Every Day Is for the Thief: Fiction

by Cole, Teju

—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. That comes to five hundred dollars a month, a pittance. And there’s no real adjustment to make for cost of living because, in Lagos, television sets cost just as much as they cost elsewhere. This is the reality in an economy that is almost totally dependent on imports. A used car will set you back ten thousand dollars, same as in the United States, and a new paperback novel costs fourteen dollars. Meanwhile, rent is not cheap, and though salaries have risen, they have not kept up with the rate of inflation at all. It is difficult for the average Nigerian to live a middle-class lifestyle. And even those whose profession or education gives them an income well above the average still struggle. And for those in the fifteen-thousand-, twenty-thousand-naira range, life is simply hell. A hundred and forty dollars a month is poverty, anywhere in the world.

  —Seventy? So who is making the money? Used to be that doctors were financially well off. Heck, isn’t that why our families pushed us to study medicine?

  —No kidding. Well, it’s not like that anymore. To be a big pawpaw in Nigeria now, you’d better have a job in telecommunications. Or better still, in the oil industry. That’s where the moola is. I have friends I went to school with who graduated and went straight into positions that pay three hundred, four-fifty even. Bankers do okay too, two hundred, you know, and more at the merchant banks. But let me tell you, life is hard in Nigeria, man. Life is very hard for the majority. We’re all looking to get out. America, London, Trinidad. Wherever.

  He stretches out further on the sofa. He looks wiped out. What he says about the economy is true. The oil and gas business rakes in lurid profits, there has been a great increase in cellphone use, and the banking sector is frenetic. The newspapers are full of mergers and acquisitions. These are the limits of the boom. It is good news in the sense that increased commerce is creating jobs, that the economy is active, and certain practical needs of the people are being met. Things are not as stagnant as they were in the dark days of the early and mid-nineties. But there are now more serious discrepancies in income levels, even among people with comparable educational qualifications. There is little incentive for people to go into professions that are not lucrative. Consumption, among those who can afford it, is conspicuous.

  We drink. There is much to talk about, and little, as happens when two friends haven’t met in a long time. I ask him if it’s been a long drive from the island.

  —Yeah, really long, man. Why do you say that? Do I look so tired? You have to time Lagos driving just right, getting on the bridge. You leave too late, a forty-minute journey could easily become two hours. Sometimes more.

  —That is just crazy. But at least your car is air-conditioned.

  —Ha! No chance.

  He shakes his head. We look at each other. And just at that moment there is a power cut and we both disappear.

  SEVENTEEN

  Rotimi accompanies me to the generator house. In the soot-covered concrete enclosure, we discover that there is just enough diesel in the machine for an hour of electricity. Then darkness until the morrow. I tell him I’m sorry about this. But why, he asks, should you be apologetic? I live in Lagos, I’m used to power cuts. Then he offers to drive me to a filling station. He won’t be dissuaded.

  The mind roams more widely in the dark than it does in light. It is no surprise, then, stepping out of the unlit house into the unlit compound to find myself with the sudden thought, What if I inhabited another body and had a different destiny? We have all had these notions, perhaps while standing on a porch over a lake in the summer night as our friends enjoy a party indoors, or maybe on waking alone at three in the morning. Moments of great isolation. And there is that other thought: What if everything changed tonight? What if there is an explosion in the generator house? Nighted color seeps into the mind.

  The backseat of Rotimi’s car, an old Toyota, is full of papers and medical books, including some for foreign exams. I put a large jerry can into the trunk. From the Ojodu–Berger terminus we connect to the Lagos–Sagamu Expressway and travel in the direction of Lagos. After ten minutes, we exit at Ogba and drive to the nearest filling station, but they have no diesel. We drive around that neighborhood, and at the next three stations the story is the same. Either the station is closed, or they are open but have no diesel. Half the city runs on diesel generators, and Nigeria is one of the world’s leading producers of crude oil. The shortages make no sense.

  Finally, we get back on the expressway, traveling in the opposite direction. In about five minutes we find a place that has diesel. I am impressed by the way Rotimi talks to the woman at the pump. He falls into a casual vernacular that erases the social distance between them. The message, unmistakably, is that we need her, that it is in her power to help us out. Diesel is advertised at seventy-seven naira per liter. I tell her we want two thousand five hundred worth, and she carefully fills up the jerry can until the numbers on the pump tick exactly to two five. I thank her and pay with a pair of thousand-naira notes and a five hundred. As we pull out of the station and onto the highway Rotimi laughs and says:

  —You noticed what just happened, right?

