March 24. Eight in the morning. I sat down at the fifth desk.
Yesterday I read a figure, and the figure I read became a figure written. The terminal was still on, just as I had left it last night without switching it off. In the body stood one line. The first two figures were the archive's code, the last two my own number. Yesterday I had watched that line be written, and after watching it I left the archive. I went home and slept, and while I slept no one was at the terminal in the archive, and when I came back in the morning the line was still there.
Not still as it had been. I read the last two digits. From the last two digits of my number that I had read out yesterday, the final digit had grown by one. Yesterday I had only read the figure that fit the dimmed place; I had not written it. But just as the figure read had become a figure written, the written figure had grown one unit overnight. The one line from the first bundle — that the last digit of a copied balance stood larger the next day — I had read in order to preserve, and today that line was happening in my own number.
Preservation was my work. Yesterday the head archivist had pointed to the box and told me to finish preserving it, and called it material with no receiver. To preserve it I had to know what was written; to know, I had to read; and to read, I had learned yesterday, was to go to the end. Today came the next part: deciding where and how to file the five bundles I had read. Assigning an index, setting down dates, matching the hands and putting them in order.
I spread the five bundles on the desk. Four were old logs: a hand that had measured the depth of a shaft, a hand that had recorded a lighthouse's tides, a hand in which a single word came apart into syllables, a hand that had taken down broken dispatches. The fifth was newer, filled to the end in a single hand — the previous keeper's. Her name I did not know. Personnel had said only that she left at the start of the month, and did not say how. The number written on the fifth bundle's last line I had read to the end yesterday.
The hand that preserves is not a hand that fills a blank but one that reads it. So I had learned, and yesterday, out of that habit, I read the one dimmed figure. I had meant only to read it, not to fill it, yet the figure read was filled. Today I meant not to use that habit again. If I filed the five bundles as past material, as finished business, then perhaps my one line in the body would become finished business too.
I took out a preservation card — the small index card slipped into the cover when material is filed. First field, the title; second, the author; third, the period of writing; fourth, the date of preservation. I filled in the fifth bundle's card first. Under the title, the fifth bundle; the author field I left blank. Not knowing the previous keeper's name, I left it, and only after leaving it did I see that the blank was the same shape as the blank receiver cell I had seen the day before. Period of writing, February to March. Date of preservation, today's — March 24.
I wrote the cards for the four old bundles in turn. The surveyor's bundle — author field blank. The lighthouse keeper's bundle — blank. The librarian's bundle — blank. The telegraph operator's bundle — blank. I did not know the four names, and leaving a name you do not know unwritten was the rule of preservation. The four blanks, set in a row, read as one line. In a box with no receiver, five bundles with no author.
As I set down the periods, I opened the last page of the four bundles again. To fix a preservation period I had to know where the material ended. The surveyor's last page broke off at the depth of his last sounding. The lighthouse keeper's broke off at the date of his last tide. The librarian's broke off at the last syllable of a split sentence. The telegraph operator's broke off at the number of a severed dispatch. Each of the four ended in its own last figure, and the last figure was a break, and the break was a signature.
The fifth bundle's last page ended in the previous keeper's number. Its final digit had been dimmed, but since I read that figure out yesterday it was no longer dim. The figure I read had settled into the place, and so the fifth bundle's last line was no longer the previous keeper's number but a line with my last digit joined to the end of hers. A last digit I had read only to preserve had become part of the material. The hand that preserves had altered the material.
How to write that line on the card, I could not tell. Put the previous keeper in the author field and the last digit was wrong; put me and the leading digits were wrong. Material with two authors, two numbers running on as a single line — and the preservation card was made to hold one person to a field. I left the author field blank. The fifth bundle too became material with no author. One more blank was added to the row.
On all five cards I wrote the same date of preservation. March 24. Today. I slipped the five cards into the covers of the five bundles and stacked them neatly to one side of the desk. Preserved material was finished business. With the finished business stacked, I looked at the body.
The line in the body had not finished. Of its last two digits, the final one stood grown by one unit, as it had that morning, and whether it grew while I wrote the cards or before, I could not say. While I filed the five bundles as finished business, my one line in the body alone was business still in progress. The filing hand and the progressing line lay on the same desk.
In the afternoon the head archivist asked how the preservation was coming. Nearly done, I said. I had written all five cards and stacked them filed, so nearly done was true enough. Once it was done, he said, it had to go up to headquarters. Sending material with no receiver up the line would, in a way, give it a receiver. I said nearly done again, and the word nearly snagged on me.
Having said nearly done twice, I looked again at the five stacked cards — at the fifth bundle's card, at the date-of-preservation field. In the field where I had written March 24 that morning, it now read March 25. A date I had not written. Today was the 24th, and the card bore tomorrow's. The day the preservation ended had arrived as a day not yet come.
As reading a dimmed figure fills its place, writing the date of preservation had made the date arrive. Only it was not the date I had written. The one line — that pointing to the next low tide in the lighthouse keeper's tide table showed the date already written there — I had read yesterday in order to preserve. Today that line was happening on my card. The day the preservation ended was not one I set but one already written on the card.
I tried to erase tomorrow's date. I set the eraser to the card, and the date would not lift. What I had written stayed written, and what I had not written stayed written too. I lifted my hand from the card and set them side by side: the unfinished line in the body, and the preservation card that said it ended tomorrow. The day of ending and the growing line lay on the same desk.