Philippe Claudel - The Investigation

A set of crystal shelves held bottles of multicolored bath salts and liquid soap. The Investigator opened a few and tried to inhale their scent, but his cold was so severe that he could smell nothing at all. He settled for reading the labels and decided on Mauve Lilac.

He let the sheet fall. Once again totally naked, but not feeling the slightest embarrassment on that account, the Investigator poured the entire contents of the soap bottle into his hands and rubbed the liquid into his remaining hair and over his face and body. Then he turned on the two faucets in the shower, and at once a generous stream of water rained down, giving off a vapor that the opalescence of the glass-paste tiles turned blue.

He thrust his right foot into the shower, shouted in sudden pain, and quickly drew back: The water was boiling! Not hot, but boiling! He closed the hot water faucet a little, opened the cold water faucet almost all the way, waited, and then ventured again to stick his foot into the cascade. It was even worse! He felt as though molten lead were being poured onto his flesh. He abandoned the shower for the bathtub, turned on the tap, waited: Clouds of steam rose at once from the porphyry block, and he didn’t dare put his foot in. He made do with holding one hand close to the water and determined that it, too, was flowing out at an atrociously high temperature. His only remaining choices were the sinks and the bidet. He hurried over to them and turned on the faucets, mixing a little hot water with a great deal of cold. Wasted effort: The water that came out of those faucets could have cooked an egg in thirty seconds. It was then that he examined the pipes and came to the astounding conclusion that there was no cold-water pipe leading to any tap in the bathroom.

Even in the basin of the little fountain, the water, whose fine vapor he’d taken for the product of some sort of sophisticated atomizing system, was at the boiling point, as indicated by the three Japanese carp floating belly-up in it, their flesh white, cooked, and already disintegrating.

The beauty of the bathroom served no useful purpose. It was a Paradise warmed by the flames of Hell. Washing oneself in it was impossible, just as it was impossible to dry oneself, since there was no towel and no bathrobe. His body entirely coated with sticky, redolent Mauve Lilac, the Investigator felt his recent and very modest upsurge in optimism plunging down again. At the moment when he stooped to gather up his bedsheet, a door opened behind him, and a big, heavily mustachioed man in his seventies entered, passed close to him, sat on the toilet, unfolded a newspaper, and began to read.

The Investigator dared not move. Where had this old man come from? He was absolutely naked, just like him; he’d practically grazed him without even noticing; and he resembled, feature for feature, the old fellow on the Enterprise key rings, the one whose immense photographic portrait adorned the Manager’s office, the one whose image was reproduced in the pictures that hung in the Hotel rooms. Was this really the same person? It was difficult to say; people, whether naked or clothed, make such different impressions. And what immodesty! Whoever he was, his behavior was unbelievable. To come in like that and sit down on the toilet!

The Investigator was on the verge of calling out when it occurred to him that perhaps it was he himself who was not in his proper place. Suppose this bathroom wasn’t his? After all, hadn’t he had to expend a considerable amount of effort and ingenuity to unblock a door that had no doubt been barricaded on purpose? But, yes, of course, that was it — he wasn’t where he ought to be. His only thought was to get out, to get out at once, before the septuagenarian noticed his presence and caused a scandal.

The old man was thoroughly absorbed in his newspaper. A benevolent smile brightened his wrinkled face. The Investigator straightened up, very slowly. Then, equally slowly, he slid his feet inch by inch toward the door of his room, but when he reached it, he couldn’t open it. He didn’t try too hard, for fear of alerting the old man, who kept on reading and paid no attention to him. The Investigator resolved that his salvation lay in the only other exit, the door through which the old man had come in. It was directly opposite the spot he’d just laboriously reached, at the cost of great pain in his toes, particularly those on his scalded right foot, which had turned scarlet. But he had no other choice. He therefore set out again, smeared head to foot with Mauve Lilac, and, after a ploddingly slow slide across the marble floor, he reached the other door, opened it in silence, and disappeared.

THE ROOM HE CROSSED, almost running, was very different from his. Like the bathroom he’d just left, it was vast, luxurious, and comfortable, with a look of extreme refinement. He had just enough time to notice a cabin trunk that was standing open, revealing four or five suits, apparently all of them tailored from the same warm, supple fabric, a green-and-beige tweed. He also spotted a big cigar, about to burn itself out in an ashtray, weaving slate-gray coils into the room’s conditioned air.

The Investigator found himself in the corridor, enveloped in his sheet. Or, rather, as he quickly determined, in a corridor. A corridor that he didn’t recognize, but which was fortunately deserted. Where was his room? To the right? To the left? Logically, it had to be to the left, but since nothing in the Hotel obeyed established rules, it was extremely probable that his room was to the right. He turned that way, trying his luck, but as he advanced, dragging his poached right foot, the numbers he read on the doors of the rooms—765, 3, 67B, 5674, 1.6, A45718, BTH2Z — gave him no clue about the location of his own. He went back, passed again in front of the old man’s room—00000@00000—and discovered that number 93, his room, was right next door to it. So he’d sent himself on a wild-goose chase with his convoluted reasoning! He went in.

The damages to the room were catastrophic. The wooden chair had eventually broken under the pressure of the bed, which had pivoted on its side and toppled over, striking the telephone on its way down and ripping it from the ceiling, along with the neon tube, before smashing the night table and staving in the door of the armoire. Destabilized by the blow, the armoire had fallen onto its side, blocking the door that led to the old man’s bathroom.

Exhausted, the Investigator slid down to the floor and curled himself up with his head resting on his knees. Shaken by nervous spasms, in despair at what he considered the hopelessness of his situation, he felt like crying, but his body wouldn’t let him, as if it, too, had joined his tormentors. He would have liked to be no more. Yes, to disappear. How strange human desires are sometimes. Even though men fear death, they often consider it a solution to their problems, without even realizing that it solves nothing. Absolutely nothing. It doesn’t have to solve anything at all. That’s not its role.

He felt something a little cool against his right thigh and opened his eyes: It was the medicine bottle left by the Policeman. He picked it up, gazed at it for a few seconds without managing to conceive the smallest thought in its regard, opened it, dumped all the tablets into his mouth, and started to chew them. Taken without water, they had a taste like aromatic herbs, pleasant and fresh. He reduced them to a slightly bitter pulp, which he then swallowed.

The room looked like a tiny battlefield. As such, it became an image, but of what combat? And if there had been a combat, who was the victor, and who was the vanquished? The Investigator imagined the bill the Giantess wouldn’t fail to present to him. It would, he was sure, amount to a good part of his savings. Maybe even the whole of them. Strangely enough, the prospect didn’t bother him. He invested money without much knowing why, without even the desire to make use of it. At the end of every year, he had a meeting with the Financial Counselor, a man who would explain to him, with the aid of curves and diagrams, the most comfortable places for his money to nestle, places where it could nap in all tranquillity, like a pet, surrounded by all affection and necessary care, and where it would, beyond the shadow of a doubt and under the best possible conditions, reproduce itself. He didn’t understand much of what he was being told, but in the end he would agree to the Counselor’s proposals. Like most of his contemporaries, therefore, he was getting ready to die with money put aside. All at once, he realized the absurdity of that situation. If he had a little money, why keep it? For whom? Let it serve some useful purpose, like paying for damages! Why not?