Form Nineteen — hints

Take a number, then go and be refused. That is not a joke — a refusal here names exactly what is missing, and the naming is how the graph gets drawn. Apply for Form 40 at counter one, Form 12 at counter two and Form 19 at counter three, and watch what each of them tells you.

Correct. Nothing is going to work today. What you are doing today is finding out the shape of the problem, and by the third refusal you will have it.

Look at it. Your name is in it with a line through it and a file number, and the file number is not yours, and it is two digits transposed and it is obvious.

Type it. It draws what you have established, and it draws the circle once you have found it.

Ask Mrs Pilar at counter three what else there is. Not for a form by number — what else there is. Feliks will tell you to do this if you ask him for advice.

Upstairs, mostly. The card on the stair says BY APPOINTMENT and nobody has ever enforced it and everybody goes up.

Ask her about the question you asked yesterday, and about the four forms, and about 1944, and about the archive. She has been thinking about this since Tuesday and she has the key.

Ordinances by number and year. Nine 1944 cards are stamped RESCINDED in red. One is marked SUPERSEDED IN PRACTICE, in pencil, because there is no stamp for it.

Ask Wanda, and then ask the Director about the word superseded. He has been waiting three years for somebody to ask him a real question and this is one.

Look at the 1944 volume in the archive. It is four paragraphs and it is real and there is a photostat of it in your coat afterwards.

No. It requires two persons of good standing, each holding a current Identity Booklet, and their booklet numbers go on a form in a file for ever.

No, and every single one of them has to say so, and it costs each of them something to say it. Ask Pilar about herself, Ostrowski about witnessing, Wanda about it if you can bring yourself to, and the Director about who qualifies.

Ask the Director. It means a current booklet and no adverse entry and it has never meant anything else and he has looked.

Across the yard. There is a man there who has had his booklet in his inside pocket since the twentieth of March waiting for you to ask him something, and he did not know what.

Not in the building — everyone in it is staff. On the steps, where thirty-one people stand at six in the morning and twenty-five of them qualify.

Ask Bohdan, who will say no and tell you exactly why and then tell you who to ask. Then ask Mrs Sadowska about her booklet, and about witnessing, and about the risk.

She is, and she is right to be, and she will give you the honest answer rather than a brave one. Ask her anyway.

Because you have not asked her. You have talked about it near her four times in three days. ask sadowska about ask and she will tell you so herself, and then ask her properly.

Go to counter three and the game lays out all four. You have known about three of them for days.

apply for the psi at counter three with both witnesses present, then take it to counter one and apply to amend the register. Six weeks. Dull. Still true in 1975.

Look at it. It is your statement of fact, it is checkable against returns three floors up in this building, and you have spent eleven weeks learning exactly what does and does not get checked.

He has offered, to a ledger, without being asked, and he has said out loud that he has not been asked. Ask him about the offer. Then decide whether you are going to be the person who takes it, knowing the file is audited in April.

The lawful one costs nobody anything and takes six weeks. The lie costs nobody anything and takes four minutes and you will carry it for thirteen years. Ostrowski costs Ostrowski. And giving up is four years of a tobacco tin, and it is not a tragedy, and it is not nothing.