March 26. Eight in the morning. I sat down at the fifth desk.
An index card was tucked into the first page of the fifth bundle. I had seen it three days before, on the day I first opened the box. A single line was written there. Do not read to the end. That day I took it for a keeper's caution — a word passed among those charged with preservation, warning against laying material carelessly open.
I broke the caution and read to the end. To preserve, I had to know what was written; to know, I had to read; and once reading, one goes on to the end. That was the excuse I made that day, half-knowing it was an excuse. Having read to the end, I read my own last digit out of the fifth bundle's final line, and the place I read out became a line in the body.
Today I looked at the card again. Do not read to the end. The same single line as three days before. Only now the line that had read as do not read read otherwise, after three days of learning what reading is. Read, and it grows. Read, and it spreads. The place read becomes the place written. Do not read to the end was do not let it grow to the end. It was do not let it spread to the end.
But I could not not read, because preservation was my work. To preserve I had to read, and to read was to spread. Preserving and spreading were one motion of a single hand. To a keeper, the warning do not read to the end was the warning do not preserve. If the preserving hand was the spreading hand, then the preservation meant to save the material was the very thing that made the material grow.
The previous keeper must have seen this card too. If she was the one who filled the fifth bundle to its end, then she was also the one who tucked the card into its first page. She had read the four bundles to the end, and only then begun her own; and into the first page of hers she wrote and tucked do not read to the end. The warning she had broken, she left for whoever came next — left it knowing it would be broken again. A hand that had read the four bundles through and broken the rule, certain the next hand would break it too.
Perhaps the four old bundles carried the same line. The first page of the surveyor's, of the lighthouse keeper's, of the librarian's, of the telegraph operator's. If each of the four had written a log through to its end, then each had first read something before them to the end. Somewhere the four hands too had met the line do not read to the end, and somewhere the four hands too had broken it. The hand that measured the shaft to the bottom, that recorded the tide to the last, that read the word to its end, that took the dispatch down to the final letter. To the end ran through all four logs alike, and the hand that went to the end was set into the place read to the end. The card's warning was left not for one person but in advance, for every hand that goes to the end.
The next hand was mine. I broke it. I broke it knowing I would, as the previous keeper had, with an excuse ready. The excuse that preservation was duty. The excuse of duty held firm. The head archivist had ordered the material preserved and, once done, transferred; to leave an ordered task undone was dereliction. To discharge the duty I had to preserve; to preserve I had to read; and reading spread it. The duty itself compelled the spreading.
What stayed with me was that breaking the rule had needed an excuse at all. There was no breaking it without one. The previous keeper broke it on the excuse of preservation, and I broke it on the same excuse. The same excuse meant the same place of breaking, and the same place of breaking meant the same end. Having read to the end, the previous keeper had been set in the place read to the end. Standing in the same place on the same excuse, I was walking toward the place she had gone. The excuse seemed to lighten the breaking, but the lightened hand came to rest exactly where hers had.
It was not that no way of not reading existed. If I left the five bundles unopened, did not look at the last page, and set them back into the box to send up to headquarters as they were, my hand would read no further. But the handover sheet asked for the last entry, and to write the last entry I had to read the last page. To transfer without reading was to leave the handover sheet blank, and a blank handover sheet would not be accepted.
What being not accepted meant, the head archivist had shown me the day before. Seeing the last-entry field empty, he asked whether I had not written it yet. Leave it blank and he asks; be asked and one must write; write and one must read. The road of leaving blank ran into the road of being asked, and the road of being asked ran into the road of reading. Even at the end of the road of not reading stood reading.
In the afternoon I set myself to fill the handover sheet's last-entry field. If a blank meant being asked, and being asked meant having to write, better to write. I opened the fifth bundle's last page. One line, my last digit joined to the previous keeper's number. As I bent to read that digit, one more figure had arrived beneath it — a figure that had not been there the day before.
I read the newly arrived figure. The first two characters were the archive's code, the last two my own number. Beneath the fifth bundle's final line, the first line of the sixth bundle had begun to write itself. The single line that had been growing in the body the day before had come onto the paper as well. Yesterday I had written that the line inside the terminal and the line on the paper grew at the same rate; today the line inside the terminal had crossed over onto the paper.
If the sixth bundle's first line had reached the paper, then the sixth bundle too must have a first page, and the first page an index card tucked into it. Just as the previous keeper had written and tucked do not read to the end into the fifth bundle's first page, I too would have to write something and tuck it into the sixth's, to leave for the hand that came next. There was no next hand yet. The archive held only the head archivist, the two assistants, and me, and the one seated at the fifth desk was me. Who would sit here after me, I did not know. The card meant for someone I did not know, I had not yet been able to write.
What I had failed to write grew by one more. I had left the author field blank, left the last-entry field blank, and now left the sixth bundle's index card blank as well. The blanks came to three. A box with no receiver, five cards with no author, a handover sheet with no last line, and now a sixth bundle with no next hand. The blanks ran on as a single line, and at the end of that running line of blanks stood my place. As the previous keeper had left the receiver cell blank for me, I too would leave some blank behind for the next hand — only without knowing who the next hand was.
What to enter in the last-entry field, again I could not tell. Was the last entry the previous keeper's final line, or my own first line newly arrived beneath it? The fifth bundle's last was joined into a single line with the sixth's first, and at that joined place the last and the first were one and the same line. The place of ending was the place of beginning. I went to write does not end in the last-entry field, and could not write even that, and stopped my hand. To write does not end was still to write, and once written, that line too would grow.