Philippe Claudel - The Investigation

WHEN THE INVESTIGATOR LEFT the train station, a fine rain mingled with melting snow greeted him. He was a small, slightly round fellow with thinning hair, and nothing about him, neither his clothes nor his expression, was remarkable. Anyone obliged to describe him — as part of a novel, for example, or in a criminal proceeding or judiciary testimony — would surely have found it difficult to give a detailed portrait of the man. The Investigator was, in a way, a disappearing person, no sooner seen than forgotten. His aspect was as insubstantial as fog, dreams, or an expelled breath, and in this he resembled billions of human beings.

The station square resembled countless other station squares, surrounded by impersonal buildings crowded against one another. Across the top of one of these tall structures, a giant billboard displayed the hugely enlarged photograph of an old man, who gazed down at the viewer with amused, melancholy eyes. The slogan accompanying the picture was illegible and maybe even nonexistent; the Investigator couldn’t tell, because the upper part of the billboard was hidden in clouds.

The sky was crumbling and falling in a wet dust that dissolved on shoulders and then, uninvited, entered every body part. It wasn’t really cold, but the dampness acted like an octopus whose slender tentacles managed to find their way into the tiniest open spaces between skin and clothing.

For a quarter of an hour, the Investigator kept still, standing upright with his suitcase on the pavement beside him, while raindrops and snowflakes continued to expire on his head and raincoat. He didn’t move, not at all. And during that long moment, he thought about nothing.

No vehicle passed. No pedestrian. He’d been forgotten. It wasn’t the first time. Eventually, he turned up the collar of his raincoat, grasped the handle of his suitcase, and resolved to walk across the square to a bar before he got completely drenched. The lights in the bar were already on, even though the clock mounted on a lamppost a few yards away from him indicated that it wasn’t yet four in the afternoon.

The room was curiously empty, and the Waiter, who’d been dozing behind the bar while distractedly watching the horse-racing results on a television screen, cast a less-than-friendly glance in the Investigator’s direction. He had time enough to remove his raincoat, take a seat at a table, and wait a little before the Waiter asked in a doleful voice, “What would you like?”

The Investigator was neither very thirsty nor very hungry. He simply needed to sit down someplace before betaking himself to where he was supposed to go. He needed to sit down, to assess the situation, to prepare what he was going to say, and little by little to enter, as it were, into his persona as the Investigator. Finally, he said, “A rum toddy.”

The Waiter quickly answered, “I’m sorry, but that’s impossible.”

“You don’t know how to make a rum toddy?” asked the Investigator in surprise.

The Waiter shrugged his shoulders. “Of course I do, but that particular beverage isn’t included in our computerized list, and the automated cash register will refuse to record the charge.”

The Investigator was on the point of making a remark, but he restrained himself, sighed, and ordered some sparkling water.

Outside, the rain had yielded to the steady advance of the snow: light, swirling, almost unreal, falling in slow motion now, orchestrating its effects. The Investigator gazed at the snowflakes as they hung a moving screen before his eyes. He could barely make out the pediment of the railroad station, and, farther off, the platforms, the tracks, and the waiting trains were no longer visible. It was as if the place where he’d stopped and stood a short while before had abruptly faded away, leaving no trace of his arrival in this new world, where he had to make an effort to get his bearings.

“It’s winter today,” the Waiter said, uncapping a little bottle of water and placing it on the table. He was looking not at his customer but at the snowflakes. Moreover, he’d spoken without even addressing the Investigator, as if his thought had escaped from his brain and flitted around his head for a bit, like a poor insect resigned to its imminent demise but nevertheless determined to play its role of insect right to the end, even if its performance interests no one and will save it from nothing.

And for a long moment, the Waiter remained like that, standing immobile beside the table, completely ignoring the Investigator, and staring out the window, entranced by the snow, by the milky particles gliding down along their elegant but irrational trajectories.

THE INVESTIGATOR COULD HAVE SWORN he’d seen two or three taxicabs when he left the train station. Waiting taxis with headlights on and engines running, their exhaust smoke gray, delicate, quickly vanishing. But the cabs must all have gone somewhere else; the Investigator imagined the passengers, warm and comfortable on the back seat. It was really too bad.

The snow had decided to stay awhile and was falling still, imposing itself like a monarch. The Investigator had asked the Waiter for directions, expecting a disagreeable response, but the Waiter had seemed happy to inform him that it really wasn’t difficult at all, the Enterprise was vast, he couldn’t miss it. It spilled over everywhere. Whatever street he took, it would necessarily lead him to a surrounding wall, a wire-mesh gate, an entryway, a warehouse, a loading dock belonging to the Enterprise.

“One way or another,” the Waiter had added, “ everything here more or less belongs to the Enterprise.” He’d placed a lot of emphasis on everything . “It’s simply a matter of following the wall,” he went on, “and you’ll come to the main entrance and the Guardhouse.”

And with that, the Waiter had gone back to his horse races. His elbows on the bar, his head in his hands, and his eyes fixed on the foaming thoroughbreds as they hurtled across the television screen, he hadn’t reacted at all when the Investigator told him good-bye, crossed the threshold of the establishment, and stepped out of his life.

The Waiter’s part was at an end anyway.

It wasn’t yet night, but the nocturnal atmosphere was nonetheless quite evident, augmented by the total solitude through which the Investigator moved as he walked along snow-covered sidewalks without ever passing a living soul. Only every now and then did he get the feeling that the place was inhabited, and that was when his little silhouette entered the creamy yellow halo shed by a streetlight and remained there briefly, the time required to cover a few yards, before being swallowed up again in the thick, impenetrable shadows.

His suitcase was getting heavier. His raincoat needed wringing out. Ignoring discomfort, the Investigator marched on. He was shivering more and more. His thoughts were wandering around, just like his cold, sore feet. Suddenly he saw himself as a convict, an outlaw, a last survivor, someone looking for shelter after escaping a final catastrophe, whether chemical, ecological, or nuclear. He felt his body becoming his enemy and stepped along in a dream. There didn’t seem to be any end of stepping along. He had the impression he’d been roaming hither and thither for hours. All the streets were identical. The snow, in its abstract uniformity, covered up every distinguishing feature. Was he going in circles?

The shock was brief and muffled, but it nevertheless left him quite stunned. He’d collided with a man or maybe a woman — he wasn’t sure which — but in any case a human shape that had erupted out of the night, coming toward him at a moderate but uncheckable speed. The Investigator murmured his excuses in a few polite words. From the other he heard nothing, except some grumbling and the sound of footsteps moving away. He glimpsed a silhouette before the night dissolved it.