The Investigation

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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.

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