The Shameful State (10 page)

“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.”

T
HEN THEY TALKED ABOUT
M
ERLINE
.
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.”