I

All year they were telling us that the company was sailing with the wind. All the graphs showed rising trends: more clients, more turnover. And also more work: that is why they were always hiring more sales staff. Every ten or twelve days we saw new faces, although it seemed to me that they were the same mugs with different ties. That suit, that laptop, that aggressive smile, the hurry, the repetition of the same platitudes on the phone, that insufferable tone of “this is of vital importance” in every email. The one who always wore a pink tie had written to us a few days ago to tell us that we had to change the font used for the name of our company in the email program. Einstein’s letter to President Roosevelt warning that Hitler was on the point of developing the atomic bomb was written in a less angry tone.

What we engineers could not understand was why, in spite of the magnificent financial results of the year, they had drastically reduced the December bonus. We were all expecting to get an explanation at the meeting. It was yet another of those never-ending meetings during which they told us how great we are and what great dicks we had. Pink Tie hadn’t been talking for ten minutes and I was already completely fed up. I started day dreaming, my mind wandered and I remembered the story of the iron pyrite.

In the first two or three years of school, no child did anything. We were nothing, just like blank canvas to be scribbled on. Generally, we just kept quiet and watched each other. Over time, each of our personalities began to take form: many kids began to act, to express themselves, to differentiate themselves from others. One made us laugh, another sang, another ran faster than anyone, another jumped higher, another made sharp observations about things, another always gave the right answer to the teacher’s questions. There was one kid who could lick his own nose, another who could spit out of the window and hit the building over the way, even one who had read a whole book, without pictures, and appeared to enjoy it. Our identities were being formed.

Other kids kept on not saying anything and looking at the others. No one talked about them: we talked about those who stood out in some way. To stand out was good: many people knew your name, smiled at you, said hello to you. Now you were no longer a blank canvas; you were something. Something beautiful, or perhaps something original, or maybe simply something; but you were something. And you were recognised for it. Sometimes you were awarded a pat or a furtive kiss, and then you felt something big that you didn’t begin to understand, but every single one of your cells seemed to be crying out, “We are getting on OK, here, mate.” The survival of the species was at stake.

One day I was approached by one of those kids who was always looking and never said anything. I didn’t know his name. “Look,” he said mysteriously. He took out a piece of golden metal from his pocket and held it out to me. I stayed looking at the tiny golden ball for a few seconds. It was grubby. The kid’s fingers were grubby too. I raised my eyes: his face was also grubby. He looked at me very seriously and spoke to me in a low voice, as if he were revealing a hugely important secret.

“This is not gold,” he paused, “It’s iron pyrite.”

He was motionless for a few seconds and then he returned the grubby little ball to his pocket. He looked at me, arched his eyebrows and went off with a smile. I remained thoughtful, suspecting something. I didn’t know what iron pyrite was: I supposed that no one at seven years of age knew either. But this kid knew. He had a piece of it. He had to be a silly prat.

I didn’t ask his name; I wasn’t interested. For me, that anonymous kid became Iron Pyrite. Sometimes I would see him in the school playground. He was always showing someone his grubby little ball; some kids seemed interested, taking the ball so they could look at it close up, passing it from one to another. Then they returned it to Iron Pyrite who wore a smile of self-satisfaction.

It took me a while, but at the end I came to some conclusions. Iron Pyrite also wanted to stand out, but he neither ran faster nor jumped higher than anyone else. When he showed you that little ball, you automatically thought that it was gold. He told you that you were wrong. Oh, I could have sworn that it was gold, you would say. And if you were wrong and he right, then he had to be cleverer than you. You were a student who, after school, would go home to eat bread with Nutella and watch Sesame Street. Iron Pyrite was picked up by helicopter and he went with his parents, who were scientific adventurers called Thomas and Linda, to explore the Amazon. In one of their many adventures, they had got lost fleeing from the fearsome Potiguara tribe (liver eaters), had swum across the Orinoco and jumping over fresh water crocodiles and sharks, they hid in the volcano of the dark tarantulas, where by chance they found the entrance to the cave of the green scorpion. At the end of that dark cave they spotted a golden glow. They crawled over the ground silently so they would not awaken the mutant bloodthirsty bats and reaching the end of the cave they bumped into the scorpion, who was three metres long. Just then, the volcano started to erupt. Thomas grabbed hold of the enormous green sting and Linda jumped between the claws of the scorpion and ran in the direction of the gleaming golden seam. One of the walls opened up and started to spew incandescent lava. Linda glanced quickly at the wall, but filled with renewed courage, returned to the golden seam. It seemed as if she was about to get there, when suddenly, a voice shouted, “No, mum, no! “Its iron pyrite!”

