Chapter 4

No sooner had we entered Miguel’s house than we sat down to eat. There was plenty of food and the exact number of places round the table, as if I had been expected, or as if he always brought home one of his fares.

Before eating we offered up a short prayer of thanks, not to a god, but to the man whose picture sat in the middle of the table – a youthful man in a suit and tie, holding a baby. “To Angelos Adore” the prayer was said in the same way we raise a toast in the West, but instead of a glass of scotch all I had to raise in acknowledgement was a piece of bread.

Over the course of the evening I would learn that Miguel was the baby in the picture and that Angelos was a former Mayor of Big City, now elderly and sick, but once the youthful face of promise and opportunity.

I was introduced to the rest of Miguel’s family: his wife Catelle, his daughter Liv and his sons Paul and Trouble. Trouble, I discovered, was the same age as me and worked at the local Coca Cola factory as Remover of the Dead.

“Remover of the Dead?” I said fearing some ghastly corporate cover up, with Trouble removing the corpses of Coke’s various victims.

“It’s a great title, no?” Trouble said, laughing hysterically. I thought of it. I remove many dead – cockroaches, rats, birds and other vermin.”

This, I would discover, is the language of Big City. Dramatic, OTT, verging on madness. Whereas in the West job titles Pest Controllers have been watered down to the blandest set of words conceivable, Hygiene Technicians or Vermin Field Operatives, in Big City even a phrase like ‘Rat Catcher’ isn’t considered dramatic enough.

Trouble’s younger brother, Pablo, is younger than me, but had also left school. He was working at a local factory where he made “things for the West.”

“I’ve no idea what the things are,” he said when pressed, “they are nice, clean, western things.”

“I’d like to go to Independent University,” Trouble said later that night, when we’d retired to bed (the three of us were sharing a room).

“Well you should then,” I said, “study hard, get the grades you need.”

The two brothers laughed loudly at this suggestion. “Get the grades! I have the top grades, but to get to Independent University you don’t need grades, you need money. I might as well wish I was City Mayor.”

At this point I could have mentioned my scholarship, but for some strange reason I knew without checking that the scholarship I had been granted was only available to westerners like myself, not to city kids like Pablo and Trouble.