Broken Glass (2 page)

 

 

 

the day after Minister Zou Loukia's speech, the president of the republic himself, Adrien Lokouta Eleki Mingi, flew into a rage, stamping his favorite daily dessert of grapes beneath his feet, and we were informed by Radio-Curbside FM that President Adrien Lokouta Eleki Mingi, who also happened to be General of the Armies, was jealous of the minister of agriculture's phrase—“I accuse,” indeed, he wished he had said it himself, and couldn't understand why his own advisers hadn't come up with a similarly short but snappy slogan instead of feeding him turgid set pieces along the lines of “
All things, like the sun, rise on the distant horizon and set each evening over the majestic Congo River
,” so President Adrien Lokouta Eleki Mingi, in his vexation, mortification, degradation, humiliation, and frustration, called a meeting of the supposedly
devoted bunch of negroes in his cabinet and bid them slave as they'd never slaved before, he was through with turgid set pieces dressed up in so-called lyrical language, and the Negroes in his cabinet leaped to attention and lined up, from the smallest to the tallest, like the Daltons in Lucky Luke, when he's tracking them through the cactus plains of the Wild West, and the negroes all said as one man, “yes sir, Commandant sir,” when in fact President Adrien Lokouta Eleki Mingi was a general of the armies, and was longing for civil war to break out between north and south so he could write his war memoirs and give it the modest title
Memoirs of Hadrian
, and the President and General of the Armies called on them to find him a phrase that would be remembered by posterity as Minister Zou Loukia's “I accuse” would be, and the negroes in the presidential cabinet worked all night long, behind closed doors, opening up and looking through—for the first time ever—encyclopedias which stood gathering dust on the presidential bookshelves, they looked in large books with tiny writing, they worked their way back to the dawn of time, back through the age of some guy called Gutenberg, and back through the age of Egyptian hieroglyphics as far back as the writings of some Chinaman who it seems had a lot to say about the art of war and was supposed to have been alive in the days before anyone knew that Christ was going to be born by the power of the Holy Spirit and lay down his life for us sinners, but Adrien's Negroes could find nothing as good as Minister Zou Loukia's “I accuse,” so the President and General of the Armies threatened to sack the entire cabinet, unless they found him a phrase for posterity, and said: “Why should I go on paying a bunch of idiots who can't find me a decent enduring and memorable slogan, I'm warning you now, if I don't have my slogan by the time the cock crows tomorrow at dawn, heads will roll like rotten mangoes, that's all you are, the lot of you, rotten mangoes, let me tell you, you can start packing
now, go into exile in some Catholic country, take your pick, exile or death, d'you hear me, starting now, no one leaves this palace as of this moment, I'm going to sit in my office and I don't want to pick up even the slightest whiff of coffee, not to mention cigars, Cohibas or Montecristos, there'll be no water, no sandwiches, nothing, zilch,
niente
, it'll be healthy eating all round, till I get my personal slogan, and anyway how did this little nobody of a minister Zou Loukia come up with his “I accuse” that everyone's talking about, eh, the Presidential Security Services tell me people are even calling their babies “I accuse,” and what about those young girls on heat getting it tattooed onto their backsides and the clients who, in an ironic twist, demand that the prostitutes have it, you'll appreciate, I think, what a colossal fuck-up this represents, it's not even as if it was rocket science to think up in the first place, a phrase like that, are the minister for agriculture's negroes better that you, eh, do you realize, I wonder, that his negroes don't even have an official car each, they get the ministry bus, they live off pitiful salaries, while you loll about here in the palace, swimming in my pool, drinking my champagne, sitting about watching foreign TV on cable, listening to their lies about me, eating my petit fours, eating my salmon and my caviar, strolling about in my garden, taking your mistresses skiing on my artificial snow slopes, I'm surprised you don't sleep with my twenty wives, I'm beginning to wonder why I even have a cabinet, is that what I pay you for, to sit around here all day doing nothing, eh, why don't I just hire my own stupid dog as head of cabinet, tell me that, you bunch of good-for-nothings,” and President Adrien Lokouta Eleki Mingi walked out slamming the door of cabinet behind him, still shouting “you bunch of negroes, things are going to change in this palace, I've had it with fattening up slavering slugs like you, let's start judging by results, to think some of you went to ENA and the
écoles polytechniques
, ENA my ass!”

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