Linda came out of her trance and the three fled at top speed, pursued by a river of lava and the giant scorpion. They jumped down an unexpected hole and fell down the crystalline waterfall into the deepest part of the lake of the bloodthirsty leeches. Now, on the banks of the lake they pulled off the leeches and smiled peacefully while the evening fell over the jungle. “But how did you know that it was iron pyrite?” Linda asked her son. He looked at her, arched his eyebrows and walked away in silence towards the gathering darkness.

Iron Pyrite seemed to hint at all this, and people seemed to believe him. I thought that he was no more than a silly prat who carried a ball of dirt in his pocket.

II

Pink Tie continued talking about motivation, effort, sales strategies, “It is a difficult market and everyone wants a slice of the cake. It is a race, and we have to come first.” Suddenly he looked at us very seriously and posed a question, “In this race, who do you think will take away the smallest piece of the cake?”

Silence. Suspense, curiosity. “The last,” someone whispered. Pink Tie smiled wryly, waited a few seconds and said in a low voice as if revealing a very hugely important secret, “The second,” he said and paused. “In this race, the second will take away nothing.”

More silence. Expressions of surprise. “But I could have sworn that it was gold,” I seemed to hear.

“We are very good. But we have to be the first.” He concluded.

Then came a similar kind of guy but with a green tie and made us look at a ton of graphs on the screen while he lectured us about the success of our product. Suddenly, he switched off the projector, gave us a smile of complicity and said, “I have to confess something.”

“I am the bastard that reduced your bonus”, I thought he was about to say. People looked at him with puzzled expressions.

The guy sat on the edge of the table and crossed his legs, letting us see one of his socks. He breathed deeply and said, “We are very much hated as a company.”

A pause. My God, who would have thought it? This is the end! We thought we were the cat’s whiskers! But we are finished, we are on our way down from the top to the dole queue!

“Yes. Although you may not believe it, they hate us,” he paused. “Our competitors hate us to death. They hate us because they dream of getting where we are today. And when they arrive, we will no longer be there; because we will already be much higher.”

He smiled at us and arched his eyebrows. People clapped. He walked away slowly away towards the darkness.

I felt that we were still in the school playground. But something had changed: it was we engineers, hired because we ran faster, jumped higher, read entire books, and answered all the questions correctly; now we were silent and looking at each other. Those who stood out now were the silly prats with their little balls of dirt.

They had reached high, very high. They had overcome sharks and tarantulas, had killed the fearful green scorpion and had succeeded in taking away a good piece of the gleaming golden seam. The only problem was that the company had not realised that the golden seam was only iron pyrite. They had bought it thinking it was gold and had paid for it with our Christmas bonus.

While we were leaving the meeting hall, I felt something big, very big. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but every single one of my cells seemed to be crying out to me, “We’re not doing so well here, mate!“

De nuevo, Mr Richard Blazek de Zen IT Services ha tenido
la amabilidad de traducirme al inglés. Con su permiso
reproduzco aquí su traducción. Muchas gracias, Richard.

I.

Antonio described the plan for tomorrow while we were enjoying our drinks: we were going to fly in a light plane from Axarquia airport to Almeria. The pilot would be Mr. Peckam, a seventy year old English gentleman who had bought the plane in pieces and had assembled it himself with a screwdriver. Put like this, the plan didn’t sound very appealing; I could already see the Guardia Civil clearing the Herradura beach of my body parts. The fruit of Mr. Peckam’s labours had four seats; Toni was also coming along for the ride. We resolved to drain our glasses and go to bed immediately so that we would be alert the following morning.

