The Investigation

VI

THE GIANTESS HAD HIM FILL OUT an incalculable number of forms. As soon as he finished each one, she tried to put the information on the hard drive of an old computer, but she looked uncomfortable at the keyboard, typing with two fingers, often hitting the wrong key, and closing the program inadvertently no fewer than five times before she was able to save the data; she had to start over from scratch every time.

At last, she handed him a copy of the Hotel Rules — a single sheet, printed on both sides, sealed in plastic, and covered with fingerprints that made the text illegible in places — and required him to read them aloud, carefully, in front of her. Because he wished to be agreeable, he didn’t balk at her request.

Afterward, she took the trouble to verify that he’d retained and digested what he’d read by quizzing him about it: “Is smoking allowed in the rooms?” “From when to when is breakfast served?” “Where?” “Are Guests allowed to receive visitors from outside the Hotel in their rooms?” “What is it strictly forbidden to throw into the toilets?” and so on.

When he gave the wrong answer to her fourteenth question—“Are Guests permitted to iron their personal belongings in their rooms without first informing the Management?”—the Giantess requested that he reread the Rules in their entirety, all thirty-four paragraphs. The thought of being shown to the door and forced to finish the night in the street convinced the Investigator that he should do as she said. In the end, he managed to pass the test, and the Giantess allowed him to choose one of the keys on the board, having first asked him for a piece of identification and his credit card, which she’d then proceeded to shut up, before he had time to protest, in a little box situated below the board with the keys, all in accordance with paragraph 18, line C of the Rules, which stated that in cases of nocturnal arrival, the Management of the Hope Hotel reserved the right to keep the Guest’s identification papers and credit card or other means of payment as a security deposit until the forenoon of the following day.

“Pick one fast. I’m in no mood to wait much longer. It’s 3:16 a.m., my nights are short, and I can’t wait to get back in bed!”

He settled on number 14. The Giantess took the key off its hook and without a word began to climb the stairs. The Investigator followed her.

He tripped and nearly fell on the very first stair, because its unusually tall riser contradicted his unconscious muscle memory, and he didn’t step high enough. By contrast, the next stair was very low, too low, which likewise disoriented him and nearly led to a fall. The result was that he began to pay strict attention, despite his fatigue, to every step, telling himself that in any case there weren’t going to be fifty of them; room number 14, the room he’d chosen, must be on the second floor, so there couldn’t be many more stairs to go.

His concentration paid off, and he climbed on without stumbling. Given that no two risers were the same height, he was pleased with his performance, but he thought that only a lunatic could have constructed such a stairway. Long after he and his escort had passed the second floor, they kept climbing, climbing, climbing. On the point of collapse, the Investigator gritted his teeth and toiled upward behind the Giantess. He lugged his suitcase along as best he could, ascending floor after floor, one step at a time. The Hotel seemed like an infinite tower whose apparent purpose was to pierce the sky, as a hand drill’s reason for being is to put holes in wood.

Then, with brutal abruptness, a thought came to him, a luminous, self-evident, indubitable thought: He was dead. He’d died without noticing it. This struck him as the obvious explanation; what other could there be? Maybe it had happened a few hours before, right after he got off the train. Maybe he’d inadvertently walked across some tracks. Maybe a freight train had struck him, crushed him, reduced him to nothing. Or maybe the event — a catastrophic collapse, a heart attack, a massive stroke — had taken place earlier, as he was leaving the Director’s office with his new orders and just after he said hello to the Accountant, who was standing by the vending machine, fixing her hair and makeup while waiting for a cup of coffee. Or maybe he’d died at home. In the morning, when he first woke up, even before shutting off the vibrating alarm clock with its hands pointing to 6:15. An instantaneous, painless death. A long slide. And after that, nothing. Or, rather, yes, something: namely, this nightmare, which must be a kind of stress test, an initiation ordeal, an upgraded purgatory. Somewhere, someone was observing him, he was more and more sure of it. Someone was studying him. Someone was going to determine his lot.

“Here it is,” the Giantess said. “And there’s your key.” She handed him the object in question — he found it quite heavy — adjusted the front of her robe, lightly passed her right hand over her forehead, which was speckled with fine beads of sweat, and went back down the stairs without so much as wishing him a good night, carrying off with her her somnolent, animal smell. The Investigator inserted the key into the lock and turned it, expecting it not to work.

He was, however, wrong. He entered the room quickly, put down his suitcase, didn’t even look for the light switch, felt around until he came to a piece of furniture shaped like a bed, dropped onto it fully dressed, and — after breathing heavily for several minutes, like a man saved from drowning by big, ruddy, clumsy hands — fell asleep.