“But that’s … that’s wonderful,” the Investigator managed to stammer, barely able to believe his ears.
“And to drink? Red wine, white wine, beer, raki, ouzo, grappa, pisco, Tokay, cognac, aquavit, bourbon; mineral water: sparkling or still, and from where? Fiji? Iceland? Italy? Guatemala?”
“Perhaps something warm,” the Investigator ventured to say, since he was shivering from cold. “Some tea, preferably …”
“Tea? Japanese, Taiwanese, Russian, Ceylon, Darjeeling, white, black, green, red, blue?”
“I’ll have, uh … regular tea,” the Investigator ventured.
“Regular? No problem!” replied the Manager, repeated the order, and hung up. “And there we are!” he said. “You see, you were right to speak up! The Enterprise’s kitchens, like the Enterprise itself, never stop. They work at all hours of the day and night, every day of the year.”
“But … is it still day?” the Investigator asked doubtfully.
“Of course it’s still day! Look at that light,” the Manager said, pointing at the big bay windows. “Now, for the sake of honesty, I must tell you that the beef comes from the Southern Hemisphere. Do you have any objection to that?”
“What beef?”
“The beef for the roast, the dish I just ordered for you!”
The Investigator smiled slightly.
“Good,” the Manager declared. “Now all we have to do is wait.”
He folded his arms across his abdomen and gave the Investigator a kindly look. The Investigator replied with a rather forced smile and sank a bit more deeply into his armchair. His head was now only a little higher than the armrests. The Manager sighed, and the two of them waited.
XIX
AS IT HAPPENED, THEY WAITED a long time. After a while, finding that silence and smiles had their limits, the Manager—who was sitting beside the Investigator, in the other armchair—initiated a conversation by assuring his guest that his meal would arrive momentarily. Then he said, “We’re going through some difficult times, as you surely know. Who can tell what the future holds for us, for you, me, the planet? Nothing’s simple. Care for some water? No? As you wish. After all—if you’ll allow me, I believe I can confide in you—a person in my position is very much alone, terribly alone, and you’re some kind of doctor, aren’t you?”
“Not really …” the Investigator murmured.
“Come, don’t be so modest!” said the Manager, tapping his visitor on the thigh. Then he took a long, deep breath, shut his eyes, exhaled, and opened his eyes again. “Remind me, what’s the exact purpose of your visit?”
“To tell the truth, it’s not really a visit. I’m here to conduct an Investigation into the suicides that have plagued the Enterprise.”
“Suicides? News to me … I’ve been kept out of the loop, no doubt. My Co-Workers know it’s best not to cross me. Suicides, imagine that! If I’d been aware of them, God only knows what I might have done! Suicides …”
There was a pause, and then the Manager began to speak again in a kind of reverie. A discreet smile brightened his face, as if he were mentally caressing a pleasant idea. “Suicide. I’ve never thought about it, but after all, yes, why not, it’s no stupider than anything else.…”
When he went on after the next pause, the smile had been left behind. “You know, I devote my time to one thing only: trying to understand why we’ve reached this point. I imagine that’s what people expect of me, but I’m not making any progress. Results are nil. Counterproductivity, total. Is there someone somewhere, just one person, able to understand? What might your personal thoughts on this be?”
The Investigator was quite vexed by the direction the interview had taken so far. He slowly shrugged his shoulders, which could be interpreted either as concurrence with the Manager’s questions or as metaphysical hesitation.
“Just so,” said the Manager. “Just so. You’re wise, you’re maturing at a tremendous rate! But as for me, I’m not you, alas, I’m not you, I’ve got my hands in the grease. I’m just a simple pawn, a sort of flour mite. Have you read the philosophers? Of course you’ve read them, a man like you has read them. Believe it or not, they send me into a state of intellectual catalepsy. It’s drastic. And they must know it, the bastards! Without a doubt, they did it on purpose. Basically, they were exceedingly cruel individuals and also incredible cowards.”
