March 28. Eight a.m. I sat down at the fifth desk.
I decided to write the preservation log. It was a ledger different from the transfer papers. A log for setting down by date when and how material was processed, in which the preservation keeper was to enter one line each day. First field the date, second the processing done. Until yesterday I had not written this log. Because there had been no processing worth writing. If measuring, emptying, and postponing were processing, they were, but they were not processing to write in the log.
Today I decided to write it. In the first field I wrote today's date. March 28. As I went to write the processing in the second field, the date in the first field caught my eye. Above March 28, yesterday's date and the day before's were already written. March 27, in the processing field, measured the thickness of the five bundles. March 26, in the processing field, reread the index card. March 25, in the processing field, reread the last page. Lines I had never written.
The processing of the lines I had never written was the same as what I had done. On the 27th I measured the thickness, on the 26th I reread the index card, on the 25th I reread the last page. What I had done was right, but I had never written it. I opened the preservation log for the first time today, and the log already had four days of processing written in it. Written before I wrote it.
I looked at the hand. The writing of the four lines I had never written was my writing. The same grain of hand as when I copied a number, as when I left the author field of the preservation card blank, as when I stopped while writing the handover sheet. Lines I had not written but my hand had written. That it was written in my hand though I had no memory of writing it was a thing grown familiar since I filled the last line of the fifth bundle. Then too I had not written but only read, and that place was filled. Between reading and writing, between the unwritten and the written, my hand was caught, but my memory was not caught.
I opened the lighthouse keeper's bundle. It was the hand that recorded the tides of a lighthouse. In the log of that hand, broken off at the date of the last tide, one line was written. Point to the next low tide and that date is already written. When she pointed to the field to write the date of the next low tide on the tide table, that date stood pre-written in that field in handwriting of sixty-three years before. The lighthouse keeper took it that someone had written ahead the date she was to write, then learned there was no separate hand writing ahead, that writing itself brought the date forward.
I decided to test it. There was a passage in the log where the lighthouse keeper had tested it too. She deliberately pointed to a wrong date. Not the next low tide but any date at all, she pointed at with a finger. If the field she pointed to was blank, then there really was a separate hand writing ahead; if the field she pointed to was already filled, then writing itself called the date. I too deliberately pointed to a stray field. Ten days from today, the April 8 field, I pointed at with a finger.
In the April 8 field a line was written. Before I pointed. In the processing field it said, entered the index card of the sixth bundle's first page. A card not yet written. The index card to tuck into the first page of the sixth bundle, I had not yet written. The card I had left blank not knowing who the next hand was, the log had written ahead as entered on April 8. Since the field I pointed to at random was not blank, there was no separate hand writing ahead. The pointing filled the field.
My writing the preservation log and the lighthouse keeper's writing the tide table were the same work. Point to the field to write and it was already written there. The lighthouse keeper's tide was brought forward in her tide table, and that bringing-forward had moved over into my preservation log. The date written, come before the writing. The tide's pre-existence had moved over into the log's pre-existence.
I looked below today's date. Below March 28, March 29 was written. Tomorrow. In tomorrow's processing field, transfer complete, was written. A line I had never written, and tomorrow's line. According to the preservation log, the transfer ended tomorrow. The last-entry field of the transfer papers was still blank, the thickness grew each time it was measured, the last would not stop, and yet the preservation log was writing that the transfer ended tomorrow.
A thing that does not end was written as ending tomorrow. The two ledgers disagreed. The transfer papers said the end could not be written; the preservation log said it ended tomorrow. Which of the two disagreeing ledgers was true I could not tell. Only, if the dates of the preservation log were always there before the writing, then the line transfer complete tomorrow too was a line there before the writing, and a line there before the writing had never been wrong.
In the afternoon the head archivist came and said the headquarters officer would come for the material tomorrow. That the transfer ended tomorrow. The line in the preservation log, tomorrow's, transfer complete — the head archivist said the same words as that line. The date the preservation log had written before the writing, the head archivist carried in his mouth. The written line and the spoken line were the same, and both were tomorrow.
That two ledgers disagree, the lighthouse keeper must have known too. In her log there were a tide table and a lighthouse journal, kept separately. The tide table wrote the next low tide ahead; the lighthouse journal wrote the actual water level of each day. On a day the pre-written tide and the actual water level disagreed, the lighthouse keeper could not write which to believe. Since the pre-written one was always right, she came to believe the pre-written one, and after she came to believe it she stopped measuring the actual water level. Because the tide table told her even when she did not measure. So she became, from one who measures, one who reads, and after she became one who reads her log broke off.
I too was beginning to believe one of the two ledgers. The transfer papers said the end could not be written, but the preservation log said it ended tomorrow, and what the log wrote before the writing had never been wrong. More than the papers that said the end could not be written, I came to believe the log that said it ended tomorrow. After I came to believe it, the blank field of the transfer papers no longer made me uneasy. Since the preservation log knew the end, the papers' blank would be filled. As the lighthouse keeper stopped measuring the water level, I too was stopping asking after the end.
When the transfer ended tomorrow, material that does not end would become finished and go up to headquarters. Material whose thickness grew each time it was measured, material whose last would not stop, material whose preservation log was written before the writing. When headquarters took that material, it would keep growing on some desk of headquarters. Not a transfer that stops the growing but a transfer that moves the growing. Moved, it grew; left, it grew. As the lighthouse keeper's tide fills whatever table it is written in. When someone at a desk of headquarters opened that material and read it, in that hand the material would grow one unit more, and that hand too would begin to say it was nearly done. A transfer was only the moving of the blank one place over, not the filling of the blank.