Philippe Claudel - The Investigation

There was a long minute during which he felt that his head and body were on the point of coming apart, of splitting open like a wall shaken by an earthquake, or by the shock wave of an extremely powerful bomb. He shut his eyes to cancel the sight of the empty box, which contained absolutely nothing and so became, in a way, a perfect metaphor for the situation he found himself in, or even for his entire life. Then, with his eyes still closed, he heard himself speak. Yes, words were issuing from his mouth, words like groans, weak, hesitant, convalescent, barely audible words, as if they’d taken roundabout routes on their way to the Giantess, bypasses, detours, side paths, endless highways, losing at each turning a little of their strength and much of their texture.

“How is this possible? You require me to entrust important documents to you, and then you lose them?”

The Giantess’s voice reached him where he stood in his darkness. “Well, that’s what you say, but I repeat, I don’t remember anything. I was asleep when you arrived.”

“But how about me? Do you remember me?”

“Very vaguely, to tell you the truth. And that doesn’t prove anything. I was told to wait for room 14 to come in this evening. You were the only Guest who hadn’t returned yet. So, when you came in a little while ago, I concluded that you were number 14. I didn’t make that deduction based on your appearance — you have no distinguishing features.”

The Investigator opened his eyes. “Are you the only person who has a key to that box?”

“My daytime Colleague has the other one.”

“Could he have put my credit card and identification somewhere else?”

The Giantess hesitated. “It’s unlikely.”

“Unlikely but not impossible,” replied the Investigator. He was at the very end of his strength, but he perceived a ray of hope.

“I repeat: unlikely.”

“Could we verify that tomorrow? I really need to sleep. I’m so weak. I’ve eaten nothing. Nothing.”

The Giantess frowned as if she suspected a dirty trick. “And how are you going to pay if you don’t have any money?”

The Investigator’s arms dropped to his sides. Couldn’t he find some respite, however brief, in the impossible situation he was in? “I was sent here on a mission,” he said, conscious that the statement made him sound like one of those lunatics who frequent the centers of megalopolises, proclaiming to all and sundry that they are the messengers of God or of some extraterrestrial race. “I have an Investigation to conduct,” he went on, striving to adopt a natural tone. “An Investigation into the Enterprise, which is located just across from your establishment.”

“Then you would be … the Investigator?” the Giantess asked in surprise.

“Absolutely.”

The Giantess hesitated, walked around her counter, went up to him, grasped him gently by the shoulder, turned him around to examine him in detail, and then pushed him toward the big mirror that covered one of the walls in the entrance. “Look at yourself.”

In the glass the Investigator saw a stooped old man with a two-day beard and hot, bloodshot eyes rolling incessantly from left to right and from right to left. His swollen forehead had turned an orangey yellow, and the area surrounding the wound caused by the falling telephone was now purple. The clothes he had on were rags, crumpled, soiled, and torn, particularly his raincoat, which must once have been a decent example of its kind. There was also a sizable slash in his trousers at the level of his right thigh. The flesh was visible, naked and white except for a long, zigzagging scratch stained with dried blood. His shoes were like big clumps of brownish lint. On one, the front half of the sole had come unglued, and the other was missing its shoelace.

“Who do you expect to believe that you look like the Investigator?”

“But I don’t have to look like the Investigator, I am the Investigator!” he said, addressing himself as much as the Giantess. “I’m the Investigator …” he repeated softly, as if to bolster his own conviction, while big tears welled in his eyes, full, round tears that rolled down his face and slid toward the wrinkled skin of his neck. A child’s tears. He remained like that in front of the mirror for a moment, incapable of moving, incapable of the smallest reaction. The Giantess went back to her post behind the counter.

“Sign the bill for me,” she said, “and then you can go to your room. Since you’ve just informed me that you’re not in a position to settle your Hotel bill and that you don’t even have a piece of identification, I could turn you out into the street, but I’m not a cruel woman, and I’m sure we’ll be able to come to some sort of an arrangement.”

He turned slowly toward the Giantess, took the pen she held out to him, and signed the bill without even looking at it.

“You’re forgetting your key!”

He was already on his way to the stairs. He went back, picked up the room key — in doing so, he had to graze the Giantess’s large, damp fingers — and very slowly climbed up the stairs, holding tightly to the handrail.

Tomorrow, he’d make a call. Yes, he’d ring up his Head of Section. Things couldn’t go on this way, and if his boss thought him stupid or incompetent, too bad. In any case, he wasn’t going to let this job cost him his health, whether mental or physical, to say nothing of his skin. He’d explain everything. The Head of Section would understand, make things right with the Hotel, and stand security for the Investigator, and then everything would return to normal. He’d feel better in the morning, and the first thing he’d do, of course, would be to change hotels. He wouldn’t stay another night in this one. He’d forget it. He’d dismiss it from his life.

The Investigator stood before the door of room 93. It was indeed located on the second floor, just as the Giantess had told him. He turned the key and pushed the door, which wouldn’t open more than about eight inches, despite his repeated efforts. With difficulty, he slipped into the narrow space, flipped the light switch, and discovered the room: a single bed, a night table, an armoire, a chair, a closed window through which he could see closed shutters. There was a door that led, no doubt, to the bathroom. The furnishings were the same as those in room 14; the walls were the same greenish color, blistered by dampness; the light was the same, an exhausted, intermittent, circular neon tube; and there was the same photograph of the old man, so much like the one on the key ring. The only difference regarded the size of the room: Here, the floor space was exiguous, and almost all of it was occupied by the bed. It blocked both the armoire door and the door of the bathroom, access to which, therefore, was strictly impossible. As for the chair and the night table, instead of standing on the floor, they had been laid on their sides across the bed, next to his suitcase.

The Investigator closed the door behind him. “Hold on,” he exhorted himself, clenching his fists. “Hold on … hold on. At least get through the night.”

He climbed onto the bed and pushed the night table and the chair as far as possible toward the bottom of the mattress. Then he grabbed his suitcase, lifted it with difficulty because it was so heavy — or was it, rather, that he was exhausted? — managed to raise it overhead, and tried unsuccessfully, three times, to slide it onto the top of the armoire. When he realized that the space between the ceiling and the armoire was smaller than the suitcase, he gave up the effort.

He released the suitcase, which fell heavily to the bed and in doing so caused a small cylindrical object that had apparently been covered by a fold of the bedspread to bounce into the air, a bit like a little horned devil springing up out of a jack-in-the-box. The object was a small yellow-and-blue medicine bottle, the same as the one containing pain medication that the Policeman had given him that very morning. The Investigator picked up the little bottle, clutched it in one quivering hand, and felt a knot in his throat. So he wasn’t a totally bad person after all, the so-called Policeman, because he’d thought about the Investigator, he’d been concerned about the state of his health, he’d taken the trouble to put the medicine on the Investigator’s bed himself. It had to have been him; no one else would or could have done that. Only him.