“But today, when the police no longer exist, things aren’t the same. When there’s a mystery, it goes unexplained. Bizarre cases are no longer solved. And perhaps that’s not a bad thing. In the past, the police had an answer for every question, but now, people realize that they don’t really need answers to every question, and they don’t really need the police either. Consequently, we haven’t even opened an investigation into where the police disappeared to. For two or three russet moons, people organized a collection so that the city might buy back a policeman, bur in the end they used the money for something else, I don’t remember what. New curtains for the school, perhaps.”

(Manuela Draeger, “North of the Wolverines,” p. 48 in In the Time of the Blue Ball, trans. Brian Evenson.)