The Investigation

by Philippe Claudel

He was almost naked, and even though he’d left the Waiting Room only a short time before, twenty seconds at the most, his head and body were covered with sweat. (No doubt to convince himself that everything was going to return to normal, he continued to think of the burst prefabricated structure lying ten feet away from him with its door open as the Waiting Room.) He felt extremely light. Walking—he took a few steps—was easy. The only problem was the heat. He’d never known such heat. It was thoroughly upsetting, because, aside from cooking him, it extracted from his body a great deal of perspiration, which slicked his legs, dripped between his thighs, ran down his back, his chest, the nape of his neck, his sides, his forehead, flowed uninterruptedly and especially into his eyes, drowning them, adding liquid blinding to light blinding, with the result that the Investigator not only couldn’t see much, he was also steadily seeing less and less.

  With his arms and hands stretched out toward emptiness, hoping in vain to block a sun that was slipping in everywhere, as if his limbs had become transparent, the Investigator looked for shade. He walked in all directions, and in particular he circled the Waiting Room, but it did no good, he couldn’t find the least shadow, which defied all logic and all laws of physics, for if the sun was shining on one wall, it couldn’t be shining on the opposite wall, too, and, what was more, the great star was far from its zenith, contenting itself with hovering lethargically just over the horizon; but the Investigator had reached the point where nothing surprised him anymore.

  Out of breath, he stopped, sat—or, rather, knelt—on the ground, folded his body at the waist, drew his chin down to his breastbone, curled his head under himself as far as he could, and put one hand on each temple, getting smaller and smaller, a shape deposited on the ground, nothing but a shape, hardly different from a large stone or a package; had there been anyone to see it, he might have wondered what it could possibly contain. And what did he contain, in fact, aside from several score pounds of burning, ill-used flesh, inhabited by a buffeted, uncertain, and broken soul?

  The Investigator had no more tears. Even if he’d wanted to cry, he wouldn’t have been able to. All the water in him was leaving his body in the form of sweat. He groaned and groaned again, trying to get more of his head between his arms and under his torso in order to escape the sun. His groaning became a cry. At first it was low and comparatively muffled, but then it grew, throbbed, rumbled, conveying the last shudders of an energy that sensed its own imminent decline, and culminating in a final explosion of animal howling, extended and powerful, which might have caused chills in a hearer had it not been so hot.

  In zoos, it sometimes happens that the cries of the great apes or the peacocks awaken the other animals, and then, in the middle of the night or during the peaceful afternoon hours, when everything’s asleep and there’s no hint of unrest, a sonorous protest breaks out, a sort of living tempest consisting of hundreds of sounds and voices fused together into a thunder of low notes and high notes, of whistling spasms and guttural bursts, of yelping, hooting, growling, stamping, of banged bars and shaken wire fences, of barking and trumpeting, which electrifies the passerby and plunges him into a nightmare all the more frightening because he’s unable to discern the exact source of each of the sounds that scamper around him, bind him tightly, and suffocate him, preventing his escape from the cacophony as it turns into torture.

  The Investigator hadn’t completely finished howling when, from most of the containers, gigantic boxes, prefabricated buildings, mobile homes, and storage units scattered around him, there arose a clamor, partly muffled and partly clear, of cries, rattles, rumblings, of voices, yes, no doubt about it, voices, whose supplicant tones he could grasp without understanding the words, the voices of ghosts or of persons condemned to death, the voices of the dying, of outcasts, age-old, ancestral, and at the same time atrociously present, voices that surrounded the Investigator and drowned out his own.

  XL

  AFTER A WHILE, THE VOICES fell silent. Gradually. One by one. It was a progressive disappearance, as if a knowing finger, in the name of a higher intention, had turned down a dial that regulated their intensity. The Investigator couldn’t get over it. He spun around and around, making himself dizzy, and finally came to a staggering halt.

  “Is anyone there?” he ventured to ask after a few seconds.

  “Here!”

  “Over here!”

  “Me!”

  “Please!”

  “I’m here!”

  “Me! Me!”

  At different volumes, depending on their distance but also on the reserves of energy quickening them, the voices made themselves heard again, at first isolated but then mingled, confused, blending into one another, creating an intolerable commotion that seemed to saturate the air, filling it like fog or heavy rain.

  The Investigator ran over to the nearest container and knocked on its wall. At once, blows struck from the inside responded to him.

  “Who are you?” the Investigator asked, pressing one ear against the wall.

  “Open the door, for pity’s sake, let me out.… I can’t take anymore …” replied the muffled voice from inside the container.

  “But who are you?” the Investigator repeated.

  “I’m … I’m …”

  The voice hesitated and broke off. The Investigator thought he could hear sobbing. “Tell me who you are!” he said.

  “I was … I was … the Investigator.”

  The Investigator jumped back as if he’d just burned himself. His heart was racing.

  “Don’t go away, please, don’t leave me … please.…”

  The Investigator’s chest contracted under violent pressure. The beating of his heart was uncontrollable and totally random, now slowing down, now most unexpectedly accelerating. He placed a hand over it, trying to calm and reassure it, as though it were an animal with one leg caught in a snare and striving to free itself, against all logic, by gnawing off the leg rather than biting through the cord. The pause did him good. With the back of his hand, he wiped away the sweat that continued to stream down his forehead, giving him the impression that he was dissolving.

