The Guard took another big gulp of wine, straight from the bottle. “I don’t mean to offend you,” he went on, “but look at yourself. Do you see what a state they’ve reduced you to? And all so they can keep raking in more profits! If I might give you a word of advice: A man in your position could cause some real damage. Instead of cleaning up their offices, you could sabotage all the computers. Oh, of course I don’t mean by smashing them with a hammer, but by more discreet methods: a little water spilled on a keyboard, a cup of coffee in the ventilation grill of a hard-disk-drive cover, a tube of glue in a printer, the contents of your vacuum cleaner in the air-conditioning ducts, and maybe even a good old short-circuit now and then—the classics always work, that’s why they’re classics—and the whole thing collapses! The Enterprise is a colossus with feet of clay. Our world is a colossus with feet of clay. The problem is that few people like you—I mean little people, the exploited, the hungry, the weak, the contemporary slaves—few such people realize the truth. The time is past for taking to the streets and chopping off the heads of kings. There haven’t been any kings for a long time. Today’s monarchs don’t have heads, or faces, either. They’re complex financial mechanisms, algorithms, projections, speculations on risks and losses, fifth-degree equations. Their thrones aren’t material thrones, they’re screens, fiber optics, printed circuit boards, and their nobility is the encrypted information that circulates through them at speeds faster than light. Their castles have become databases. If you break one of the Enterprise’s computers, one among thousands, you cut off one of the monarch’s fingers. Do you understand?”
The Guard took another large mouthful of wine, gargling the liquid before swallowing it. The Investigator had listened to him with mouth agape, looking like a perfect idiot. The snow gave his thin shoulders a more marked, rectangular outline, thanks to which he became a sort of noncommissioned officer of the night, a stupefied sergeant in a routed army who’d been thrown into a conflict and could no longer recall the reason for the fighting. “Don’t you think you ought to be more careful about what you say?” he ventured to ask.
“Careful? Why? For whose sake? I have no master. I know no authority. People like me still exist. Why do you think I do this job that everyone else refuses? Because I don’t want to play the game. Look at me, behind this glass. I’m a total symbol! But wait, you’re not a policeman, are you? Eh?”
“Of course not,” said the Investigator.
“And the person who claims to be the Investigator—you’re not him, either, right? My colleague warned me about this guy. He tried to force his way in here last night, around ten o’clock. His pretext was an Investigation into the suicides. An Investigation into the suicides at ten o’clock at night—do they think we’re that stupid? I’m convinced this individual is actually a Downsizer. Another one. We get one a month. And every time, there are layoffs right and left. Those people have no morals—you realize that, don’t you? If we’d let them, they’d come here even at night so they could get an early start on their repulsive tasks! Of course you’re not the Investigator. With your miserable face, those three little hairs on your head, and your rags, you’re like me, you’re not him!”
“Of course not …” replied the Investigator, trembling—not solely from the cold—and clutching, in his raincoat’s one remaining pocket, the old sausage that had been the Watchman’s gift to him.
“I swear to you that if that individual comes back tonight,” the Guard began again, “I won’t be as amiable as my colleague. I’ll fry him!”
“You’ll … fry him?”
“Without batting an eye! You see that lever?” said the Guard, pointing to a kind of rubber-coated handle set into the wall. “If I pull it down, I send a twenty-thousand-volt current into all the metal barriers you see around you. Even if he doesn’t touch them, even if he stands still in the place where you’re standing right now, for example, the amperage is so high that in two or three seconds the repugnant creature will be reduced to a common heap of ashes!”
“A heap of ashes …” the Investigator groaned.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust!” the Guard concluded. A tiny morsel of pâté had fallen from his sandwich and now adorned his chin.
