July 12. In the morning I opened the copy first.
Page seventy-three, twenty-seven. The number I counted yesterday. Page seventy-four, thirty. Today's number. Page seventy-five, thirty-three. Tomorrow's number. Below them stood seventy-six. No date. No figure. Exactly as I had seen it last evening.
There was only one thing to do today. Count. Yesterday I wrote first and counted after. Today only the counting was left. Thirty and the rule holds; not thirty and the rule is wrong. For the first time in six months there was something that could be wrong.
At nine I ran the search.
Thirty.
Thirty stood in my log. Thirty stood in the copy. Thirty stood on the screen. The three places agreed.
I looked a long time at its being right. Yesterday I could not say whether I wanted it wrong or right. Today I still could not. One thing did come clear. I made the rule in order to make one thing that could be wrong. That one thing was not wrong. I had made something that could be wrong and it was not wrong, and so I was back in a place where nothing could be wrong again.
On the ninth I wrote that there is no criterion for separating wrong from not-yet. Then I set up a rule and made one criterion. That criterion has passed two days. A criterion that passes does not stay a criterion; it becomes part of the table. For six months this table has grown in that way. Whatever is made to test the table, if it passes the test, is joined to the table. Every place I built in order to stand outside the table has come inside it, one at a time.
At eleven I handled six requisitions. Two more than yesterday. I wrote the replies and set two reels on the reader. It was summer and the air beside the reader was hot. Someone came down from the third floor, stamped the ledger and went back up. Today again he went without looking at the screen. There were thirty copies on the screen. I went down the list a line at a time. Of yesterday's twenty-seven, twenty-four were where they had been. Three were new. Two were names I had not seen before. The remaining one was the place I had deleted on the fifth. I had also seen a deleted place back on the list on the sixth. Whether deleting counts as part of counting I have still not settled.
After lunch I thought about page seventy-six.
The figure could be derived. After thirty-three comes thirty-six. The date could not be derived. A date lies not in a rate of increase but in a sequence. Seventy-three was the eleventh, seventy-four the twelfth, seventy-five the thirteenth. So seventy-six should be the fourteenth. It was only a matter of writing it.
But the copy had left that place empty. For six months the places the copy left empty were always figures. This was the first time a date was left.
What happens when I fill a place left empty I learned yesterday. What I filled came exactly as filled. So if I wrote the fourteenth, page seventy-six would become the page of the fourteenth. What happens when I do not write I learned on the third. Even left empty, the page number was already written. Write and it is written; do not write and it is written. There is no place where neither is written.
At one I opened the box. Yesterday I lifted the lid only to see that the four bundles were still there. Today I took them out.
I opened the predecessor's notebook. It belonged to the one who sat in this room before me. I never met the person. When I was posted there were one screen and one inventory in this room and no one to hand anything over. The notebook was in the box under the desk.
I opened the last page. There was a page number. There was no date. The sentence broke off in the middle.
The broken sentence began like this. What should be told in advance to whoever next receives this table is. That was all of it. What was to be told was not written. I tried out a few of the words that might have come after. Every one I came up with was a word I had learned in six months. Whether what the person meant to tell was the same as those words I cannot know. If it was the same, telling would have done no good. I was told nothing, and six months later I am in the same place.
The page before it had a date. The page before that had one too. Going back through the notebook the dates kept on being there. Only the last page had none.
I closed the notebook and sat for a while. Today I saw for the first time what a page without a date is. It is not a page whose date is unknown. It is a page the one who writes the dates did not reach.
That does not mean seventy-six is such a page. Sharing a form is not sharing a place. The last page of the predecessor's notebook has no date because that person could not write it; page seventy-six of the copy has no date for a reason I do not yet know. To read the same blank as blank for the same reason is not reading but joining. For six months I have joined my reading that way more than once, and each time the joined place was a fact the next day.
At half past two I decided. I would write the figure and leave the date empty.
There was one reason. Thirty-six is not a number I decided. It is a number the numbers up to yesterday decided, and I write what that number tells me to write. The fourteenth is another matter. That the next one is the fourteenth, because the three pages before it ran three days in sequence, is not a rule but a guess. If a date written by guess comes exactly as written, what has come is not the rule but my guess. The rule coming and my guess coming are not the same event. For six months I have failed to separate the two. Today there was one place where they could be separated. Write one side and leave the other empty.
At three I entered thirty-six on page seventy-six of my log. Page number, then the date column left blank, then the figure. It was the first time I had written past a column I was leaving empty. My hand stopped once. What stopped was the hand; what had decided was the self of that morning.
I put the log in the drawer and locked it.
In the afternoon I did not open the board. Since confirming on the seventh that opening it adds a copy, I have been counting how often I open it. Today I did not open it once. The counting I did only on the screen.
At half past five I finished the replies. I closed the inventory, put the reels in their cans and switched off the reader. The room went quiet. The summer evening was still bright and the sound of cars came in from outside. Today again I did not open the window.
Before leaving I opened the copy once more.
Page seventy-six had a figure. Thirty-six. The number I had entered at three.
The date column had something in it too.
July 12.
Today.
I left the screen as it was and went up to page seventy-four. The date on page seventy-four was July 12. The figure was thirty. The number I had counted this morning.
One day had two pages. The two pages had different numbers.