The Mongolian Conspiracy

Начало книги

Filiberto García, the protagonist of The Mongolian Conspiracy, the sixty-year-old Mexico City police hitman, or pistolero, or guarura, as they are called nowadays, says “¡Pinche!” a lot, which Katherine Silvers translates as “Fucking!” Pinche past! Pinche furniture! Pinche gringo! Pinche Tame Tiger! Pinche professor! Pinche goddamned captain! Pinche jokes! Those are just the pinches found in the novel’s first three pages. Mexican profanities, such as chingar, are famously variable, their meanings subject to context and tone and conjugation, and pinche can be used in lots of ways in Mexican Spanish, for example even relatively genteel parents might say, “Pinche brats, go to bed,” but probably very few of their English-speaking American counterparts say, “Fucking brats, go to bed.” But “fucking!” is certainly the best possible translation of the pinches in García’s inner monologue, an explosive expression of rancor and mockery — including of himself — sarcasm, humiliation, bafflement, defiance, weary or bitter sorrow and resignation, all of which barely suggests the full range of his pinches. Let’s just take a look at what the “fucking” “pinches” of those first three pages tell us about Filiberto García:

Читать дальше →