The Investigation

XXII

A FORCEFUL SLAP BROUGHT HIM BACK to consciousness.

“Pardon me, but I wasn’t sure what to do. You literally collapsed against me at the bottom of the stairs. I had to hold you up and drag you out, and as soon as we got through the door, you dropped like a ripe fruit! Do you feel any better?”

The Watchman was standing over the Investigator, who lay curled up on the ground. There was no sympathy in the Watchman’s worried face, and nothing friendly in his question. The Investigator made a vague hand gesture to show him there was no cause for alarm.

“You’re not carrying some virus, by any chance, are you?” asked the Watchman. “Because what the Enterprise really doesn’t need at this moment is an epidemic!”

“Nothing to fear,” the Investigator murmured weakly. “It’s just that … I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday morning.…”

The Watchman seemed surprised: “Since yesterday morning, you say?” He thought for a moment. “That’s only two days. You mustn’t have a very solid constitution if a little two-day fast can put you in this state. Either that, or you don’t have enough willpower. Six months ago, the Deputy Head of the Export Department went on a hunger strike. He said no one had the right to put him in a pre-retirement program. Guess how many days he held out?”

The Investigator shook his head to indicate that he had no idea.

“No, no, say a number!”

“Fifteen days …?”

“Forty-two! He held out for forty-two days. Do you realize how long that is? Forty-two days! Management didn’t want to give in. And they were right! They were right not to give in!”

He’d screamed the last sentence, looking all around as he did so. Then he fell silent, calmed down, and turned his eyes again to the Investigator, who was still on the ground. He began to feel the beneficial effects of fresh air.

“How did it end?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The hunger strike you were talking about.”

“Ah, right,” said the Watchman, as if setting foot on a shore abandoned long ago. “The DHED died. Simply died. The organism has its limits. Forty-two days is a lot of days. Too many days. Some people never know when to stop. Result: no pre-retirement, plus no retirement at all. Nothing. So that’s one less grumbler, and his position comes free and makes somebody happy.”

“I never heard about that case,” groaned the Investigator. “At least, I don’t think so, it wasn’t mentioned in the documents that—”

The Watchman violently interrupted him. “And why should you be informed that the Deputy Head of the Export Department died while on a hunger strike? Why? Aren’t you here to investigate the suicides? And only the suicides?”

“So I am,” the Investigator said thoughtfully. “But perhaps, if you consider it, the course of action taken by the hunger striker might seem like a form of suicide.…”

The Watchman planted his legs a little wider apart, pushed his cap back on his head, folded his arms, and was quiet for several seconds. He appeared to be pondering something. Above him, the sky was as black as his uniform, so black that only his wide-open, furious eyes emerged from the darkness, or that was how it seemed to the Investigator. In the end, the Watchman unfolded his arms and, with a threatening look, pointed his right index finger down at the Investigator. “Tell me something,” he said. “According to what you just said, you haven’t eaten for two days. Doesn’t that mean — if I follow your reasoning — doesn’t that mean you’re trying to commit suicide?”

The ground was covered by a not very thick layer of delicate, perfectly pure snow. The Investigator had just noticed it. Blackness covered the sky, and this white carpet was on the ground, and he was sitting on it. Wind buffeted his long white coat, which he was still wearing, carefully buttoned up, and which appeared to be keeping him pleasantly warm. The hard hat protected his balding head. He was freezing, certainly, and yet he wasn’t cold, not cold at all. He even had the impression that he was languishing in palpable, unctuous heat. He could have fallen asleep there, in front of the entrance, yes, he could have slept there for hours and escaped from his situation, which made no sense.

The Watchman waited, his left fist against his hip, his right hand on the butt of his revolver.

“I’m hungry,” the Investigator finally said. “I would eat anything, whatever I could get. I won’t make a fuss, I swear to you.…”

The Watchman immediately relaxed, blew his breath out hard, took his hand off his weapon, and wiped his forehead. “Good God, you scared me! That was close! Yes, you just saved your life! I was on the point of deciding that you were a mole!”

“A mole?”

“Yes, I thought you’d been turned, if you prefer. It’s a classic expression in espionage.”

“But I’m not a spy, I’m the In—”

“I know perfectly well who you are, but you’re missing the point. Consider: Someone is sent to investigate a wave of suicides, but he himself turns out to have dangerous, potentially suicidal tendencies; therefore, everything’s distorted, the system sabotages itself, the whole shebang explodes, it’s the end of all things! Now do you grasp my meaning?”

“Not very well …” the Investigator murmured. He could no longer feel his hands, which were thrust into the snow.

“It doesn’t matter. But get up, for heaven’s sake! You have to leave right away. You’ll come back tomorrow.”

The Watchman grabbed him, raised him to his feet, propped him against a wall, and then started rummaging in his own pockets. Eventually, he found what he was looking for and handed it to the Investigator. “Take that, it’s all I’ve got.”

The Investigator took hold of a largish stonelike object, brown and wrinkled, about four inches long, more or less round, and curved in the middle. He raised his eyes to the Watchman, not daring to formulate his question, but the latter anticipated him: “Top-quality. It may be a little dry. It’s probably been forgotten in my uniform for the past three months, but I offer it with all my heart.”

And as the Investigator hesitated before the thing he was holding in his hand, the Watchman became frosty again and asked in a suspicious tone, “On top of everything else, do you mean to tell me you don’t eat pork?”