As he grew more and more uncomfortable, the Investigator kept a tight hold on his rusk. He was now sure he had a fever. His head hurt. His eyes stung. His neck was stiff. His nose was hot and painful, as was the cut on his forehead. His whole body made him suffer. The Policeman rummaged in his right coat pocket, then in his left, and extracted a yellow-and-blue medicine bottle, which he handed to the Investigator.
“Take two of these.”
“What are they?”
“You have a headache, don’t you?”
“How do you know that?”
“I know everything, it’s my business. Your arrival yesterday, your visit to the bar, the dispute over the rum toddy, your persistence at the Guardhouse, your banging on the door of the Hotel, then your inability to answer some simple questions concerning the rules of the establishment, and this morning your rude comments on the breakfast. I know about all of it. The dossier I’ve been given is most thorough. I’m the Policeman. As such, I know. You’re the Investigator, so you don’t know; you seek. I’m a good distance ahead of you. I said two.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Two tablets. Go ahead and take them, you’ve still got a little coffee.”
The Investigator was holding the medicine bottle in the palm of his hand. He hesitated to open it. The Policeman burst out laughing.
“Come on, don’t be afraid! I’m the Policeman, not the Murderer. Everyone has a role, and your role is to be the Investigator, isn’t it? And if you pay attention to the proper dosage, there’s no risk whatsoever.”
The Investigator slowly assented.
“That’s the way. Excellent, excellent! Pretend I’m not here.” Having said this, the Policeman lowered his head and ostentatiously inspected his hands, as though to demonstrate that he wasn’t keeping the Investigator under surveillance. Still totally confounded by the other’s sudden arrival and unsure how to react to him, the Investigator ended up opening the medicine bottle and taking out two tablets. Like the bottle, they were yellow and blue. The Investigator examined them closely and tried to sniff them, but his nose was so stopped up that his sense of smell was completely gone. He hesitated a little longer, shut his eyes, and swallowed the pills, washing them down with what remained of the repulsive black coffee.
The Policeman raised his head and looked at the Investigator again, still smiling. “Now, about those suicides. How many, exactly?”
“Twenty-three. But there’s some doubt about one of them. It’s not known whether the person took his own life or whether his death was an accident. Gas.”
“Gas? Radical! You die, and sometimes you take others with you. Was that the case?”
“No. He lived alone in a detached house.”
“Too bad …”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
There was silence for a while. The Policeman, although he continued to smile, appeared to be weighing what the Investigator had just told him about the suicides. Then he made a little hand movement, as if banishing those thoughts and moving on to something else.
“I suppose you think you’ve landed in a most peculiar place, right?”
“Well, I mean, I must confess—”
A burst of loud laughter from the Policeman startled him. “Sh, sh,” the Policeman said. “You don’t have to confess anything. This is a conversation we’re having, not an interrogation. Relax!”
The Investigator didn’t know exactly why, but even though he’d done absolutely nothing he could reproach himself for, a great weight was abruptly lifted from him. He started laughing with the Policeman. It did him good. Oh yes, it really did him good to laugh with this man—a kindly fellow, when all was said and done, and as surprised as he was by the way things had gone.
“I can tell you the whole story,” the Investigator said, taking up the conversation again. “But please indulge me, I don’t understand it very well myself. I have the impression that I’ve been living a sort of nightmare ever since I set foot in this town, or, rather, that I’m the victim of a gigantic hoax. Everything seems arranged to prevent me from doing what I have to do.…”
“The Investigation into the suicides?”
“Exactly. It’s as if … What I’m about to say is going to sound absurd, but it’s as if everything here, in this town, including the layout of the streets, the absence of signs, the climate—it’s as if everything were conspiring to prevent me from carrying out my Investigation, or to delay it as long as possible. I’ve never known anything like it. And this Hotel! Has anyone ever seen such a hotel?”
The Policeman reflected intensely for a few moments. His round face kept its smile, but his eyes seemed to narrow in fierce concentration.
