November 17. Monday. Rain.
At eight I went down to the stacks and began filing last week's cards into the drawer. My hand stopped at the top one. My own handwriting, and it won't read in one go.
Codex had come apart into Co and dex, sitting separately on the card. I shut my eyes and opened them, and it had joined again. On the next card it comes apart again.
I thought it would stop at my ears. Now even the letters I read with my eyes arrive split.
With my pocketknife I cut a small window in the middle of a blank card. A square big enough for one syllable. I laid that window over a card and read by sliding it along one joint at a time. With only one piece showing at a time, it's less dizzying, if anything.
At eleven Mr. Whitmore came down. He opened the drawer, counted the cards, and shut it.
"Four cards an hour, is it?"
"I've been checking the handwriting."
"Do your checking on Friday."
At lunchtime his footsteps faded up the stairs toward the main building. I opened the cabinet.
I took it out envelope and all and laid it on the desk, kept the first page covered with my palm, and turned to the second. April 3, 1882. Duncan's hand leans right and runs close.
My eyes, meant only to take in the date before I shut it, caught on the first line. The word casket was there.
One line of English took me half an hour. The syllables of every word were scattered, and I had to lay the windowed card over them and gather them up one joint at a time. I copy it here in Korean.
Workmen raised a bronze casket from beneath the embankment by the river. The library is to keep it.
On the casket's card, in the accession field, I wrote 1882.
As I went to close the notebook, there was a drawing on the next page. The casket. Nine dots on a lid drawn in pen. Below it Duncan's hand had copied out the letters of the band, but the spacing between them is uneven. Did he too write them one at a time, looking at the band?
A door opened at the top of the stairs. I pushed the notebook into the envelope and locked the cabinet. The man who came down was not Mr. Whitmore but the stoker, carrying a coal scuttle.
The stoker opened the boiler door and began to shovel. The scrape of iron on iron did not split; it came in one lump. Only people's speech does it, then.
November 18. Tuesday. Fog.
From morning until four I wrote eleven cards. I reread what I'd written one joint at a time through the windowed card. This is a hand that used to do twenty a day.
At five Mr. Whitmore left ahead of me. I opened the cabinet and put the envelope in the inside pocket of my coat.
The porter at the main gate told me to get home safe. That came in two pieces too.
The notebook against my chest pressed my ribs at every step. Calfskin takes on a person's warmth quickly and goes lukewarm, I found.
All the way along the road, where fog came up from the river and swallowed the streetlamps one by one, I walked with my palm pressing the notebook's corner through my coat, and when I reached the boardinghouse gate and took my hand away, the corner had left a red dent in my palm.
I have broken the rules. The third clause of the pledge. Going up the boardinghouse stairs I recited that clause under my breath. Recited in Korean, the clause came out in one piece.
I came into my room and put the notebook in the very middle of the desk. I sat down without even taking off my coat. From downstairs comes the sound of Mrs. O'Brien stacking plates.
In the stacks I always had to keep one ear counting where Mr. Whitmore's footsteps had got to, but in this room there is no one like that, and so the only excuse left for not opening the notebook was that one line on the first page.
Keeping the first page pressed under my palm, I turned from the second on.
I read the spring of 1882. It takes an hour a page. I copy only a few lines here, in Korean.
April 9. The casket has no keyhole. No seam either.
April 20. Took the lid to Professor R. at the observatory. He studied it a long while and shook his head.
April 26. Copied the band once more. Set beside yesterday's, the count of letters is the same. As it ought to be.
All of April goes like this. Duncan copied the band and copied it again. A line every day, the same seven words. Why did he bother to write that it ought to be the same?
Going into May, gaps opened in his writing. The middle of a word stands open. A gap between syllable and syllable wide enough for a fingernail. The same size as the gap between MEN and TEM on my draft card.
I put out the lamp and lay down, then lit it again. I turned one more page of May.
November 19. Wednesday. Cloudy.
Mr. Whitmore asked for the casket's card. He read the band's letters on it aloud.
MEN. TEM. MOR. TA. LI. UM.
Do people who read Latin always break it up like that? The joints that came out of his mouth matched the joints that came into my ear exactly.
He turned the card to face him, and his finger stopped at the 1882 in the accession field.
"Where did this year come from?"
"It was engraved on the bottom of the casket."
Mr. Whitmore went down to the stacks and tipped the casket with both hands. The bottom was smooth. Nothing but green verdigris. He set the casket down and handed the card back to me.
"Monday morning at nine the secretary of the Board is coming for the dean's papers. Hand back the cabinet key then too."
He did not strike out the 1882. I'm not changing it either.
After Mr. Whitmore went up, I went to the main office and took the 1882 accessions register from the shelf beside the safe. The leather binding had rotted so far it came off on my hands. I opened it to April and went down it field by field with the windowed card.
Title, volumes, date received. On the April 3 line a bronze casket, one, was entered. The ink darker than on the other lines, the writing leaning right. Duncan's hand.
I copied that line onto the back of the casket's card. So 1882 is no lie now. The only lie left is that it was engraved on the bottom.
In the afternoon fog settled on the stack windows again. Even with the electric light on, the letters on the cards are still in two pieces, three. The edges of the square in the windowed card have worn round with handling.
November 20. Thursday. Rain.
At lunchtime I went up to the second-floor corridor of the main building. I stood before the portrait and held the windowed card up to my eye. Inside the hole came a single eye of the dean's, the left one.
I lowered the card and laid it on the brass plate under the portrait. BARTHOLOMEW DUNCAN. 1882. 1893. The name fell apart at every syllable, but the numbers stayed stuck together, all four digits. Because numbers are one lump from the start, is it?
Going by the notebook's thickness, the 1893 entries will be in the last few pages. I haven't so much as touched near there with a finger yet.
In the evening Mrs. O'Brien's son picked up the windowed card lying on my desk. The boy put one eye to the hole and looked up at me.
"What's this for?"
"For seeing one thing at a time."
The boy scanned my face this way and that through the hole, then laughed and said all he could see was an eye. After he went down I squared the card's corners with my fingernail and set it beside the notebook.
Night. I reached June 1882 in Duncan. Once into June, his writing had a gap in every word, and in every gap a single dot of ink. Not a comma, not a period. A dot.
The last line of the entry for June 13. Tomorrow I finish copying out the band.
The page after that is missing. Near the binding thread only a single strip of paper is left. One finger-joint wide. Not cut with a knife but torn by hand, so the edge stands up like fur.
The next page is dated June 15. First line. Tore out the page I wrote yesterday.
If he was going to tear it out, why did he write it? Or did the reason to tear it come only after it was written?
I drew the oil lamp right up and shone it on the torn strip. There was ink on the edge. The first letter of each line, one apiece, seven lines from the top.
M. M. S. P. N. N. C.
The initials of the band's seven words, in the same order. How many more lines were there below the seventh?
I tore a blank leaf from the back of this journal and set it against the torn place. It fits exactly. The strip's seven letters hung in a row along the left edge of the blank paper.
I dipped my pen. I brought the nib up beside the first M and drew it back. A drop of ink fell on the paper and spread in a circle.
Shall I fill in the day the dean tore out? The line he said he would finish copying.