XXIV
ORDINARILY, THE INVESTIGATOR DIDN’T dream much. His nights were calm, and in the morning, he only rarely remembered his dreams—except for the recurrent one about the copy machine. He was in his office. He needed to create a duplicate copy of an Investigation dossier. He went to the room where the photocopier was located and started to reproduce the documents in the dossier, but the toner cartridge was almost out of ink, and the machine quickly put itself into pause mode. Since he didn’t know how to change the cartridge—his function was to conduct successful Investigations, not to maintain photocopy machines—he stood there helplessly, with no idea what to do. Most fortunately, that distressing dream had never become reality. But this—that is to say, everything that had happened to him since he’d set foot in this town—was quite obviously a nightmare. What else could it be? Nothing else. Yes, a nightmare. A long nightmare, certainly diabolical in its complex, subtle, convoluted realism, but a nightmare nonetheless!
The problem was that the Investigator couldn’t perceive any way out. He had no blessed idea about how to escape from the world he was in, even though it was necessarily, indubitably false, totally oneiric, utterly unlike life. Real life couldn’t be this bewildering, he thought, it couldn’t throw you together with characters as disturbing as the ones who’d been having their fun with him since the previous evening, taking pleasure in starving him, battering him, disorienting him, stringing him along, crushing him, frightening him. But what if …? What if …? Maybe life—which up until that moment he’d experienced as a monotonous and pleasantly boring sequence of repetitions, without surprises—maybe life, considered from a certain perspective and in certain circumstances, entailed unforeseen, harrowing, or even tragic accidents.
The street was empty, as it had been the previous evening. The vehicles and the throngs of pedestrians had all disappeared, which hardly surprised him, and that was what he found truly amazing: He wasn’t surprised anymore. He told himself he was starting to adopt the illogical logic of his nightmare. This didn’t assuage his hunger or lower his fever or mend his raincoat or relieve his immense fatigue, but he felt a little better all the same. He reasoned that if his thoughts were patterning themselves after things that had happened to him and would no doubt go on happening to him, then he’d probably be better able to bear them, just as a man who’s climbing up to high altitudes eventually becomes accustomed to the lack of oxygen.
Despite his great exhaustion and his weakened state, he crossed the street in a few seconds. The ease with which he did this made him snigger, remembering the difficulty he’d had that very morning getting to the entrance of the Enterprise. He headed for the Hotel, whose sign was trying to light up. The effort lasted a few seconds before the sign crackled wretchedly and then went out, only to begin a new attempt, doomed to failure like the others. The street was covered with snow, and the only tracks in it were his. This seemed to him proof that what he’d felt before was true: The snow was a dream; he was dreaming the street. It couldn’t possibly be unmarked by vehicle tracks and untrodden by pedestrian traffic, for the City was densely populated, as he’d verified for himself that morning, when hundreds of cars and thousands of people had clogged the street. He was, therefore, dreaming.
But there were holes in his reasoning, and he was seized by doubt. He saw that he was hedging his bets between dream and reality, choosing one or the other, whichever suited him, to explain events. His lovely nightmare theory fell apart. There was, alas, only one reality, and he was stuck in it up to the neck, like a wooden stick in a barrel of molasses. A few minutes earlier, his morale had begun to recover, but now it collapsed, a fragile house of cards. His headache was very bad again.
He was exhausted when he pushed open the door of the Hotel. The Gia
ntess was behind the reception counter. Upon seeing him, she said, “You were in room 14, correct?”
The Investigator couldn’t utter so much as a word. He contented himself with a nod of his head, wondering what might be the significance of that past-tense verb. What register had he been expunged from? What list had he been crossed off of? And why? As before, the Giantess was wearing her pink terry-cloth bathrobe, which totally enveloped her massive body. The Investigator felt tiny in her presence. Despite his cold and the few yards that still separated him from the desk, he was able to detect the big woman’s sweet, sweaty scent.
“We’ve been obliged to change your room. The Management apologizes sincerely for any inconvenience. Your new room is number 93. Second floor. Your bag’s already inside.” The Giantess placed a very small key on the counter in front of the Investigator. He was about to take the key, but she held it down with her index finger. “One more thing,” she said, using her free hand to place a document on the counter. “I need you to sign this bill for the property destruction you caused this morning.”