As the Manager talked, he wrung his fingers as though he wanted to yank them off. “My goodness, if you knew what my days were like. Since it’s just the two of us, I could tell you about them, my days, how I spend them—I spend them wondering. Yes. I wonder, I ponder. I don’t leave this office. That’s all I do. Under the eyes of …”
He broke off, coughing, and the Investigator had the impression that he was turning toward the large photograph of the good-natured, smiling old man, whose bushy white eyebrows elegantly matched the big, slightly floppy bow tie that closed his shirt collar. The Manager nodded and turned back to the Investigator.
“Yes, I wonder,” the Manager began again. “What’s become of our ideals? We’ve trampled on them, we’ve laid them waste! I don’t mean you, I wouldn’t take such a liberty, you’re different, you’re above, but me, me, I’m as contemptible as rat droppings, I’m a centipede, an old cigarette butt, wet, torn, crushed under the heel of an anonymous and scornful shoe, yes I am, yes I am, don’t say no to make me feel better! I beg you, don’t handle me with care! You must be terrible—just, but terrible! And all that, for what? Why? I’m asking you, I’m asking you, I know you know, because you, you do know, don’t you? Don’t you know?”
The Investigator, not daring to disappoint the Manager, nodded his head.
“Of course you know.… Oh, this is all so … But I’m wandering!”
He clapped his hands, sprang up nimbly, danced a few steps, caught one foot in the thick rug, and almost fell. “Look at me!” he cried. “I have resources, don’t I? I’m not on my way out, not yet, despite my age! What do you think?”
The Investigator was getting weaker. His armchair had turned into a great mouth that was gradually swallowing him, and he found the man before him, who was jumping around like an athlete warming up, even more disturbing than the Policeman in the Hotel.
The Manager began to do entrechats, up-and-down bounces, long leaps. He pirouetted and ran to the back of the room, where he made the sign of the cross, took a run-up, and charged at his desk, over which he attempted to jump and which he nearly managed to clear, except that at the last moment, when he was suspended in the air, his left foot struck the massive black marble inkwell and he crashed heavily against the glass wall.
The Investigator prepared to go to his aid, but the Manager was already getting to his feet. Smiling, he massaged a knee and an elbow, repeating the whole while, “I didn’t hurt myself, not at all. I’ve got the hang of it. The hang of it … You’ll tell them, won’t you? You’ll tell them that I’m at the peak of my powers? That I can still, I don’t know what, I guess, hold on, hold on, yes, that’s it, I can still hold on!!! I’m here. I’m here! You’ll tell them? Please? Please …”
The Manager knelt before the Investigator. He lifted up his joined hands. His eyes were wet with tears. He besought his companion.
“Of course,” the Investigator said, “I’ll tell them. I’ll tell them, there’s no need to worry about that.” And at the very moment when he pronounced those words, which seemed to come from someone other than himself, he wondered how he could get out of the situation he was in.
“Sometimes at night, I have the feeling that I’m the captain of an enormous airliner.” The Manager’s voice had thinned to a murmur. “Five hundred passengers are in my charge, or five thousand, or five hundred thousand, I don’t know anymore. I’m flying the aircraft.…”
Still on his knees, he embraced the Investigator’s legs. For several seconds, contorting his mouth, he imitated the sound of the jet engines.
“I’m the great pilot. The people in the plane sleep, read,
dream about those they love, build their futures on sweet, tender fantasies, and I, I, I’m the last and only, God has placed His index finger on my forehead, I know the route, I know the skies, the stars, wind currents, souls, there’s this big instrument panel in front of me, all illuminated, with all these magnificent buttons, white, opal, yellow, red, silver, all these lives that come on, go off, blink, these levers, so pleasant to the touch, how intoxicating it is to feel the destinies of all those people at my back, shut up in the same aluminum cabin, but I’m only a man, a man, damn it, why me? Why on earth am I the captain? Why me? I don’t know a thing about flying! Not a thing! I don’t know how to read a map, I have no sense of direction, and I’ve never been able to make so much as a kite take off! It’s a horrible dream.”
