Carlos Gamerro - An Open Secret

“Yes,” I say, loathing him.

“So on our way back from Villalba’s place we asked the Sub what next and he goes you’ll have to ask the Superintendent you’ve seen how much he takes this business to heart said it like he was having a laugh enjoying himself like I sometimes wonder if he didn’t set the whole thing up just to bring the Super down, just like he did with me right, over the watch.”

“Which watch?” asks Nene Larrieu, pricking up his ears like a gun dog every time he got wind of some new-sounding information.

“A Casio digital, gold wristband, stopwatch, lovely it was, and Subsuperintendent Greco turned round and said I ’d pocketed it. When, say I, as yous know I wasn’t alone with … for more than a few minutes and he didn’t have a ring any more or even a hand and they weren’t going to bury him wearing his watch and jewellery were they if only ’cause of identification right? So I really don’t know what happened to that watch, ’less Villalbas pigs ate it.” He chuckles at his own joke before going on. “If you ask me it was Greco himself as took it and comes along later accusing me so nobody’d suspect, You don’t know well maybe you do what that man was capable of. Let’s go and ask Chacón if you don’t believe me I never saw that watch in my life I swear to God, but Greco was already digging a hole for me, first he got me labelled as a thief over the watch and then soon as he could—”

“So it was you,” I interrupt.

“What do you mean it was me?” His eyes narrow, without actually focusing. “You calling me a liar? I told you I never touched that watch.”

“No no, I know. You just helped to kidnap and kill him and …” I can’t pronounce the sharp, clear words tearing my mind apart, so I just say, “… get him out … of Villalba’s.”

“Oh. Yeah right. Yeah. Why?”

He’d blurted it out all on his own, but he was looking at me as if I’d made him do it on purpose.

“All right, all right,” I mutter through the livid strips of aggression hanging between us. “Nobody’s keeping you here. You can leave when you like. We’re not in headquarters here.”

“Kicking me out are you?” His attempt to make his voice sound butcher rises to a cackle that makes him spin round in fury to see who’s laughing at him. I keep out of the others’ attempts at calming him down. Sayago knows that when he reaches the end of his tale the happy hour’s over, and it occurs to me his constant digressions might be a ruse to delay the fateful moment for as long as possible. He looks more upset than Scheherazade and it takes another glass to calm him down.

“What the Super wanted was to find the right spot”—he addresses not me, but the general audience. “I’ve already told you Superintendent Neri liked to do things properly. Very particular he was, very well organised. So he spent the time reading some report or other he’d been sent till well into the evening.”

The genesis and evolution of Malihuel’s lagoon must not be interpreted using a localist approach, for such an interpretation would, per se, be lacking the indispensable bases of its rational understanding. We must view it as the result of processes affecting our entire plain, and it is of interest to us from the point of view of Applied Geography. We believe, however, that, even extending the study to the entire Pampas, such an approach would still be one-sided, and it must therefore be seen in its precise dimensions in relation to phenomena on a continental or even planetary scale that …

Viewed on a continental scale, the problem of the subsidence of one small block is minimal and would not appear to be of any great interest, but from the point of view of human facilities and the works of man, it is important. In the investigation of a plain such as ours, methods used in areas where outcrops and structures are visible cannot be applied. In the sector in question, we see an almost total lack of them, and must therefore sometimes focus exclusively on the behaviour of the surface waters and of …

The observations must be megascopic in nature, as they have to cover wide areas, and the drops — almost always of several metres or even decimetres — and the gradients, however insignificant they may seem must always be taken into consideration, as they may or may not be indicative of differential movements, the immediate consequence of which may be deviations in the courses …

Its broadest diameter runs W-E, its narrowest, N-S, ie not parallel to the sides of the block. Between those two isohypses (WSW, SE and NE of the basin) stretch semi-permanent floodplains and gullies from the last paleo-hydrogeological model …

Rising water levels are not solely due to precipitation, but also to groundwaters. The annual peaks for precipitation are reached in the storage period of monthly rainfall, aggravated by the fact that the basin is served by a single evacuator (ie evaporation), which is minimal in the months of maximum rainfall. According to official data, the highest levels recorded were those of the years 1941 and 1965, with peaks of 84.88m and 84.91m respectively, as measured by the Military Geographical Institute.

In terms of the influence of groundwaters, the directions of the run-off and the equipotential lines of the phreatic layer are indicated on Kreimer’s hydrographical map (1968). The convergence of the former and the close-packed lines indicate heavy drainage toward the central basin.

According to the bathymetry conducted in 1970, the maximum depth was 6m, and this measurement has remained constant along a 3,000m trench, approximately 2.5km N of the so-called Island Beach Resort (northern peninsula).

Elordi J & Jaimovich I La laguna Malihuel in

Estudios de geografía de la Provincia de Santa Fe

Various Authors Santa Fe GÆA 1973.

“HERE’LL DO, said the Super and Chacón and me thanked God and stowed the oars, we’d been rowing into a headwind, couldn’t move the day after, but the Super wouldn’t use the fire brigade’s rubber dinghy even if it did have an outboard motor. The moon was still up — he even made sure of that — and the sky was thick with stars, I dipped my hand in the water to wash the sweat off, it was warm I remember and if it hadn’t been for the luggage I’d of fancied a swim. A couple of officers I can’t remember who had spent the whole afternoon attaching bricks and bits of iron to him with wire till you could hardly pick him up, I can’t explain to you what he weighed nearly give myself a whatdoyoucallit a hernia I did, I ain’t saying not to take precautions but the bricks was over the top ’specially as someone else’d have to carry him afterwards … They put some sacking over him before they tied him up, he was not a pretty sight by then, looked like a big beef roulade, and with all the heaving and shoving the boat was rocking all over the place and the Super was swearing at us took three attempts to get him over the side it did, the last one nearly capsized us and we both fell backwards, me I cut my hand on the rusty wire had to have two stitches and a jab case it got infected look here I still got the scar and while we’re at it I’ll have another shot of caña to oil the gun. You still paying Buenos Aires or not? You ain’t telling me I let you down are you. Eh?”

My head hurts with the effort of remembering. Sunday the twenty-seventh they dumped him. I always went back to Buenos Aires at the beginning of March. But that left Monday the twenty-eighth. Was I in Malihuel that Monday? Did I have my usual last farewell dip in the lagoon? Maybe, if it rained that Monday, I can stop worrying. Any newspaper will tell me. The relief if it rained.