The Survey Line

Letter 13 of the Book of Forgetting

The morning came in grey and still, and I was at my bench with the rangefinder open when Tobiah Sharon came in, holding a sheet of paper. He was the surveyor, a lean man of about forty with a leather case slung across his chest and a pencil behind his ear.

"Fernando," he said. "I need you to look at this."

He set the paper down. Numbers in three columns, his hand neat and small.

"Two hundred twelve going out," he said. "One hundred ninety-six coming back. Same line, same instrument. I measured it four times yesterday." He tapped the paper. "Hillel the tailor borrowed my rangefinder and got the same. Efrat the librarian got the same. Gilead Meron got the same."

I looked at the numbers. "Same instrument?"

"Same instrument. Calibrated last week, against the survey standard in your workshop." He looked at me. "It's not the instrument, Fernando. It's the line."

"The line doesn't move," I said.

"The line doesn't move. But the fog does." He pulled the pencil from behind his ear and made a small mark on the paper. "I went out at first light. Set the post at the north line. Walked toward the fog with the rangefinder at my eye. At two hundred twelve, the fog stopped me. I turned around. Walked back. At one hundred ninety-six, the fog stopped me again."

"You walked into it?" I said.

"I walked into it." He put the pencil down. "It felt like walking through cold water. Then there was a wall of it, grey and quiet, and I couldn't go further. I turned, and it was there too."

"Both sides?"

"Both sides." He folded the paper. "I measured the air temperature at both points. Same. Wind speed, same. Light, same. But the distance is different going out than coming back."

I held the rangefinder in my hands. It was a good instrument. I had built it myself, and I trusted it.

"Maybe the fog is moving," I said.

"Maybe it is." He put the paper in his case. "But it's moving at different speeds in each direction, and I don't know what that means."

He left, and I sat at my bench a moment. Then I went out.

The survey post was at the north road, where the fog pressed against the town's edge like a grey wall. Ivo stood there, heavy in his grey-green jacket, his radio clipped to his shoulder. He watched me approach and nodded.

"Tobiah's numbers," he said.

"You've heard."

"I've heard. And I've seen what happens at the line." He gestured with his chin. "Guard turned back three people this morning. Obed Kfir at the end of the north road. Seth Nir at the south. Liora Yaron at the west. All of them standing at the fog, looking in. All of them told to stay at their work."

I walked to the line. The fog was close enough to touch, grey and quiet, the air cold around my face. I raised the rangefinder and took a reading. Two hundred twelve meters to the post behind me.

I turned around. One hundred ninety-six.

"What's it like inside?" I said.

"Cold," Ivo said. "Quiet. Like being underwater without the water." He paused. "Obed came back with something on his shirt. White dust. He couldn't say where it came from."

We stood there a moment. A bird came out of the fog, grey and small, circled once, and went back in.

"Tirzah the shopkeeper got a seed this morning," Ivo said. "A bird dropped it at her feet. She brought it to me. It's not in the reference list."

I looked at him. "Rivka found one last week. Same seed, same way."

"I remember." He pulled his jacket tighter. "Two seeds. From a fog that moves different going out than coming back."

A guard called to him from the road, and Ivo walked off. I stood at the line a moment longer, the cold pressing at my face.

When I got back to my workshop, Rivka Raz was there, holding a pot of earth. A small green shoot stood in the center, two leaves, smooth and bright.

"It grew," she said. "Overnight. It wasn't there yesterday."

I bent down. The leaves were larger than the seed, the color of new grass.

"Do you know what it is?" I said.

"No." She set the pot on my bench. "But it came out of the fog, Fernando. And it's growing."

I looked at the shoot. Then I opened the Book of Forgetting and wrote: A seed from the fog, planted, has grown overnight. A surveyor measured the same line twice and got two different distances. A bird still circles and returns.

I did not know what any of it meant. But the shoot stood green in its pot, and the fog still pressed at the edge of town, and the numbers lay folded in Tobiah's case, waiting.