“Welllltheeen, shlee you tumorra, mate,” I said, five rounds later.

I went home and got into bed to dream of Heath Robinson aircraft, multiple brain lesions and fourth degree burns. A little later, the alarm went off.

II.

I went out to have breakfast with Antonio. Two orange juices and two ham sandwiches later I was still none the wiser.

“So how is it that he took out all the gubbins from the plane and rebuilt it? Look, an aircraft isn’t like a lighter which either needs fuel or a flint…,” I said to Antonio.

“Don’t worry about it, mate. Mr. Peckam was an engineer.”

Ah, so that’s all right then! Some choice moments from my ten years as an engineer passed in front of my eyes: inspired analysis, brilliant design, pompous presentations, shed-loads of documentation, self-confident smiles, impeccable coding, exhaustive testing and, in the demo, the client enters a user name and password and puff! Null Pointer Exception and back to the cubicle with my tail between my legs. Another demo flop! But as a Null Pointer corresponds roughly to the connection between the con rods and the crankshaft in an aircraft, then how confident would you feel…

“If he wears a tie then I’m going to start running without looking back,” I said.

Toni picked us up in his car. We reached the aerodrome in a few minutes, got out of the car and waited at the end of the runway for the plane to arrive.

At any moment, I was expecting an old cronk to appear from behind the hangars, trembling and hippety-hopping and leaving a trail of nuts and bolts behind it to the shriek of rusty gear wheels, smoking rockets and horn blasts with the music of La Cucaracha. The propeller would fall off and a charming old geezer Harpo Marx look-alike would come out of the cabin, replace the propeller, smile at us with a look of nothing-untoward-has-happened- here-has-it and would invite us to get in with a couple of blasts of his hooter.

Minutes passed and I mentally rehearsed my last words to my loved ones. How many texts would I be able to send during a free fall from the sky? Some phrases came into my head from nowhere. “Just to let you know that I loved you even though I was always a silly bugger,” and “goodbye, thanks for everything and please never let my dog feel lonely,” things like that.

Then The Commander (this is the name Mr. Peckam had given to his creation) appeared, gleaming. On the outside it looked like new. But this was only the external appearance. What worried me was the implementation.

Mr. Peckam got down from the plane and greeted us warmly. Antonio made the introductions.

“Toni, Alfredo, this is David Peckam. He doesn’t speak much Spanish.”

“I have started to learn now,” he said in Spanish.

Well bugger me! I had given up learning German at twenty-four because I thought it was already too late.

David’s eyes gleamed intelligently. His expression was bright, deep, courageous and positive. When looking at David, age became a mere technical issue, a number written on a sheet of paper somewhere. There was nothing in him that is normally associated with what is known as the “third age”.We went to the bar while David filled up with fuel and made the routine checks on the plane. I went straight to the toilet, took a look at myself in the mirror and seriously considered clearing off. I pulled the chain and abandoned that option.

III.

David came into the bar: the moment of truth had arrived. We finished our coffees and returned to the landing strip. Everything was ready for take-off. We got into The Commander.

The plane began to move slowly. We headed along the runway. David made a series of last-minute checks. He checked the lights, adjusted the controls, confirmed that the doors were properly locked and told us to tighten our seat belts.

“Are you ready?” he asked us.

I turned to look at the runway. It seemed to go on forever. I felt as if the whole of my life was in front of me. And between it and myself, fear. Then my mind cleared. I closed my eyes, breathed deeply and said to myself, “This is the time to throw caution to the winds. I want to fly.”

“Ready,” I said.

Antonio and Toni raised their thumbs. David gripped the controls. We rolled along the runway, faster and faster. The Commander started to vibrate and roared majestically, like a great tiger just before jumping on a fire. I clenched my teeth. My heart beat faster and faster.

Suddenly, all the power bottled up inside The Commander was set free. The wheels left the ground and we started to ascend. We cheered David and clapped with enthusiasm. We were in the air, fear remained behind on the ground.

David’s actions showed astonishing skill. He consulted the flight plan, adjusted our course and then took his hands off the controls.

