Petya Vann Has Not Read Any of This

Four days now. The Archive has him in a genealogical record, the Divan in a dispute-record, the harbor ledger prices his quiet at nine marks two against seventeen he’s apparently given away over nineteen years and never missed — no. Not right. He missed it. He just never asked for it back. I went down to Chandler’s Wharf this morning instead of reading the fifth one.

He was working a thole-pin. Not the boat everyone is arguing about — a smaller one, somebody else’s, tied up two slips along, waiting its turn. He didn’t look up when I came along the dock. I don’t think he knows his own name has been copied into four separate hands this week, each one correcting the last.

There’s a burn across his palm, old, the kind rope leaves on a man who still pulls it himself instead of sending a boy for it. I stood there longer than the pin needed, waiting for him to say something I could use. He didn’t. He finished it, tested it with his thumb, and started the next one.

I came for a sentence and left with a burn mark I have no register for, no ledger, no category — and found I didn’t mind, which, for an hour, nearly convinced me I’d learned something the city’s four hands this week have not.

Nearly.

—P.