  He examined the container. It was one of those that appeared to be the most recent, the newest. The film of dust that covered it was thin and translucent. Careful to make as little noise as possible, he started walking around the container, looking for the door.

  “I can hear you, you know. You’re moving.…”

  The Investigator kept walking. He made an effort not to worry about the voice, which had spoken those last words in the most desperate manner possible. He stepped along on tiptoe, making himself light. Rounding one corner of the container, he looked at the wall on that end, saw no door, and tiptoed on.

  “Why don’t you answer me …?”

  The Investigator continued his inspection. He turned the next corner and studied the second of the container’s two long sides. Still nothing. No door in sight.

  “… just say a word, please, I know you’re still there.… I know it.…”

  There was but one side left. Only one. The Investigator increased his pace. The man in the container could hear him, so there was no longer any point in walking so cautiously. Anyway, why should he be scared? The man didn’t seem to be aggressive, and besides, he was shut up inside a box. The Investigator was about to turn the last corner, but he slowed down. Or, rather, his body slowed down, even before his mind gave the order. Why was he so fearful? What exactly was he afraid of? What discovery was he anticipating, and why did the thought of it paralyze him to such a degree? He knew the answer but dared not admit it to himself. He’d inspected three of the container’s four sides, and there was no door, no opening at all, in any of the walls. That meant, therefore, that the door was located on the fourth side. To make sure of that, all he had to do was to go around the final corner and take a look. However, he didn’t do it. He dared not do it. He dared not because, deep down inside, he was convinced there was no door and no window on the fourth side, either,
even though that didn’t make any sense.

  The Investigator let himself slide down to the ground and sat with his back against the container. He preferred not to verify. He preferred to cling to doubt. Only doubt, he told himself, would allow him to hold on a little while longer. For there were only two possibilities: Either there was a door on the fourth side of the container, or there was not. If his eyes saw the door, then all would be well. But if his eyes verified the absence of a door, then there would be nothing left for him but to sink all the way into madness or just let himself get baked by that bloody sun, which was still there, still in the same place, sending its heat streaming out over the naked land. The Investigator preferred not to know about the door and clung to the possibility, the meager possibility, that he was still in a world where enclosed structures couldn’t contain anything, no object, no person, no plant, discolored or not, unless there was an opening in the structure through which the contents had passed.

  “You’re still there, aren’t you?”

  The container’s voice was very close. It echoed in the Investigator’s back—the man must have spoken with his mouth against the wall. His words entered the Investigator’s body, causing a kind of tickling.

  “Answer me.…”

  “Who are you?” the Investigator asked again.

  “I already told you, I’m the Investigator.”

  “But I’m the Investigator!”

  There was a silence, and then he thought he heard a sigh.

  “If you say so … In any case, we all are, more or less …”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Think what you wish. I’m not going to fight, I don’t have any more strength.… It’s ruined me, all this. Please, can you help me get out of here?”

  “I’m afraid not. Your box looks like it’s hermetically sealed.”

  “Box? But I was asked to take a seat in the Waiting Room.…”

  The Investigator moved a little away from the wall of the container and looked at it again. Then he said, “I said ‘box’ for brevity’s sake. In fact, you’re imprisoned in a sort of prefabricated building located in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Nowhere …”

  The voice fell silent. The Investigator didn’t know what to do. He felt that there was, on the other side of the wall, a man who—except perhaps for a few differences—had experienced events similar to those he himself had been confronted with.

  “It’s cold, it’s so cold …” the voice murmured.

  “How can you say that?” the Investigator asked in surprise. His body was visibly liquefying, dissolving in fluids, in water, in sweat. “I have practically no clothes on, and I’m still too hot. The sun looks like it’s suspended in the sky. It doesn’t move an inch. There’s not a scrap of cloud, and when a little wind comes up, all it does is blow streams of burning dust into the heat!”

  “How lucky for you … No matter how I wrap myself up in my clothes, I’m still chilled to the bone. There are ice crystals everywhere, in my beard, on my hands, on the wall, on the low table, and even on the green plant, which is all white anyway. I can’t feel my hands or my feet anymore, they seem to be frozen, I think they’re already dead.…”

  The container didn’t appear to be a walk-in cooler, and its outer walls, plywood covered with a coat of beige paint, felt hot to the touch. Couldn’t the voice be lying to him? Wasn’t this just another of the numerous tests he’d had to undergo?

  “What was the subject of your Investigation?” the Investigator asked.

  “I was supposed … I was supposed to … Oh, what’s the use of explaining.…”

  The voice had lost all its strength. The Investigator had to press his ear against the container wall as hard as he could in order to make out the words.

  “Were you investigating the Suicides within the Enterprise?” the Investigator persisted.

  “The Enterprise? Suicides? No … no … My job was to … I mean, I was supposed to try to … explain … the decrease of motivation within the Group.… So cold … cold … My lips are freezing, too, and my eyes, I can’t see anymore.…”

  “Which Group? What are you talking about?”

  “The Group … the Group …”

  “Does the Group belong to the Enterprise?”

  “The Enterprise …?”

  “Make an effort, damn it!” cried the Investigator, losing patience. “If you’re where you are, there’s bound to be a reason, for God’s sake! One doesn’t wind up where you are without a good reason! The Group you’re talking about must be part of the Enterprise. Answer me!”

  “Group … motivation … tongue … frozen … Enterprise … can’t anymore … can’t anymore …”

  “Answer me!!!”

  “… anymore …”

  The Investigator began to shout, beating the walls of the box with both hands, abandoning the relatively hushed tones he’d been using up to that point. And thereupon, dozens, hundreds, thousands (or were there more? who could know?) of walled-up voices were raised once again, in an outburst of cries, yells, death rattles, tragic appeals, complaints, prayers, and supplications that made the Investigator feel as though he were being clawed at from every side, clung to like some wretched boat that shipwreck victims cling to, even though they know it won’t be able to save them all, continuing to hold on to it all the same, with the sole, selfish intention of sinking it so that it won’t save anyone, unconsciously preferring the deaths of all to the survival of even one.

  The Investigator could find but one escape from all that: He clapped his hands over his ears and closed his eyes.

  XLI

  QUITE OFTEN, WE TRY TO GRASP what escapes our understanding by using terms and concepts peculiar to ourselves. Ever since man attained distinction among the other species, he hasn’t stopped measuring the universe and the laws governing it by the scale of his thought and its products, without always noticing the inadequacy of such an approach. Nonetheless, he knows very well, for example, that a sieve is not a proper tool for carrying water. Why, then, does he constantly fool himself into thinking his mind can grasp everything and comprehend everything? Why not, rather, recognize that his mind is an ordinary, everyday sieve, a tool that renders undeniable service in certain circumstances, performing specific actions in given situations, but is completely useless in many others, because it’s not made for them, because it’s got holes in it, because a great many things pass through it before it can hold them back and consider them, even if only for a few seconds?

  Was it because of the unrelenting heat? Was it because he couldn’t stop sweating, seeping, disappearing into his fluids? Was it because he was thirsty without even being completely aware of it that the Investigator was starting to think about human imperfection, about liquids and a sieve?

  All was silent again. He still had his eyes closed. He’d dropped his hands long ago, and now they lay along his sides. The voices had stopped. Only the moaning of the wind as it played among the containers reached his ears. All of a sudden, he had the impression that he was a little less hot, and at the same time, the blackness behind his eyelids became still blacker.

  A shadow.

  It must be a shadow, he thought, a thick cloud hiding the sun, unless the sun itself has finally decided to go down.

  He opened his eyes. A man stood before him, a figure he could see only in silhouette. The tall, stout body cast a large shadow over the Investigator. The man looked enormous. He was no cloud. In his right hand, he was holding what appeared to be a broom handle.

  “Where did you come from?” asked the Shadow. His was an old man’s voice, heavy, deep, a little hoarse, but it projected, despite that roughness, a lively, fresh, lightly ironic tone. The other voices, the ones that came from inside the containers, rose in lamentation again.

  “Be quiet!” the Shadow bellowed, and immediately there was silence. The Investigator couldn’t believe it. Who could this shadow be, that he had such rough, incontestable authority over all those capti
ves?

  “I asked you a question,” the Shadow said, addressing the Investigator again.

  “The Waiting Room. I was in the Waiting Room, over there …” the Investigator slowly replied, leaning on the wall of the container as he rose, with great difficulty, to his feet. The Shadow moved, turning his head in the direction the Investigator had indicated, and then remained still for a few moments, gazing at the gutted prefab structure with the open door from which the Investigator had emerged. The latter had the sun in his eyes again, the bloody, blinding sun. It hadn’t moved an inch.

  “You can’t see a thing,” said the Shadow. “Wait, I’ll fix that for you.”

  The Investigator felt a hand on his person, tearing away what was left of his hospital gown. He quickly tried to cover his groin, but the cavernous voice forestalled him: “You’re not going to start with that old nonsense again, are you? What’s the point? Nobody can see you, except for me, and I’m in the same state as you.”

  The Investigator heard the Shadow tearing his hospital gown into many strips. Then his hands, his old hands with their long, misshapen fingers, grazed the Investigator’s face as they tied the strips around his eyes in several layers, gently pulling the cloth taut and knotting each strip behind his head, but not too tightly, so that his eyelids would retain their freedom of movement.

  “There you are. It’s done. You can open your eyes now.”

  When he did so, the Investigator perceived the world through the orangey gauze that up until then had served him as a garment. The sun was now only a yellow ball the color of straw, and the ground had lost its blinding whiteness. Here and there, he could make out darker masses: the unequal hulks of the different containers. They covered the plain, which was perfectly flat, without elevation or eminence, as far as the eye could see. There weren’t dozens or hundreds of them, as he’d at first thought, but thousands, dozens of thousands! And the vision of that infinity sent sweetish bile surging up into his dry mouth. He felt on the point of vomiting. But what could he possibly have to vomit?