“Property destruction …?”
“An official report transmitted to me specifies damages in the ladies’ restroom on this floor. I’m simply passing the bill on to you. I make no judgment in regard to your presence in a ladies’ room.…”
The Giantess had spoken the last sentence in a lighter tone, a tone full of insinuation. The Investigator nearly launched into explanations, but then he changed his mind. What good would explaining do? He took hold of the bill and the pen the Giantess had placed on the counter and prepared to sign. But when he saw the total amount written on the bill, he recoiled. “This can’t be possible!” he exclaimed. “All these charges for a torn towel? I refuse to sign such a document!”
He slammed the pen down on the counter, but this had no effect on the Giantess, who continued to watch him impassively. The Investigator found her steady gaze unsettling. He took up the bill again and examined it in greater detail. It contained fifteen items: replacement of destroyed towel, replacement of destroyed towel dispenser, replacement of destroyed screws, replastering of damaged wall, repainting of damaged wall, meals for three workers (plasterer, painter, carpenter), transportation expenses for said three workers, cleanup of worksite, disinfection of toilets, initial report fee, certified statement fee, general expenses tax, secondary expenses tax, taxes tax, taxes tax tax.
“That’s simply robbery! First your fake Policeman makes me waste my entire morning, and now you’re telling me I—”
“What fake Policeman?” the Giantess asked, interrupting him.
Summoning all his remaining strength, the Investigator fought back the cloying nausea that rose to his lips, swallowed hard, and pressed his hands against his temples to lessen the pain that was beating inside his skull with the persistence of a percussionist. “I’m sure you know him better than I do. The man who lives in that broom closet there,” the Investigator said, pointing to the small room where the Policeman had taken his statement.
The Giantess looked at the door of the storage room and then at the Investigator again. “I can’t go on,” he said. “I have to get some sleep. We’ll see about all this tomorrow. Just give me back my ID and credit card.…”
“Where are they?”
Choking with panic, the Investigator said, “What do you mean? They’re in that box there! You confiscated them from me last night and put them in that box! Remember?”
The Giantess froze, appeared to stop breathing, and kept staring fixedly at him. “I don’t remember,” she said. “I don’t remember anything when my sleep is interrupted at 3:14 a.m. Moreover, ‘confiscated’ isn’t the proper word. As you no doubt recall, the Rules—”
“Paragraph eighteen, line C …”
“Exactly. We’ve already had enough problems with clients who take a room without being able to pay for it.”
“Give me back what belongs to me … please,” the Investigator implored her, putting all his distress into his words. The Giantess seemed to be shaken by his plea. She hesitated and then slowly slid her right hand down the front of her nightgown between her breasts, felt around for a moment, and pulled out a golden key. She slipped it into the lock on the front of the little box, gave it three complete counterclockwise turns, opened the metal door, and looked inside.
“Well? What was it you wanted to get back?” she asked in a mocking tone. The Investigator didn’t take his eyes off the box.
It was tragically empty.
XXV
THE INVESTIGATOR ALMOST LOST HIS GRIP for good.
There was a long minute during which he felt that his head and body were on the point of coming apart, of splitting open like a wall shaken by an earthquake, or by the shock wave of an extremely powerful bomb. He shut his eyes to cancel the sight of the empty box, which contained absolutely nothing and so became, in a way, a perfect metaphor for the situation he found himself in, or even for his entire life. Then, with his eyes still closed, he heard himself speak. Yes, words were issuing from his mouth, words like groans, weak, hesitant, convalescent, barely audible words, as if they’d taken roundabout routes on their way to the Giantess, bypasses, detours, side paths, endless highways, losing at each turning a little of their strength and much of their texture.
“How is this possible? You require me to entrust important documents to you, and then you lose them?”
The Giantess’s voice reached him where he stood in his darkness. “Well, that’s what you say, but I repeat, I don’t remember anything. I was asleep when you arrived.”