“When I arrived, I felt the same way you do,” he said. “I haven’t been here very long. We’re constantly being bounced from one post to another, and we obviously can’t complain, we don’t have the right to complain. I asked myself why I was here. I wondered who could have made the absurd decision to send me to this place, and for what purpose. Of course, I knew I was the Policeman, but I hadn’t been given any more precise information about what I was to do or what role I was desired to play. Very strange. Very, very strange. And besides—I’m not sure how to say this—I had an impression, a very distinct impression of a … of a presence.”
“As if someone were observing you?”
“Exactly. That’s just what I mean! But I’ve never been able to catch anybody at it.”
“It’s the same with me. I’ve had that very feeling since yesterday evening.”
“Well, in the end, one gets used to it. After all, it’s man’s nature to adapt, isn’t it? And these days, aren’t we all constantly under surveillance, wherever we are and whatever we’re doing?”
The two men became pensive. Silence reigned until a telephone started ringing. Without hesitation, they simultaneously began to reach into their pockets, which made them both laugh. Then the Investigator remembered that his phone battery was completely discharged. The Policeman pulled out his own device, a kind of mobile phone the Investigator had never seen before: oblong in shape, and equipped with a single button. The Policeman mimicked an apology and pressed the button.
“Yes?”
The Investigator felt relieved. The man across from him, who resembled him in many ways, was a source of comfort.
“Well, what do you know.… I see …” said the Policeman, taking a notebook and a pen from his pocket. The smile had vanished from his face.
“And what time was that, you said?”
He jotted down a few notes.
“Are you certain?”
The Investigator turned his eyes away so as not to bother his companion.
“Very well. Thank you for informing me.”
The Policeman pressed the single button on his telephone and slowly slipped it into one of his pockets. He reread the notes he’d just taken, scratching the back of his neck all the while, and then, with a sharp gesture, he snapped the notebook closed. His eyes were now a fox’s eyes, very thin, yellow-brown, and shining.
“Nothing serious, I hope?” asked the Investigator, keeping his tone light.
“That depends on for whom,” the Policeman coldly replied. He went on at once, speaking tersely in a metallic voice and stressing every word: “Can you explain to me why, at 7:21 a.m. today, you entered the women’s restroom and there willfully destroyed a cloth towel as well as the wood-and-metal structure supporting it, in an act of unjustifiable violence?”
The rusk the Investigator was holding between his fingers exploded into a thousand pieces, and at the same time, he had the sensation that he’d been seized by two strong hands, which were in the act of flinging him down into a bottomless abyss.
XI
BY THE TIME THE INVESTIGATOR WAS finally able to leave the Hope Hotel, the morning was well advanced.
The Policeman had detained him for more than two hours, compelling him to answer a barrage of brusque questi
ons. Some of these the Policeman had repeated again and again, at intervals of a few minutes, in order to make sure the Investigator’s responses didn’t vary. He’d been required to explain, three times and in meticulous detail, his every action and reaction, no matter how insignificant, since the moment he’d awakened that morning. He’d had to describe the telephone call that had rousted him from his sleep, his discovery of the walled-up window (“I’ll verify that,” the Policeman had assured him, almost threateningly), the counting of the stairs, the massive presence of Tourists in the breakfast room (“Tourists? Really? First I’ve heard of them!” the Policeman had sneered), and, finally, the incident in the ladies’ room.
In addition, the Policeman had insisted on examining, with the most minute attention, the cut on the Investigator’s forehead. Having completed the examination—for which he’d pulled on a pair of surgical gloves—the Policeman had stood erect and ordered the Investigator to accompany him to the restroom for a re-enactment.
“A what?”
“You understood me perfectly well.”
