The Shameful State (12 page)

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?”