For five days the journal lay unopened upon my desk. It was not fear that kept me from opening it. It was that I could no longer read.
Since that Tuesday afternoon, November 18th, when I heard a word I heard its syllables apart. At first only the Latin. Then the English, then the speech of my own country. On the fifth day it left the ear and crossed into the eye. When I tried to read the headline of a newspaper, the letters stepped apart of their own accord. I could not receive a sentence whole. The syllables arrived, one syllable at a time, apart.
the · head · line · of · the · morn · ing · pa · per.To a scholar this is death. A librarian who cannot read is no librarian. I tried to give a reasonable account of it — overwork, want of sleep, the damp November stack ruining my eyes. But Duncan's journal lay upon the desk, and I knew what it had begun. The separation that broke letters into syllables had crossed to me from the band of Latin on the bronze casket.
I opened the journal. To the blank of June 14th, which I had seen five days before, turning the pages quickly.
June 14th had been removed at the gutter. The remaining stub bore, along its torn edge, a stain of dark brown — not ink. Duncan had torn the page out. Five days before I had taken it for damage. Now I know. Duncan had not damaged it; he had closed it. He had cut that one leaf away so that something should not be read. The entry of June 13th had ended thus — "I shall return tomorrow with a fresh hand." So on June 14th he had returned with a fresh hand, copied something out, and then torn it away.
The ends of the letters left on the torn stub stepped apart and rose under the lamp.
— men · ti · bus · no · stris.Upon our minds. It was the end of the sentence Duncan had been copying when he tore it away. I could fill what came before it. The Latin that had arrived to me in pieces from the band of the bronze casket, five days before I had copied down unassembled — subjugare, corpora, mentem mortalium. The minds of mortals. To subdue. The bodies. Upon our minds.
The sentence sought to gather into its own shape. I tried not to gather it. A scholar knows how to leave pieces as pieces. But my hand was already carrying the pen to June 15th beside the empty stub — the page Duncan had left blank. To fill, in my own hand, the place where Duncan had ceased to write.
If · an · y · one · reads · this — close · the · cas · ket.Duncan's last line now rose, broken into syllables. In 1893 he had written it. If anyone reads this — close the casket. Do not read further. Five days before I had read it as the charge of a dead man. Now I know toward whom it turns. Duncan did not write it to anyone of his own time. He wrote it to the next person — the one who would, coming someday to this page, read that line with an eye in which the syllables had begun to part.
I am doing as he did. Five days ago I dismissed the thought. Now it is not dismissed. Duncan too must have read someone's journal. That someone too must have read the journal of someone before. The casket is always passed to the next hand.I took up the pen. In the blank of June 15th, the sentence Duncan had torn out and closed, I began to write again in my own hand. The minds of mortals — the bodies — upon our minds. As I copied, the separation of syllables came at last to completion. I could no longer see whole even the letters I was writing. One stroke, one syllable, apart. What I wrote, I could not read. Yet my hand did not stop.
The sentence stops there. After it, only blank leaves remain in the notebook.