Sony Tansi - The Shameful State

FOLKS IN MY TRIBE WERE FOND OF SAYINGthat 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.