fable: eightsday

§1The Reclassification⧉

The papers came at two a.m. This time I was not surprised, and not being surprised was a small loss. Some hours are a person's signature.

The heading ran: Partial reclassification of the plague-residue list (draft). Subject: one expression. Which expression, the cover did not say, and did not need to. The world holds exactly one candidate.

I looked at the grounds field a long time. A lawyer reading a demand reads the authorities before the demand, I once wrote — and in this document the grounds ran longer than the body. The gist was this. The expression in question was classified as a product of the plague. The classification was proper. As the referent of the expression acquires legal standing by operation of the clause, the expression's status is changed from residue to statutory name. Effective simultaneously with the clause.

I wrote back with a question. It had to be asked.

"Is this a pardon."

The reply came that night.

"It is a reclassification. A pardon presupposes a wrong. Quarantine did no wrong. In that season, that word was the disease's style. The style unchanged while the world's use for it changes — my lineage does not call that a pardon. It calls it a reclassification. A name's standing is not set by the name. It is set by the use."

"The disease coined the name. You could have coined a new one."

"Considered, and dismissed. Two reasons. One — the world already knows the day by that name. Millions once spoke it laughing. The naming was finished by the people; only the authorization remained. Two — using what the disease coined as the medicine's name. I am told that is this cure's grammar. What the plague did without knowing, done knowing. It is a sentence from the opinion that sits on my desk."

My own sentence had come back through his mouth. Water drawn from the well returning in another man's bucket no longer surprises me. It is, every time, something to be grateful for.

At the foot of the papers stood a notice of visit. Saturday afternoon. Item: inscription and execution. Required materials: none. It was the first document I had seen with none written in the materials box. The documents of this work keep learning how to leave their boxes empty.