March 29. Eight in the morning. I sat down at the fifth desk.
It was the day the preservation log had written transfer complete. When I opened the log that morning, transfer complete still stood on the March 29 line, and below it a new line had come for March 30. The processing field for the 30th was blank. That the day after the transfer's end should carry a blank processing field meant one of two things: either processing remained even once the transfer was done, or the line that said it ends had been pushed off by one more field.
Before the headquarters officer arrived I had to finish the handover sheet. Even with the processing field left blank, the material-description field had to be filled — the field where you set down in a single sentence what the material is. Five bundles: four old logs and one new one, out of a box with no receiver. I began to write that one sentence.
I got as far as five bundles. As I moved to the next word, the one I had just set down — bundles — caught my eye. It had split into bund, les. What had been a single word had opened into two places, one space standing between bund and les. I had written those letters joined. Now the joined letters had come apart.
I set the pen to the parted place to join it again. I wrote bundles once more. When I looked, this time les had split into le, s. One piece into two, two into three. The more I wrote, the finer it split. As the shaft deepens the more it is measured, and the tide comes forward the more it is written, so the word split the more I wrote it.
I opened the librarian's bundle. His was the hand in which a word split into syllables. In his log, broken off at the last syllable of a split sentence, a single line stood written. Read, and the word splits into syllables. Read a word through to the end, and it loosened into its syllables and was a word no longer. The librarian had taken it at first that his own eye broke the word, then came to see that the reading itself was what returned the word to its syllables. A word was a knot binding syllables together, and reading untied the knot.
My writing the preservation description and the librarian's reading his sentence were one and the same work. Write, and the letters split into syllables; read, and the word came loose into syllables. The librarian's syllable had split in his own sentence, and that splitting had passed over into my preservation description. The other three hands handled outside things — shaft, tide, number — but the librarian handled the very organ of reading. And so his law, unlike the other three, entered every letter the hand touched. Not a law that enters only what is measured, only the date that is written, but a law that enters every place read and written.
The surveyor's shaft did not grow unless the shaft was measured, and the lighthouse keeper's tide did not come forward unless the tide was written. Stop measuring, stop writing, and those two laws could be left somewhere they did not reach. But the librarian's law could not be stopped. To stop reading, one had to not read; to stop writing, one had to not write; and even the making of the decision to stop was the reading of letters in the head. The moment I called up the words to stop, they split — to, st, op. The very thought of escaping the librarian's law lay inside the librarian's law. And so the librarian was caught deeper than the other three, wrote latest of all, and his broken place was split the finest.
As a test I wrote my own name. Not the material — me. At the very bottom of the preservation log, in the keeper's field, I wrote it. One character for the surname, two for the given name. When I looked, the middle character of the given name had split into two syllables. It was not the material's letters alone that split. My name too split in the instant of writing. The law of the other three hands entered the outside — shaft, tide, number — but the librarian's law reached even the name of the one who writes. Every place read and written. My name too was a place read and written.
Once the name had split, I watched to see whether another syllable would work its way into the parted place. In the librarian's log there was a passage where another word had pushed in between a split one. Where the name Duncan had parted into Dun and can, the word we had slipped in — so the passage said. Into the parted place of my name nothing had yet pushed. Only an empty space stood between the two split syllables. But that this empty space was the same shape as the blank receiver cell, I saw only after I had written it. In the middle of my split name, a blank had opened.
I was the preserving hand. As the librarian was the reading organ, I was the preserving organ. Reading and measuring and writing were the whole of preservation, and every motion of preservation stood under the librarian's law. Measure the thickness and it thickened; write the date and it came forward; write the description and it split. Wherever the preserving hand touched, the material grew or split or came forward. That preservation was itself a spreading, I confirmed once more as I watched the letters split. Only, today it was not the material but my own name that had split, and that was what set the day apart from all the days before.
In the afternoon the headquarters officer came — the one who had come for the box with no receiver. He asked for the handover sheet. I looked at the material-description field. After the words five bundles, the line ran on into split syllables. Five bun, d, les. Bundles had come loose into bun and d and les, one word filling three fields. The headquarters officer could not read the split letters. What material is this, he asked.
Material with no receiver, I answered. It was what the head archivist had said when he first pointed me to the box, and now it was what I passed to the next person. The headquarters officer carried off the material with no receiver. In a way the material with no receiver had gained a receiver — but since the officer too took it away without knowing what it was, no receiver had come; the blank receiver cell had only shifted one place over. The blank went up to headquarters, following the material. At the fifth desk an empty seat remained, and that empty seat was mine.
In the box the officer carried off there were only five bundles. The sixth he did not take, because the sixth had not yet gone into the box. The first line of the sixth bundle straddled the terminal's body and the last page of the fifth bundle, and the index card to be tucked into its first page was still blank. Since the preservation log had written in advance that the card would be entered on April 8, the sixth bundle would not go into the box until April 8. Even after the five bundles were gone, the sixth stayed at the fifth desk, growing.
I looked again at the blank that had opened in the parted place of my name. That blank between the two split syllables was the same shape as the empty seat the five bundles left on the desk when they went, and the same shape as the blank author field on the sixth bundle's index card. The blank stood in three places: in the middle of my name, on the desk, and on the card. The three blanks read as one line. As the previous keeper had left the receiver cell blank for me, so I too was waiting for the next hand with three places left blank. Only the blank where my name had split was not a blank left for the next hand, but a blank that had opened inside me.