There was a silence. The Manager had begun to weep, and his tears were wetting the Investigator’s trousers. Although he was thoroughly annoyed by this turn of events, the Investigator didn’t dare say anything. He was pondering what to do when the Manager bounded to his feet, smoothed his pants, rubbed his face with his hands, wiped away his tears, and offered the Investigator a countenance smoothed by a beaming smile. “All the same, life is marvelous, don’t you think?”
The Investigator didn’t reply. He’d just seen a man in ruins before his eyes, a man like an old, worn-out battery, unable to hold a charge, and then, suddenly, the same man—but was he truly the same?—was wiping all the tears from his face with the back of his hand and rejoicing in existence. The Investigator didn’t have time to reply.
“With your permission, I need to step away for a few seconds. I’ll be right back.” The Manager pointed at a door located to the left of his huge desk.
“Please, go right ahead,” said the Investigator. The Manager clapped his hands, performed an elegant entrechat, and danced toward the door in bossa-nova rhythm. Then, having reached his goal, he turned around, saluted an imaginary public with a graceful movement of his hand, opened the door, and vanished, closing it behind him.
XX
HUNGER IS A STRANGE CONTINENT. Up until then, the Investigator had never imagined it as a landscape, but he’d started to perceive its immense, desolate expanse. He felt his head buzzing, and it seemed to him that the walls of the room were swaying a bit. The beneficial effects of the two tablets the Policeman had given him had long since disappeared. He was obliged to yield to the evidence: He had a raging fever. In spite of the overheated office and the heavy coat keeping him warm, he was shivering. His mouth was dry, and he had the disagreeable sensation that his tongue was going to adhere permanently to his palate. His empty stomach was making bizarre noises that sounded like groans, echoes of distant quarrels, muffled shocks, minor explosions. His vision clouded every now and then. His heart beat in an unusual way, alternating abrupt accelerations with scary pauses. He tried to gain a little assurance by telling himself that the Manager had no doubt gone to inquire about the food he’d ordered for him, and that in a few minutes he’d come back, bringing a tray laden with the promised meal, and all the Investigator’s discomfort would cease.
The Manager … Was this City inhabited solely by strange creatures like the Giantess and certifiably insane people like the Policeman and the Manager? The latter’s obscure lamentations had quite amazed the Investigator, and though he was by no means completely stupid, he hadn’t understood very clearly the nature of the man’s complaints. Where had he sprung from, this Manager, and why did he have this need to pour out his heart to the first stranger who came along? They weren’t friends, they hardly knew each other at all! Didn’t he have any self-control, any sense of propriety? How could this depressive man have been given such an important post, when you didn’t have to be a psychologist to consider the evidence and conclude that he had neither the mental qualities nor the solid nerves required to discharge such a responsibility? And then there was the gigantic portrait, the photograph the Manager had gazed upon several times with mingled fear and admiration, as if he might find support there, or increased authority. Who could the subject of the portrait be, that his mere image had the power to provoke moments of veneration or dread?
The Investigator examined the picture more attentively. The old man’s smile was direct, frank, and penetrating. It wasn’t fake; it was the smile of a man who loved his neighbor, who knew him and looked upon him with benevolence and humanity. The old fellow was wearing a suit of elegant cut, which, though perhaps a bit outmoded, nonetheless perfectly became him, a suit made of a soft, warm, reassuring fabric, doubtless some kind of tweed. He leaned forward, as if he wished to come as close as possible to the person looking at him.
This must be the Founder, the Investigator said to himself. The Founder of the Enterprise. Who else could he be? Then again, the Investigator had no memory whatsoever of the Enterprise’s having had a Founder. To be sure, it must have been founded at some point in the past, and no doubt by a particular individual. The meager documentation the Investigator had received from his Head of Section when he was charged with the Investigation provided only the tally of recorded suicides and barely mentioned the Enterprise, and the incoherent dossier the Guide had given him earlier that afternoon likewise shed no light on the subject.
