper that this is the return of Jeanne d’Arc, what a striking mount she has chosen! Won’t you stop bothering me with all your media utensils: the real living here are the names, and the normal blood of Paris is the Seine. Stop bothering me with all your nonsense, dragging life along by the hair, well I don’t believe in your third sex. He pushes aside these male names and these female names: Garibaldi, Sèvres-Babylone, Emile Zola, that name stinks like those hernias from back home, Volontaires, Passy, Trocadéro, République, Nation, Bonne-Nouvelle, Michel-Ange-Molitor, Richelieu-Drouot, my hernia is right: the real living in Paris are the names; meanwhile all the passengers in the metro stare wide-eyed:

“Who on earth is this quarter of a White man carrying this blonde?”

“Er, gentlemen, I’ve got the same rape utensils as you do.”

They head back to the Crillon, the hotel I always stay in, and a telegram from Carvanso was waiting for them: “Mr. President (Stop) country is in danger (Stop).” He pounds on the table and it breaks in half; terrified, the young girl runs off wearing only her underwear. But where are you going, my love? She ran down the stairs as fast as she could, blushing from fear and shame, but where are you going, my sweet love? He chases after her in his pajamas, brandishing his inseparable suitcase used for transporting cash. Where are you going, my liquid? He threads his way between the cars and all the insults from people calling out the names of Mom’s privates. “Come back. Come back!” They make it to the flower market and just when he’s about to catch up with her he trips over and now there’s this vixen standing in his way because Mister you’re going to pay me for those! He opens his suitcase and shoves a big bill right between her rotten teeth. He wants to try and catch up with her, but Mister you’re going to pay me for those again and again.

“Ok, fine, I’ll buy the whole damn market now get off my back,” he throws some banknotes up in the air, “Now let me catch up with her.” Mom’s Lopez now covered in flowers this time my beauty be good after all this chaos with the money in that market of their mothers.

All night long. Not like those colonels of yours after being promoted and he combs over his body: you see that scar there done by the rebels with a white-hot knife. He explains to her why his juices are strong in the way they are strong, but the phone rings ah it’s from the country, now speak!

“Who is this?”

“It’s me, Colonel Carvanso.”

“What’s the latest, Carvanso?”

“A terrible thing has happened: Vauban has seized power.”

“But which Vauban?”

“Your personal head of security.”

“Vauban has seized power… but which power?”

“Your power, Colonel sir.”

Mom, why Vauban? He thunders: a Portuguese guy like him, illiterate, a loser like Vauban? Don’t hang up, I’m on my way. Ah Vauban, with his silly zipper with neither tail nor head. What on earth is he going to do with my people’s power? Ah! He packs his bags in a hurry and walks all the way to the airport, pursued by a pack of journalists stoning his hernia with questions; now won’t you leave me the fuck alone, you’re all the bloody same. He caused havoc at the airport terminal with the check-in formalities, that’s out of the question, they’ve seized power in my country so quit bothering me with your bullshit formalities! Get out of my way, and he boards his flight, throws himself into a seat, the plane takes off, one hour, two hours, what the fuck, he gets up and goes into the cockpit hey you there this thing ain’t a fucking bicycle you know; he takes hold of the controls and too bad for you if you didn’t take on enough fuel, and he flies the plane nonstop to my country, the airfields are closed but I have to land tonight in Zamba-Town. Under fire, in the midst of flying bullets, he lands the aircraft, now in God’s name where’s the power, where is National Carvanso, he gathers a group of aventuriers heading home on the same DC-10 flight now off we go my friends, I have the Public Treasury, Carvanso has taken over an army barrack to the east of town, onward children. They get as far as the Juando-Delpata barracks, a phone line is set up for him, ah what a country!

“Hello!”

“Who’s there?”

“…”

“Ah, Ok… Very good… And Vauban?… On the run? Don’t let him get away: I’m hungry.”

Then came that shameful day, morning of the nation when he invited my colleague and all of Mom’s European friends; he invited the “Flemish” chiefs, ah that day, a long time before his third death, the real one, not all those false ones; a long time after the attempt by the Russians who in total agreement with the Amerindians were damn close to handing power into the hands of my National Aunt (that’s what I call Colonel Loufao who has a woman’s voice), he invited the Pope and all the consorts, because this day comes straight from my entrails, he invited the top diplomat from the United Nations, and they all drank, ate, and danced the night away; he even made a point of serving them all himself, with his father’s hands, he served them whispering this thing that they couldn’t quite hear or that some heard but without fully understanding what he was saying: “Here, help yourselves, eat, this is Vauban.”

I’m not like National Haracho who siphoned off oil money on the quiet and then stashed it away in Swiss bank accounts, which didn’t prevent us from making him god-damn father-of-the-nation my God how shameful! And you saw how National Dascano slept all your women, you saw how he used to spend his nights at Lahossia Junior High, how he sired some sixteen hundred and eleven wrecks but you still stuck him in as father-of-the-nation, and now tell my hernia how many fathers you’re going to give this poor land? No no and no, I, National Lopez son of Mom, this is what I have to say: “This business of inviting shit has got to stop, and enough of your hernia games: no more father-of-the-nation bullshit, no more mirage-merchants: Hurray for the fatherland! Down with shit and down with bullshit! I’m handing power back to civilians! Infantrymen, return to your barracks with my hernia and wait for war.”

Cries of “Hurrah!” could be heard in the stadium and all over town in the way we do around here when someone scores a goal in the championship.

He ended up marrying the girl. We picked up his cases of mustard and his chamber pot just as we had done forty years ago, and accompanied him all the way to Moumvouka, Crazy-National-Mom’s village, while he, with that big smile on his face, sang the national anthem: “Long Live Lopez, down with Carvanso.”

Sugar-Hill, May 1st, 1980

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

SONY LABOU TANSI

(1947–1995) was a Congolese novelist, playwright, and poet whose groundbreaking work transformed postcolonial francophone African literature. He is the author of Life and a Half (IUP, 2011).

DOMINIC THOMAS

is Madeleine L. Letessier Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has published numerous books and edited volumes on the cultural, political, and social relations between Africa and France, and on immigration and race in Europe, including Black France (IUP, 2007) and Africa and France (IUP, 2013). He is the Global African Voices series editor at Indiana University Press.

ALAIN MABANCKOU

is professor of French and Francophone studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a Franco-Congolese author who has received numerous literary prizes, including France’s prestigious Prix Renaudot. In 2015, he was short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize. His novel Blue White Red (2013) is published in the Global African Voices series at Indiana University Press.

Content

Sony Labou Tansi
The Shameful State

FOREWORD

WARNING

THE SHAMEFUL STATE

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS