The Investigation

X

HE FROZE IN PLACE AND THEN, very slowly, with fear in his belly, turned around. A man was coming toward him, a man who was neither a Server nor a Tourist. The closer he approached, the clearer his outline and features became. He looked as though he might be around the same age as the Investigator, and the same size, too. He was smiling.

“You’re not going to finish your breakfast?” the man repeated, gesturing toward the cup and the rusk. His voice was friendly.

“I’m not very hungry anymore,” the Investigator mumbled. “And I’m already late.”

“Late? If you say so. My feeling about life is, we’re often early, and death always comes too soon. Come, sit down, finish your breakfast calmly, don’t worry about me.”

The Investigator didn’t have the strength to protest. There was something imperious beneath the man’s bonhomie. Without removing his raincoat — into which he’d slipped only one arm — the Investigator sat down. The man took the opposite chair and looked attentively at the Investigator.

“Did you sleep well?”

“I arrived very late, and—”

“I know,” the man said, interrupting him. “The night was short. But eat, please. Pretend I don’t exist!”

The man pointed to the remaining rusk. The Investigator picked it up reluctantly and began to nibble at it.

“Let me introduce myself,” said the man. “I’m the Policeman.”

“The Policeman …?” the Investigator repeated fearfully. He put his rusk down and shook the hand the other man held out to him.

“Exactly. And you are …”

“I have,” the Investigator started to reply, choking a little and sweating a lot, “that is to say, I am … I am …”

“You are?”

“I’ve come to conduct an Investigation into the Enterprise.”

“An Investigation? Well, I’ll be! An Investigation! And I don’t even know anything about it?”

The Policeman maintained his friendly smile throughout, but his eyes stayed fixed on the Investigator’s eyes.

“It’s not a police investigation, not at all,” the Investigator stammered. “Don’t get the wrong idea! It’s simply a question of administrative procedure. During the past year, the Enterprise has experienced a relatively high — to speak frankly, a most unusually high — number of suicides, and I’ve been ch—”

“Suicides?” the other interrupted him again.

“Yes. Suicides.”

“How many?”

“Around twenty.”

“Twenty? And I haven’t been informed? But that’s incredible! I’m the Policeman, serial suicide is being committed a few steps from my office, and I don’t know a thing about it! When you say ‘around twenty,’ how many do you mean exactly?”

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.