Broken Glass

by Alain Mabanckou

  the negroes of the cabinet set about their arduous task with a Chaka Zulu spear and a sword of Damocles dangling over their heads while the palace walls still echoed with the president’s final words, and around midnight, since they still hadn’t thought of anything—there’s plenty of gas in this country, but not many ideas—it naturally occurred to them to phone a well-known member of the Académie Française who was apparently the only black in the history of this august assembly, and everyone applauded this last-minute idea, and everyone said the academician in question would consider it a great honor, so they wrote him a long letter full of smoothly phrased imperfect subjunctives, and even some particularly moving passages composed in classical Alexandrines with identical rhymes, they checked it carefully for punctuation, they didn’t want to be sneered at by the academicians, who would take any opportunity to prove their usefulness to the world, beside handing out the Top Prize for Best Novel, and the president’s negroes almost came to blows over it, because some of them said there should be a semicolon in place of a comma and others didn’t agree and wanted to keep the comma to move the phrase up into fifth gear, and those in the latter camp stuck to their point even though it was contradicted by a certain Adolphe Thomas, in the Dictionnaire des difficulteś de la langue française, whose view supported that of the first camp, and the second camp refused to yield and the point of all this was to get on the right side of the Black academician who, as they were humbly aware, was one of the first ever doctors of French grammar from the African continent, and everything might have passed off smoothly if Adrien’s negroes hadn’t then said that the academician would be slow to reply, the spear of Chaka Zulu and the sword of Damocles would come down on them before they received word from the Coupole, which is the name given to the onion dome beneath which these immortal sages sit listening to the distant babble of the French language and decree absolutely that such and such a text is the degree zero of all writing, but there was another reason why the negroes beat a retreat, one member of the cabinet, who’d come in top in his year at the ENA and owned the complete works of the black academician in question, pointed out that he had already produced a phrase for posterity, “emotion is black as reason is Greek,” as an ENA graduate himself he explained to his colleagues that actually the academician couldn’t come up with a second slogan because posterity isn’t like the court of King Petaud where nobody’s boss and anarchy rules, you only get one chance to coin a phrase, otherwise it’s all just hollow chatter, much ado about nothing, that’s why phrases that go down in history are short, sharp, and to the point, and since such phrases survive through legends, centuries, and millennia, people unfortunately forget who the true authors were, and fail to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s

  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”

  as he had told me himself many years ago, the Stubborn Snail first got the idea for opening a bar when he was in Douala, in the downtown district of New-Bell where he saw The Cathedral, the Cameroonian bar that had never closed its doors since the day it first opened, and the Stubborn Snail turned into a pillar of salt and settled in, ordered a bottle of Flag, a man came up and introduced himself, saying he had been the boss right from the start, they called him Steppenwolf, he said, and according to the Stubborn Snail the guy looked like something on the road to extinction, an Egyptian mummy, nothing mattered but his bar, even brushing his teeth or shaving the cactus stubble on his chin was a waste of time, he chewed kola nut, smoked moldy tobacco, it was as though he moved about on some kind of magic carpet, like you get in fairy tales, so the Stubborn Snail asked him about a thousand and one questions, to which he willingly replied, and the Stubborn Snail realized that the Cameroonian had managed to keep his bar permanently open thanks to a loyal team of staff, rigorous management, and personal commitment, he was there at The Cathedral in person, every morning and evening, and his employees, seeing him turn up regular as clockwork, decided The Cathedral was truly a place of worship, with morning and evening prayers and since, as you might expect, Steppenwolf had his lair just opposite, so you couldn’t even mention the devil without seeing the flash of his tail, and slept with one eye open, he could tell you exactly the number of people in the bar, who was drinking, who wasn’t, the names of those who were just there chatting and not buying, he knew exactly the number of bottles of wine sold, just by keeping an ear out from his bolt-hole and in the middle of the night he’d wake up and walk across Shit Alley to see off some troublemaker, telling him this was a bar and not a boxing ring for Mohammed Ali fans from Zaire, he drew attention to the customer’s charter scratched onto a plank of Gabon wood facing you as you came into the bar, you couldn’t fail to see it, which declared, among other things, the customer’s rights—to order any drink he chose, without fear of contradiction by the bartender, to keep a half bottle behind the bar for the next day, to receive a free bottle for every ten days uninterrupted presence—as well as his obligations, which included not to fight, to vomit strictly in Shit Alley only and not inside the bar, to acknowledge that he entered the bar of his own free will and not because Steppenwolf forced him, to refrain from insulting the staff and to pay for his drink as soon as it was served

