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.