Every Day Is for the Thief: Fiction by Cole Teju

Author:Cole, Teju [Cole, Teju]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780812995794
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2014-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

One evening, a man walks into the living room. He makes straight for me and locks me in a powerful embrace. The features come together very slowly. But when he grins I have it figured out. This stranger is no stranger. It is Rotimi, my childhood friend.

—Look at this guy.

—How the hell are you?

—What have you been doing with yourself?

—Can’t complain. Dealing with this country, and the country’s dealing with me. You know.

—Doesn’t look like it, man. You’re looking good. Come here, fool.

We embrace again. His eyes flash like gemstones in the velvety setting of his face. I can’t believe it is him, after all this time. And yet it is him, it can only be him, that unmistakable grin. Same as it was when he was a shy five-year-old. Rotimi tells me he is now practicing as a physician. He knows I am training in psychiatry. We just sit there and look at each other in amazement for a while, as if trying to reconcile the image of the children we were with the men we now are. He has his life together, he is a made guy. Purple shirt, silver tie. Very smooth. I grab two bottles of beer from the kitchen. And we sit down and talk. Fifteen years of catching up to do.

—I’m so happy to see you, he says.

—I’m happy to see you too. So tell me, man, what’s the scene like here? How’s medicine in Naija?

—Ol’ boy, it’s not easy o. It’s not easy at all.

—Yeah, everyone says that. But doctors do better than others, no be so?

He loosens his tie and leans back. How quickly time takes hold of us. The diffident kid I knew since I was myself an infant, and here he now is, a man resting after his day’s labor. I look at his hands. In those hands is new knowledge.

—How are the cases?

—The cases are okay, you know. Very wide variety. But it’s a private hospital, and they do a pretty good job of keeping it supplied with drugs, equipment. Well anyway, I’m thinking of going into pediatrics.

—That’s good.

—Should be fine. The kids are okay, actually, it’s the parents that are difficult. They’re the hardest part of pediatrics. Anyway, I’ll do general medicine for a while yet.

—Yeah, I did my last few rotations in internal medicine last year. There’s a part of me that’ll miss that. But the “talking cure” is a much better fit for me.

It is starting to get dark inside the living room, though the sky is still the color of burnished copper. I switch on the lights. These Lagos nights that fall without warning: the last glow of day at a quarter to seven, pitch-black fifteen minutes later. The call to prayer floats in from the distance.

—Well paid?

—Not really. I mean, I live with my parents, so I can manage. But it’s not great.

—What are we talking, a hundred?

—More like seventy.

I whistle. Seventy thousand naira a month, for a doctor in a private hospital. I hadn’t expected it to be so little.

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