Patricio Pron - My Fathers' Ghost is Climbing in the Rain

A couple of letters to the editor were published in El Trébol Digital on June 18 and 19 of that year: one denounced “the black humor” of an anonymous text message that proposed marching for the disappearance not of Burdisso but of a rival sports team; the other wondered if Burdisso had been “swallowed up by the earth.”

A survey, published on the same site on June 18, contained hardly any variation from the one published a week earlier.

He’s going to show up (2.64 % as opposed to the previous 2.38 %); He’s never going to be seen again (11.45 % as opposed to 13.10 %); He’s going to be found alive (2.64 % as opposed to 3.57 %); He’s going to be found dead (28.63 % as opposed to 25.00 %); He moved without telling anyone (5.29 % as opposed to 4.76 %); This was a crime of passion (24.67 % as opposed to 25.00 %); He was kidnapped (5.29 % as opposed to 8.33 %); He is dead by natural causes (2.20 % as opposed to 3.57 %); He left town for some reason (5.73 % as opposed to 2.38 %); I don’t know what to think (11.45 % as opposed to 11.90 %).

The title of another article: “Agents from Criminalistics Arrive in the City for the Burdisso Case.” The date of its publication: June 19, 2008. The defense of the actions taken by the local police, from the chief of the Eighteenth Regional Unit:

[…] on the speed with which Burdisso’s dwelling was occupied and the delay in the arrival of the Brigade of dogs to the city, Dr. Gómez pointed out: “They are two separate issues. As in regards therein to the dwelling it must be understood that as there is no proof of any tragic events the dwelling cannot be kept unoccupied, and the issue of the dogs is because they were looking for finer elements [ sic ]. The dogs were sent in and will be sent in again soon. We are searching for Burdisso throughout the country, as we have been from the very first moment.” […]

A declaration, from the same civil servant: “For the moment we are searching to find him alive.”

I want him to show up if he went off on his own, and if he’s found dead, I want the guilty parties to be found. I’m asking everyone who was there [at the demonstration on the seventeenth], [who] also did it out of obligation, nobody is exempt, it could happen to any of us.

Raquel P. Sopranzi in El Trébol Digital on June 20, 2008

As I continue reading my father’s file, I come across a headline from El Trébol Digital on June 20, stamped on an idyllic image of the town with the incongruence of a modern device in an old photograph: “Now They Discover a Body in an Abandoned Well.”

This morning, at approximately 10:30, the excavation unit of the Volunteer Firemen of El Trébol, following intense search, founds [ sic ] a body at the depths of an abandoned well in a field 8 kilometers from the city of El Trébol, where there is an old abandoned building with two old water wells. The body appeared beneath much rubble and corrugated metal sheets. The police worked at the site while the firemen operated on the outside of the cavity. At approximately twelve thirty, they managed to extract a male body of some eighty-five or ninety kilos and approximately 1.70 in height tressed [ sic ] in pants and blue cardigan and white T-shirt. The judge of the city of San Jorge, Dr. Eladio García, along with special units and staff from the 18th Regional Unit based in Sastre, arrived on the scene.

Dr. Pablo Cándiz, forensic doctor, made the first inspection of the cadaver, which was later transferred to the city of Santa Fe to be autopsied.

“We have no information on other missing person cases in the region,” stated the Deputy Chief of the 18th Regional Unit, Commissioner Agustín Hiedro, to “ElTrebolDigital” [ sic ] from the site[,] and added: “We found the site based on a report from someone who had been in that field and noticed a penetrating odor surrounding a well. We works [ sic ] intensely in the late noon on Thursday until due to low light it was decided that we would continue our work on Friday morning, and so we came out here first thing.”

The body found in the depths of the crevice has physical similar [ sic ] characteristics to Alberto Burdisso, who mysteriously disappeared exactly twenty days ago.

Some photographs accompanied the article. In the first you could see some five people looking into a well; since all the figures were leaning over, you couldn’t make out their faces, though you could see that one of them, the third from the left, situated precisely in the middle, had white hair and wore glasses. In the next photograph you could see a fireman descending into the well on a rope; the fireman wore a white helmet with the number thirty on it. In another photograph you could see the fireman already inside the well, barely illuminated by the light from the mouth of the hole and a flashlight attached to his helmet. In the next one you could see three firemen with their gear; in the background, a coffin or box wrapped in black plastic. In the two photographs that followed, you could see five people carrying the coffin; one of them covered his face with a handkerchief, maybe to avoid the smell of the cadaver. In the next photograph you could see the firemen putting the coffin into a van that perhaps served as an ambulance and perhaps not; there was a man filming, with one hand in his pocket; two other men smiling. In the final photograph, which broke the apparent chronological continuity, you could see the coffin before it got taken to the van; it was on the ground, which was broken into big dark mounds of clumpy earth, and you couldn’t see anyone near it; the coffin was completely alone.

Question: “Is it true that the body has a scar on the torso like the one Burdisso had?”

Answer: “It is true that the body has a scar like this.”

Question: “What information will the autopsy reveal?”

Answer: “The autopsy will determine the causal [ sic ] of death and the reasons for the state of putrefaction.”

Question: “In what state was the body?”

Answer: “The body has a series of circumstances that the doctors will mention in their report.”

Question: “What does that mean? Injuries?”

Answer: “Exactly. The doctors confirmed that.”

Question: “On the face or on the body?”

Answer: “On the body.”

Question: “Bullet wounds?”

Answer: “At this point it does not appear so.”

Question: “Blunt force trauma?”

Answer: “There are no details of that kind […].”

Question: “Has anyone been arrested?”

Answer: “There are people of interest in El Trébol and in other areas.”

Question: “Could this change the determination of the cause of death?”

Answer: “That will be decided by a judge […].”

Question: “Are there fugitives from justice?”

Answer: “The people summoned have appeared.”

Question: “Who notified the authorities about the body? Is it true that it was a hunter?”

Answer: “The person who revealed knowledge could be someone who hunts, who smelled the odors.”

Conversation between the writer and Jorge Gómez, of the Eighteenth Regional Unit, El Trébol Digital , June 20, 2008. Title of the article: “We Have Information That the Body Found Could Be Alberto Burdisso’s”