“It flies by itself,” he explained. “I only have to make an adjustment now and again.”

Of course it flies itself. Once you’ve had the balls to take off. That’s life. Life starts when you overcome fear.

IV.We were tracking the coast. We laughed and enjoyed the views. Up here, the sky and the sea fused together; the horizon was something we had to imagine for ourselves. I tried to make it out among the clouds, to have some kind of mental image. In the end, I gave up: this way was much more beautiful.

From time to time I turned to look at my friends. We were talking to each other without saying anything; it was enough to look at each other and nod gently. We were all immersed in the same sensation. It’s very rare that two spirits are really in the same place and here we were, four of us, sharing a single smile.

In a little over half an hour we were flying over Almeria. We started to descend. It was a clear August afternoon; the light of the sun rested gently on a greenish sea, minute ants ran along the roads, a cruise ship lay at peace in the harbour. Life continued on its pleasant journey and we were floating on soft and gentle stillness.

David landed smoothly. While we were rolling down the runway, I realised that were were not on some tiny aerodrome. When we got out of The Commander we saw an Iberia jet take off.

We went inside the terminal and walked between the luggage belts. A number of workmen dressed in boiler suits and reflecting jackets were loading suitcases and there we were in swimwear and flip-flops with towels over our shoulders like holiday-makers. We went down a corridor and as were were just about to go out of the exit, a security officer stared at us with eyes like two white plates.

“Hey! You! Where do you think you are going?”

“To eat a hell of a lot of lobster, officer”

He took us to a window and made us fill out some paperwork. We went out into the street and took a taxi. “To the beach bar, please!”

V.

The lobsters tasted of the sea, of summer and of victory. A salty breeze slipped through the window, a breeze tasting of damp sand, of old wood lapped by waves, of bits of fish, of seagulls. We emptied cool golden jars of beer and chatted excitedly.

Between mouthfuls, David told us about his life. He was born in 1941 in England, became an aeronautical engineer, he worked there for a while and then they sent him to the Middle East. We listened with special attention as he told us about how after fourteen years in Kuwait he had to leave, shitting bricks, on the day of the invasion.

They say that after retirement comes a crisis. On the day that he retired, David went to Germany with his good friend Ian Whittle, son of Sir Frank Whittle, the inventor of the jet engine, to buy himself a light plane. After that, he came to live in Spain (in a house in the mountains without a phone line), he dismantled the plane and took two years to re-build it as The Commander. A few months ago he completed the circumnavigation of Spain with it.

“Now I’m thinking of buying a boat, but before that I want to spend a bit of time in the Sahara,” he told us.

“In the Sahara? But aren’t things a bit fucked up over there?” said Antonio.

“Life is for living; if you crash, pick up the pieces and start again.”

I have tattooed that phrase on my soul by repeating it so often in my mind. The day I forget it I am sure something horrible will happen to me.

After a leisurely lunch we went to the beach to enjoy the sun. We didn’t have much time because we had to return in good light (David still didn’t know how to fly in the dark). We sprawled on the sand and talked about girls. David was a widower; his wife had died of cancer some years ago. That cut him up badly at the time. He then put the pieces together again.

VI.

We landed in Axarquia at twilight. In the hanger, Margaret, David’s lovely companion, was waiting with nice cold beers. We called a toast and sat down to drink by the last rays of the sun.

Sitting in the hangar, the minutes passed slowly. Taking a look at The Commander, I couldn’t help thinking about myself, about how at my barely thirty years of age I sometimes feel old, done, spent, unable to take off. How ridiculous! The next time I feel like that I will pull myself apart and rebuilt myself piece by piece: here a bit of sun, there a bit of sand, a coat of salty breeze and sea mist, a blue evening spiced with good memories.

We drank slowly as the night fell around us. The sky slowly filled with stars, the cicadas began their timid songs, and life started anew.

The horizon fused into the dusk.

To David Peckam, Antonio Maldonado and Toni Gutiérrez.
With them it is easy to face the runway.

(English version courtesy of Mr. Richard Blazek in Zenit IT Services. Thanks so much!)

