April 3. Nine a.m. The headquarters officer came down to confirm the transfer complete.
He was the one the head archivist had said yesterday would come today. The sound of his shoes coming down the stairs approached, ringing the archive ceiling one bay at a time, and he was a different person from the one who had taken the five bundles last time. In his hand were one transfer-confirmation sheet and a small case holding a seal. The five bundles had already gone up to headquarters, so what he came to confirm was the remaining sixth bundle. The sheet read, in type, the whole of the material with no recipient, and beside it the transfer-completion date was printed as April 8. It was the date the preservation log had written ahead. The date I had come to know by pointing, headquarters had carried down in print. The date the log wrote and the date the document set were one day. Somewhere the same date was being written twice, and which of the two came first I could not tell.
Pointing at the sixth bundle, I said this was the last one bundle. The headquarters officer lifted the bundle and gauged its thickness, then said it was thicker than he had thought. I did not say it had grown one page thicker than yesterday. Even if I said it, the thickness he saw and the thickness I saw would differ. He set the bundle down again and asked whether I could finish preserving and transfer it by April 8. I could not answer that I could not finish. The words I cannot finish could be said only to someone who had seen the growing bundle.
I answered that I would finish. After answering, I knew what I had just promised. To finish preserving was to index, bind, and box the last page of the sixth bundle by April 8. But each time the preserving hand touched it, the bundle grew one page, so the more I preserved in order to finish, the farther the finishing place receded. To finish I had to preserve, preserve and it grew, grow and I could not finish. The promise to finish was a promise to finish, within the deadline, a thing that could not be finished.
The headquarters officer asked for the recipient's signature on the transfer-confirmation sheet. The signature of the one who had agreed to receive the material with no recipient. I took up the pen and wrote my name in the signature field. One character for the surname, two for the given name. After writing it I saw the middle character had split into two syllables. In the parted place of my name in the signature field was one empty field the same shape as the blank recipient field. Even a signature on an official document was under the librarian's law. Anywhere a place is written, it split in the instant of writing.
The headquarters officer did not recognize the split signature. He pressed onto it a seal confirming the signature checked. As the seal pressed down, the split middle character seemed to join back into one syllable, then split again under the seal. The seal only covered the splitting; it did not join it. My name made into an official document was, having become an official document, written more firmly in that place, and being written more firmly, split more deeply.
After the headquarters officer went back, one copy of the confirmation sheet was left on the desk. The sound of him closing the seal case and climbing the stairs receded, ringing the same bays in reverse as on the way down. The order to preserve had been left as paper. The preservation the head archivist had pointed to by mouth on my first day was now stamped paper. Preservation was no longer a thing I could choose or stop. Stop and it was dereliction of duty, dereliction was disobeying the confirmation sheet, disobeying the sheet was disobeying the seal. Yesterday stopping was the confirming of no door; today stopping became a disobeying. Added to there being no place to stop, now it became a place where I must not stop.
But not stopping made no difference to the not finishing. The sheet said to finish preserving, but since finishing was itself making it grow, the sheet was also an order to make it grow. Both roads were blocked. Stop and it was disobeying the seal; do not stop and it was making it grow. On one door dereliction of duty was written, on the other spreading. Out whichever door, it opened onto a closing seat. As Do-gyeong was herself whether she moved or not, I spread whether I finished or not, and closed whether I did not finish or not. Only, Do-gyeong's two roads were roads Do-gyeong chose, while my two roads were roads the seal chose.
The order to preserve, the more it was a stamped official document, made me preserve more and made more grow. The law was not in my hand alone. It was in the head archivist's mouth, in headquarters' official letter, in the seal on the transfer-confirmation sheet. The more the company ordered preservation, the more the law spread. The hand that ordered preservation and the hand that made preservation spread had, by one seal, become the same hand. The name of duty was another name for spreading. The company ordered preservation to keep the material, but that order to keep made the material grow. Keeping and making-grow were, under the one name of duty, the same work.
Then what makes it grow. At first I took it that my hand made it grow. My hand measuring and writing and moving. Yesterday I tried stopping that hand, but the growing did not stop. Stop the hand and it grew, an official letter came and it grew, a seal pressed and it grew. What made it grow was not my one hand but the work of preservation itself. By whomever done, by hand or by seal, wherever there was the work of preserving, it grew. The surveyor said the measuring hand makes depth, but after he died and his shaft was buried, as long as there was a hand preserving his log the depth grew. What made depth was not the measuring hand but the measuring work, and even when the measuring hand stopped the measuring work moved to another hand. Then the search for a hand to stop had been vain from the start. What was to be stopped was not a hand but a work, and the work was larger than the hand. The hand dies but the work continues to the next hand, and all the while it continues, it grows.
I tucked the copy of the confirmation sheet between the pages of the preservation log. Since tucking too was preservation, the moment I tucked it the log grew one page thicker. Preserving the order to preserve increased the ordered preservation by one page. The paper saying to finish by April 8 made April 8 one place farther. Lifting the tucking hand, for the first time I saw clearly that what made it grow was neither hand nor seal but the act of preserving itself. Do-gyeong changed a seat by the act of answering, but answering was a finger pressing once. My preserving was not even a pressing; it was simply being beside the material, measuring and writing and tucking beside it. Being beside it made it grow. The act made it grow. That the act could not be stopped was confirmed today by a seal. Five days remained until April 8, and for five days I had to do, without stopping, the growing work, in order to finish a thing that could not be finished.