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

on the map was the house where the murder had taken place, and, in that case, if it had been my father who had alerted the police. On a small blank page I found on my father’s desk I jotted down: “Was my father the firewood collector—the hunter, in other versions—who filed the report with the police?” and I remained contemplating what I’d written for a long while. Finally I turned the pageover and discovered that it was an invoice for some photographic enlargements that weren’t in the file but—though I didn’t know yet, so I should pretend here that I don’t know—were inside another of the files piled up on the desk, to which I would return time and time again in the days following these discoveries.

57
    “How long have you lived in El Trébol?”
    “About twenty years.”
    “What are you?”
    “I belong to a charismatic center. I’ve been strengthening the mental part.”
    “Are you clairvoyant?”
    “I haven’t gotten that far.”
    “Are you a witch?”
    “No.”
    “Do they call you a witch?”
    “Affectionately. Witch, witchy and crone.”
    “Do you make your living this way?”
    “I have up until now.”
    “Describe to me what your powers are.”
    “I channel myself to help those who need it for good. I channel for health, work and affection.”
    “How does that include the Burdisso case?”
    “I measured myself. I wanted to see my ability and my reach.”
    “What did you see?”
    “The first Monday he disappeared, I saw that he was still alive. It was that Monday. The following days it was already looking more doubtful. It could be or not. I saw all the ups and downs. Then, it gave me [
sic
] that he was deceased. That he could be in a place with stagnant water, depth, a sewer, a well, et cetera. It wasn’t clear. But they were looking in the cemetery and I felt that wasn’t right.”
    “What did you feel when the case was solved?”
    “Very powerless because this is a small town. Very annoyed. […] I couldn’t help him in the moments that he manifested himself to me that he was alive. I don’t knew [
sic
] whether to call it strength or cowardice, because I didn’t come forward in those moments and I didn’t reveal myself, I didn’t reveal my ability to help.”
    “How do you see these things?”
    “Through writings. I call it ‘mermerism’ [
sic
] and it is through the fingertips. I carve around and I look at the contents of the person, but I never let the person tell me about their situation directly. I try to decipher it myself […].”

58
    Alberto’s mother died when he was very young and he never talked about her, I guess he didn’t remember her. […] His father went missing when he was only fifteen years old, and at that point Burdi was already doing jobs as a laborer and bricklayer’s assistant. He lived a life of loneliness, humility and simplicity, and we should acknowledge him as one of those people behind the scenes in this country. Who live silently, scraping by, in a highly complicated society. […] [In the late 1970s] he told me about the problem with his sister, […] and I went with him to Tucumán, but, unfortunately, we returned empty-handed. […] That money [the reparations given by the state as compensation for being a relative of a disappeared person] doomed him, in every sense. His life was, without a doubt, torturous. His childhood was marked by the absence of his mom. As a teenager his father dies. Then, the only loved one he has left, his sister, is murdered by the military dictatorship and, when he gets some financial stability, which could have allowed him to enjoy life, he ends up losing everything, even life itself. Burdi could have left the money in the Club’s mutual fund and lived off the interest. But we advised him to buy property,it seemed to us the best way to invest some of the money and, besides, he would have a place of his own to live. Maybe if we’d made a different suggestion, this wouldn’t have happened.
    Roberto