Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and shortlisted for the Man Booker, The Good Doctor is a powerful tale of a friendship overshadowed by betrayal, set against the tawdry hopes and disappointments of a post-apartheid South Africa.
“HE LOOKED AROUND AT THE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE COURTYARD and I could see him relax visibly. It was nice here in the half-sun, entwined in other conversations. When Mama had brought our beers and we’d both taken a long cold drink, he sighed and said: ‘In the hospital, you asked me why I wanted to come here.’
‘Yes.’
‘I want to explain it to you. But I’m not sure if you’ll understand. All the others, the students, I mean, they just wanted the most comfortable posting. None of them wanted to do it anyway, they were angry. But if they had to go, they wanted it to be convenient, you know, a good hospital, close to home. They didn’t care about it.’
‘And you?’
‘I thought: let me be different to them. Let me find the tiniest place, the furthest away from anything. Let me make it hard on myself.’
‘But why?’
‘I don’t want to be like the rest.’ He studied me uneasily through his spectacles, then dropped his eyes. ‘Why?’ he said. ‘Do you think I’m a fool?’
‘No. But it’s a big symbolic gesture. What do you achieve?’
He said carefully, ‘I want to do work that means something.’
‘But you do want to work,’ I said. ‘You’ve come to a place where that doesn’t always happen.’
He thought about this for a long time, biting his lip. ‘Is it always like this?’ he said at last. ‘I mean, it can’t be.’
‘Why not?’
‘Then it can change.’
‘How?’
‘People change things,’ he said. ‘People make things, they can change them.’
‘You’re idealistic,’ I said.
I wanted to say, you’re very young. I wanted to tell him, you won’t last.
‘Yes,’ he said, nodding happily; he didn’t detect any criticism. He sipped his beer and became serious again. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I like you, Frank.’
I didn’t answer, the declaration made me uncomfortable, but the truth was that I liked him too. The feeling wasn’t based on anything except the few hours we’d spent in each other’s company, but already I was finding it difficult to resent him completely.
Which, in another way, made me resent him more.
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by Damon Galgut
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