“But you must be crazy! A re-enactment for a torn towel? What kind of world is this? I can’t waste my time on such childishness. I’ve got a job to do, an Investigation to conduct. People have died. Men and women have killed themselves. I don’t think you realize what suicide represents, but whether you do or not, it is my duty to understand why these acts have been committed. I need to know why, inside such a brief span of time, and within the same enterprise—within the Enterprise—so many people have fallen so deeply into despair that they’ve chosen to end it all rather than consult a Psychologist or seek help from an Occupational Physician or apply for an appointment with the Director of Human Resources or confide in a colleague or a family member or even to call up one of the many associations that offer assistance to suffering people! And you put obstacles in my path, you detain me for trivialities, you interrogate me for an hour about a mutilated towel, about damages that would never have taken place if this Hotel provided the minimal level of services that a guest has every right to expect, you waste my time with—”
“Who am I?” the Policeman interrupted him.
“You’re … you told me you were the Policeman.”
“Exactly. Well, then?”
“Well, then, what?”
“Well, then! Does one question the Policeman’s orders?”
The Investigator opened his mouth, only to feel his throat dry up and his words die unspoken. His shoulders slumped. “Let’s get it over with,” he sighed.
The Policeman invited the Investigator to follow him to the ladies’ room, where the re-enactment took place. It lasted twenty-seven minutes. The Investigator was obliged to reconstruct his actions and movements during his prior visit to the ladies’ room. The Policeman observed him from different angles, jotted down notes, drew an extremely precise sketch, strode purposefully around the room, measuring its dimensions, and used his mobile telephone to take photographs of the broken towel dispenser, of the towel itself (which he’d extracted from the trash can after slipping on a fresh pair of surgical gloves), and of the Investigator (close-ups, frontal and profile views). He put some questions to the Investigator and ascertained that the stains on his trousers and jacket hadn’t disappeared. When he finally seemed convinced that the Investigator wasn’t hiding anything and had told him nothing but the truth, the Policeman asked the suspect to accompany him to his space.
“Your space? What space?”
“My office, if you prefer. Surely you don’t think I’m going to let you go without taking a statement from you?”
“A statem—”
The Policeman was already walking away, so the Investigator was forced to follow in his footsteps. They left the restroom. The Policeman closed the door behind them and put seals on it, to the Investigator’s great astonishment. Then they crossed the immense breakfast room, passed in front of the reception desk, which was still deserted, and stopped before a door situated to the right of the counter. This door bore a sign: STAFF ONLY. The Policeman drew a key from his pocket, opened the door, and showed the Investigator in.
It was a broom closet whose jumbled contents included a great many buckets, floor cloths, sponges, dustpans, and cleaning products, along with a very large vacuum cleaner. In one corner, an electric typewriter stood on a pair of boards laid across two trestles.
“I can’t stand computers,” said the Policeman, having noticed the Investigator’s skeptical look. “Computers dehumanize relations.”
He held out a pink plastic bucket to the Investigator, who took hold of it without grasping its purpose. Then the Policeman seized another bucket, a blue one, turned it upside down, and sat on it. “Go on, don’t be afraid,” he said. “They’re pretty sturdy and quite comfortable, too, once you get used to them. My chairs haven’t been delivered yet.”
The Policeman inserted a sheet of paper into the typewriter. He performed this act most meticulously, removing and reinserting the sheet three times because it seemed slightly askew.
“What if I’m dealing with a madman here?” the Investigator wondered. “Maybe he’s a policeman like I’m God the Father. He didn’t show me his card. His office is in a hotel, and what kind of office is it? A nasty little storage room. Yes, that’s it—he’s nuts! Why has it taken me so long to see that?”
The thought revived his confidence. He nearly burst out laughing, but he restrained himself. Better not to let anything show, better to play along with this lunatic for a few more minutes, and then to clear out at top speed. He’d have plenty of time that evening to lodge a complaint with the Hotel Management about this obviously sick person, who must be a deranged janitor.
“There we are!” exclaimed the Policeman, smiling broadly at the sight of the white page, perfectly horizontal and flawlessly aligned with the upper edge of the typewriter’s platen.
“I’m at your service,” the Investigator replied.