“But how about me? Do you remember me?”
“Very vaguely, to tell you the truth. And that doesn’t prove anything. I was told to wait for room 14 to come in this evening. You were the only Guest who hadn’t returned yet. So, when you came in a little while ago, I concluded that you were number 14. I didn’t make that deduction based on your appearance—you have no distinguishing features.”
The Investigator opened his eyes. “Are you the only person who has a key to that box?”
“My daytime Colleague has the other one.”
“Could he have put my credit card and identification somewhere else?”
The Giantess hesitated. “It’s unlikely.”
“Unlikely but not impossible,” replied the Investigator. He was at the very end of his strength, but he perceived a ray of hope.
“I repeat: unlikely.”
“Could we verify that tomorrow? I really need to sleep. I’m so weak. I’ve eaten nothing. Nothing.”
The Giantess frowned as if she suspected a dirty trick. “And how are you going to pay if you don’t have any money?”
The Investigator’s arms dropped to his sides. Couldn’t he find some respite, however brief, in the impossible situation he was in? “I was sent here on a mission,” he said, conscious that the statement made him sound like one of those lunatics who frequent the centers of megalopolises, proclaiming to all and sundry that they are the messengers of God or of some extraterrestrial race. “I have an Investigation to conduct,” he went on, striving to adopt a natural tone. “An Investigation into the Enterprise, which is located just across from your establishment.”
“Then you would be … the Investigator?” the Giantess asked in surprise.
“Absolutely.”
The Giantess hesitated, walked around her counter, went up to him, grasped him gently by the shoulder, turned him around to examine him in detail, and then pushed him toward the big mirror that covered one of the walls in the entrance. “Look at yourself.”
In the glass the Investigator saw a stooped old man with a two-day beard and hot, bloodshot eyes rolling incessantly from left to right and from right to left. His swollen forehead had turned an orangey yellow, and the area surrounding the wound caused by the falling telephone was now purple. The clothes he had on were rags, crumpled, soiled, and torn, particularly his raincoat, which must once have been a decent example of its kind. There was also a sizable slash in
his trousers at the level of his right thigh. The flesh was visible, naked and white except for a long, zigzagging scratch stained with dried blood. His shoes were like big clumps of brownish lint. On one, the front half of the sole had come unglued, and the other was missing its shoelace.
“Who do you expect to believe that you look like the Investigator?”
“But I don’t have to look like the Investigator, I am the Investigator!” he said, addressing himself as much as the Giantess. “I’m the Investigator …” he repeated softly, as if to bolster his own conviction, while big tears welled in his eyes, full, round tears that rolled down his face and slid toward the wrinkled skin of his neck. A child’s tears. He remained like that in front of the mirror for a moment, incapable of moving, incapable of the smallest reaction. The Giantess went back to her post behind the counter.
“Sign the bill for me,” she said, “and then you can go to your room. Since you’ve just informed me that you’re not in a position to settle your Hotel bill and that you don’t even have a piece of identification, I could turn you out into the street, but I’m not a cruel woman, and I’m sure we’ll be able to come to some sort of an arrangement.”
He turned slowly toward the Giantess, took the pen she held out to him, and signed the bill without even looking at it.
“You’re forgetting your key!”
He was already on his way to the stairs. He went back, picked up the room key—in doing so, he had to graze the Giantess’s large, damp fingers—and very slowly climbed up the stairs, holding tightly to the handrail.
Tomorrow, he’d make a call. Yes, he’d ring up his Head of Section. Things couldn’t go on this way, and if his boss thought him stupid or incompetent, too bad. In any case, he wasn’t going to let this job cost him his health, whether mental or physical, to say nothing of his skin. He’d explain everything. The Head of Section would understand, make things right with the Hotel, and stand security for the Investigator, and then everything would return to normal. He’d feel better in the morning, and the first thing he’d do, of course, would be to change hotels. He wouldn’t stay another night in this one. He’d forget it. He’d dismiss it from his life.
The Investigation Page 9