[Translation of Fuckowski: memorias de un Ingeniero by Rafael Fernández published in Blogs 20minutos on 14-Jun-2006. This article is an interview with Alfredo de Hoces who wrote the book with this name. The book can be downloaded from YoEscribo.com. The subject of the book is the struggle between the engineer (who does things) and the manager (who causes things to be done).]

In the same way that the Golden Age has its classics, so has the Internet. Alfredo de Hoces has written the first classic of the Internet, “Fuckowski: memorias de un ingeniero.” How about this for the first sentence: “There is a brown line that that separates humanity into two large groups: those who are born above the scum line and have a life and those of us who are born submerged in shit and have to fight like hell to get out and breath.” Can any self-respecting Internet surfer doubt that it rivals: “In a village of La Mancha…”? [Just in case someone doesn't know, “En un lugar de la Mancha...” are the first words of Don Quijote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, a classic of the Spanish Golden Age.]

Winner of the first prize for novels in 2005 awarded by Yo escribo.com, Alfredo de Hoces shows us life as it really is and without beating about the bush: “That was like doing a 69 with a transvestite. On the one hand, you couldn’t deny that it gave a certain degree of pleasure, but on the other hand, you had a mouth full of cock.” With an acute sense of humour and and an neat prose that is a long way from the archaic style with which current writers auto masturbate and bore their readers, Alfredo de Hoces has written the novel that Bukowski [Charles Bukowski - the Post Office, I think ] would have written if, instead of living in the USA, he were living in Malaga and studying engineering. The best novel that I have read in years: when you finish reading it, you don’t feel that you have read a book, but that you have seen into the soul of a person and you have a new friend. I haven’t experienced anything like this since I read “El guardián entre el centeno” [The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger].

What is the other story of this book? Why did you decide to write it, how long did it take, how did you get it published?

I went to live in Dublin for three years, to break with routine and a work environment that left me hardly any free time. I wanted to travel, to meet new people, to feel alive, and to grow. And I started to write; the idea went round and round in my head for months. I started working in a software company after being disconnected from the world for six months and suddenly everyone was talking about blogs. My blog this, my blog that. At first I thought that this was just another one of those fashionable trends that people get caught up in, but then I surfed the net a little and I realised that it was all true.

Well, I set myself up with one of those blogs and started to write little stories, in the way of a cathartic exercise with a bit of humour mixed in. I tried to give myself a smile every day, view my situation in perspective, encourage myself, remind myself about the things that are important in life. I didn’t think that this would interest anyone, but to my surprise, I soon began to receive comments and mail from a horde of people I didn’t know who said that they identified with what they read in my scribblings. They thanked me for giving them a good time and encouraged me to continue. In three months I had eleven stories, some one hundred pages. A reader suggested that I enter this in some literary competition and only then did I realise that I had written a book. I entered it in the Fourth Novel Competition at YoEscribo.com and I won a prize: 3000 Euro, a week in Mallorca and a print run of 500 copies.

How many copies of your book have been sold?

The first edition is just about to sell out; every week I get some orders. That is not bad, bearing in mind that the novel is only being sold on the Internet and you can read it on my web page for free. People buy it to have something on paper, to give as a present to someone or simply as a gesture of thanks.

Are you pleased to have been published?

Of course, seeing my stories in print gives me a feeling of satisfaction, but I don’t consider that to be important: it was a small competition and someone had to win. What I think is really significant is to have been able to use my writing to communicate something important to other people. Some have told me that my novel has helped them to understand some things, and even that it has given them the little push they needed to leave everything behind and to go in search of their dreams. This is worth far more to me than the three thousand Euro.

What are you currently doing?

I am combining my work as an IT engineer with my hobbies, chiefly music and literature. I play the guitar, read anything I can, and write.

What do you think of the current state of literature?

It seems excessively commercial to me: today everything is a business. Products are created at low cost, which generate profits as quickly as possible and people forget them equally quickly, leaving space for new products. It’s a cycle of consumption in which it is easy to get trapped: before the mirage disappears and we feel empty, we have another mirage to take its place. In my opinion, compulsive consumption of ephemeral sensations generates stupidity and causes the soul to die of starvation. After a time of doing this you may experience a crisis, the existential emptiness… and then it may already be too late.

