January 4. Yesterday I saw only the result count and did not extract the list.
At twenty past four I saw the number six and until five I was looking at that number. Extracted, names come out. Extracting takes twenty seconds. I put off twenty seconds for forty minutes.
At ten past nine I extracted the list.
The sort basis is written on the query form. One line per recorder, in order of the earliest date of entry among that recorder's materials.
There is no printer in this room. I looked at the screen and copied it out by hand.
It is six lines.
The first line is twenty-three. In the recorder box it says chainman.
The second line is twenty-four, and librarian.
The third is thirty-four, and lighthouse keeper.
The fourth is thirty-seven, and telegraphist.
The fifth is ninety-seven, and Kim Do-gyeong.
The sixth is ninety-nine, and my name.
I looked at the sixth line three times.
For twelve months my name has not been in this room's records. In the log I write an employee number, in the register four digits, and beside the cards four digits also. The papers with a box for a name are signature slips, and those belong to whoever requisitioned.
Yesterday I wrote it in the recorder box of the registration form. Today it stands in a column.
Filling the box was yesterday and standing in the column is today. Filling one box took ten seconds and standing in the column took a night.
Having copied them out I looked again at the first four.
The four are not names. They are titles of office.
In January, registering the four bundles, I copied the recorder from the first page of each. None of the four had a name on its first page. It said only the one who measures, and the one who keeps the lamp.
I could have left the recorder box empty. I did not leave it empty and wrote the title of office. A registration needs a recorder for the material to come up, and a material that does not come up drops out of an inspection, so it was done that way. At the time I did not think that far, and filling a box was the work, so I filled it.
The list does not tell a title of office from a name. All six lines stand in the same form.
I have read the four for twelve months. The first measured the depth of a pit, and each time he measured, the depth increased. The second copied out books, and the more was copied, the more the words split. The third kept a lamp, and one tide was added. The fourth took down an empty frequency, and received a message dated tomorrow.
All four wrote their own work and in all four the last page does not end. Not one of the four left a name.
Four who left no name and two who have names are in one list. One of the two is the person who sat at this desk two years ago, and one is me.
From half past ten until twelve I looked at the space between the fifth and the sixth.
Ninety-seven and ninety-nine.
There is no ninety-eight.
The notebook is registered. It was registered in January a year ago. Whether it was company material or personal property did not resolve, so I left the year box empty and left the recorder box empty as well.
It was not left empty for not knowing the name. It is on the first page of the handover papers. It is beside the date of separation. I have looked at it many times in twelve months.
A box left empty makes no line in the list.
It is not that a blank line appears. There is no line.
Ninety-nine is joined directly beneath ninety-seven. The gap between those two lines is the same as the gap between any other two. Anyone seeing the list for the first time reads it as nothing between them.
In July I wrote that empty boxes are of two kinds. The box left empty for want of time and the box whose writer had not yet gone. The day before yesterday I wrote a third. Empty because there is nothing to write.
There is a fourth. The box whose writing was put off.
A box put off is not in the query. What is absent and what is empty are not the same shape on a screen; the empty has a shape and the absent has none.
From one until two I looked at the desk beside me.
For twelve months that place has been empty. There is a desk, a chair and three drawers. I opened the drawers in January and they were empty. Being empty can be seen.
That place in the list cannot be seen.
At ten past two I opened the box and counted pages. The fifth bundle is a hundred and seventy-seven. It has not grown for nineteen days.
I counted the notebook too. Behind the last page with writing there are two blank pages. There were two from January, and in the sixth month I carried on the page before them in my own hand, so the blank pages were two then as well.
In the notebook of the person with no line in the list, two blank pages remain.
At half past two I took out the handover papers.
Copy the name across and a line appears. It is a matter of moving four characters from a paper to a list, and by hand it takes ten seconds.
From half past two until four I kept those ten seconds in front of me.
Copied out, things grow. That is what I have learned in this room in eight months. Moved onto film it increased, copied as a file it increased, four digits written on a card and it increased. It has not failed once.
What increased was always the side that was copied onto.
If what is copied out is a person's name, what increases is written nowhere in this room.
Having written deferred I closed the papers.
Closing them I saw what it is I am putting off. A year ago I left it empty for failing to resolve company material from personal property, and today I leave it empty knowing that copying out makes things grow. The reason has changed and the box is the same.
For a year that box has been empty. It will be empty a year more.
At half past four I looked at the six lines again.
Between the first line and the second is one year. Between the second and the third, ten years, and between the third and the fourth, three. Between the fourth and the fifth, sixty years. Between the fifth and the sixth, two.
On the screen those five gaps are all the same. The line height is the same and the spacing is the same.
Sixty years and two years sit at the same width. The list does not write distance. It writes only order.
Writing only order, the six are one column.
At five a form came from head office.
What I extracted earlier is in order of earliest date of entry. The head office form says the sort basis is the latest date of entry. It says to extract again and submit.
Before setting it running again I made a reckoning.
The first four stand as they are. The four bundles have an end and the year they ended is written.
Kim Do-gyeong has two materials. The 1997 log is still being written and yesterday's page is the sixth of February 98. The latest date of entry is ninety-eight.
My log I registered yesterday. In the period box I wrote only the beginning and left the end box empty.
A box left empty is stored as double zero.
Double zero is read as nineteen hundred.
I did not set it running again and switched off the screen.
It is a matter of twenty seconds, and what will come out after those twenty seconds has already come out in the reckoning.
If the reckoning holds, tomorrow morning the first line is me.