Alain Mabanckou - Broken Glass

undaunted, the negroes of the President and General of the Armies came up with something else at the last minute, they decided to put all their ideas and everything they had found into a hat, they said it was called “brainstorming” in the smart colleges some of them had been to in the United States, and each of them wrote down on a piece of paper several phrases that had gone down in the history of this shitty world, and started to go through them, like they do in countries where you have the right to vote, reading each one out in a monotonous voice under the authority of the chief negro, beginning with Louis XIV, who said “ I am the State, ” and the leader of the negroes of the President and General of the Armies said “no, that quote’s no good, we’re not having that one, it’s too self-regarding, it makes us sound like dictators, next!” Lenin said “communism issoviet power plus the electrification of Lenin said “ Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the entire country, ” and the chief black said “no, that’s no good, it’s disrespectful to the people, especially in a country where they can’t even pay their electricity bills, next!” Danton said “ Boldness, and again boldness, and always boldness !” and the chief negro said “no, no good, too repetitive, besides, people will think we’re not bold enough, next!” Georges Clemenceau said “ War is too serious to be left to the generals, ” and the chief negro said “no, no good, the military won’t like that, we’ll have a coup d’état every five minutes with that one, the president himself is a general of the armies, don’t forget, we need to watch our step, next!” Mac-Mahon said “ I am here. I shall remain here ,” and the chief negro said “no, no good, sounds like a man unsure of his charisma clinging to power, next!” Bonaparte said, during the Egyptian campaign, “ Soldiers, from the height of these pyramids, forty centuries look down on you, ” and the chief negro said “no, no good, it makes the soldiers sound uncultured, as though they’ve never read the works of the great historian Jean Tulard, it’s our job to show people soldiers aren’t idiots, next!” Talleyrand said “ This is the beginning of the end ,” and the chief negro said, “no, no good, they’ll think we mean the end of our regime, and we’re meant to be in power for life, next!” Martin Luther King said “ I have a dream, ” which irritated the chief negro, he hates any mention of MLK over Malcolm X, his idol, so he said “no, no good, we’re fed up with utopias, everyone’s always waiting for their own to come true, and I can tell you they’ll be waiting a good few hundred years yet for that to happen, next!” Shakespeare said “ To be or not to be, that is the question ,” and the chief negro said “no, no good, we’ve got past wondering whether we are or whether we aren’t, we’ve already settled that one, we’ve been in power here for twenty-three years, next!” and the President of Cameroon, Paul Biya, said “Cameroon is Cameroon” and the chief negro said “no, no good, everyone knows Cameroon will always be Cameroon, it’s not as though any other country’s going to even try to steal its identity or its Lions, who are, in any case, unbeatable, next!” The former Congolese President, Yombi Opangault, said “ A tough life today for a sweet life tomorrow ” and the chief negro said “no, no good, don’t take the people of this country for fools, why not a sweet life today and to hell with tomorrow, hmm, besides, the guy who said that lived in the most disgraceful luxury of all time, come on, next!” Karl Marx said “Religion is the opium of the people,” and the chief negro said “no, absolutely not, we spend all our time trying to persuade the people that our President and General of the Armies is God’s elect, and everyone will get steamed up about religion again, don’t you know every single church in this country is subsidized by the president himself, come on then, next!” and President François Mitterand said “ Time will take care of time, ” but the chief negro got cross at this, you mustn’t mention Mitterand to him, and he said “no, no good, that guy took all the time in the world for himself, he spends his whole life riding roughshod over his friends and his enemies, then bows out to take up his seat at the right hand of God the Father, no way, next!” Frédéric Dard alias San-Antonio said “ Fight your brother when he’s shorn” and the chief negro said “no, no good, too many bald people in this country, especially in the government, we mustn’t rub them up the wrong way, I’m bald myself, next!” Cato the Elder said “ delenda Carthago, ” and the chief negro said “no, no good, people in the south will think it’s some phrase in northern patois and the people in the north will think it’s a phrase in southern patois, best to avoid misunderstandings, on we go, next!” Pontius Pilate said “ Ecce homo ” and the chief negro said “no, no good, same applies as to Cato the Elder’s flights of fancy, next!” as Jesus was dying on the cross he said “ My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? ” and the chief negro said “no, no good, too pessimistic, too whiny, really, for a guy like Jesus, he could have really fucked things up here below with all the power he had, next!” Blaise Pascal said “ if Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter it would have changed the face of the world” and the chief negro said “no, no good, we’re talking politics here, not plastic surgery, move on, next!” and so the president’s negroes looked through thousands of quotations and all sorts of other historic sayings and found nothing suitable for the country’s most important citizen, because each time the chief negro said “no, no good, move on, next!” and then at five in the morning, before the first cock crowed, one of the advisers who’d been flicking through some black-and-white documentaries at last hit upon a historic phrase

at exactly midday, just as the entire population sat down to a delicious meal of bicycle chicken, the President and General of the Armies took over the radio programs and the only TV channel in the country, it was a solemn occasion, the president stretched taut as the skin of a Bamileke drum, it was hard to choose exactly the right moment for leaving a phrase to posterity, and on that memorable Monday he was dressed in his Sunday best, wearing his heavy gold medals, looking from then on like a patriarch in the autumn of his reign, in fact he was so much dressed in his Sunday best, on that memorable Monday, you’d have thought it was the day of the Feast of the Goat, which we celebrate in memory of his grandmother, clearing his throat to overcome his nerves, he began by criticizing the countries of Europe, who dazzled us with the sun of independence, when in fact we’re still dependent on them, since we still have avenues named after General de Gaulle and General Leclerc and President Coti and President Pompidou, but in Europe there are no avenues named after Sese Soto, or Idi Amin Dada, or Jean-Bedel Bokassa or any of the other fine men known personally to him, and valued for their loyalty, humanity, and respect of the rights of man, in that sense we are still dependent — they take our oil but withhold their ideas, they cut down our forests to keep themselves warm in winter, they educate our leaders at ENA and the Polytechnique and turn them into little white negroes, the Banania negroes are back again, we thought they’d disappeared into the bush, but here they are, ready for action, thus spoke our president, his breath short, his fist punching the air, and this speech on the ills of colonialism led him on to a denunciation of the cruelty and challenges of capitalism, he said all that was utopia, and worst of all were the homegrown lackeys of the colonialists, the guys living in our country, who eat with us, dance in our bars, sit next to us on public transportation, work in our fields, our offices, our markets, these double-edged swords who do things with our wives which the memory of my mother who died in the river Tchinouka prohibits me mentioning, these men are actually moles of the imperial forces, and let’s just say the President and General of the Armies’ anger shot up by ten notches at this point, because he hates those lackeys of imperialism and colonialism, as one might hate chigoes, bugs, fleas, or worms, and the President and General of the Armies said they must be tracked down, these criminals, these puppets, these hypocrites—“Tartuffes,” he called them, “Malades Imaginaires,” “Misanthropists,” and “Paysans Parvenus,” he said the proletariat revolution will triumph, the enemy will be crushed, driven back, wherever he may appear, he said God was with us, that our country was eternal, as he was himself, he called for national unity, the end of tribal warfare, he told us we were all descended from a single ancestor, and finally he came to the “The Credit Gone West Affair,” which was dividing the country, he praised the Stubborn Snail’s initiative, and promised to award him the Legion of Honor, and finished his speech with the words he was determined to leave to posterity — and we knew these were the words because he said them several times over, arms stretched wide as though clasping a sequoia, he said “I have understood you” and his phrase too became famous throughout the land, which is why, for a joke, we common folk often say that “the minister accuses; the president understands”