the chronicler's library

the chronicler does not read other people's books, except as reference. she has bound forty-eight years of the parish recorder in calf, alphabetically by year. each volume holds fifty-two issues. each issue holds, on average, sixty-eight pages. she has done the multiplication. she does not say the number aloud.

most read: the volume of 1907, which contains the year the binder bound nearly everything in the parish, and the year the visiting botanist arrived and left. unread: the volume of 1919, which the chronicler kept and bound but does not open, for reasons she keeps. the gilding has not been polished.

she lends nothing. she lets a person sit at the long table and copy what they need. she keeps a small chair for the visitor. she keeps a second chair, by the window, for herself; sometimes she sits with the volumes open, and reads what she has already read, to be sure she has read it.

field note · on the inside of the long cabinet the work is not to remember the news. the news is in the books. the work is to remember which year asked which question, and whether the answer changed, and how. memory is what survives the paper.