Philippe Claudel - The Investigation

No, it was a better idea to be patient.

The corridor he’d entered from the breakfast room dead-ended some ten yards away. There were two doors in the wall on his left. On the first one, a pictogram showed a female silhouette; he went on to the second, but it was adorned with the same image. He retraced his steps, thinking he was mistaken. No. He’d seen right. Both doors indicated that they led to ladies’ rooms. The Investigator felt his heart shift gears. The joke was still on him.

He shot a glance to left and right and even above his head. Nobody. Without hesitating a second longer, he went in. The restroom was deserted. He went over to a sink, turned on the hot water, and dug in his pocket for his handkerchief, which wasn’t there. Or in his other pocket, either.

A continuous cloth towel was hanging from a roller. The Investigator tried to pull the towel down gently, but without success. He pulled on the cloth again, then harder, then harder still. The towel tore, the screw fixing the roller to the plaster wall came loose, and a mesh of fine cracks appeared on the plaster. He wet the towel and applied it energetically to the two coffee stains. After a few minutes, it seemed to him that their dark color was fading a little; however, though the stains were lighter, they now covered a larger area. The Investigator threw the towel into a trash can, pushing the wet, torn cloth down to the bottom of the can and covering it with paper. Then he left the restroom.

When he pushed open the door to the breakfast room, the hubbub had completely ceased, and the Tourists, without exception, had disappeared. All the tables had been cleared and tidied up; not a speck of refuse remained. How was this possible, when he’d been gone for four minutes at the most?

The chairs had been resituated and carefully aligned. He looked at his place. The coffee cup was still there, as well as the second rusk, which he hadn’t finished eating. On the chair, which was slightly askew with respect to the table, he saw his raincoat. It was the only table in the room that showed any sign of the recent breakfast.

The Servers themselves had become invisible.

The Investigator hurried over to his place. He wanted to get out of that room as soon as possible, and out of the Hotel, too; he wanted to go outside and take a few deep breaths of fresh air and feel its coolness on his temples, on the back of his neck, in his lungs, in his brain, as it were, his brain, which was being tried and tested, so severely that the Investigator wondered whether it might not simply explode. But just as he was putting on his raincoat, feeling once again its extremely unpleasant dampness, he heard a powerful voice at his back, calling to him from rather far away.

“You’re not going to finish your breakfast?”

HE FROZE IN PLACE AND THEN, very slowly, with fear in his belly, turned around. A man was coming toward him, a man who was neither a Server nor a Tourist. The closer he approached, the clearer his outline and features became. He looked as though he might be around the same age as the Investigator, and the same size, too. He was smiling.

“You’re not going to finish your breakfast?” the man repeated, gesturing toward the cup and the rusk. His voice was friendly.

“I’m not very hungry anymore,” the Investigator mumbled. “And I’m already late.”

“Late? If you say so. My feeling about life is, we’re often early, and death always comes too soon. Come, sit down, finish your breakfast calmly, don’t worry about me.”

The Investigator didn’t have the strength to protest. There was something imperious beneath the man’s bonhomie. Without removing his raincoat — into which he’d slipped only one arm — the Investigator sat down. The man took the opposite chair and looked attentively at the Investigator.

“Did you sleep well?”

“I arrived very late, and—”

“I know,” the man said, interrupting him. “The night was short. But eat, please. Pretend I don’t exist!”

The man pointed to the remaining rusk. The Investigator picked it up reluctantly and began to nibble at it.

“Let me introduce myself,” said the man. “I’m the Policeman.”

“The Policeman …?” the Investigator repeated fearfully. He put his rusk down and shook the hand the other man held out to him.

“Exactly. And you are …”

“I have,” the Investigator started to reply, choking a little and sweating a lot, “that is to say, I am … I am …”

“You are?”

“I’ve come to conduct an Investigation into the Enterprise.”

“An Investigation? Well, I’ll be! An Investigation! And I don’t even know anything about it?”

The Policeman maintained his friendly smile throughout, but his eyes stayed fixed on the Investigator’s eyes.

“It’s not a police investigation, not at all,” the Investigator stammered. “Don’t get the wrong idea! It’s simply a question of administrative procedure. During the past year, the Enterprise has experienced a relatively high — to speak frankly, a most unusually high — number of suicides, and I’ve been ch—”

“Suicides?” the other interrupted him again.

“Yes. Suicides.”

“How many?”

“Around twenty.”

“Twenty? And I haven’t been informed? But that’s incredible! I’m the Policeman, serial suicide is being committed a few steps from my office, and I don’t know a thing about it! When you say ‘around twenty,’ how many do you mean exactly?”

As he grew more and more uncomfortable, the Investigator kept a tight hold on his rusk. He was now sure he had a fever. His head hurt. His eyes stung. His neck was stiff. His nose was hot and painful, as was the cut on his forehead. His whole body made him suffer. The Policeman rummaged in his right coat pocket, then in his left, and extracted a yellow-and-blue medicine bottle, which he handed to the Investigator.

“Take two of these.”

“What are they?”

“You have a headache, don’t you?”

“How do you know that?”

“I know everything, it’s my business. Your arrival yesterday, your visit to the bar, the dispute over the rum toddy, your persistence at the Guardhouse, your banging on the door of the Hotel, then your inability to answer some simple questions concerning the rules of the establishment, and this morning your rude comments on the breakfast. I know about all of it. The dossier I’ve been given is most thorough. I’m the Policeman. As such, I know. You’re the Investigator, so you don’t know; you seek. I’m a good distance ahead of you. I said two.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Two tablets. Go ahead and take them, you’ve still got a little coffee.”

The Investigator was holding the medicine bottle in the palm of his hand. He hesitated to open it. The Policeman burst out laughing.

“Come on, don’t be afraid! I’m the Policeman, not the Murderer. Everyone has a role, and your role is to be the Investigator, isn’t it? And if you pay attention to the proper dosage, there’s no risk whatsoever.”

The Investigator slowly assented.

“That’s the way. Excellent, excellent! Pretend I’m not here.” Having said this, the Policeman lowered his head and ostentatiously inspected his hands, as though to demonstrate that he wasn’t keeping the Investigator under surveillance. Still totally confounded by the other’s sudden arrival and unsure how to react to him, the Investigator ended up opening the medicine bottle and taking out two tablets. Like the bottle, they were yellow and blue. The Investigator examined them closely and tried to sniff them, but his nose was so stopped up that his sense of smell was completely gone. He hesitated a little longer, shut his eyes, and swallowed the pills, washing them down with what remained of the repulsive black coffee.