  —Um, no. What?

  —How much did you pay?

  —Two five. That’s how much I wanted, and that was the reading on the machine. So don’t worry, I had my eye on things.

  —Okay, yes, but did you see the advertised rate?

  —Sure, it was seventy-se
ven.

  —And how big was your jerry can? Twenty-five liters, abi be ko?

  —Ol’ boy, I don’t see what you’re driving at.

  —You had your eye on things! Omo, do the maths.

  So I do. Twenty-five at seventy-seven only comes to nineteen twenty-five. Christ. She’s just had us for almost six hundred naira, easy as that. Rotimi chuckles again and says:

  —Don’t sweat it, that’s just the way it is, man.

  —This damn country.

  Somehow, seeing the advertised rate set into the pump, and seeing the pump tick up the numbers, made me think that everything was clean and official.

  —We couldn’t have done anything about it. That’s just the way it is, she has to have her own cut. It saves us the trouble of having to tip her.

  He laughs again. I am a little annoyed, but I have to marvel at how brazen it all is. So I smile too, and swear again. We cruise on the highway, red lights twinkling directly ahead of us, the white headlamps of oncoming cars flashing to our left. And as we approach Isheri, I say what has been weighing on my mind all evening:

  —Rotimi, how did you deal with the, I mean, how did you cope with Sola’s death?

  The unspoken thing. I haven’t seen him since it happened, in 1993. From the late seventies and for most of the eighties we were a close-knit crew. Their mother and my father had gone to school together, and when they’d had us three boys within the space of three years, it was natural that close friendships would ensue. And so, the Bamgbose boys are there in those early photos, my fifth birthday, his brother, Sola’s third, someone else’s tenth. Sola was the youngest of us three, he was the runt, the one we teased constantly, a rambunctious, happy kid. They were always there with me, as the photos went from black-and-white prints to the washed-out colors of the Polaroids, wearing the same bow ties and ruffled shirts that our mothers made us wear to those parties. The lights of the Lagos night interrupt the darkness of the car at intervals, as though we were passing under scanners. Rotimi’s face takes on that guarded, distant look that I know so well. But when he starts to talk, it is clear that he wants to open up.

  —It was very difficult. You know, he and I were in the same class, in spite of our age difference.

  —I never did know what happened exactly. An accident at that boarding school in Abeokuta, right?

  —Yes. We were in SS One. I had just turned fifteen, and Sola was fourteen. He was always one of the youngest kids in class. Anyway, one of his friends, a day student, had brought a car to school to impress the boarders with. Which, of course, wasn’t allowed. And somehow or the other, the car stopped working, developed some fault. So the boy who brought it gets into the car, and the other boys, there are three of them, start to push the car. They finally get it to start, and the three boys stop pushing. They climb up on the trunk for a laugh. But the boy inside the car doesn’t see them do this, and he just accelerates and drives off.

  We come off the expressway, and ease the car into the congested bus terminus near the housing estate. Rotimi speaks dispassionately, but the weight of the event is still there in his every word. It is about nine at night. The danfos are still active at the terminus, the bus touts are still crying out, but in fewer numbers than during the previous hour.

  —All three boys fell off the car. Two of them did not have a scratch. But Sola somehow slammed his head on the road.

  —My God.

  —And that evening was weird, you know. No one could tell me what had happened. Everyone knew, but I didn’t. I was there in the dining hall, and boys were offering me their seats, serving me larger portions than usual. It wasn’t normal. I knew something was up. Eventually, one of the prefects took me aside and said my brother had had an accident, that he had been taken to the general hospital in town. And, of course, my parents came to pick me up the next morning.

  —When did they tell you he was dead?

  —Not until we got home. It was unreal, you know. Sometimes it is still unreal, that Sola could just die like that. Just gone like that. I was all alone. And that was the last time I was ever in Abeokuta. I transferred to a day school in Lagos the next semester.

  We park the car outside the compound and Rotimi switches the engine off. We sit. We hear only the sound of the neighbors’ generators.

  —To be honest, my mother almost went mad. There was a lot of silence in the house for the first year afterward. It was unbelievably hard for all of us. For each one of us, in a different way.

  —I can imagine. And now?

  —We’re fine. Mostly. They’re overprotective, of course, but I understand. Even when I don’t want to be too careful, I have to think about them and I force myself to be careful. Just for them if for no other reason. Once I told them I had ridden on a motorcycle. My dad almost slapped me. And, you know, he kind of had a point.

  We both laugh. I take the diesel out of the trunk, and wipe my hands on a rag.

