Investigation

Translated by Leo Shtutin; Published in The Mad River and Chewers by Masticadores

My feet are ankle-deep in water. The shack in which we have found ourselves, he and I, is a dilapidated structure. Its floor has rotted, and water is seeping in through the cracks. The surrounding landscape is boggy, and rain hammers down on the tightly thatched roof. I have been here a good while now, but I haven’t the time to glance at the clock. The oriental calendar hanging on the wall tells me nothing. Its meticulously scribed characters have blurred with moisture and lost their colour. I think the round-spectacled man sitting opposite me is my investigator. That said, I perceive myself neither as accused nor as witness. I have done nothing for which I could be incriminated by this faceless representative of an unknown authority. Nor do I have anything to tell him—all the events of my life have passed me by. One question preoccupies me without cease: what is it that we’re investigating as we sit here in this sodden shack? We’ve almost become friends, my interrogator and I. We spend the majority of our time in silence, but, silence or no, such lengthy conversations are out of the common run. He has told me of the four truths of Buddha. They troubled me till dawn. But I am mute before the East. Nor can the East hear me. What are we to say to one another?.. The investigation is being conducted in a thorough, methodical fashion. What is its end goal? The spectacled man asks me no questions. Questions would be inapposite: all my answers are foreknown to him. Concealing anything seems an unlikely prospect. This rain is driving me insane. It drums away against the tight thatch of the roof, and, with the roof’s upper layer now waterlogged, drops trickle from the woven ceiling… What does he expect of me? I would be willing to divulge a secret to him, but, alas, I possess no secrets. Nonetheless, I’m coming more and more to feel that I, specifically I, am the object of his investigation. This would be no great concern if the focus here were on my actions. Throughout my life I’ve undertaken few actions indeed. But he remains indifferent to them. He is interested in nothing but the workings of mind. He speaks of the madness of clandestine desires that assail us at night. That entire realm to which we owe our authentic existence, and which we can share with no one. A realm thick with fancy, horror and vice. A realm into whose recesses we retreat when alone with ourselves. Those desires which in the light of day we recall with trepidation and discomfiture. Thoughts which are sacrilegious in their very essence, and on which, come morning, we cannot reflect without shuddering. Night alone is capable of reconciling us with our oneiric visions. Only in whispers, having burrowed into our bedraggled beds, can we relate them to ourselves… Strange that I have never before experienced anything of this ilk. Water gurgles quietly beyond the shack’s walls. Perhaps the rain has inundated all the land there is; perhaps our shack, torn loose from its foundations, will embark on an endless voyage across the infinite water. The investigation would become redundant, and, having understood nothing, I would once again plunge into the sweet serenity of repose, into a measured, quiet life unveined by disquiet… But my dreams are not fated to materialise. I can feel time. It exists independent of me. It pervades the space of this sodden room. I can sense it on my skin. I can touch it. It throttles me, makes me gasp for breath. This wretched shack is a bottle brimming with it. Soon enough it shall crash down on me, force me from the bottle, shoot me into space. Where will this investigation lead? And will a judgement be pronounced? My investigator is patient. He is a man of the East. His time does not vanish second by second—it liquesces by degrees in the haze of the room. He sits with his diminutive wooden-sandaled feet neatly tucked beneath him. His bamboo armchair groans; the delicate reed-woven table creaks. Do I really have nothing to impart to him in return for his forbearance?.. Before long I confess my intention to obliterate the universe. My wise interlocutor responds with nothing but a quiet chuckle. It is genuine desires that he’s after. In an access of fury I try to wrest something authentic and unbridled from within, or at least a semblance of sorts. But my entire being remains unresponsive to these efforts. I feel like a glass figurine that once dreamed only of becoming real and enduring nocturnal torment, racked by trepidation and soul-rending desire. I am tired, deathly tired of my own screaming muteness. Raindrops fall heavy from the unsound ceiling and beat against the table and sing as they strike the copper ashtray. Those characters, that sodden calendar, those mats aswim on the decrepit floor, that water seeping through the walls—all this suggests the investigation is nearing its close. The round-faced investigator smiles away at me, as ever he has done, and nods his oriental head like a mandarin doll. Water continues to pour into the room, thin rivulets of it now streaming from the ceiling. I am drenched, and knee-deep. I have nothing to impart to him, to myself, to the world. I am but a sheet, a blank, flimsy sheet of paper on which the greatest of artists has depicted nothing with an assiduous brush. My desires and designs have been meek. My pains have not been intolerable. My passions have fizzled without possessing me. I have nothing to scream to the world. My investigator smiles politely. The investigation is at an end. Water floods into the shack. Bursting through all the structure’s crevices, it rises ever closer to my chin. The narrow straps that bind me to my high-backed seat are swollen with it, and cut into my body. Perhaps I shall manage a scream before it overflows my gaping mouth. But the investigator is already fumble-splashing and spittle-spluttering his way across the room. Raising a slender wet hand in farewell, he hauls himself up to a window and vanishes through. The last thing I see is a scrap of calendar, ripped from the wall and borne towards me by the torrent. Only now, as I strain for breath, do I realise what those characters express. The truth of Buddha, rendered with a broad brush. Free yourself from passion, it enjoins. I am its involuntary senseless executor… I gasp for air, frantic. The calendar-scrap plasters itself over my mouth.