  throughout his stay in New-Bell, the boss sat around in this bar, closely observing the behavior of the clients and the staff, chatting with Steppenwolf, who had quickly become a friend, at which point he rushed back home, full of enthusiasm for this unusual enterprise, determined to replicate the New-Bell model, but he needed cash, words won’t make a dream come true, the Stubborn Snail was determined, he emptied his piggy bank, borrowed money wherever he could, everyone laughed at him when he talked about his plan, said it was like trying to find out how to slip through customs with a salmon in your luggage, but he gradually got it off the ground, with four tables and a counter less than two meters long, then eight tables, because a lot of people came, then forty tables and a terrace outside, because people were lining up waiting to be served, it was the talk of the town, news quickly spread by word of mouth, particularly since everyone knew that the Stubborn Snail was always above board, paid his taxes on time without quibbling, paid for his license, for this permit and that permit, had produced all the necessary paperwork, including his baptism certificate, his proof of vaccination against polio, yellow fever, beriberi, sleeping sickness, multiple sclerosis, his license to drive a wheelbarrow and a bicycle, he had been subjected to rigorous inspections not applicable to bars which close at midnight, on Sundays, bank holidays, for the funerals of close friends or relatives, or at the drop of a hat, they had threatened to make him go bust, soon, they said, they’d be calling his bar-that-was The Titanic, they swore he’d be eating boiled potatoes, become a beggar, one of God’s bits of wood, sleeping in a barrel, like a certain ancient philosopher, and still the Stubborn Snail stood firm, determined as a chess player, and the years went by in dubious battle, till his envious opponents got bored of nitpicking, he resisted the confederacy of dunces, and the other barkeepers all called him names—witch doctor, Houdini, Al Capone, Angoualima, the twelve-fingered assassin, local Lebanese, wandering Jew, and particularly, capitalist, which you’ll understand is a serious insult round here if I tell you it’s worse than insulting your mother’s cunt, or your sister’s cunt, or the cunt of your aunt, maternal or paternal, and it’s thanks to the President and General of the Armies that we hate capitalists, you call anyone anything in
this country, except a capitalist, it can justify the duty of violence, it can justify a good fistfight between social classes, a deadly settling of scores, because a capitalist in these parts is the devil incarnate, he has a fat belly, he smokes Cuban cigars, he drives round in a Mercedes, he’s bald, selfishly rich, is involved in all manner of shady deals, in the exploitation of men by men, women by women, women by men, and men by women, sometimes even the exploitation of men by animals, since plenty of people round here are paid simply to feed, tend, and exercise the capitalists’ animals, so they called our bartender a capitalist, but he let it pass, though it was a terrible insult, the Stubborn Snail resisted, he hid in his own snail spit, like a true gastropod and it all blew over, the hurricanes, the tornadoes and the cyclones all subsided, the Stubborn Snail bent but he did not break, which was partly thanks to those of us who supported him from the start, because without us he’d have spent the first few months after the opening of the bar dozing behind the counter, he had no loyal staff at the beginning, so he had to get his dishonest cousins to help him out, and they pilfered his paltry takings at first cock’s crow, so he’d wake up in the morning to a half-empty till and a mountain of empty wine bottles polished off by the customers, and he quickly realized he mustn’t mix family and business, he’d have to hire some responsible, hard-working people, and he was lucky enough to come across two incorruptible guys, simple, good-hearted men, let’s say one of them was called Mompéro, he had been an undertaker, he never cracks a smile unless he absolutely has to, you shouldn’t even try to tell him a joke, he thinks laughter’s unnatural in the human species, and don’t even try asking him for credit “you pay up here and now or I kick you out the door,” that’s what Mompéro will say, I’ve never seen him argue a point, and I mean never, he’s got a face of stone, eyebrows like a circumflex, lips like a sink plunger, muscles like a wrestler, they even say that once when he was really angry, he took a whack at a fruit tree though the fruit tree had done nothing, and every single leaf of this innocent tree just fell to the ground, and they also say that when he’s angry, really angry that is, you have to get him to drink two liters of palm oil and a cupful of boa fat, and chew on two kilos of onions, just don’t pick a fight with him, that’s what everyone says, or you’ll come off badly, very badly, and the other bartender, his name’s Dengaki, he used to keep goal for the Bembe team, more skillful with a knife than a butcher-turned-serial killer, he can catch a bottle in mid-air, is nice sometimes, but not that nice, sometimes his colleague Mompéro has to put him in his place, and tell him there’s no point getting in a tangle with the clients, or taking liberties with them, and whenever there is a problem, Mompéro’s the one who flexes his muscles, while Dengaki first plays the diplomat plenipotentiary then threatens to get out the pocketknife hidden in the pocket of his pants, so these two guys have been there since the bar opened, they love their job, no doubt about that, when one works the day shift, the other does the night shift, they take it in turns, sometimes Mompéro works a whole week of days and Dengaki a whole week of nights, they’ve never disagreed on that front, it’s a well-oiled machine that’s run for years, so Credit Gone West is open all hours, and people are happy, they don’t have to clock watch, they’re not worrying about last orders from some bartender eager to get home, a bartender who comes along shouting that they’re closing in a few minutes’ time, “empty your glasses and get off home you bunch of hopeless drunks, go back to your wives and children and try to get down a good bowl of fish soup to sober yourselves up!”