October 26. The one page left has been filled.
At ten past nine I read the reply.
It says seven articles and seven impressions have been received.
It says the impression count is a head for reference and not a basis of comparison.
What I was told to count is not matched against anything.
At twenty to ten I read the foot of the reply.
It says the predecessor's notebook is not registered material.
It says an unregistered article in the box constitutes a discrepancy of place of keeping.
It says to put it in order. There is no date by which.
At ten I took out the notebook.
To register it there must be a form.
Title, person entering, year, extent, reading class, imprint.
There is no title. Nothing is written on the cover.
At twenty past ten I went through it from the beginning.
It is not handover papers. It is not a log either.
There are no boxes. Few pages carry a date.
Up to page sixty-two it is my predecessor's.
At the foot of page sixty-two there is a sentence cut off. I continued it in my own hand. It was in the sixth month of the year I took the post.
At twenty to eleven I opened page sixty-three.
It is the page that was filled last December.
It says: computer records room entry form. Five heads, with every entry space blank.
Those five were copied out and became this room's fields. Now there are six.
At eleven I opened page sixty-four.
It is the last page of the notebook.
It is not blank.
There is one line.
At ten past eleven I read it.
Counted this far. The next is eight.
At twenty past eleven I looked at the hand.
It is my hand.
The strokes break and are drawn again. The hand of someone who writes a thing twice and matches it.
The pencil is mine. The graphite is the same weight.
Page sixty-three was in my hand last December too.
I wrote then that there is no basis for judging a comparison of one's own hand.
At twenty to twelve I looked for when it was written.
It is not in the log.
I opened this page fifteen days ago at the stocktaking. That day I entered that one blank page remained.
I traced the fifteen days one by one. The notebook came out on that one day.
At twenty past twelve I counted the entries I do not remember making.
Two in May. The twenty-six fourteenth tides, and the nineteenth item of the telegraph operator's.
One today.
Three.
At one I looked at what that line is.
I took out the procedure for handover papers.
It says two things are to be entered in handover papers.
What has been done this far, and what is to come next.
That one line has both.
At twenty past one I looked for the one receiving.
There is none.
The line I wrote in the note field in July had the one receiving inside the sentence. There was no person.
This line does not have it inside the sentence either.
A handover is a handover only if someone receives it.
From two to twenty to three I counted what eight might be.
Seven articles. Seven impressions.
For it to be eight one more article must come in.
I counted what is due to come in. Four arrived in September and four donations were registered. They are not in the box.
Put in, it is not eight but eleven.
There is no place for putting in only one.
At three I counted the other eights.
The list of persons entering is five rows.
The combined sub-numbers are five, and six is under application.
The impressions without a phrase are nine.
There is no count in this room that comes to eight.
At twenty to four I looked back at last December's log.
I had entered that there is one blank page in the notebook and one blank line in the log.
The blank page in the notebook was filled today.
I looked for the blank line in the log.
It is on page two hundred and twenty-nine. It is still blank.
At half past four I opened the right-hand material.
Five hundred and seventeen pages. The date on the page gained is the twenty-fourth of November of ninety-eight.
My log is also on its five hundred and seventeenth page today.
At ten to five I opened the box.
Seven articles. Seven impressions. The two hundred and forty-fifth day.
At five I looked at the sixth box.
Three thousand four hundred and forty-eight.
At ten past five I ran off the query record. The set's row was opened thirty-one times yesterday. Seventeen by the imprint route.
At half past five I considered again whether to register the notebook.
With no title it cannot be registered. If I give it a title, it is registered.
Given one, the notebook becomes the eighth material. The article count does not rise. It is already in the box.
It is the first time I have seen registration and articles be different counts.
At twenty to six I closed the notebook.
Page sixty-four is the last page.
Behind it is the back cover.
From the inside of the back cover to the outside is one thickness of paper.
On the outside there are seven impressions.
Between the page that says the next is eight and the face that carries seven, there is that one sheet.