XII
A BRIGHT SUN WAS BLEACHING the already very pale sky. The temperature was mild, almost hot, totally unlike the chill of the previous night. The Investigator blinked and stood unmoving for a moment on the Hotel steps, incredulous, happy, and relieved to be outside at last, however late in the day. He felt a little better. Could that be because of the medicine the Policeman had given him?
After having been so harried and upset during the past few hours, he was ready to become the Investigator again: a scrupulous, professional, careful, disciplined, and methodical person who didn’t allow himself to be surprised or bothered by the circumstances or individuals he was required to encounter in the course of his investigations.
On the sidewalk a few yards away, a human flood—a dense, fast-moving, utterly silent Crowd—was streaming past him as though pulled along by a powerful force of suction. The Crowd consisted of men and women of all ages, but they were all walking at the same speed, in silence, their eyes fixed on the ground or staring straight ahead. Equally strange was the fact that the Crowd on the nearer sidewalk was moving from left to right, while the Crowd on the sidewalk across the street was moving in the opposite direction, as though someone somewhere had instituted foot-traffic rules and no one dared go the wrong way.
The only perceptible sound, very soft, came from the vehicles on the street as they crawled along in one direction, from right to left. It was a huge traffic jam! The cars drove past extremely slowly, but in a most orderly fashion, and the Investigator was unable to detect any signs of agitation on the faces of the drivers; they kept their eyes fixed on what was in front of them and seemed to be suffering in silence. There were no horns blowing, no shouted insults—nothing but the elegant, muffled, almost inaudible hum of the engines.
The rhythm of the City had decidedly changed. Though deserted by night, by day it presented an image of great liveliness, of an industrious, concentrated, steady, fluid animation that excited the Investigator and provoked a surge of energy in him. Of course, given the empty desolation of the streets
at night, the dense Crowd and heavy traffic were surprising, but when he considered the disconcerting events he’d just lived through and the weird persons he’d had to deal with, he felt he was getting back to a kind of normality. He wanted to accept it and avoid pondering hard questions.
Once again, however, the Investigator had to get his bearings. He’d chosen not to ask the Policeman for directions, being certain that the man, policeman or not, would use the request as an excuse to ask him another endless series of questions and maybe even to place him in custody in his cubbyhole.
The Investigator examined the structures he was able to see: immense warehouses, rows of large metal or stone sheds, office towers, administrative buildings, huge parking garages, laboratories, metal chimneys emitting clouds of nearly transparent smoke. The heterogeneity of those structures was in fact only superficial, for they all belonged to the operations of the Enterprise, as was demonstrated by the wall that encompassed them; and as the wall defined a boundary, it also created bonds, connections, bridges, and attachments between the entities it enclosed, absorbing them into the cells and members of a single, individual, gigantic body.
The whole City seemed to consist of the Enterprise, as if little by little, in a process of expansion nothing had been able to check, the Enterprise had extended itself beyond its original limits, swallowing up, digesting, and assimilating the neighborhoods on its perimeter by imbuing them with its own identity. The mysterious force emanating from the whole caused the Investigator to suffer a brief dizzy spell. Although he’d been aware for a long time that his place in the world and in society was microscopic in scale, this vision of the Enterprise, this glimpse of its brazen extent, allowed him to discover another unsettling fact: his anonymity. Over and above the knowledge that he wasn’t anything, he suddenly realized that he wasn’t anyone, either. The thought didn’t distress him, but all the same, it entered his mind as a narrow, curious worm penetrates an already fragile fruit.
But when he spotted a recess in the wall about two hundred yards to his left, on the other side of the street, he was strangely captivated by the sight and broke off his reverie. Yes, that wide angle, that break in the even line of the wall—there was no doubt about it—had to be the entrance. The entrance to the Enterprise. The entrance where the Guardhouse was located. And to think that the Hotel was barely a minute away. He’d needed several hours to trudge from one to the other, and by God knew what impossible route. It was pretty laughable. The Investigator felt almost euphoric.
The Investigation Page 4
