第20章 The Fifth Sentence

On the twenty-first of the third month at the third hour Avelin Cindermill walked down the long street and past the foundry and past the Yard and to the bench in the middle of the Yard, and she went in the door of the Yard, and the door was the door, and the Yard was quiet, and the Yard had the bench in it, and the bench had no ruler on it, and the bench was hers, and she sat down at the bench, and she put her arm out on the bench, and she unrolled the cuff, and the brass came out, and the brass was the colour of the third hour, and the number on the brass was 1174. The clerk Wrenno was at the desk at the far end of the Yard, and Wrenno had the rolls of the third month in front of her, and the rolls had the fifth sentence on the last page, and the fifth sentence was under the standing of 1174, and the standing was 1174, and the 1174 was not zero, and Wrenno looked up from the rolls when Avelin sat down at the bench, and Wrenno did not move her face, and Wrenno looked at the brass on the bench. "The fifth sentence is in the rolls," Wrenno said. "I know." "You are here on the twenty-first." "I know." "The fifth sentence was written at the first hour of the nineteenth." "I know." "Then you are two days past it." "I am two days past it." "And you have come to the bench." "I have come to the bench." "And the bench is the bench." "The bench is the bench." "And the rolls have the fifth sentence." "The rolls have the fifth sentence." "And the fifth sentence is under the standing of 1174." "The fifth sentence is under the standing of 1174." "And the standing is on your arm." "The standing is on my arm." "And the standing is 1174." "The standing is 1174." "And 1174 is not zero." "1174 is not zero." "And the rolls have marked you exhausted at 1174." "The rolls have marked me exhausted at 1174." "And the rolls have not marked you at zero." "The rolls have not marked me at zero." "And the rolls have not come to the Yard to correct it." "The rolls have not come to the Yard to correct it." "And the rolls will not correct it." "The rolls will not correct it." "The rolls will keep it forever." "The rolls keep it forever." "And the fifth sentence is wrong." "The fifth sentence is wrong." "And the wrong is mine." "The wrong is mine." Wrenno looked at her for a long time. She looked at her and she did not move her face, and she put the rolls down on the desk, and the rolls were the rolls, and the rolls had the fifth sentence, and the fifth sentence was under the standing of 1174, and the 1174 was on the brass on the bench, and the brass was the brass. "There is a sixth sentence," Wrenno said. "There is no sixth sentence." "There is a sixth sentence in the drawer under the bench. The sixth sentence is the one the rolls do not write. The sixth sentence is the one the rolls keep. The sixth sentence is the one the rolls have kept for thirty-one people before you. The sixth sentence is the one I have kept for twenty-nine years. The sixth sentence is the one Mabry wrote on the second half of the card. The sixth sentence is the one you have not signed. The sixth sentence is two hundred and forty Hours, and the two hundred and forty Hours are the thing the rolls took without your consent, and the taking was the fifth sentence, and the fifth sentence was wrong, and the sixth sentence is the correction, and the correction is not written, and the not written is the keeping, and the keeping is the drawer under the bench, and the drawer under the bench has the sixth sentence, and the sixth sentence is yours." Avelin looked at the bench. She looked under the bench, and under the bench was a drawer, and the drawer had a lock, and the lock was the House's lock, and the lock had no key in it, and the drawer was shut, and the drawer was the drawer. "I will not sign the sixth sentence," she said. "You will not sign the sixth sentence." "And I will not open the drawer." "And you will not open the drawer." "And I will not let the rolls write the sixth sentence." "And you will not let the rolls write the sixth sentence." "And I will not let the rolls keep the sixth sentence." "And you will not let the rolls keep the sixth sentence." "Then the sixth sentence is unwritten." "Then the sixth sentence is unwritten." "And the drawer stays shut." "And the drawer stays shut." "And the bench stays as it is." "And the bench stays as it is." "And I stay where I am." "And you stay where you are." Wrenno looked at her for a long time. She put the rolls in the drawer at her desk. She did not write anything on top of them, and she did not take anything out of them, and she did not read a single line aloud, which was the third of the three things a clerk did, and she did it by doing nothing. Then she walked out the door of the Yard and down the long street and up it again, and she did not come back. The Yard was quiet behind her. The bench stood in the middle of the room with her arm still laid out across it and the brass bared, and under the bench the drawer sat shut with a lock that had no key in it. The sixth sentence was in there somewhere, or it was not, and the difference between those two was that she had not opened it to check. Avelin sat at the bench with her arm out on the wood and the brass reading 1174. The standing was 1174 and 1174 was not zero, and the rolls had written her exhausted at a standing that was not exhausted, and they had kept the writing and would keep it, and they had been punctual about the writing and would be punctual about the keeping, and the punctuality was everything an institution had to offer, and everything it had to offer was already