March 21. One letter came from outside.
At half past nine I opened what had been referred.
The sender field carries eight Latin characters.
They are the eight that came up in the query record at eleven minutes past two on the fourth of March. I set them against what I had copied down, character by character.
The enquiry is three lines.
One asks where the rest of material number four three two may be seen.
One asks whether there are other materials of the same imprint.
One asks who copied this material out.
I read the three lines twice.
All three questions are aimed at boxes that say unknown. Where it is, the imprint, the recorder.
Two of the three I made so this month. I amended the recorder to unknown with my own hand on the sixteenth, and on the sixteenth I decided not to write the imprint and left it empty.
Two things were put out of the asking side's reach this month, and both went through my hands.
At ten past ten I read the first line again.
It says where else it may be seen.
Else is written there.
Asking where else it may be seen says that some of it has already been seen. What went up on the outside screen is seven boxes and not the text. The material number and the title and the year, the extent and the recorder and the reading class, and unknown.
There is a person who sees seven boxes and writes else.
Either he guessed from the boxes alone what is inside, or he has already seen it somewhere. Which of the two does not resolve from these three lines.
At twenty past ten I looked at what material number four three two is.
It is of twenty-four and it is the librarian's bundle. A hundred and thirty pages, the thinnest of the four. Its recorder box has said unknown since the sixteenth of this month.
In January, registering it, I copied the title of office from the first page. He was a man who counted books, and who wrote down, while counting, that the same book was counted twice.
Of the four, that is the one asked for.
On the screen the four have the same shape. Only the title and the year and the extent differ. There are no grounds on the screen for choosing one of them.
From ten to eleven I looked for the procedure for replying.
The guidance has no procedure for replying to outside enquiries.
The register has a box for receipt. It has none for reply.
This room writes what it receives. For fourteen months there has been no box for what it sends out, and there has been no call for one.
I asked head office. Head office replies to outside enquiries, they said. This office need only submit the content.
Does what I submit go out as it is, I asked. Generally so, they said.
Then what I write goes outside.
From eleven to twelve I looked at what could be written to the three questions.
To the first, that it is held in this office.
The location exists. There is no way to it. The guidance has no procedure by which a person from outside comes to this room.
There is an answer to where it is and none to where it may be seen. This room's form treats the two as one box.
To the second, that there are four.
The four share an imprint. All four carry the same stamp inside the front cover.
On the screen they are not grouped. The imprint box says unknown on all four, so the list leaves the four strangers to each other. Unknown and unknown are not the same value.
As I know it they are one set, and what the screen knows is four.
To the third, unknown.
From half past one to three I drafted.
Drafting, I came to see something.
To write it I have to read that bundle again. Read it, and set down in short what is written in it.
Setting it down in short is copying it out.
For fourteen months everything copied out in this room went from form to form. From cards to the screen and from the screen to the outside form. The receiving side was always a box.
What I write today does not go to a box. It goes to a person.
I have never written anything in this room that has a recipient. A log has no recipient. A register has none. A reply goes to head office, and head office is not a person but a box.
From three to four I looked at one more thing.
Once submitted, the writing stays on head office's side. It does not stay here.
There being no reply field, there is nowhere for it to stay.
It becomes the first thing to go out of this room and not remain in it.
For fourteen months everything that went out left a copy. The copy remained, so it could be checked, and being able to check it meant the divergences could be counted.
What goes out today cannot be counted.
So I copied the draft into the margin of the log.
The margin entries this month are three.
On the seventh I saw two written in the margin and wrote that the place of the third is settled. Today I went to that place and wrote.
If there is somewhere to go to, that is a box.
It is not in the form. It is in the back margin of my log.
At ten past four I opened the right-hand material.
Two hundred and ninety-eight pages. The date of the added page is 19 April 98.
My log is on its two hundred and ninety-eighth page today.
At half past four I opened the box.
Seven. Six impressions. The twenty-sixth day.
At five I looked at the sixth box.
Three hundred and fourteen.
At ten past five I submitted the draft.
At twenty past five I read what I had written to the second line again.
I wrote that there are four materials of the same imprint.
Writing four, I did not write why it is not five.
The fifth bundle came out of the same box. Whether it is the same imprint I do not know. There is no stamp on it.
The imprint box saying unknown, it cannot be different either. To tell same from different, both have to be written.
The asking side asked where else it may be seen.
For more of it to be seen the four have to be in one place.
The four are in one box. In the list the four are scattered.
There is no box in the list for writing that they are in one box.
Tomorrow I will look for whether that box exists.