March 29. Eight a.m. I sat down at the fifth desk.
It was the day the preservation log had written transfer complete. When I opened the log in the morning, transfer complete was still there on the March 29 line, and below it a March 30 line had newly come. The processing field of the 30th was blank. That the processing of the day after the transfer ended was blank meant either that there was processing left even after the transfer ended, or that the line saying it ends was put off one field more.
Before the headquarters officer came I had to finish writing the handover sheet. Even leaving the processing field blank, I had to write the material-description field. The field for setting down in one sentence what the material was. Five bundles, four old logs and one new log out of a box with no recipient. I began writing that one sentence.
I wrote as far as five bundles. As I went to write the next character, the word bundles I had just written caught my eye. Bundles had split into bund, les. What had been one word had spread into two places, a gap of one space between bund and les. A word I had written joined. The word written joined had come apart.
I put the pen to the parted place to write it joined again. I wrote bundles again. After writing it I saw that this time les had split into le, s. One syllable into two, two syllables into three. The more I wrote, the finer it split. As the shaft deepens the more it is measured and the tide is brought forward the more it is written, the word split the more it was written.
I opened the librarian's bundle. It was the hand in which one word split into syllables. In the log of that hand, broken off at the last syllable of a split sentence, one line was written. Read and the word splits into syllables. Read a word to the end, and the word loosened into its syllables and was no longer a word. The librarian took it that her own eye broke the word, then learned that reading itself was the work of returning the word to syllables. A word was a knot tying syllables together, and reading untied that knot.
My writing the preservation description and the librarian's reading the sentence were the same work. Write and the word split into syllables; read and the word loosened into syllables. The librarian's syllable split in her sentence, and that splitting had moved over into my preservation description. The other three hands handled outside things — shaft, tide, number — but the librarian handled the organ of reading itself. So the librarian's law, unlike the other three, entered every character the hand touched. Not a law that enters only the measured, only the dated, but a law that enters every place read and written.
The surveyor's shaft did not grow if the shaft was not measured, and the lighthouse keeper's tide was not brought forward if the tide was not written. Stop measuring and stop writing, and those two laws could be left where 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 making the decision to stop was reading characters in the head. The moment one called up the words to stop, the words split into to, st, op. The very thought of escaping the librarian's law was inside the librarian's law. So the librarian was caught deeper than the other three, wrote latest of all, and her severed place was split finest.
As a test I wrote my own name. Not the material but me. At the very bottom of the preservation log, in the keeper field, I wrote my name. One character for the surname, two for the given name. After writing it I saw that the middle character of the given name had split into two syllables. It was not only the material's characters 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 entered even the name of the one who writes. Every place read and written. My name too was a place read and written.
When the name split, I watched whether another syllable inserted itself into the parted place. In the librarian's log there was a passage where another word inserted itself between a split word. Where the name Duncan split into Dun and can, the word we inserted itself, the passage said. Into the parted place of my name nothing had yet inserted itself. There was only one empty field between the two split syllables. But that the empty field was the same shape as the blank recipient field, I saw only after writing it. In the middle of my split name a blank had appeared.
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 was under the librarian's law. Measure the thickness and it thickened, write the date and it was brought forward, write the description and it split. Wherever the preserving hand touched, the material grew or split or was brought forward. That preservation was spreading, I confirmed again, watching the characters split. Only today it was not the material but my name that split, and that was different from the days before.
In the afternoon the headquarters officer came. The one who came for the box with no recipient. He asked for the handover sheet. I looked at the material-description field. After what was written as far as five bundles, it ran on in split syllables. Five bun, d, les. Bundles loosened into bun and d and les, one word taking up three fields. The headquarters officer could not read the split characters. What material is this, he asked.
Material with no recipient, I answered. It was what the head archivist had said pointing me to the box at first, and now it was what I carried to the next person. The headquarters officer took the material with no recipient. Material with no recipient had, in a way, gotten a recipient, but since the headquarters officer too took it without knowing what it was, it was not that a recipient had come but that the blank recipient field had moved one place over. The blank field 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 headquarters officer took there were only five bundles. The sixth bundle he did not take. Because the sixth bundle had not yet gone into the box. The first line of the sixth bundle straddled the terminal's body field and the last page of the fifth bundle, and the index card to tuck into its first page was still blank. Since the preservation log had written ahead that the card would be entered on April 8, the sixth bundle would go into the box only on April 8. Even after the five bundles left, the sixth bundle remained at the fifth desk, growing.
I looked again at the blank that had appeared 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 of the sixth bundle's index card. The blank was 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 recipient field blank for me, 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 appeared inside me.