The Sofa

Jean-Luc Raharimanana
Translated by Tom Tulloh

A sofa floating in the fog. Inside, declining, I sink in sweet softness. 6 a.m. Everything’s fine. A head chopped off by a machete. Pre-recorded. Unfortunate. Reeking trousers on the dirty black flesh, green flies on red blood. A cloudless sun, all-over tan for those parts of the epidermis out in the open. This sofa, which endlessly sinks and grows hollow …

And the flies. The flies … flies wriggle into the lopped-off head, exiting through the nostrils, collide with the wind and lay heavy, coated in brains …. An aspirin. Shepherd’s pie. An aspirin. Some dry and some hard. Tanks on the asphalt, turning away, that mangle the flies.

A child in the grass—on the carpet—here feels good. A naked woman—a negress covered in a thousand slashes, a thousand insults … To be raped. To be raped stretched on my tomb. On my sofa. Pre-recorded. Unfortunate. To be deferred, recorded into my dreams.

And the naked woman licks up again the flies weighed down with brain, then spits them into her hole. The child is hungry on the carpet going green. I cry, “That’s mine, that diced herby brain you want, you will not rub it through your guts!” I delete the woman and I swipe her away and I sink her. She disappears. Live.

Everything feels so cozy here. Mud where rave a thousand mad bullets. Mud where raves pulped flesh. Mud. A tank, livid. Caterpillar tracks. Caterpillar tracks! … Which, bloodied, cross the swamping of flies.

Hunky-dory. 7 a.m. The sofa remains intact and paralyzes my lengthy legs. All’s fine here. 8 a.m. Fine. Fine. Clean and without dribble. No blood stains. No oblivion’s puddle. Some aspirin, fuck!

The naked woman reappears—a negress dripping with ethnic blood. Fraîcheur de vivre. Freshness of life. She lubricates her vagina with the muddy pap flesh. Blood, only blood on glistening bones, which divide the vision. Pieces of shrapnel that penetrate deeply between her snaking legs. Still, she pulps the flies. Pulping relentlessly in the gaping mortar of her parts. Her child is hungry. Famine. And the flies and the flies and the flies that he does not eat. Eat them fuck, eat them! The naked woman starts, seizes her child, and quickly departs far away. All in the depths of the apartment. My wounds leak through the miasma between her legs, the rage in my cranium, my baseness, my muck and mire. I dream. I soar. Some aspirin, please. Some dry and some hard. It’s home sweet home. Nose, full of the smell of powder. And lightness. Light. As good as the pollen in the air. It’s nice. 10 a.m.

A noise. A massacre. All in the depths of the apartment. Limbs flying. They soil the walls. Limbs that fly. That land at the foot of my sofa. No odor. Shame. No odor. Sudden hubbub. Stones that fly and voices and cries pulverized under the cobbling. Pebbles. Iron rods. Heaps of bones and pedigree dog shit.

A flurry. Some tears my god. Some tears. All in the depths of the apartment. Reprisals. Reprisals. The cut-off head bounces back in every sense and goes berserk. Black. Darkness in my no-go zone. Borderless sofa that is lit up by a purple exhalation.

“Baby? Baby?”

The naked woman searches for her child in the grit of cracked cobblestone. There! On the carpet invaded by tongues pulled raw and gross ankle boots. I switch off the woman, her cries—and roll out the barbed wire, blocking her passage. My sofa is a cut-off trench where it’s good to live. Purple light and blanket of silence—peaceful— extend over him. Purple silence and blanket of light. Powder, flash of light and drip of conscience.

The child bites on the barbed wire, which slices up his lips, shreds his cheeks, and rips his eyelids. The child has eyes as big as his gnawing stomach.

“Vade retro, Satana.”

I raise the mud aloft and recreate his lips and recreate his cheeks and recreate his eyelids. The child with the mud face smiles and his lips and his cheeks and eyelids melt away. The ravenous flies rush towards him.

I raise the mud aloft and plug his ugliness. He closes his eyelids, opens his mouth, vomits onto my hands the mud I put on his eyes. He can swallow nothing. He can eat nothing. Not enough strength. Not enough life. I put back in his mouth the mud, now I return some to his gums, I re-add it to his tongue which keeps dumping it back out. Right out of his mouth. He is too hungry. Too hungry.

The naked woman bursts her cystic voice, which shatters and then mixes with my saliva. I spit grimly but the child always catches. The child catches. And the cries of the woman biting the barbed wire and slicing herself up and shredding herself and ripping herself. Quiet. 11 a.m.

All is well here. Vast sofa, lit up by purple light and covering the immense expanses of green corpses, of cobbled streets, of pebbles, of iron rods, and of dirty caterpillar tracks. Purple light and shower of sun. Moondrop and wilted asteroids. An aspirin. An aspirin. 12 p.m.

The child boils on the carpet of flies and the gas of his hunger clambers towards my sofa. Scald. Scald. The bodiless head burns. And the flies. And the blood clots. And the neck’s rigid veins. And the glassy wings of the beasts on the black, blood-matted, putrid hair. Burn. Burn. And some applause and some clamor. All in the depths of the apartment. Applause and cries of joy and cries of hate and cries of faith and cries of substance, of ethnics. Firebugs!

The naked woman cries and I raise the fire to her genitals. She yanks on the barbed wire and masturbates with it. She tears herself to ribbons. Pulling the barbed wire, she dresses up her pubis. O blockaded woman aside my unreachable trench. 1 p.m.

I settle deep into my burial sofa. And I watch. I watch. So so cozy. Oh so nice. In the fine powder of innocent spirits. In the nameless fog of rediscovered lands. Unfathomable, I settle into my everlasting sofa. I dream and soar.

And the child exhales his rank soul, which infuses the room. His stench permeates through the murky fumes where all my selves flutter. I crash. I snuggle endlessly into this gaping sofa, which exposes me to an abyss of tears. The head rolls along the floor of the apartment. And slams on every door and slams and slams and slams.

The naked woman fucks me and fucks me. Her ulcerous tongue bursts and erupts into my mouth, leaving my saliva acrid. I choke. She wails. You have killed my child. She digs into her privates and nourishes me. Drawing from her parts, she wets my lips with the milk from her vagina. Sip! Sip! Stomach swollen with drool, her child burst from hunger. And the head knocks forever on all the doors of the world. And keeps knocking, knocking.

“Let us in,” she says, “Let us in!” No. 2 p.m. “Open!” No! No! All’s fine here. So homey.

She rises and gathers her clothes using my entire skin. She covers herself with it and heads towards the festering depths of the apartment. She says to me that I will rot, living on this imposing sofa. She turns off the TV. Opens the door. Sorry, sorry. Please. My husband is dead in Bosnia. I am all alone with my daughter. Sorry, sorry. Please. I’m sorry. I can’t …

I haven’t moved from my sofa. Everything is nice here. So nice. 3 p.m. … 4 p.m. … 5 p.m. …