Forget It!

Forget It!

The lawyer leant forward menacingly towards the man in the witness box. ‘Professor Donald Amnesia, you were born in 1957, is that correct?’

‘I can’t possibly be expected to remember that My Lord,’ said the absent-minded professor, looking to the Judge for mercy. ‘I was far too young at the time. I have only hearsay evidence from my parents, who were both notoriously unreliable.’

‘Surely you must know how old you are,’ said the Judge irritably. ‘Don’t you have a birth certificate?’

‘You will appreciate, My Lord, that a learned professor such as myself has an extensive personal library. Looking for one small document like that would need a bibliographic search that could take months.’

‘Just get on with it,’ the Judge snapped at the lawyer. ‘You are supposed to be looking for stolen property, not missing birth certificates.’

‘Moving on,’ said the lawyer, ‘in 1985 you came back from the States with a Doctorate in Amnesia and Forgetfulness?’

‘That’s right,’ said the professor proudly, thrusting his big belly forward and adjusting his wonky spectacles. ‘I wrote a thesis entitled The Role of Forgetfulness in the Criminalisation of the State.’

‘What was it about?’

‘I can’t remember,’ said the professor. ‘But it was mainly composed of impressive quotations from other people.’

‘But soon after you came home, you were appointed Economic Adviser to Mupupu Wabufi, even though you had no qualifications in economics!’

‘I was not an adviser in the economy of money. I was an adviser in the economy of truth!’

‘You mean that you advised him how to lie?’

‘Good gracious me no! What are you suggesting! He was already an excellent liar! Everybody believed his lies! He didn’t need any advice from me!’

‘So what did he need you for? If nobody knew he was lying, there was no problem.’

‘On the contrary, My Lord, there was a very big problem. The problem was that he knew he was lying. All his lies and misdeeds used to give him nightmares. He dreaded the day when it would all catch up with him, and he would have to stand in this court and tell the truth.’

‘So you had to teach him to believe his own lies?’

‘That wasn’t possible either. Wabufi was a very clever little chap, and not gullible enough to believe his own lies. This is the terrible burden of great leadership.’

‘So what did you advise?’

‘I advised him that the solution to his problem was forgetfulness, which is the key concept in the economy of truth. I taught him how to forget all the lies and misdeeds of yesterday, so that he could better concentrate on lies for today and tomorrow. That is the secret of how to be a great leader. The secret of an easy conscience is lack of memory.’

‘Since you must know where all these lies were buried,’ suggested the lawyer, ‘it seems that you may be the very one to unravel the mystery of the missing funds. The incoming government has found that the entire contents of the Treasury have disappeared, and they have inherited nothing but huge debts. Do you have any information about this?’

‘I certainly do. I know for a fact that the previous Minister of Finance was extremely forgetful. Perhaps he absent-mindedly banked the money in a wrong bank. Or took it to the National Assembly instead of the Ministry of Finance. Or put it in a wrong tin trunk. I suggest you ask him.’

‘So you have managed to remember that he was forgetful. I was beginning to think you couldn’t remember anything!’

‘It is important to remember when to forget, but not to forget when to remember.’

‘How many houses do you own, Professor Amnesia?’

The absent-minded professor looked over his spectacles, put his tongue in his cheek, and scratched his head for a couple of minutes. But finally he had to admit his difficulty. ‘I have to admit,’ he admitted, ‘that as an academic specialised in qualitative matters, I cannot speak with any precision or certainty on purely quantitative matters. I’ve never had a good memory for figures. I suggest that you put your question to the Director of the Central Statistics Office.’

‘I put it to you that you bought twenty-four houses in the last year!’

‘Really? I can’t remember any such thing. It sounds rather unlikely. I’m sure I would have noticed all the title deeds. Perhaps you should ask my wife, she might know something about it. She runs a very successful little café in Katondo Street.’

‘Are you the director of ten different companies which have all collapsed?’

‘You forget that a company which has collapsed doesn’t have directors, only liquidators.’

‘Why did you drive here in an old Datsun 120Y, when you have three new Mercs at your mansion in New Kasama?’ shouted the lawyer, banging his fist on the table.

‘Even me, I’ve been wondering about those Mercs. My wife says that they belong to the Shushushu. She says they parked them in my yard because they were short of space, but they seem to have forgotten about them.’

‘Nobody can remember anything!’ yelled the lawyer. ‘Can you remember swearing on the Bible?’

‘Swearing on the Bible?’ said Amnesia, stroking his chin thoughtfully. ‘No, I’m sure I never did anything like that,’ he finally replied. ‘I’ve sworn never to swear. I couldn’t forget a thing like that.’

The lawyer came close and hissed into the professor’s face. ‘Will you ever remember anything?’

‘If I ever get back into power,’ Amnesia growled menacingly, ‘I shall certainly remember you!’