spent. She rolled the cuff over the brass. She buttoned the sleeve. She stood up from the bench and the bench creaked, and the creak had been in that Yard for twenty-nine years, and the twenty-nine years belonged to a man who was walking the long street somewhere. She walked out of the Yard and down the long street. The Yard bell struck the fourth hour, and the bell was one bell, and the cart was going up, and the Yard was open, and the foundry was closed, and the roll was closed, and the check-walk was closed, and Trenn had nothing left to do with the foundry. Mabry was walking the long street and Halbert was walking the long street, and both of them were walking, and walking was the one thing the rolls could not mark, because the rolls marked the standing and the standing was still, and the stillness was the not signing, and the not signing was hers. She came up to the step of the house on Vail Street. She did not take the rail of the stair. She climbed the stair with her feet and went in the door, and the table was where the table was, and the list lay on it, and the ninth line of the list was empty. She sat down at the table. She put her hand flat on the wood. She did not read the room. She did not weigh the bread. She did not reach for the salt. She picked up the salt with her hand and she put it on the bread with her hand and she ate the bread with her hand, and the bread was the bread. At the fourth hour Nyall came in the door with the coal and the bread and no apples, because the jar was empty and the empty was the rolls. At the fifth hour Trenn came up the stair with her lunch box and her spectacles and the list in her coat, and she set the lunch box on the table and she sat down and she did not ask. At the seventh hour they ate the bread at the table with the evening coming through the cloth. The step was dry, the coal was stacked on it, the jar sat empty at the corner of the list, and the ninth line on the list was empty still. Trenn did not count anything that night. She had counted nine things in the seventh month and eight by the eighth and seven after the foundry closed and never had written a tenth, and the ninth had held its nothing for thirty days, and the nothing was the thirty days, and the thirty days were the kept, and the kept was the little of herself Avelin had saved for the end. Outside, on the long street, the Yard bell struck the eighth hour. The cart was going up toward the Yard and the Yard was open and the foundry was closed and the roll was closed and the check-walk would be closed at the month's end. In the Yard the bench stood empty in the middle of the counting room, and under the bench the drawer sat shut, and in the drawer the sixth sentence lay unwritten, and the rolls of the Hourhouse held no record of it, and would hold none, because a sentence no clerk had written was no sentence to the rolls at all. The rolls had no sixth sentence. They had the fifth. The fifth had been written at the first hour of the nineteenth of the third month, and it had said exhausted and recovered nothing and owed nothing and paid in full, and it had been written at a standing of 1174, and 1174 was not zero. The error was there. It would be there forever. The rolls had marked her at the first hour of the nineteenth and then they had not come, and they would not ask, and they would not correct, and they would not read it back, and they would not take, and all of the not-doing was hers. Avelin Cindermill sat at the table on Vail Street with her hand flat on the wood, and the wood was warm under her palm, and the warmth had not been spent, because the Reach had not reached for it. She had decided that on the first day of the fifteen, and the fifteen had become thirty, and the thirty had been the walking and the bread and the coal and the stair and the boy in the weir and the not going and the two apples and the empty jar and the list and the ninth line and the not signing. None of it had cost an hour on the ledger. None of it had cost an hour on the metal, because the metal had stopped on the twenty-second of the second month, and the stopping had been the rolls, and the rolls had been wrong. She had kept a little of herself for the end. The little was two hundred and forty Hours that no clerk had written down and no warden had ruled upon and no bench had measured and no card had carried and no rolls had recorded. It had lived in the drawer under the bench and in the ninth line of her daughter's list and in the space between the first hour of the nineteenth and the eighth hour of the twenty-eighth, and in that space she had been a woman on a stair with her hand on a rail, and a woman at a table with a ball on her step, and a woman in a kitchen with a neighbour who had never once asked her what was on her arm. The bell struck the ninth hour once, and then a second time, and then a third, and no one in Draymoor stopped to listen. In the Hourhouse the rolls kept the fifth sentence forever. Under the bench in the Yard the drawer kept the sixth. Between the two of them there was a gap the size of two hundred and forty Hours, and the gap was not in any ledger, and would never be, and the gap was the only thing in Draymoor that had been paid in nothing and come out of the paying holding everything. Avelin Cindermill buttoned the sleeve of her coat and turned her cuff inward, and the brass went under the cloth, and the cloth was the sleeve, and the sleeve was buttoned, and the button was the last one, and she sat at the table with her daughter and her neighbour and ate the salt off the bread with her fingers and did not spend an hour of it.