The Shameful State
Page 13
“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.