Ofurud

FROM THE MANUSCRIPT · READING EXCERPT

Enter the story

Varethun laid the key beside the inkpot. It landed on its side, and he turned it flat before the Keeper could mistake the gesture for carelessness.

The old man was trying to mend a torn page. He had put a strip of thin paper beneath the split and was holding it in place with two fingers while he searched for the paste brush. Varethun could see the brush under his sleeve. He said nothing.

“There,” the Keeper murmured, finding it. He spread the paste, set a clean board over the repair, and looked at the key. “You can keep your room tonight.”

“I've packed.”

“It'll rain.”

“I haven't come to discuss the weather.”

The Keeper drew his hand from the board. Paste glistened on a knuckle enlarged by age. Once, when Varethun could scarcely hold his attention through a simple exercise, those hands had rested on either side of his own. He remembered their steadiness more clearly than anything the man had said. Now a tremor moved the little finger against the table.

“Then sit,” the Keeper said.

Varethun remained standing.

Outside, someone dragged a bench along the covered walk. The scraping stopped; a voice asked whether it was straight. Another answered that it would do. Work went on while he stood here with all his possessions tied in a bundle downstairs.

He put his folded request beside the key.

“You've read it.”

“Several times.”

“And?”

“I won't issue that order.”

At least the answer had come plainly. Varethun had spent the night preparing for another patient conversation that would end exactly where the last had ended. He drew the spare chair out with his foot and sat.

“They agreed to assist me.”

“For an afternoon.”

“We were close.”

“One couldn't keep her hand steady enough to lift a cup.”

“I saw.”

“Did you?”

Varethun leaned back. He could still see the cup, water spilling over the rim as the woman tried to carry it away. He had taken it from her. Someone had thanked him for that, as though fetching water was what they had come together to accomplish.

“I offered to take her place.”

“At a task you weren't holding. While continuing your own.”

“I understood what she was doing.”

“She said she couldn't continue.”

“She didn't have to continue. That's what I've been trying to explain.”

The Keeper drew the request towards himself. Varethun had written it carefully. There were no accusations in it, no mention of the people who had put their chairs away before he finished describing the next attempt. Only a proposed arrangement of work, a request for assistance, and, at the bottom, the authority he thought necessary to keep the arrangement intact.

The old man's thumb rested on that last paragraph.

“You want me to make their refusal meaningless.”

“I want them to trust the person directing them.”

“They trusted you enough to tell you they were finished.”

Varethun pulled the paper back. Its edge caught beneath the inkpot, scattering a few dry flakes from the rim. He brushed them away too sharply. A black mark crossed the side of his hand.

“Do you know how many people have asked me for help?” he said.

“Yes.”

“You can't know all of them.”

“Some have asked me too.”

“And what did you tell them?”

The Keeper looked at the board covering the damaged page.

Varethun wanted him to say it. That he had offered what he could. That there were limits. That a person ought to be grateful for a small intervention even when the thing beyond it remained unaltered. He knew the answers so well that he had begun hearing them before anyone spoke.

“I told them what I thought I could do,” the Keeper said. “I've been wrong.”

For a moment Varethun had no answer. He bent to the bag at his feet and brought out the transcription.

The folds had grown soft with use. He opened them with the care he had denied his own request and weighted the corners with the key and the inkpot. Rows of copied characters crossed the sheet. The hand was precise, preserving irregular spaces and the outlines of broken stone; beside it, in a different ink, stood the translated passage that had occupied him for months.

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End of excerpt. This site presents a selection from the manuscript.