Every Day Is for the Thief: Fiction Read Online Free PDF

microphone about the couple. The bride-to-be, Alaba, is absent. She is a banker in Cape Town. Her groom, my cousins’ cousin, Dayo, has come with his family to formally present himself to his future in-laws.
    —It was armed robbers, Muyiwa says. It happened in 1998.
    The woman’s skin glows with warm ocher tones, and her eyes flash intelligently each time she speaks or laughs. I observe her intently from where I sit. She must be about fifty-five.
    —The men came into their house at night, an armed gang. Woke up the parents, their children, the house help.
    —And they shot him?
    —No.
    Home invasions were extremely common in Lagos in the 1990s, and they still happen, though less frequently. My own family had two encounters with armed robbers. Once, when I was at Aunty Folake’s place on a long vacation, the men had got into the compound but had been unable to break down the reinforced doors leading into the house. We had all huddled in the bathroom of the master bedroom while the robbers threatened from outside. They kept at it,ramming the massive front door repeatedly, until it was almost the break of day. Only then, thwarted, did they give up and melt away with the shadows. We emerged from behind the barricades long after the sun had risen, and saw that one of the robbers must have been injured scaling the broken-glass-topped fence. We found drops on the concrete all the way along the walls surrounding the house and leading to the front door, the blood he’d left behind like ominous petals.
    These robbers, or some others like them, came back a few years later. This was after I had left for America. This time, they got in. Uncle Tunde had been punched in the face. Muyiwa, who was about eight at the time, had been slapped. All the electronics, jewelry, and money in the house were taken. For many years afterward, Aunty Folake couldn’t sleep through the night. Uncle Tunde bought a gun. It was never fired, not even in practice. It just hung there on the bedroom wall, rusting. It was a mysterious presence in the family home, a Chekhovian prop awaiting its fruition in vain.
    —They cleaned out the house, but when they were leaving, they forced Mr. Adelaja to come with them.
    The master of ceremonies makes a wisecrack that has both the bride’s and the groom’s families convulsed with laughter. The bride’s family has selected a peach-colored theme for the occasion, and all their headwear is of the same fabric. At the laughter, Muyiwa and I both look up, then look down again, and Muyiwa continues his story.
    —They locked him up in the trunk of his car, and drove around to the neighbor’s house. When they got there, they dragged him out and made him speak into the intercom. “It’s your neighbor. Please. I need some help. Please open the gate.” This was at two in the morning. Mr. Adelaja was the kind of man you opened your gate to, at any time of day. A respectable man, well known in the neighborhood, well liked. And that way, the robbers gained access to the neighbor’s place, cleaned out his house. Then, they dragged him along too, left his wife and daughters weeping and pleading. So now, there are two men in the trunk of the car, and they can hear the armed robbers discussing their strategy. They can hear them saying, Well, these guys have seen our faces and heard our voices. We’re going to have to kill them. And then they come round, and they open the trunk, and they shoot Mr. Adelaja twice, once in the stomach and once in the head. The neighbor, they leave alive, hoping to use him as bait for some more houses. They shut the trunk. But not long after that, they run into a police checkpoint. Panicked, they jump out of the car and disappear into the woods. And the police examine the car, and in the trunk they find two men, both covered in blood, one man still alive.
    Muyiwa shakes his head. I look at Mrs. Adelaja again, this woman in whose radiance I can see nothing that looks like grief and nothing that