The woman at the records desk put my copied transfer slip beside the request for a formal citation.
"Which volume?"
"The archive's receipt index."
"That's the series. I need the volume."
I looked at the slip. Transfer mark, receipt reference, destination. I had copied everything I thought an academy clerk would need, but nothing about the book it had come from.
"Can you find it from the receipt?"
"Across the whole series, yes." She turned the request toward me and tapped the space for the source. "Not by the time this desk closes."
Behind me a man carrying a leather document tube sat down heavily on the waiting bench. I moved my notebook away from the edge of the desk so he wouldn't knock it with the tube if he stood again.
Two days earlier I had filled a page with my mother's voice. This morning I had taken the slip from the notebook's front cover and looked again at the loop I had corrected in the archive. Arriving at the academy with a number in my own uncertain handwriting was asking for trouble. I wanted a reference its clerk could check without having to believe me.
The woman waited while I went through the pages at the front. I had not written down the volume. There was no point going through them twice.
"The keeper entered it when I consulted it," I said. "He made me sign."
She pulled the request back. "Then we can use his entry. Was it under your name?"
"Yes."
She added a note for the archive and handed it to a clerk collecting a stack of returns from the other end of the desk. He put the note on top and left. My signature was in that other register whether I liked it or not; at least she knew where to start.
"While we wait," she said, "what exactly do you need their office to verify?"
"The public entry corresponding to this receipt. Its transfer mark and destination." I moved the slip so she could see both. "I know it won't let me collect anything. I want them to be able to tell me whether their acknowledgment matches."
"Put that here. They'll need a purpose for the catalogue consultation."
I had written academy preparation, which explained very little. Below it I added the comparison I wanted made. She read it and nodded toward the signature line.
The soft glove made the pen clumsy. I slid it off, keeping the narrow strip of linen in place, and finished the signature with my index finger resting clear of the barrel. She waited until the ink had settled before taking the form.
"I have to compare the source. You may wait."
The man on the bench got up at once, holding his tube across both hands. I moved aside and let him occupy the desk. He wanted a countersignature. The woman wanted the original letter rather than the copy he had brought. They had clearly discussed this before; his first objection began in the middle of a sentence.
I sat where he had been. The bench was lower than I expected. I lowered myself carefully and opened the notebook without reading it, one finger keeping my place near the front. On the desk, the clerk laid my corrected request in a tray and took the man's letter out of its tube. He stayed standing while she read.
By the time she called me back, the household receipt index was open beside her. I recognized the polished corner of its cover. Someone had brought it from the archive while I was looking at the courtyard through the window.
"This mark?" she asked.
I checked the page before answering. The academy acknowledgment, the restricted-catalogue reference in place of a description, the empty return column: all there. The loop I had copied twice joined the stroke she was pointing to.
"Yes."
"The citation will refer to this volume and leaf, with the public receipt reference. The receiving office can compare its own acknowledgment."
I pointed at the empty return column. "Keep that in the extract, even blank."
She wrote 'No return entered on this page' and drew a boundary around the field so nothing could be added without showing.
She copied the citation in a hand so even that my earlier slip looked careless beside it. I watched the transfer mark take shape, checked each character against the book and asked her to stop once while I found the matching stroke. She waited with the nib lifted. The next time she reached for the ink, she left the bottle on my side so I could see the page without leaning across her arm.
At the bottom she wrote the purpose from my request. Then she read the entry back, including the lower repository beneath the academy and the reference to a description this extract did not contain. The volume and leaf were there now, alongside the numbers I had brought with me.
"They can find it from that?"
"Without searching the whole series." She checked the source one last time and turned the index away.
She placed the citation beneath a weighted blotter and entered its issue in a second register. I signed that line too. My father could find out what I had requested. The answer I had given this desk would at least be the same answer I could give him.
The clerk removed the blotter, stamped the citation, and waited before lifting it by its corners. I kept my hand out until she offered the paper.
"Don't fold through the stamp while it's soft."
I had already begun to bend the bottom edge. I stopped. She passed me two plain pieces of stiff paper to keep it flat on the way upstairs and filed my request beneath its issue number.
I wanted to throw away the old slip. Instead I laid it beside the formal copy and compared them once more. The uneven loop was mine, not a second mark. I returned it to the notebook's front cover and carried the citation separately, between the stiff sheets, with my left hand under them.
Back in my room I moved the examination diagrams into a pile. The stamp had set without taking an impression from the cover sheet. I laid the citation beside the notebook, where I could find it without unfolding anything, and put the right glove on top of the diagrams.