Philippe Claudel - The Investigation

AFTER A WHILE, THE VOICES fell silent. Gradually. One by one. It was a progressive disappearance, as if a knowing finger, in the name of a higher intention, had turned down a dial that regulated their intensity. The Investigator couldn’t get over it. He spun around and around, making himself dizzy, and finally came to a staggering halt.

“Is anyone there?” he ventured to ask after a few seconds.

“Here!”

“Over here!”

“Me!”

“Please!”

“I’m here!”

“Me! Me!”

At different volumes, depending on their distance but also on the reserves of energy quickening them, the voices made themselves heard again, at first isolated but then mingled, confused, blending into one another, creating an intolerable commotion that seemed to saturate the air, filling it like fog or heavy rain.

The Investigator ran over to the nearest container and knocked on its wall. At once, blows struck from the inside responded to him.

“Who are you?” the Investigator asked, pressing one ear against the wall.

“Open the door, for pity’s sake, let me out.… I can’t take anymore …” replied the muffled voice from inside the container.

“But who are you?” the Investigator repeated.

“I’m … I’m …”

The voice hesitated and broke off. The Investigator thought he could hear sobbing. “Tell me who you are!” he said.

“I was … I was … the Investigator.”

The Investigator jumped back as if he’d just burned himself. His heart was racing.

“Don’t go away, please, don’t leave me … please.…”

The Investigator’s chest contracted under violent pressure. The beating of his heart was uncontrollable and totally random, now slowing down, now most unexpectedly accelerating. He placed a hand over it, trying to calm and reassure it, as though it were an animal with one leg caught in a snare and striving to free itself, against all logic, by gnawing off the leg rather than biting through the cord. The pause did him good. With the back of his hand, he wiped away the sweat that continued to stream down his forehead, giving him the impression that he was dissolving.

He examined the container. It was one of those that appeared to be the most recent, the newest. The film of dust that covered it was thin and translucent. Careful to make as little noise as possible, he started walking around the container, looking for the door.

“I can hear you, you know. You’re moving.…”

The Investigator kept walking. He made an effort not to worry about the voice, which had spoken those last words in the most desperate manner possible. He stepped along on tiptoe, making himself light. Rounding one corner of the container, he looked at the wall on that end, saw no door, and tiptoed on.

“Why don’t you answer me …?”

The Investigator continued his inspection. He turned the next corner and studied the second of the container’s two long sides. Still nothing. No door in sight.

“… just say a word, please, I know you’re still there.… I know it.…”

There was but one side left. Only one. The Investigator increased his pace. The man in the container could hear him, so there was no longer any point in walking so cautiously. Anyway, why should he be scared? The man didn’t seem to be aggressive, and besides, he was shut up inside a box. The Investigator was about to turn the last corner, but he slowed down. Or, rather, his body slowed down, even before his mind gave the order. Why was he so fearful? What exactly was he afraid of? What discovery was he anticipating, and why did the thought of it paralyze him to such a degree? He knew the answer but dared not admit it to himself. He’d inspected three of the container’s four sides, and there was no door, no opening at all, in any of the walls. That meant, therefore, that the door was located on the fourth side. To make sure of that, all he had to do was to go around the final corner and take a look. However, he didn’t do it. He dared not do it. He dared not because, deep down inside, he was convinced there was no door and no window on the fourth side, either, even though that didn’t make any sense.

The Investigator let himself slide down to the ground and sat with his back against the container. He preferred not to verify. He preferred to cling to doubt. Only doubt, he told himself, would allow him to hold on a little while longer. For there were only two possibilities: Either there was a door on the fourth side of the container, or there was not. If his eyes saw the door, then all would be well. But if his eyes verified the absence of a door, then there would be nothing left for him but to sink all the way into madness or just let himself get baked by that bloody sun, which was still there, still in the same place, sending its heat streaming out over the naked land. The Investigator preferred not to know about the door and clung to the possibility, the meager possibility, that he was still in a world where enclosed structures couldn’t contain anything, no object, no person, no plant, discolored or not, unless there was an opening in the structure through which the contents had passed.

“You’re still there, aren’t you?”

The container’s voice was very close. It echoed in the Investigator’s back — the man must have spoken with his mouth against the wall. His words entered the Investigator’s body, causing a kind of tickling.

“Answer me.…”

“Who are you?” the Investigator asked again.

“I already told you, I’m the Investigator.”

“But I’m the Investigator!”

There was a silence, and then he thought he heard a sigh.

“If you say so … In any case, we all are, more or less …”

“I don’t understand.”

“Think what you wish. I’m not going to fight, I don’t have any more strength.… It’s ruined me, all this. Please, can you help me get out of here?”

“I’m afraid not. Your box looks like it’s hermetically sealed.”

“Box? But I was asked to take a seat in the Waiting Room.…”

The Investigator moved a little away from the wall of the container and looked at it again. Then he said, “I said ‘box’ for brevity’s sake. In fact, you’re imprisoned in a sort of prefabricated building located in the middle of nowhere.”

“Nowhere …”

The voice fell silent. The Investigator didn’t know what to do. He felt that there was, on the other side of the wall, a man who — except perhaps for a few differences — had experienced events similar to those he himself had been confronted with.

“It’s cold, it’s so cold …” the voice murmured.

“How can you say that?” the Investigator asked in surprise. His body was visibly liquefying, dissolving in fluids, in water, in sweat. “I have practically no clothes on, and I’m still too hot. The sun looks like it’s suspended in the sky. It doesn’t move an inch. There’s not a scrap of cloud, and when a little wind comes up, all it does is blow streams of burning dust into the heat!”

“How lucky for you … No matter how I wrap myself up in my clothes, I’m still chilled to the bone. There are ice crystals everywhere, in my beard, on my hands, on the wall, on the low table, and even on the green plant, which is all white anyway. I can’t feel my hands or my feet anymore, they seem to be frozen, I think they’re already dead.…”

The container didn’t appear to be a walk-in cooler, and its outer walls, plywood covered with a coat of beige paint, felt hot to the touch. Couldn’t the voice be lying to him? Wasn’t this just another of the numerous tests he’d had to undergo?

“What was the subject of your Investigation?” the Investigator asked.

“I was supposed … I was supposed to … Oh, what’s the use of explaining.…”