The Observer Translation Project

A mass grave is discovered in a small mountain resort. Public prosecutors, journalists and former political prisoners show up in droves. The press has a field day. The issue becomes a source of daily political wrangling. Did the communists commit the crime in the 1950s? Searching for a lead, Petrus the archeologist plows through archives and visits the town’s oldest citizens. Here begin the afternoons with auntie Pauline (who reads coffee grounds and interprets dreams), the tales of Dumitru M. (ninety years old, former industrialist and refined gourmet), the history and histrionics of Eugenia Embury (a Lady, the widow of an English oilman), the appearances of Paraskeva M. (mystic trances, blue-blood caprices)—idiosyncrasies that play in relief against a world convulsed by communism and craving justice. Stained by ties to former and current regimes, the military prosecutors have no credibility. Argentinean anthropologists arrive to investigate. Their verdict: the bones in the mass grave were left by victims of the Black Death—disappointing news in a country that has every reason to blame communists for murder wholesale and mangled lives. Only, an unknown hand intervenes. Rusted bullets are found among the bones. Poetic justice prevails.