Ordinarily, the Investigator did not concern himself with the origins of enterprises or look into their civil status. That wasn’t his business. Moreover, in the world where he lived, such origins had become as it were nebulas, agglomerating subsidiaries like so many particles, dislocating them, relocating them, creating ramifications, distant arborescence, rootlets, muddling levels of participation, assets, and boards of directors, constructing a maze so intricate that it was no longer possible to know who was who and who did what. In such circumstances as these, digging down to foundations called for a degree of competence in economic archeology that far surpassed the Investigator’s skills as well as his curiosity. He wondered why questions like those were even occurring to him. Quite definitely, he wasn’t in his normal state. His fever was probably rising. The immense old man in the photograph was still looking down at him, but now it seemed to the Investigator that the man’s smile had changed, had passed from benevolent to ironic.
All at once his eyelids became very heavy. He closed them for a fraction of a second, but when he reopened them, he saw that the office was plunged in darkness. The daylight that had been streaming in through the two big bay windows just a few instants previously had given way all at once to a night of deep, black, total darkness. And it had happened in the blink of an eye! Panic-stricken, he rose from the armchair and hurried over to the windows. Yes, night had fallen, all right. But if so, how long had his eyes been shut? Could he really have fallen asleep for several minutes, maybe even much longer? And in that case, where was the Manager? What time was it? He looked at his watch: 9:43 p.m.! He went to the door his host had disappeared through and knocked three times, then four, then five, harder and harder. No one responded. He put his ear to the wood. No sound, not even a tiny one, came from the other side of the door. He grabbed the doorknob and turned it, only to discover that the door was locked. He rattled the knob with increasing desperation.
“May I know what you’re doing in this office at this hour?”
The Investigator froze. He could feel his blood turning to ice in his veins. Someone was standing a few yards behind him. Someone who had entered the room unheard.
“Put your hands in the air, very slowly, and turn around without making any sudden movements,” the voice ordered, not cordially at all.
XXI
THE INVESTIGATOR PIVOTED AROUND while raising his arms very high, hands open and well apart to show he wasn’t holding a weapon.
“That’s it, like that, very good,” continued the voice, which the Investigator seemed to recognize. “Now, no more moving.”
The man shined a flashlight on him. Its beam swept the Investigator from head to foot. “I’m going to turn on the light,” the man said. “But remember, you’re not to move. I’m armed, and if you m
ake the slightest movement, it will be your last mistake. Understood?”
The Investigator, whose eyes were by this point at last accustomed to the darkness, felt like a laboratory mouse placed under light projectors for observation. He blinked his eyes and then, at the end of an extended moment, was finally able to make out the man who was taking aim at him.
“What? It’s you?” the Investigator said with relief, recognizing the Guide and beginning to lower his hands.
“No moving! Keep your hands high!” said the Guide in a curt, hard tone. “I won’t hesitate to shoot.”
The Investigator knew he couldn’t be mistaken. The man was indeed the Guide, the one who’d escorted him to that very office some hours earlier. It couldn’t be anyone else, unless he had an identical twin. Only his clothes were different: The elegant gray double-breasted suit was replaced by a black jumpsuit with a zippered front, cinched at the waist with a canvas belt. In addition, he was wearing a soft cap, also black, and high-topped military boots. His right hand held a remarkably large revolver.
“But look, please,” the Investigator stammered, “we know each other! You’re the—”
“Not one more word, or I’ll be forced to utilize my weapon!” the man yelled, rapidly approaching him and steadily aiming the revolver. When he got within reach of the Investigator, he flattened him against the wall and obliged him to put both hands behind his back. After cuffing them together with a plastic strap, he pushed him roughly toward the exit, taking care along the way to stop beside one of the armchairs, pick up the hard hat, and replace it on the Investigator’s head.
The Investigation Page 7