Half asleep Oren registered that Marin was making more noise in the kitchen than she should at this hour.
Not dishes, not water.
Footsteps, back and forth, back and forth, and a tune she was humming that cut off the second his door creaked.
He came out and found her at the stove with her back to him.
Something sat on the table under a cloth he didn’t recognize.
“Morning,” she said, without turning around.
Totally normal voice.
That made him more suspicious than if she’d sounded nervous.
“Morning.” He nodded at the table.
“What’s that?” “Nothing.
Sit, the kettle’s almost there.” He sat and kept looking at the lump under the cloth, and she grabbed it and stuck it on the shelf behind her before he got a proper look.
He let it go.
He reached for the bread, and that was when he remembered the date.
It was the day their mother used to make a fuss about, every year, before she got sick and died, back when Oren was small enough to think a little cake could make one day different from the others.
A smile started to come up.
He pushed it back down.
Marin poured the tea and sat across from him and watched him eat, not saying anything, obviously not saying anything, for a few minutes.
Then she jumped up.
“Wait here.” And she was gone into her room.
She came back with the same thing in her hand, no cloth now, and put it down in front of him fast.
A notebook.
Real leather cover, darker and heavier than his old one, it’s edges stitched carefully, the pages thick.
He looked at it.
Then at her.
“I got it last week,” she said, not looking at him, picking at her sleeve where nothing needed picking.
“At the merchant who brings things in from the big city.
And I thought, well.
He writes in those cheap pages every night and they fall apart in a month, because he’s scared of forgetting things.
He should have something that lasts.” Oren took it and flipped through the blank pages, then looked up.
“How much was it?” “Doesn’t matter.” “Marin.” “It doesn’t matter I said.” She got up to put her cup in the basin, faster then the cup needed.
“It’s your birthday.
You don’t have to keep accounts with me.” “You never spend anything on yourself.
I saw your shoes last week.
The front’s cracking.” “My shoes are fine.” “Marin.” She turned around at last and crossed her arms, trying to look stern and not managing it for long.
“Fine.
More than I should have.
So what?
Buy me shoes, then, if it bugs you so much.” “Maybe I will.” “You won’t.
You’ll forget by tomorrow.” “I won’t forget.” “We’ll see.” She smiled properly then and sat back down.
“Anyway, it’s a present for me too.
I won’t have to hear you moan every month about the ink going through onto the next page.” He laughed a bit.
He held the notebook in both hands and felt the leather.
“Thank you,” he said, quieter than he normally talked.
They went out to the market after, no plan, the way they did on rest days.
Marin said today needed something sweet, more than usual, even if it meant one piece between two of them.
There was a little shop that sold honey-and-nut sweets, run by a woman who knew Marin and said her name before she said hello to Oren.
The whole place smelled of burnt sugar.
“There you are,” the woman said, bringing a tray from the back.
“I put aside the kind you like.
I thought you’d dropped me this week.” “Never.
I was just busy.” Marin pointed.
“These two.” “Special occassion?” The woman wrapped them in paper nicer than she usually used.
“My brother’s birthday.” The woman gave Oren a big smile.
“Then he gets one more.
On the house.” She dropped a third one in before either of them could argue.
They thanked her and moved off.
Marin ate hers too fast, like she was afraid she’d change her mind halfway and be sorry she hadn’t made it last.
“You know everybody here,” Oren said.
“I don’t know everybody.
I know who sells good stuff.
Different thing.” “Pretty much the same thing.” “No, it matters more.” She laughed and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“You know people from work.
Numbers, seals, records.
I know them by what they sell, what they run out of, what they complain about.
You get a picture of the village from that.
You’d never get it from a record.” He thought about it and couldn’t find anything wrong with it.
After that they just walked, until they reached the end of the road where it opened onto the fields, and sat on the low stone wall between the road and the first field.
“You know what I heard this week?” Marin said after a while, looking at the horizon.
“A woman was talking about a theater.
