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Authors: Chinua Achebe
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headmaster, John Williams, told him that the Army was the career for gentlemen he immediately abandoned thoughts of becoming a doctor and became a soldier. I am sure the only reason he didn’t marry the English girl MM found for him in Surrey was the shattering example of Chris and his American wife Louise whom he married, if you please, not in New York which might have made a certain sense but in London. I suppose it is not impossible for two strangers to fabricate an affinity of sorts from being exiled to the same desert island even from opposite ends of the earth. Unfortunately Chris and Louise didn’t make it once in bed, or anywhere else, throughout their six months cohabitation.
John Williams, our teacher, whose favourite phrase was “good and proper, pressed down and flowing over,” in describing punishment, probably made the best choice for Sam after all. He grew so naturally into the part, more easily, I think, than he would have slipped into the role of doctor although I am sure his bedside manner would have been impeccable. But after Sandhurst he was a catalogue model of an officer.
His
favourite expression after he came home was:
it’s not done
, spoken in his perfect accent.
I went to see Sam the morning after I heard news of his promotion to Captain. It was Sunday and the time about ten o’clock. I found him in his morning coat lounging in a sofa with Sunday papers scattered around him on the floor, a half-smoked pipe on a side-table and from his hi-fi Mozart’s
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
on a 45 r.p.m. record playing at 331/3. That was Sam’s problem. Not very bright but not wicked. And completely tone-deaf. Nothing is more entertaining than Sam trying to whistle a tune.
There is something else about Sam which makes him enormously easy to take: his sense of theatre. He is basically an actor and half of the things we are inclined to hold against him are no more than scenes from his repertory to which he may have no sense of moral commitment whatsoever. He was fascinated by the customs of the English, especially their well-to-do classes and enjoyed playing at their foibles. When he told me about his elegant pipe which he had spent a whole morning choosing in a Mayfair shop I could see that he was not taking himself seriously at all. And therefore I had no reason to do so.
Of course one may well question the appropriateness of these attitudes in a Head of State. But quite frankly, I am not troubledby that. In fact the sort of intellectual playfulness displayed by Sam must be less dangerous than the joyless passion for power of many African tyrants. As long as he gets good advice and does not fall too deeply under the influence of such Rasputins as Reginald Okong we may yet avoid the very worst.
Perhaps I am altogether too sanguine but his response to the doctors’ crisis gave me great hope and encouragement. He saw right away—just as I did and Chris refused to—that it wasn’t Mad Medico’s insane graffiti that brought all those worthy people so viciously about his throat. Far from it. His crime was rather that he had dared to get one of their number disgraced. Publicly they admitted that Dr. Ofe may have behaved unethically. But did that give a layman, especially one who was also a foreigner, the right to instigate relatives of a dead patient and even give them his own money to sue the very hospital in which he works? Their answer to their own rhetorical question was, of course, an emphatic no. Mine was an equally strong yes and so, thank God, was His Excellency’s. In fairness to Chris he did not disagree with us on the Ofe affair but took the legalistic line that the doctors’ complaint about Mad Medico’s notices must be seen in isolation and entirely on its own merit. That shyster of an Attorney-General must have given free lessons to Chris.
Admittedly Mad Medico made a complete fool of himself putting up those atrocious jokes. He was both irresponsible in his action and careless of his
John Williams, our teacher, whose favourite phrase was “good and proper, pressed down and flowing over,” in describing punishment, probably made the best choice for Sam after all. He grew so naturally into the part, more easily, I think, than he would have slipped into the role of doctor although I am sure his bedside manner would have been impeccable. But after Sandhurst he was a catalogue model of an officer.
His
favourite expression after he came home was:
it’s not done
, spoken in his perfect accent.
I went to see Sam the morning after I heard news of his promotion to Captain. It was Sunday and the time about ten o’clock. I found him in his morning coat lounging in a sofa with Sunday papers scattered around him on the floor, a half-smoked pipe on a side-table and from his hi-fi Mozart’s
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
on a 45 r.p.m. record playing at 331/3. That was Sam’s problem. Not very bright but not wicked. And completely tone-deaf. Nothing is more entertaining than Sam trying to whistle a tune.
There is something else about Sam which makes him enormously easy to take: his sense of theatre. He is basically an actor and half of the things we are inclined to hold against him are no more than scenes from his repertory to which he may have no sense of moral commitment whatsoever. He was fascinated by the customs of the English, especially their well-to-do classes and enjoyed playing at their foibles. When he told me about his elegant pipe which he had spent a whole morning choosing in a Mayfair shop I could see that he was not taking himself seriously at all. And therefore I had no reason to do so.
Of course one may well question the appropriateness of these attitudes in a Head of State. But quite frankly, I am not troubledby that. In fact the sort of intellectual playfulness displayed by Sam must be less dangerous than the joyless passion for power of many African tyrants. As long as he gets good advice and does not fall too deeply under the influence of such Rasputins as Reginald Okong we may yet avoid the very worst.
Perhaps I am altogether too sanguine but his response to the doctors’ crisis gave me great hope and encouragement. He saw right away—just as I did and Chris refused to—that it wasn’t Mad Medico’s insane graffiti that brought all those worthy people so viciously about his throat. Far from it. His crime was rather that he had dared to get one of their number disgraced. Publicly they admitted that Dr. Ofe may have behaved unethically. But did that give a layman, especially one who was also a foreigner, the right to instigate relatives of a dead patient and even give them his own money to sue the very hospital in which he works? Their answer to their own rhetorical question was, of course, an emphatic no. Mine was an equally strong yes and so, thank God, was His Excellency’s. In fairness to Chris he did not disagree with us on the Ofe affair but took the legalistic line that the doctors’ complaint about Mad Medico’s notices must be seen in isolation and entirely on its own merit. That shyster of an Attorney-General must have given free lessons to Chris.
Admittedly Mad Medico made a complete fool of himself putting up those atrocious jokes. He was both irresponsible in his action and careless of his
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