The Investigation

II

THE INVESTIGATOR COULD HAVE SWORN he’d seen two or three taxicabs when he left the train station. Waiting taxis with headlights on and engines running, their exhaust smoke gray, delicate, quickly vanishing. But the cabs must all have gone somewhere else; the Investigator imagined the passengers, warm and comfortable on the back seat. It was really too bad.

The snow had decided to stay awhile and was falling still, imposing itself like a monarch. The Investigator had asked the Waiter for directions, expecting a disagreeable response, but the Waiter had seemed happy to inform him that it really wasn’t difficult at all, the Enterprise was vast, he couldn’t miss it. It spilled over everywhere. Whatever street he took, it would necessarily lead him to a surrounding wall, a wire-mesh gate, an entryway, a warehouse, a loading dock belonging to the Enterprise.

“One way or another,” the Waiter had added, “everything here more or less belongs to the Enterprise.” He’d placed a lot of emphasis on everything. “It’s simply a matter of following the wall,” he went on, “and you’ll come to the main entrance and the Guardhouse.”

And with that, the Waiter had gone back to his horse races. His elbows on the bar, his head in his hands, and his eyes fixed on the foaming thoroughbreds as they hurtled across the television screen, he hadn’t reacted at all when the Investigator told him good-bye, crossed the threshold of the establishment, and stepped out of his life.

The Waiter’s part was at an end anyway.

It wasn’t yet night, but the nocturnal atmosphere was nonetheless quite evident, augmented by the total solitude through which the Investigator moved as he walked along snow-covered sidewalks without ever passing a living soul. Only every now and then did he get the feeling that the place was inhabited, and that was when his little silhouette entered the creamy yellow halo shed by a streetlight and remained there briefly, the time required to cover a few yards, before being swallowed up again in the thick, impenetrable shadows.

His suitcase was getting heavier. His raincoat needed wringing out. Ignoring discomfort, the Investigator marched on. He was shivering more and more. His thoughts were wandering around, just like his cold, sore feet. Suddenly he saw himself as a convict, an outlaw, a last survivor, someone looking for shelter after escaping a final catastrophe, whether chemical, ecological, or nuclear. He felt his body becoming his enemy and stepped along in a dream. There didn’t seem to be any end of stepping along. He had the impression he’d been roaming hither and thither for hours. All the streets were identical. The snow, in its abstract uniformity, covered up every distinguishing feature. Was he going in circles?

The shock was brief and muffled, but it nevertheless left him quite stunned. He’d collided with a man or maybe a woman — he wasn’t sure which — but in any case a human shape that had erupted out of the night, coming toward him at a moderate but uncheckable speed. The Investigator murmured his excuses in a few polite words. From the other he heard nothing, except some grumbling and the sound of footsteps moving away. He glimpsed a silhouette before the night dissolved it.

Another dream?

No, some tangible signs of the incident remained: a sharp pain in his left shoulder, and a sore spot on his forehead, which he rubbed as expiring snowflakes ran down his face. And then there was his suitcase, of course. His suitcase. Burst open, its contents spread over the ground, reminiscent of the bags and baggage one sees in news reports, floating on the surface of the ocean in the aftermath of one plane crash or another, the final witnesses of lives tossed by the currents, of lives disappeared, pulverized, annihilated, reduced to sweaters soaked in salt water, to trousers still in movement, even though the legs they contained are gone, to stuffed animals, surprised at having lost forever the arms of the children who held them.

The Investigator experienced some difficulty in gathering up his five shirts, his underwear, his pajamas, his toilet things, his polyester pants, his alarm clock, several pairs of socks, a bag (still empty) for his dirty laundry, his electric razor, and its rebellious cord. During the process, he stepped on a tube of toothpaste, which spurted out and lay on the ground like a big pink-and-blue worm, redolent of synthetic mint. Eventually, he was able to close the suitcase, which was heavier, because along with his personal items he was now carrying a little snow, a little rain, a little melancholy.

But it was imperative that he keep on walking. It was by this time full night, and he was finding the City more and more inhospitable, uninhabited, as it appeared to be, except by the occasional shadow with a body as solid as a bull, capable of staggering a man with a single blow of its horn. And to cap his misfortune, the Investigator launched into the first of three violent sneezes. He was sure he’d wake up the next day with his nose running, his throat dry, raspy, and nearly closed, and his feverish head stuck inside a snare drum. The prospect of such a morning filled him with mild dread. Ah, to wake up feeling like that, he thought, before beginning a long and no doubt tedious day of investigating, what rotten luck!

To wake up, yes. In a room, of course. But what room? Where?