In the capital.
A whole building, just so people can watch stories.
They sit in rows and the actors stand up there in costumes, doing different voices, like it’s actually happening.” “Sounds wierd.” “Sounds wonderful.” She turned to him.
“Don’t you want to see it?
Once?” “I don’t know.
Maybe.” “You never know anything,” she said, laughing, not really complaining.
“Well, I want to see it.
Not now.
Someday.” “And then what?
After you’ve seen it?” She thought about that, like nobody had asked her quite that way before.
“First I’d see the city.
All of it.
The markets, the buildings, everything.” A pause, and a little smile.
“And after that I’d decide what to do with my life.” “That’s not a plan.” “It’s the start of one.
I’ve got some money put by.
Not much.
Something.
And I hear seamstresses get work there easier than here.” She looked at her hands.
“I’m not bad at it, you know.” “You’re not bad at it.
True.” “So it’s not impossible.
It just needs time.” Neither of them said anything for a few minutes.
The wind moved the leaves at the edge of the field.
Oren had never heard her talk about it like this, so evenly.
“And you?” she said after a while.
“Would you come, if I went?” “Maybe.
I don’t know what I’d do there.” “Work in another archive.
There must be one somewhere that size.” “Maybe.” She smiled and bumped his shoulder with hers.
“You don’t have to decide now.
We’ve got time.” They got home shortly before sunset.
The next morning at the Archive the eastern section felt different.
Martin was standing at the mouth of the corridor talking low to a clerk Oren had never seen, who kept sniffing and wiping his nose on his cuff, and on the main table there was a stack of papers, neater than usual, with a fresher seal than anything they normally got.
“Came in early this morning,” Martin said as Oren walked up, tipping his head at the stack.
“Lists from the courthouse.
We sort them and file them today, before a copy goes up in the square.” “Lists of what?” Martin gave him a look.
He wasn’t surprised.
He just assumed Oren already knew.
“Names for review.
The conscription.
They’ve been going on about it for weeks.” Oren sat down at his table and started in the way he always did, sorting by type, matching seals.
His hand was slower than usual.
His mind kept sliding off the numbers and onto the names, which never happened with this kind of work.
They sorted almost till evening.
Martin read out names now and then, ones he knew from his village or the next ones over, in the voice you’d use for a tax record.
Oren got to the page for his own village late in the afternoon, when the light from the high windows had gone yellow.
He read the names one after another.
Some he knew well, boys he’d seen playing in the square a few years back.
Some he only knew by face.
Then his own.
His hand just stopped.
He read the line again.
Full name, village number, and a small note with the review date, about two months out.
He stayed where he was.
He didn’t say anything, didn’t call anyone.
All he had to do was put the usual stamp on it and file it, like all the other pages that day, and that’s what he did.
His hand did it.
“Find yours?” Martin said from his own table, not looking straight at him.
“Yes.” Martin didn’t add anything, he went back to work.
He got home when it was nearly dark, lamplight from the kitchen window spilling onto the street.
Marin was making dinner.
She asked how the day was and he said busy, lots of work, and that was all he said.
They ate and talked about small things like every night.
He didn’t tell her.
Tonight didn’t feel right.
Afterward he sat in his room and lit the little lamp on the desk.
The new notebook was where he’d left it that morning, and next to it his old one, on its last few pages.
He picked up the new one and opened it.
The first page was blank, whiter and cleaner than he was used to.
He held the pen over it for a moment and didn’t write.
He looked at the blank page, then at the old notebook beside it, the one with the folded note inside that he’d written to himself weeks ago and still didn’t understand.
Finally he wrote the date at the top.
Stopped again.
Then, smaller than his usual hand: “Today Marin gave me this notebook.
Today I also found my name on a list.” That was all.
He shut it and put it up on the shelf over the desk next to the old one.
He turned out the lamp and sat in the dark a few minutes before he got up to go to bed.
Your support means everything.”