The Shameful State (16 page)

“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

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.