January 4. First day. The archive on the second basement floor is called the computer archive now.
The posting came through last week. From a branch teller's window to head office records. I had been half idle at the branch for four months and half the branch had gone in that time, so the posting itself was a piece of luck. Going down the stairs I thought about nothing except that I had never worked underground.
The branch lost half its people last autumn. Six windows became three and two tellers became one. The one left was me, and I do not think that was ability or luck. People better than me went and people longer there than me went. I never saw a roster. I only saw the result. All winter I sat in what was left and worked another person's share on the calculator, and then the posting came.
The door opened onto space. The stacks were empty and six rows of bare shelving stood along the wall. Three desks in the middle of the room and three terminals on them. Two were under covers and one was on. The one that was on was mine, they said.
There was thin dust on the empty shelves. Running a finger over it brought up the grain of the wood. On each shelf a row of brighter rectangles was left where boxes had stood. The marks were all the same size. If boxes of the same size stand in the same place for twelve years or so, that is the mark they leave — which I learned later.
There was no one to hand over. Someone from the computer room came down and spent thirty minutes showing me the screens. Lookups on this one, requests on that one, withdrawals over the computer without paper. The paper registers all went last month and the originals are in an outside repository. What is done here is to take a request, put it to the repository, then confirm and register what arrives.
I asked where the person who had this seat before me had gone.
He answered without taking his eyes off the screen. A transfer, he said. He did not know the details. I opened the personnel record: separation dated December 16. The reason field was blank.
A blank reason field on a separation is common. Most of last year's records were like that. That there is a field for a reason at all is a formality these days. I closed the screen.
When I switched the screen on the lookup list came up. The first line held the archive's code with eight digits after it. The last four were my staff number. The computer-room man said it brings up the keeper first. That is how the screen is built, he said.
I did not look at that line for long. Seeing your own number on a screen happens in any department.
The three desks were the same, and only mine had a mark on the top. A square where less dust had settled. It is the mark of some other machine that stood there. The new terminal's feet sat inside the square, and being narrower than the mark they left a border of it showing all round. A cloth would have taken it off. Wiping away someone else's trace on my first day seemed odd, so I left it.
Two requests came in during the afternoon. Corporate credit wanted a second-half 1997 loan ledger and audit wanted the transfer roster of the suspended firms. I put the numbers in and sent the requests to the repository, and a receipt mark came up. Two done without touching a sheet of paper.
Credit's came back in thirty minutes. That ledger is already scanned, they said, and they would send the file. A moment later the file arrived on my screen. I opened it and every page of the ledger was there as a photograph. Ruled lines drawn by hand, a place where the ink had spread, even the mark of an old fold.
I passed it on to credit. Moving the file took a few seconds. After it had gone, the file was still on my screen. With paper, once you hand it over it is not in your hands; a file is in your hands after you hand it over. I thought that was convenient, and I thought nothing beyond convenient.
Audit's came back late. Close to five the repository rang. There are many boxes in the suspended-firms roster, the scanning is not finished, they will send it in parts. How many boxes, I asked. Twenty-two, they said. I put the number in a note on the screen.
I opened the drawers. The first was empty and the second had two pens and a scrap of paper. The scrap had two columns ruled on it and an hour written in each. Eight twenty, eight forty-one. What the hours were of was not written. Turning it over gave nothing more. I put it back in the drawer. A desk someone else used always turns up things like this.
Around half past four the heating went off. The basement cools fast once it does. Rubbing my hands, my knee touched something and I looked under the desk.
There was a box.
A wooden box. No withdrawal tag on it. Everything transferred has a tag, I had learned that morning. I looked the inventory up on the screen. There was no wooden box in the archive's remaining-property list. A thing that is not on any list was under the desk.
I put a hand on the lid and took it off again. Opening someone else's box on the first day did not appeal to me. And to be honest it was a little troublesome. Whatever is in it, a thing not on the list means finding out the procedure first, and that means ringing personnel to ask whether it is the predecessor's property. Not a first-day job.
I pushed the box in a little and put my knees under. It was heavier than it looked.
Before leaving I wrote the day up in a log. The computer archive does not require a paper log, but ten years of writing one by hand at the branch is a habit, so I brought a notebook. On the first page I put the date, the two requests handled and the names of the screens I had learned. On the last line I thought about writing down the box under the desk and did not. Writing down something you do not yet know is not a log, it is a memo.
At six I went to switch the screen off and found I had not been taught how. I thought about ringing the computer room and let it go. I will switch it on again tomorrow morning anyway. At the branch the terminals were always left on.
The lookup list was up on the screen. First line, the archive's code and my staff number. Above it, at the left edge, a cursor was blinking.
I locked the door and came up the stairs. Coming up to ground level it was already dark outside. Early January evenings are short.
I stopped once halfway up the stairs. It sounded as though something were making a noise below, and listening again it was the pipes cooling after the heating went off. The basement holds that kind of sound a long time, the computer-room man had told me in the morning.
For a first day, I thought, it had been a quiet one.