The Shameful State. Sony Labou Tansi
The meeting got underway on time. You’re going to laugh, yes, for sure you are, because Colonel Martillimi Lopez made Africa and the rest of the world laugh too. No no and no again: I wouldn’t have seized your crappy power if my predecessor hadn’t taken it upon himself to piss all over the fatherland’s business, if he had just left you to starve to death rather than killing you off like rats, if he hadn’t squandered seventy percent of the budget on Russian scrap metal. Here, that’s the way things are—you visit any household you like at night and you’ll hear the story of the late Colonel Martillimi Lopez, Commander-in-Chief of love and fraternity, and each version will have its own tone, saliva, dates, places; each household will allow their imagination to run wild, but this is the true story of the life of Colonel Martillimi Lopez, the son of our National Mom, as it is told by those in my ethnic group, with their taste for myth, amidst gales of laughter, Mom’s very own Lopez who now lies in state in a stone casket in the National museum, his right eye permanently open, let him look at the fatherland for centuries to come, watch over us from his father’s rotting sleep, let him protect us from tyrants, his dead person’s gaze will continue to germinate in the memories of our children’s children, it is the very symbol of our past, God is great! And this dead eye that watches over us is a miniature of the nation. No more bullshit, my brothers and dear fellow countrymen: let us love Lopez. He was a hundred times better than Dolsano Maniana is today.
1. Sony Labou Tansi’s experimentation with language is a defining feature of his pioneering corpus of works. A range of devices are used, including subversions of well-known proverbs or translations of these from the original Lingala directly into French. Attempting to explain each and every translation choice would be futile. In this particular instance, however, the original French text read “L’eau chaude ne brûle pas le linge,” a direct translation from the Lingala “Mai ya moto etumbaka elamba te”—the closest equivalent phrase in English might very well be “Don’t let yourself be intimidated.”
“MY HERNIA IS SAD TODAY.”
He grabbed the sides of his baggy kaki shorts and hoisted them up toward his belly-button, rearranging his big greasy herniated balls in their sack that reeked of corn beer and mustard.
“My brothers and dear fellow countrymen, my hernia is sad today.” Not really sure why, but we applauded. That happens when you’re in a crowd: one person does something and everyone joins in. Long live Lopez, Long live National Mom! And he says it again: “My hernia is sad.” All of a sudden, I’m pretty sure, his handsome face looked much older.
“Ah, Mom! My hernia is sad. All because Cataeno Pablo, that shameful national, that sellout, but how could an insect like that Cataeno Pablo betray us in this way, how could he, how could he? Barely for the price of a tin of sardines, how shameful for us . . .”
Vauban, the head of personal security, stood at his side as he delivered his speech to the nation. His hernia was sagging, giving off a nauseating stench of eggplant and spices, scales were breaking out all over his body in protest at the sweltering heat, and there was also a hint of sugar and the aroma of wormwood, and a smattering of sour urine along with the musty vapors of his nocturnal juices, that kaki odor, a terrible noxious smell. He spoke loudly, our tricolor colonel did, barricaded off from his nights as national lover, conqueror of virgins! Let my people sing and dance: I adore them with the love of a mammal, Lopez one Tuesday night came directly into the world making mystical sounds, right in front of the Pope, and was then raised in poverty and total destitution, National Mom wiped his backside with a hemp rag, just regional Lopez at the time of Sanamatouff, then later Lopez of my ethnic group under Faramento, and today Lopez that my people sing and dance to, Lopez of my people who don’t want me to step down because of the prestige I embody, Lopez for peace, after all I gave the people back to the people, the world back to the world, Lopez aimed at swine like Cataeno Pablo, that miserable national who who who went into hiding with Laure and her mother, Cataeno Pablo whose meat we were going to distribute here today to those of you at this meeting, to you the national, and not to the you of expatriates who shamefully support the rebel command by handing them seventeen Mauser-52 rifles and eleven Sten guns. Come to think of it, is mister the diplomat in charge of the Belgian embassy and all its “flemishings” here today? Close down their diplomacy, close it down right now and take the first plane in the first direction, and if you don’t want to, in the name of Lopez, I’ll ship you to His Majesty of the shame of the “Flemish” who have always pecked at us, go ahead and close it down, and I’ll also ask the whole Flemish colony settled throughout my hernia to leave the sovereign territory and return to their native Flemishything, in the name of the Revolution, in the name of National Mom and in my own name too, and the same decision of my hernia goes for Italy, yes, my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, Italy has also been mixed up in Cataeno Pablo’s harebrained nationalist ideas, Italy, and Cuba as well: same crisis, same sanctions, and in two days time, my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, if you lay hands on a “Fleming,” Italian, or Cuban, you have my full p . . . , you have my full permission to waste him. To conclude, my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, I’m going to bring out five “Pablosard” rebels captured by the nation’s infantrymen, I’m going to have them come up to the mic, so that it’s not only my hernia making decisions. I’ll ask some questions, and you can decide as to the severity of their actions and the punishment they deserve. (A pause). My brothers and dear fellow countrymen, I’m being told there are in fact six and not five, bring them up. And my God National Mom, what do we have here? This young girl too? No no no: such a delicious creature, but why on earth mother? No no no this can’t be so! We’ve all witnessed his hernia swell when he gets angry, but the swelling quickly dissipated, now come closer my girl, but how on earth does a girl like that, barely twenty years old, with that kind of body, as juicy as they come, and those thighs my God, National Mom, oh my goodness, and those fleshy breasts, a girl who should be able to cage every man in her dreams, imprison every man in her vertiginous bodice and the magic of her thrusts, go figure my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, unless one has been badly fucked, as is often the case for most of the girls in the area near the lake. Just how is it that Flora and the Mona Lisa, brought together in this way, just how is it that such a beauty can come into the world . . . “Like this!” someone shouted out from the crowd. And just like that they were silenced for centuries upon centuries, and that’ll teach you to have big mouths and to use them as instruments of hate: get rid of the corpses and go ahead and tell your god-damn TVs that the President’s speech claimed several lives.
Under a sun that had become unhinged, in this very same Alberto-Sanamatouff Stadium, National Alberto Sanamatouff that the “Flemish” had incessantly pecked at, God rest his soul! Pecked to death through their local “Flemishings,” poor old Alberto, the former conqueror of regimes, Martillimi’s former father-in-law, former police chief of his hernia, proud member of the national bureau of hernia sufferers, former Special Representative of his very own hernia to the United Nations, the late-lamented Alberto Sanamatouff, national hero with no other heroism than his “herotic” capacities which, if truth be told, were closer to gushings, and the rumor goes around and around: what a horny devil! With his hellish aptitude for squirting, national tomcat known to all the country’s bitches and as you know, as we all well know: shameful lover of National Mom . . .
And he repeats the refrain: just how is it, that such a simple body, such a complete body, with the proportions of an angel, so physically blessed, a body that in the end is frightening because, my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, one can’t really tell where it begins and where it ends. He cradles his privates that are beginning to stir: easy now, we’re talking politics: you can’t chase after two sets of big balls at the same time. Check out that fine-looking ass won’t you, it’s as enchanting as a campfire. My brothers, such beauty is making me restless. He stuck his enormous hand into his pants and stroked his kaki sack: easy now, we’re talking politics. But “they” ignore their master’s instruction, and begin to undulate, trickle, to emit a smell because of this ready-made nudity before my eyes. And this is how far Cataeno Pablo has driven the nation: he wanted to turn our girls into weapons, “Over my dead hernia!” Ours is a land