“Ah, Vauban, give him three hundred coustrani.”
“Mr. President, I want to purchase a plot of land.”
“Vauban, give the guy seven thousand coustrani.”
“Colonel, my wife left me.”
“Vauban, find him another wife.”
“Colonel, when it rains I have water running into my home.”
“Ok, I’ll send someone over to lay asphalt.”
“Colonel, the infantrymen raped my daughter.”
“Alas, there’s nothing I can do about that: infantrymen the world over are there to fuck. Tell her to wash herself and forget about it. That’s the only solution.”
“But Mr. President, she wants to commit suicide.”
“What? Just because of that?! Tell her to wash herself old man, and to use warm water if she prefers.”
“But she only got married yesterday and then they raped her. A poor guy like me. Where am I going to find the money to pay back her dowry?”
“Vauban, settle this issue.”
No no and no: I’m not like that ex-your bastard Sarnio Lampourta who drank muelocco all day long, and had to smoke cannabis before he had the courage to speak to the people. I’m not like Houtanansa who built stadiums as if the people could eat his mother’s balls, I’m not like Dartanio Maniania who left behind a country with neither head nor balls and that you went and made a hero of the people, who managed to rack up a foreign debt of some ninety-nine billion, but you still made him a god-damn hero of the nation just for hurling his shitty juices in your wives’ entrails, how shameful; I’m not like Caranto Muhete who gave all the members of his clan positions in the army so that he could hold on to the power to kill, I’m Lopez of the people and there aren’t a lot of ways of being president, there’s one way for God’s sake one way and he pointed to his zipper. We cheered loudly. And I swear on my hernia that I would never kill someone just for being reasonable and you can take my word for that, reason is sacred; and I’m talking about the reason of reason not that of folly, go figure my brothers and dear fellow countrymen, go figure how someone like Hugo de Lafundia that we appointed child of the nation, mourned for a whole month, even buried him three times over to prove to his mother’s dumbasses who asked for the return of his remains that we had buried him, yes, in this country of mayhem upon mayhem in which you can’t even be sure whether you’ll be buried; we buried him with all his military stripes and all his medals, we sang the national anthem and it was as enchanting as a real camp fire; now go figure why anyone would come and bother my hernia in the name of his death: well let me tell you, he hanged himself right when my hernia was about to find out that he was the one who killed the woman of my heart. And he shed real tears over this girl I had loved but that the “Flemish” pecked at. Brother Carvanso wiped away the drool and snot running from his face.
“Mr. President, be especially careful with the Amerindian press.”
All this is as sad as crab stock. As sad as a dick infected with bilharzia. He replaces the customary minute of silence with a minute of his hernia, because one must cry in remembrance of lost loved ones, instead of having a good laugh in private, instead of keeping quiet like some dunce. Ah, that national moment for crying, when cheeks glisten in the midday sun, let us give the juices from our eyes the same respect that we give the national juices with which we impregnate our sisters. And the eyes redden, the snot starts to run. The nation has to tighten its heart and soul. We cheered loudly. Long live National Mom’s Lopez. He shows us once again how he forgives those who massacred my aunt. He steps down from the podium and walks off rubbing his eyes. He clears his large nostrils noisily, flicks his snot on Colonel Carvanso, I’m sorry my brother, he passes his hands over his eyes then strokes his hernia and wagging tongues would have it that his heart had dropped into his pants. He walked back to the palace. Kissed Mom. Look at this bunch of grovelers but I’m not going to fall for it: if my hernia dropped dead you’d have a good laugh over me just like you did over National Salamanso, and I know it was you lot who just yesterday were licking his hernia. It’s written in your eyes, it’s written on your foreheads, it’s written in your blood: around here, no one likes leaders. He spent the rest of the day in bed crying over his dead aunt. Vauban and Mom bent over backwards to try and cheer him up.
“I loved her you know.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“So don’t waste your breath trying to comfort me.”
And so he cried over his dead aunt in the way that people here cry over their dead aunts. Unless you’re Satan, you can’t even hurl your own piss without it coming back to splash you in the face. But I love them. But it’s not always funny: sometimes they kill my people to thank me. Too bad for them: the fire next time.
“Lafonsia came to tell me that he had a dream that I would die on Monday.”
“Set his grave on fire, Colonel.”
“What kind of a world is this in which the dead return and bother the living? I buried him in the way I may one day be buried. I even handed some dough to his seventy-one mistresses…”
“Mr. President, those are state secrets.”
“I don’t agree — the best way to hide things is to show them. I’m going to tell you, my people: all those guys except for myself and Mom have stashed away a pile of dough in Switzerland, billions of coustrani they’ve sent over there to keep Europe moving. That’s why I’m going to reshuffle my hernia, right here, for all of us to see: who wants to be Minister of Trade Negotiations? Ok. And what about Minister of Infantrymen… now that’s democracy, and let’s be honest: Who wants to be Minister of Youth and Sports?… How about Minister of Diplomas?”
By the evening he was slumped down in his favorite official chair and the visitors kept coming: Mr. President, Vauban informs him, the French want to drill for uranium in Valanta.
“How much are they offering?”
“11 percent.”
“Ask for 29 percent.”
“The Italians want to fish off the coast from Watangotta.”
“What percentage?”
“21 percent…”
“That won’t do. Tell them we want one out of every three fish they catch.”
“The Russians are prospecting for oil in Moudan.”
“Out of the question: they’re far too dumb in any case.”
“But Mr. President…”
“Out of the question, I said.”
He shows his zipper to Jouvanso who’s busy gawking at power and stirring up the tribes in the south and I’m here to tell you in person so that you know that my hernia is angry. Our brother Jouvanso scratches his head. But he says it again: my hernia is angry because you still haven’t stopped confusing the fatherland with your way of pissing.
“Where’s my younger brother Ravou del Cosso?”
While he strides across the palace, Mom watches him, smiling: my son is so very beautiful. He’d be even more beautiful if it weren’t for that hernia swelling up his pants, without that smell of eggplant, and without all that mud from the people. He runs into National Yoha who tells the future using cowrie shells: everything looks good, Mr. President. Ok. Everything looks good, but from what I can predict, death will come on a Monday morning, on the leaves from a Kapok tree, and it will be a woman. An extremely beautiful woman.
“Are those predictions correct?”
“I’ve never been wrong. A very young woman will slit your stomach open while you sleep, all the way from the solar plexus to the groin, somewhere between nine and ten o’clock. She’ll cut out a piece of your large intestine.”
“If I was Dananso Lopez, I’d get rid of all the women.”