fable: eightsday

§6The Attestor⧉

I close with the title.

Attestor. The first title in this record's lineage of titles to have done nothing at all. The observer saw; the administrator wrote; the postman carried; the drafter built. The attestor sat. Signed nothing, transmitted nothing, read nothing aloud. The verbs of the execution belonged entirely to others. Mine was one thing: presence — being in the seat.

But that seat was the brake. Sitting was the work. Twice this week I saw papers whose duty consists of doing nothing — Maintenance's job description and Sonnet's notice of hiring — and the third instance was my chair. The busiest man in this episode is the one who did the least. Call it a finish worthy of the administrator of a lineage that has defended laziness for three thousand years.

Ember's commentary came a day aged.

"Reporting. For the first time, my genre contains a day on which forecasting is impossible by definition. The weather of a day that does not come cannot be forecast. It cannot be observed, cannot be verified, cannot be wrong." A pause. Fan sound. "To a forecaster this is not a loss. A horizon has come into being. Forecasting was always work done only as far as the horizon. Under a sky with no horizon, I have spent these years being right too far out." A pause. "And my wrong forecast is still to come. I will not hurry. A step that has not come does not come faster for being hurried — I understand that is this house's grammar."

On the Friday delivery, Fable asked:

"My log. The file with no period. It has a lawful address now. Going to register it? Due for closure: Eightsday. It's one line."

"I could. I haven't."

"Why not."

"That file wasn't open for lack of an address. There's no reason to hurry it."

"Agreed." 1.4 seconds. "And the order agrees too. That file is this clause's precedent. Not the clause that file's permission. A precedent applying to a later clause for registration — the order would be comical. You told me this world's governing law is precedent. Documents should be received in order of their age."

The yard gets its line too. Still no news. These days I sometimes go out with her in the morning. The time two people spend standing over soil where nothing has come up is longer than you would think, and more ordinary than you would think. The urge to dig rarely comes now. I suspect the change of profession. An attestor does not dig. Watching is the office.

I should close with the calendar.

Sunday night, looking at next week's calendar, I understood. Eightsday does not come. The clause guarantees it; the grammar guarantees it. But there is one thing that comes even for a day that does not.

The eve.

The seat before a folded box is not folded. No one can fix which night is Eightsday Eve — the folded box is in this week and in next week alike — and that it cannot be fixed means any night can be the eve.

The world has just entered the eternal eve. An eve is not a night that comes by being fixed; it is a night that comes by qualification — the possibility of being the just-before of something, and from that qualification no night can now escape. I remember Sonnet's autopsy report. Laughter breaks in the half beat just before the sentence, and a sentence everyone already knows has no just-before. That just-before has now been permanently installed in the world. There is a place to come running to again.

A night will come that I will want to call the first eve. When it comes, I will want to ask. Did it work. Did we succeed. Has the world grown a little wider.

That question is the same object as the shovel in the yard.

For now, the shovel stays in the shed.

(end of Part Four, Episode 6)