Free Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe Page A

for the gathering-in of the tribes,” I said.
    “I wish I could look like him,” said His Excellency wistfully, his thoughts obviously far away. If somebody else had reported that exchange to me, especially the sentence
I wish I could look like him
I would not have believed it. A young man wishing he could look like an octogenarian!
    But the leader Sam spoke most about was President Ngongo—I beg your pardon—President-for-Life Ngongo, who called Sam his dear boy and invited him over to his suite for cocktails on the second day. I have little doubt that Sam learnt the habit of saying
Kabisa
from old Ngongo. Within a week it spread to members of the Cabinet and down to the Bassa cocktail set. From there it made its way more or less rapidly into the general community. The other day the office driver who drove me to GTC said: “Charging battery na pure waste of money; once battery begin de give trouble you suppose to buy new one.
Kabisa
.”
    It is unlikely that Sam came away with nothing but
Kabisa
in his travelling bag. I may be wrong but I felt that our welcome at the palace became distinctly cooler from that time. The end of the socializing is not important in itself but its timing must be. I set it down to Sam’s seeing for the first time the possibilities for his drama in the role of an African Head of State and deciding that he must withdraw into seclusion to prepare his own face and perfect his act.

5
     
    “S AME HERE ,” says Ikem.
    “Shit!” replies Mad Medico. “You don’t have to follow your fucking leader in this house, you know. Come on, have Scotch or Campari or anything—even water—just to show him.”
    “Too late,” says Ikem. “We were enslaved originally by Gordon’s Dry Gin. All gestures of resistance are now too late and too empty. Gin it shall be forever and ever, Amen.” Jovial words, but there is not the slightest sign of gaiety in the voice or face.
    “I wonder where you got the idea that Ikem follows my lead. Once again, you are the last to know. He’d sooner be found dead. I thought everyone, even you, knew that.”
    “Following a leader who follows his leader would be quite a circus,” said Ikem with unabated grimness.
    Mad Medico pours out two long gins made longer still by ice cubes he has transferred with his fingers from a plastic bowl. He pours a little tonic water into each and I ask him to add more to mine. Then he throws into each glass a slip of lemon from anotherbowl giving it a little squeeze between thumb and forefinger before letting it drop, and stirs. Twice or thrice in the preparation he has licked his fingers or wiped them on the seat of his blue shorts. I can see that Ikem’s new girl, Elewa, is at first horrified and then fascinated. She is seeing Mad Medico at close quarters for the first time though she has obviously heard much about him. Everyone has. Perhaps she is seeing any white man at close quarters for the first time, for that matter.
    Mad Medico’s proper name is John Kent but nobody here calls him by that any more. He enjoys his bizarre title; his familiar friends always abbreviate it to MM. He is of course neither a doctor nor quite exactly mad. Ikem once described him as an aborted poet which I think is as close as anyone has got to explaining the phenomenon that is John Kent. And the two of them, poet and aborted poet, get on very well together. MM got on very well too with His Excellency, as everybody knows. It was their friendship which brought him here in the first place, made him hospital administrator and saved him a year ago from sudden deportation.
    Elewa’s fascination grows as she explores with wide amazed eyes Mad Medico’s strange home. I find her freshness quite appealing. Now she nudges Beatrice and points at the legend inscribed in the central wall of the bar above the array of bottles in a semi-literate hand and Beatrice obligingly chuckles with her although she has seen it at least a dozen times. Mad Medico notices the