City of Tiny Lights by Patrick Neate

Author:Patrick Neate
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2005-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

16

It took a few days to wean me off the morph. I cried like a baby, serious. Gloria was sympathy itself. ‘Thomas!’ she exclaimed. ‘You complaining again? But you’re troublesome! You don’t know what pain is. You should try childbirth, my friend.’

I suffered a severe sense-of-humour failure. I’m not proud of it. I told her my name was Tommy. I told her I wasn’t her friend. I told her where she could stick her troublesome. She came over all pouty and suggested my bed could be put to better use by the more deserving. So at least we agreed on something. I had to get out of there. I had work to do. I needed a drink and a fag. But the doctors made me wait.

In the meantime, Farzad didn’t come back. I knew he hated hospitals. They reminded him of Mina: pacing corridors the best part of certain his life had just fallen apart. Fair enough. Then again, everything reminds him of Mina from the bottom of a can of Genius to the wall of his front room, know what I mean?

There was no reappearance by exoticmelody either. I somewhat regretted that I’d been comatose when she’d dropped by. Her flowers sat in the vase until they started to smell rotten. Even then, it took a comment from the registrar before Gloria chucked them. My only visitor, therefore, was Av. No sign of Michelle this time and no fresh fruit from Mrs K. He was on his own.

Av had been to his first meeting with the PWA. Av was overexcited. Av talked faster than usual and, with my brain working slower than usual, it took me a minute or two to decipher whether he was hyped by his first venture into the thrilling world of espionage or what he’d heard at the Kilburn Library. But I figured it out.

‘So I went down there, Tommy man. And I was all, like, “I hear this is what what what.” And they were, like, “What of it?” But I was cool, you get me? So they let me in and they all calling me “my brother” or whatever and I’m, like, this is extra because I’m not no f___ing sucker, right? But I tell you, Tommy man, there was ’nuff youth down there of all flavours, you know what I mean? I mean, from what you said, Tommy man, I was expecting some c – s talking religious business and what what what. But there was none of that. They was just cool, you know?

‘It was like college. Not like college college. But like college. It’s like what they said, man: “This is schooling they don’t teach you in school.” That’s what they said. They said, “We teach you history and science and mathematics but not like that bullshit you learn in school.”’

He paused. He took a deep breath. He was going to tell me something important. ‘You know where they had the first library in the whole world?’

I said, ‘No.’

‘Timbuktu. You know where that is? Africa.

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