Have the things that you write about in your book happened to you?

Fuckowski is my alter ego, a part of me placed in ‘dramatic’ situations.

Have you had any problems with anyone, using them as a character in your book?

It is curious; there are some who have accused me of misogyny because of the chapter in which I write about my ex-girlfriend, but she loves it. One of my best friends, Alvaro who inspired Pijoski, [who might be called Poshski in the English version - how many of you didn't pick up on the word play in Fuck-owski?] recognised himself in the novel and congratulated me. It is a matter of having a sense of humour; I imagine that we are all offended to the degree that we hate ourselves.

Without doubt, the bit I liked most was when you decide not to go to work to look after a bird that you find lying in the street. I don’t remember ever having read a more beautiful metaphor against the heartlessness of our times…

The bit about the bird is true. It was a very young pigeon that had fallen from its nest; I kept it for weeks in my room. Contemplating this defenceless and trembling creature fighting for survival, watching it regaining its strength little by little, winning its freedom in an act of pure instinct, seeing it change before my eyes into what it was destined to be; this was an important experience for me that helped me recover my fascination for the miracle of life.

Have you ever had sex with an animal?

I have had sex with animals, and also with vegetables (a melon). With minerals I see some complications… Joking apart, when I visit my parents, I sleep with two dogs and a cat; there is touching involved, but they are always on top of the sheets. Does this count?

Is your dog really called Satan?

I changed the name of the dog in the book to protect his identity. In the novel I used the name Satan in honour of the faithful companion of the Phantom in his adventures in a comic that I often used to read as a child. Satan was a black wolf that the Phantom adopted as a puppy. This mixture of ferocity and loyalty has always fascinated me. The next dog I have I will certainly call Satan.

Are you a Satanist?

Being a Satanist is as irrational as believing in God. I am an atheist, so I don’t believe in Satanism. But everything that fascinates me has at one time been branded as demonic or evil. Nietzsche said in “The Antichrist” that according to Christianity, in the distorted version propagated by the catholic church and a totally anti-natural philosophy, everything close to nature and to life, the pagan, is automatically labelled as the work of the devil, God’s eternal adversary. I like the version of the story of the fallen angel which says that when the angel got close to God, he understood the fraud that He was, and for this he was cast out, slandered and silenced. When the church contemplates instinct and common sense, it thinks that it is the devil tempting us. The forbidden fruit is the understanding of good and of evil: it is the exclusive property of God. The rules are set in stone and to question them means expulsion from paradise. This deceit and manipulation, which seems so obvious to me, is bought by many people even today: it is the cornerstone of fascism in politics and is found in the workplace and the family. We are all afraid of questioning the actions of our leaders: we let them do what they want, we give them power in return for protection. We are not going to get anywhere like this. By chance there are some rebellious and lucid minds which do question everything and help to wake others up. Noam Chomsky comes to mind.

How long have you been writing your blog? Have you ever had any problems, have you ever been abused by someone?

I have been doing the page for two years, and so far I have been pleased. I have had nothing remotely like abuse; quite the contrary. Someone has even proposed marriage to me…

I have come into contact with very interesting people, like Javier Malonda, who was awarded a prize by 20minutos for his blog, “El sentido de la vida” (the meaning of life). We have forged a close friendship.

However, there are always some who want to fall out with you for some unknown reason; sometimes someone sends me an e-mail remembering them to my mother; This is the price you have to pay for daring to express your opinion. Well, that is just how things are; to not fall out with people you have to become a sycophant.

What are your next artistic projects?

Currently I am writing my second novel, in which I narrate my experiences in Ireland. In Dublin I got to know many people in the same situation; people who had left everything to go out into the world to search for something more. To wake up one morning in a place where they don’t speak your language, where the customs are different, where everything is to be discovered and to start making a new life step by step is a very enriching experience. You feel yourself re-born and you discover parts of yourself that you had forgotten ever existed. In the novel I am going to see where this takes me.