The Investigation

XX

HUNGER IS A STRANGE CONTINENT. Up until then, the Investigator had never imagined it as a landscape, but he’d started to perceive its immense, desolate expanse. He felt his head buzzing, and it seemed to him that the walls of the room were swaying a bit. The beneficial effects of the two tablets the Policeman had given him had long since disappeared. He was obliged to yield to the evidence: He had a raging fever. In spite of the overheated office and the heavy coat keeping him warm, he was shivering. His mouth was dry, and he had the disagreeable sensation that his tongue was going to adhere permanently to his palate. His empty stomach was making bizarre noises that sounded like groans, echoes of distant quarrels, muffled shocks, minor explosions. His vision clouded every now and then. His heart beat in an unusual way, alternating abrupt accelerations with scary pauses. He tried to gain a little assurance by telling himself that the Manager had no doubt gone to inquire about the food he’d ordered for him, and that in a few minutes he’d come back, bringing a tray laden with the promised meal, and all the Investigator’s discomfort would cease.

The Manager … Was this City inhabited solely by strange creatures like the Giantess and certifiably insane people like the Policeman and the Manager? The latter’s obscure lamentations had quite amazed the Investigator, and though he was by no means completely stupid, he hadn’t understood very clearly the nature of the man’s complaints. Where had he sprung from, this Manager, and why did he have this need to pour out his heart to the first stranger who came along? They weren’t friends, they hardly knew each other at all! Didn’t he have any self-control, any sense of propriety? How could this depressive man have been given such an important post, when you didn’t have to be a psychologist to consider the evidence and conclude that he had neither the mental qualities nor the solid nerves required to discharge such a responsibility? And then there was the gigantic portrait, the photograph the Manager had gazed upon several times with mingled fear and admiration, as if he might find support there, or increased authority. Who could the subject of the portrait be, that his mere image had the power to provoke moments of veneration or dread?

The Investigator examined the picture more attentively. The old man’s smile was direct, frank, and penetrating. It wasn’t fake; it was the smile of a man who loved his neighbor, who knew him and looked upon him with benevolence and humanity. The old fellow was wearing a suit of elegant cut, which, though perhaps a bit outmoded, nonetheless perfectly became him, a suit made of a soft, warm, reassuring fabric, doubtless some kind of tweed. He leaned forward, as if he wished to come as close as possible to the person looking at him.

This must be the Founder, the Investigator said to himself. The Founder of the Enterprise. Who else could he be? Then again, the Investigator had no memory whatsoever of the Enterprise’s having had a Founder. To be sure, it must have been founded at some point in the past, and no doubt by a particular individual. The meager documentation the Investigator had received from his Head of Section when he was charged with the Investigation provided only the tally of recorded suicides and barely mentioned the Enterprise, and the incoherent dossier the Guide had given him earlier that afternoon likewise shed no light on the subject.

Ordinarily, the Investigator did not concern himself with the origins of enterprises or look into their civil status. That wasn’t his business. Moreover, in the world where he lived, such origins had become as it were nebulas, agglomerating subsidiaries like so many particles, dislocating them, relocating them, creating ramifications, distant arborescence, rootlets, muddling levels of participation, assets, and boards of directors, constructing a maze so intricate that it was no longer possible to know who was who and who did what. In such circumstances as these, digging down to foundations called for a degree of competence in economic archeology that far surpassed the Investigator’s skills as well as his curiosity. He wondered why questions like those were even occurring to him. Quite definitely, he wasn’t in his normal state. His fever was probably rising. The immense old man in the photograph was still looking down at him, but now it seemed to the Investigator that the man’s smile had changed, had passed from benevolent to ironic.

All at once his eyelids became very heavy. He closed them for a fraction of a second, but when he reopened them, he saw that the office was plunged in darkness. The daylight that had been streaming in through the two big bay windows just a few instants previously had given way all at once to a night of deep, black, total darkness. And it had happened in the blink of an eye! Panic-stricken, he rose from the armchair and hurried over to the windows. Yes, night had fallen, all right. But if so, how long had his eyes been shut? Could he really have fallen asleep for several minutes, maybe even much longer? And in that case, where was the Manager? What time was it? He looked at his watch: 9:43 p.m.! He went to the door his host had disappeared through and knocked three times, then four, then five, harder and harder. No one responded. He put his ear to the wood. No sound, not even a tiny one, came from the other side of the door. He grabbed the doorknob and turned it, only to discover that the door was locked. He rattled the knob with increasing desperation.

“May I know what you’re doing in this office at this hour?”

The Investigator froze. He could feel his blood turning to ice in his veins. Someone was standing a few yards behind him. Someone who had entered the room unheard.

“Put your hands in the air, very slowly, and turn around without making any sudden movements,” the voice ordered, not cordially at all.