November 3. In the morning I set the two broken sentences side by side.
One is the note in the box under the desk. The predecessor was putting it in order and its last page breaks off in the middle of a sentence. I received it in January and have read it many times over ten months. In the sixth month I carried it on in my own hand.
One is the last page on the right-hand screen from yesterday. Page one hundred and seventy-three of the 1997 archive log, its last line broken off in the middle.
They do not join.
The note's break has no object. It breaks at to copy out— and after it there is nothing that is copied out. The log's break has no subject. It breaks at so the next—.
Put together they do not make a sentence. I wrote in the log that I had tried to put them together. Writing it, I saw what it was I was hoping for. I was hoping the two breaks were the front and back of one sentence. Then the people would be one and not two.
They are two.
At half past ten a requisition came from the third floor. Two boxes of second-half 1998 material.
I took them from the stacks, entered them in the register, took the signature. The register is on the operational machine, so it was entered as 3 November.
I noted that there was no duplicate entry. Days without one are rare now.
At eleven I opened yesterday's material again. I meant to check that it ends where I saw it end.
There was a page one hundred and seventy-four.
Yesterday page one hundred and seventy-three was the last. Today one page has been added.
I read the added page. It begins per the form. Its first line runs thus.
Previous day's releases, two items. Two material numbers are entered, with a recipient code and quantities.
The two material numbers were the two I entered at ten thirty-four this morning.
Only the recipient code differed. Theirs is five places and this one is four. It is the same department written in two systems.
It said previous day.
What I did at half past ten today is, on that page, what was done yesterday.
From half past eleven until one I wrote out how this differs from what I have seen until now.
The copy was a day ahead for eight months. It laid tomorrow's figure on today's date, and that was the habit. The distance ahead was one day.
Today's went back. 16 December 1997 is a year and ten months before today. A line I wrote today went back a year and ten months and sat down.
I thought going ahead and going back were different things. Written out, they are the same thing. The line that moved is the same line and only the distance moved differs. A day ahead or a year and ten months back, sitting somewhere that is not its own place is the same.
What I learned in October fastens on here. In the date box two digits are one value. Where 2000 and 1900 sit down in one box, that box has no direction. In a box with no direction, ahead and back are the same place.
At half past one I verified one thing.
Page one hundred and seventy-four of my log has no previous-day releases line. I write today's work today. Yesterday's work is on yesterday's page.
So it was not I who wrote previous day. And that side wrote it first.
From two until three I counted the material's pages.
Yesterday, a hundred and seventy-three. Today, a hundred and seventy-four.
My log is a hundred and seventy-three yesterday and a hundred and seventy-four today.
That log did not end on 16 December. It is coming a page a day up to today. Only the date is a year and ten months back.
At ten past three I did a hundred cards or so. Drawer eleven finished today.
What is left is drawer twelve alone. Some six hundred cards, three days' work. The deadline is the end of November, so twenty-seven days remain.
While doing cards the hand does the same thing always and the head is elsewhere. What was in my head today was page counts.
When the twelve drawers are done that work ends. It is work with an end, so I reckoned it at the start and it is going by the reckoning. On 5 October I wrote that the work is shrinking, and that still holds.
That other log has no end. Its end date is entered a year and ten months back and its pages come every day. An end date entered is a mark that it is finished and pages coming are a mark that it is not. Two marks stand together in one material.
There is one place in this room that tells what ends from what does not. What ends is what has been counted. The cards are seven thousand three hundred and forty and the drawers are twelve and the programs are six. What has been counted has an end.
Nobody has counted that log's pages. Yesterday a hundred and seventy-three, today a hundred and seventy-four. My log likewise.
At half past three I telephoned head office.
I said the page count of a registered material increases of itself. He asked who registered that material. I do not know, I said. He said to send in the instance. Copy the screen out as it stands and send it, he said.
There is no printer in this room. There has been none since January, and everything sent up to head office is written out by hand.
Having written transcribed, I took out paper.
From twenty to four until twenty to five I copied that page out.
A line looked at and a line written. It is the work I have done longest of anything in this room over ten months. Laying paper on the glass is this, and copying a file is this, and writing four digits beside a card is this.
This time I copy out a paper of two years ago. What I did today is written on that paper.
Copy out and it grows. In eight months in this room that alone has never once been out of true. Copying, I thought about what would grow. There are three places to grow. The transcript is one, the report sent to head office is one, today's page of this log is one.
There may be a fourth. Tomorrow's page of that other log.
At twenty to five I finished the transcription and put it in an envelope.
At ten to five the third-floor man came down and said he had received the box all right. He asked whether anything was the matter and I said nothing was. He laughed and said he keeps asking these days.
At five I looked at that page's last line.
It was a sentence outside the form.
I know that sentence.
I wrote it on 6 October.
It is on a page of a year and ten months ago.