New Mexican Fiction (5)
La razón que dinamitó mi carrera de narrador, el auténtico catalizador, fue la envidia, mientras hace casi 10 años leía el tercer volumen de la antología Más allá de lo imaginado, de Federico Schaffler, y descubrí que el autor más joven era un tal Gerardo Sifuentes... ¡Dos años más joven que yo!

Me puse a escribir.

Hoy, Gerardo es uno de los narradores más destacados de su generación. Con él cerré la ponencia sobre nueva narrativa mexicana que di en Londres:

Gerardo Sifuentes was born on Tampico, an industrial port on northern Mexico in 1974. He's an electronic industrial engineer who fled the dull world of factories and quality control offices to pursue a career on writing. He's published a short science fiction stories collection, Perro de Luz (Lightdog), and a novel, Pilotos infernales (Infernal Pilots) which won a national science fiction novel award. Sifuentes' storytelling ranges from the conventional to the dellusive. The next excerpt from his novel would've been easily enjoyed by William Burroughs.

Infernal pilots
I
The sexiest thing about Marta was her bulbous stump, right at her right knee's height. If you asked her, she'd reply that a shark got her leg on Tampico, before she became the lover of a Russian ship's captain.

Truth is her leg was crushed by a trash truck while she laid dead drunk on an alley. The Russian ship stuff is true.

Some time ago, few sailors would pick her up at the bar. Back then she charged a couple hundred.

Ater the accident, she started charging a thousand.

And when she met the Russian captain, something happened that changed her life forever.

II
I finish my beer while Konejo and Mortadelo boast about their hunchbacks in front of two Japanese tourists. An American girl, a gringa, asks me for cigaretes. She has a third blue eye, not a very good implant. I show her the pack, she takes three cigaretes and then goes away, blinking her third eye. A saliva filament hangs from my lips. I've never caressed the skin of a seal or al dolphin. They say seals are the ocean's dogs.

I like this neighborhood. Konejo got me a cheap appartment. Only 500 pesos a month, two rooms, bathroom and a balcony with plants. I like my studio-living-dining room, because it always retains the smell of beer and pot from the day before. Last week, Konejo took a cage with groundhog and they felt very happy on my room's enviroment. It's a shame we ended up eating them, I would loved to have one as a pet.

Today, I went to the Police Station, but no one showed up to work. I forgot it was sunday. I hate sundays, specially sundays' afternoons. A book I read said that such feelings were an evidence of industrial societies' failure to bring people quality leisure time.

By night I showed up at the new Tokyo Pop bar, The Chocokrispies were playing a gig. I met a one-eyed girl who resembled my first girlfriend. I asked her if she had any dolpihns or seals on her house. She just meowed and since I didn't understand her I just nodded all the time. "Can't help falling in punk with you?"

I work as a M-Kultra agent, a government's agency. My incomes allows me to have certain luxuries and special connections on this city. I also travel a lot. I'll be on Australia in a couple of months, there I'll buy a kangaroo. I know I don't have enough space to raise it, but Konejo has a large backyard where it can be happy.

Mi boss is a Capricorn. Yesterday he stabbed to death her wife with some scissors, when he caught her stealing some M-Kultra's classified files. Today he has a hearing with the supreme comitee. They need to know for how long did his wife keep contact with the enemy. If they find out about our activities, something really nasty could happen. I don't know exactly how nasty, but they mustn't know it. I'm an Aquarian myself.