  —Ol’ boy, thank you so much for all this driving around.

  —What nonsense. Don’t mention it. I’m so happy to see you. It’s been too bloody long.

  —It was a good time, my friend. Stay in touch, okay? Let me know how I can help. Especially when you decide to take those American licensing exams. Don’t hesitate, use my mailing address, have me send you forms, whatever it is. The program I’m in is quite small, but there are always opportunities in New York.

  —Most definitely.

  He smiles, hugs me as if he were comforting me. He gets into his car and drives away, waving the whole time. And, because it is night, my mind continues to trace alternatives.

  EIGHTEEN

  The field I am standing in is mostly dust, but it has sere grass in scattered patches. Six men sit in the shade of a large Indian almond tree. One of them, a young man in a sky-blue cap, is blind in one eye. For some reason, I keep thinking his damaged eye is rolling over to look at me. It is hot and nobody talks. Ahead, near the wall that demarcates the field, a black goat grazes. The grass is so low and rare that the goat kneels on his front legs and eats in an angled position. He chews at one patch and shifts around on his knees and eats from another. Head to ground, rump raised in the air, outlined starkly against the off-white wall, he looks like a plane about to land.

  It is a school field but quiet because the children have all gone away on Christmas break. It is late afternoon. We are waiting for a container. My aunt built a school on the outskirts of Lagos in the late eighties. She spends all her money on keeping it supplied with resources so that it can compete with the many other private primary schools in the city. Uncle Tunde’s brother had, in October, filled up a medium-size container in Chicago and sent it to Lagos. The shipment contains books, personal effects, and a car. The car is a three-year-old Honda Civic. It is one of the cheapest of the four-door sedan cars on the American market, but nonetheless a fine car to have in Nigeria. The container arrived in Apapa only in the third week of December. But the field in which we are waiting is not at my aunt’s school. This is an older school belonging to their family friend Mr. Wuraola. They have decided against sending the container all the way across Lagos. Instead, they plan to off-load the container at Mr. Wuraola’s field in Surulere and then use small school buses to carry the goods to Ojodu. The reason for this is to avoid attracting the unwanted attentions of hoodlums in the neighborhood, for whom the sudden appearance of a large container might be an invitation to robbery.

  There is a Yoruba word: tokunbo. That is the term for the secondhand imported consumer goods that flood the Nigerian market. It means “from over the seas.” This word is also a Yoruba first name, given to those who were born in foreign countries before being brought back home. That is the primary use of the word, but the other sense, the adjectival one, has become common. Tokunbo cars, tokunbo clothes, tokunbo electronics. A word that was once a mark of worldliness now has a mildly pejorative air about it. The importation of used goods is vital to the domestic economy in Nigeria, as the manufacturing industry is not well de
veloped. But in addition to those goods destined for the market, there has also been a steep rise in imports by private citizens for personal use.

  Our wait in the field in Surulere is only the latest in a long series of delays. Already, hundreds of dollars have been spent on bribes and unofficial taxes. The previous day, we received a dressing-down from a customs officer at the port who was enraged that his colleague had left him out of the take. And the container is two weeks late. Two weeks and four hours. Then it arrives. Godot is here, says my uncle. Godot’s been rigged to a flatbed trailer, brought through the highways and winding streets from Apapa to Surulere. The trailer pulls into the field. The black goat stops eating and looks up. He gets to his feet and goes away, through the main gate. We don’t see him again. The men under the tree get up from their half slumber. The container is opened quickly, and we started unloading it. We begin with the smaller boxes and work in a chain to transfer them from the container into the little vans. Many are schoolbooks for the various grades. Others contain everyday objects like dish soap, parboiled rice, and lamps. Aunty Folake and Mr. Wuraola supervise the work. Mr. Wuraola, with his red T-shirt tucked into his khakis, looks exactly like a middle-aged American.

  When about half of the boxes have been brought down, the driver of the trailer and his assistant set up a winch and an incline. One of the school bus drivers gets inside the Civic and very gently eases it out of the container down into the field. It gleams, looks as good as new compared to the other cars, which have suffered the streets of Lagos. That is when they come in. Three of them. Even from the distance it is obvious that this is trouble. We stop arranging boxes. Two of the drivers immediately go to the far end of the field to meet them and to keep them from getting too close to us. Mr. Wuraola turns to his workers and says:

  —How did they get in? How did they get in?

  We all look at each other. Our hands hang limp at our sides. Mr. Wuraola paces near the car in his khakis and red T-shirt. Aunty Folake says: