My Fathers' Ghost is Climbing in the Rain (6 page)
Read My Fathers' Ghost is Climbing in the Rain Online
Authors: Patricio Pron
The next article was from the same digital newspaper, published a day after the first. It read:
Alberto Burdisso has not turned up. 72 hours have passed since his disappearance, there are not many clues to guide those searching for him in the city and in the region. After an intense day on Wednesday in which the local police relentlessly took declarations from coworkers, family members, neighbors, and friends, the Volunteer Firemen, along with the police themselves, scoured the region, rural roads, farmhouses, ruined and abandoned houses that border and are next to the neighborhood where Burdisso has his abode, with a totally negative result. “We carried out patrols and searches in suburban and urban areas in spiral but to date we’ve found nothing. We’ll continue all day today with more searching. We worked the canals, sewers and even wastelands, but, for the moment, nothing,” explained Hugo Yussa to “ElTrebolDigital” [
sic
]. Alberto Burdisso was last seen on Sunday night near his domicile, on Calle Corrientes number 400.
On Wednesday evening during the evening hours, another important detail emerged:
Burdisso’s debit card was swallowed by the ATM of Banco Nación. “The card thing happened on Saturday,” explained Iussa, of the 9th Precinct. The search operation asked the banks Credicoop (from thence the card was issued) and Banco Nación (in who’s [
sic
] machine it was found) to offer information on the financial movements in the accounts of the missing resident.
The following pages were stapled together in the upper left corner; they were printouts, shoddy ones, of a short history of El Trébol that my father had corrected and annotated by hand:
The birth of El Trébol [illegible]. There was no single act or explicit desire [crossed out]. The situation is even further complicated by the almost simultaneous design of three towns: […] Pueblo Passo in 1889, El Trébol in 1890 and Tais in 1892. The conjunction of these three towns came about in 1894 when, by provincial decree, the Municipality was established, all under the single denomination of El Trébol, whose [illegible].
On the 15th of January 1890 the first train left Cañada de Gómez [illegible] immigrant family
members and friends with the intention of establishing themselves in those lands [illegible] of the Central Argentine Railway like the founding date of El Trébol, [crossed out] their complex interrelation [illegible] rural [illegible].
The name emerged during the construction of the branch line of the Central Argentine Railway [illegible] financed with capital from Britain, since this subsidiary company was responsible for naming the stations that [illegible] three stations in a row were named with symbols of Great Britain. “Las Rosas” for the red and white roses in the English coat of arms; “Los Cardos”—Thistles—in honor of Scotland; and “El Trébol”—Clover—for the flower typical of Ireland [illegible] first colonists that came to settle around 1889 were [illegible] in 1895 the national census of that year calculated 3,333 rural settlers and 333 in the urban area, which is [illegible] mostly Italians, although there were also Spaniards, Frenchmen, Germans, Swiss, Yugoslavians, Russians, “Turks” who arrived crowded into boats with third-class tickets and for the most part [illegible].
In 1914 Mr. Victorio De Lorenzi and Mr. Marcos de la Torre bought the land where [illegible] and in 1918 some expansions were undertaken, the police station and an [illegible] assembly hall was built. In 1941 when
the fiftieth anniversary of El Trébol was celebrated they [illegible] the resolution to erect a monument. The sculptress Elisa Damiano [illegible] was entrusted with the creation of said monument. The sculpture was designed atop a base of four figures with intertwined hands symbolizing the human prototypes of our region. It was crowned by a figure of a woman symbolizing the abundance of the harvest, depicted by a sheaf of wheat and a bag of grain. The plaque placed on the western face has this inscription: “The town of El Trébol to its first immigrants.”
In 1901 a small group of Spaniards established the Spanish Society, in 1905 [illegible] the exclusive work of the members since they built it themselves, working on Sundays and thus managed to open the Teatro Cervantes. Between 1929 and 1930 the theater, interior furnishings and dressing rooms were expanded. The main holiday was the Spanish Processions, celebrated on the 12th of October, Día de la Raza. Grand dances were organized and the hall was lit with gas lanterns because there was no electricity. There were hired bands and bagpipers. The musicians came from Buenos Aires, and the townspeople waited for them at the train station, marching from there through the streets, handing out lit torches to those accompanying the bands [illegible] collapses in 1945 [illegible].
In 1949 it was resolved to erect a Flagpole and an Altar to the Nation in the center of the plaza, for which the traditional [illegible] was demolished. In addition the plaza was given the name of General San Martín [illegible] inaugurate the first Catholic church in El Trébol, dedicated to Saint Lawrence the Martyr. In 1921 the Priest Joaquín García de la Vega was [illegible] and in 1925 was placed [illegible] monumental building in Tuscan Renaissance style [crossed out].
In September [added in pencil: “1894”] Enrique Miles, Santiago Rossini and José Tais were appointed to build the cemetery. On November 19th of that same year the Italian Mutual Benefit Society “Italian Star” was officially established. In the year 1896 the first gravedigger was named, Casimiro Vega [illegible]. In the year 1897 they decided to build the municipal abattoir [illegible]. On the 16th of September 1946 the Athletic Club was founded. The [illegible] inaugurated the Volunteer Blood Donors Club.
In the year 1984 the necessary steps were taken to raise the town to the status of city through sanction of a provincial law [illegible].
National Day of the Milking Machine [illegible] construction of the first mechanical milking machine in South America [illegible] the National Queen, selected from
representatives of the Santa Fe geographical province.
The first party was organized by the Club Atlético Trebolense, in [illegible] of the Tango: due to the notable boost that the city’s music experienced in El Trébol during the last [illegible] that played for its native sons [crossed out] in the month of February in the brand-new permanent parade grounds, organized by the Town Hall of El Trébol, where one can enjoy the procession of floats, bands, Carnival Queen contestants, a foam machine and the popular dance [illegible] in the heart of what is called the “Humid Pampa,” the most important cereal growing region in South America and one of the most important in the world in terms of the quality and quantity of arable land, suitable for all types of vegetable species and livestock rearing.
Another article, from the same paper as the others and published on June 6, 2008:
Commissioner Odel Bauducco gave details to “ElTrebolDigital” [
sic
] about the intense search that is being realized. “From a personal
and professional standpoint, I began to work on the search for this person. The Firemen offered to work and they are working beside us combing the area. For example, yesterday the Fire Department worked in the rural area, in María Susana, Bandurrias and Los Cardos, without results.” On the crossing of borders in the search to find him, Bauducco noted: “On that very Sunday, a photo of this person arrived in every police station in the country. We can trace his movements up to six on Sunday evening, when this person went to a private residence. After that nobody has been able to tell me anything more. I can’t comment on what he did or what was said in that residence because the matter is sub judice.”
The Commissioner also rejected some rumors that have traveled the streets in the last few hours: “I am not aware that someone saw him on Monday morning at a bank. The debit card was found before he was last seen. I even have in my possession the ticket print-out receipt of the card that was found in his domicile. Now we are asking people who know something about him to come forward with information.”
On a printed page, there is a series of facts that seem to have been taken from an encyclopedia—“32°11′21″S 61°43′34″O; 92 meters above sea level; 344 km?; 10,506 inhabitants, approximately; term used to refer to the inhabitants: trebolense; postal code: S2535; telephone prefix: 03401”—and below that are some handwritten notes, probably made by my father: “two soccer teams: the Club Atlético Trebolense and the Club Atlético El Expreso; ‘Sky Blue’ and ‘The Green Bug’; and the ‘Club San Lorenzo,’ which is next to the church; four primary schools and two secondary schools and one special needs school; 16,000 inhabitants.”
No news on the Burdisso case. Alberto José Burdisso hasn’t shown up. The earth must have swallowed him up last Sunday. A week now since his disappearance, the information and clues are skimpy. Only his debit card has appeared, stuck in the ATM of the
Banco Nación on Saturday. After that nothing more is known. The fliers distributed by his coworkers indicate their desperation and interest in finding leads. The police have said nothing or very little and the rest is sub judice. The Volunteer Firemen finished their search of the entire region last Thursday. The rumor that the body of the missing employee of the Club Trebolense was found lifeless in a well was quickly denied. They past [
sic
] declarations to the police and, in addition, conducted searches of different places. We, the citizens of El Trébol, demand an explanation or a response to a mystery that we cannot ignore, because this could happen to all of us.
El Trébol Digital
, June 9, 2008
A flier, its upper left corner wrinkled, carries the same photograph of the missing man that accompanied the article on June 4, and the text
ALBERTO JOSÉ BURDISSO.
WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN.
LAST SEEN ON JUNE 1, 2008.
COMMUNICATE ANY INFORMATIONS [
SIC
]
TO HIS COWORKERS AT C. A. TREBOLENSE,
POLICE 101, FIREMEN 100
ANY INFORMATION APPRECIATED, COWORKERS.
A survey, published in the same local paper under the title “What Do You Think About the Burdisso Case?,” reveals the main theories about the disappearance and the reactions of the town’s inhabitants. The results are the following:
He’s going to show up (2.38%); He’s never going to be seen again (13.10%); He’s going to be found alive (3.57%); He’s going to be found dead (25.00%); He moved without telling anyone (4.76%); This was a crime of passion (25.00%); He was kidnapped (8.33%); He is dead by natural causes (3.57%); He left town for some reason (2.38%); I don’t know what to think (11.90%).
A quick glance at these figures reveals that most of the town’s inhabitants—many of them involved in the search for the missing man, as the local press states—believed at the time that he was going to be found alive, and that the root of his disappearance was a crime of passion. But who would commit a crime of passion against a common worker in
a provincial club, some sort of Faulknerian simpleton whose presence had gone unnoticed by everyone except a small circle, who was tolerated the same way a dust storm or a mountain is tolerated, with indifferent resignation?
By the way, if the aforementioned percentages are added up the result is 99.99 percent. The remaining 0.01, which is missing or simply represents an error in the survey, seems to occupy the place of the disappeared man: he is there as that which cannot be said, that which cannot even be named. The writers of the survey left out some possible explanations for the disappearance that we can briefly mention here, even though they’re admittedly improbable—he won the lottery, he is in France or Australia, he was abducted by aliens, et cetera—which prove that not even reality can be absolutely reduced to a statistic.
Ten days without Burdisso: Alberto José Burdisso lived alone in his house on Calle Corrientes, number 400 of the city of El Trébol. His domicile is some four blocks from the Club Trebolense, where [
sic
] he frequented mornings and afternoons from Monday to Saturday for many years to carry out his work tasks. He was a simple, popular character and friendly with those around him. He barely had any family, except for some relative who lives in the rural area of the city with whom he had no relationship. […] On Monday June 2nd, when he didn’t show up for work, his coworkers at the Club missed him and that afternoon they called the police and mentioned his absence. That very evening, when his friends went to his house, they found his bicycle left on the patio and beside it, his loyal dog, who followed him wherever he went. […] The city’s firemen completed spiral searches from his domicile outward. Every rural road, every abandoned, dilapidated house and uninabited [
sic
] home as well as the sewer and irrigation ditches. There were four or five days of desperate searching. They went as far as Las Bandurrias, Bouquet, Pueblo Casas, María Susana and Los Cardos. […] Meanwhile, 10 days
have now passed since his disappearance. Associated but not minor facts: it could be noted that “Burdi” came into some money three years ago […] of which he had nothing left; he lived off a salary that the club religiously paid him on the last working day of each month (coincidencelly [
sic
] he was paid the Friday before he disappeared); he was a person who kept “temporary company” and not much more.
Nobody knows anything. Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything. In the city everybody whispers about it, as if they were afraid of something, without knowing what. If they let things like this happen, tomorrow the same thing could happen to any of us.
Commissioner Bauducco declared: “I don’t feel pressure from local residents because these things happen and we are working hard to try to resolve [the case]. […] We have new witness statements and new leads to follow. There may or may not be news in the coming hours. […] I invite people to come forward with any information that they will be welcome [
sic
]. There have been no arrests because there is no crime, in principle. It is clear that, in the case of the person arriving deceased, it would no longer be a missing person’s case and we would work on other theories.”
Later Bauducco said: “In the Burdisso home no signs of violence were found, nor any signs that he was planning a trip. The
door was closed and there are other teensy details.”
El Trébol Digital
, June 11, 2008
