In the second drawer of the metal cabinet in the records office, at the border post in the Surxondaryo region where Davron Rasulov had been typing for four years, there were still a hundred and twenty forms of the old kind, the ones with the box printed at the bottom left where the number of days was entered and where the number entered, in the practice of that office and of every office like it, had for years been ten, ten being the days the prosecutor could authorise for anyone carrying no document; and nobody had withdrawn those forms, nobody had counted them, nobody had written a circular to say that from a certain date the box was no longer to be filled in.

The Constitutional Court had ruled on the twenty-second of September, and the ruling had been in force since the twenty-fifth: Davron knew this because the bulletin arrived in a grey envelope on Wednesdays, and because on Wednesdays, his shift over, he read it sitting in the office chair with his jacket over his shoulders rather than on the coat stand, a habit taken up the year the coat stand was moved behind the door without his asking why, just as he had asked why about none of the other things that changed places in that office.

(In the room at the end of the corridor, the one with the high window and the cot bolted to the wall, a man brought in on the twenty-eighth stood near the door, one hand resting on the frame, looking out at the piece of courtyard visible from there, calling to no one, in the manner of those who have already called.)

The file on the man brought in on the twenty-eighth had been lying on the table for four days, with the record typed up by Davron that same evening, the prosecutor's authorisation attached in copy, the box for the days filled in with ten as the form in front of the prosecutor required, and the date of entry written twice, in figures and in words, because that was how Davron had been taught in his first month and that was how he had done it for four thousand records, without getting a single one wrong in its form; or rather, without getting a single one wrong in any of the things that can be checked by reading back.

The twenty-eighth was three days after the twenty-fifth.

At ten past three Davron took the file to Bekzod, who held it without opening it, because he knew what was inside; he said the most reasonable thing that could be said in that office on that afternoon, namely that the ruling had been in force for a week, that the internal regulation comes afterwards, with the new forms, and that until the regulation a border post works with the forms it has; and then he said the rest, which was the true part: that if a sheet left this office today for the district court, it would not be only the man in the room at the end who walked out, every record at the post would become open to question, including those typed by Davron over the four years, including those from the months when people came through the crossing who were now in a different kind of register.

Davron said the sentence he always said, I write what is dictated to me, and Bekzod handed the file back without answering, then went to fetch the duty notices for signing.

At ten past four Davron filled out the application, file number, date of entry, article twenty-seven, the name of the matter, two lines of statement, in the typewriter hand that came to him even longhand after four years; and he left the application on the table beside the date stamp with its nearly dry pad, because outgoing post closed at five, and after five a sheet filled out and not stamped is a sheet in a folder, where a sheet can stay as long as anyone likes.

At four fifty-two, with the Court's bulletin still open on the table at the page where article twenty-seven stood printed in small type beneath a line of commentary that explained nothing, Davron took the date stamp from the cardboard box he had kept it in for four years, turned the units wheel with his thumb to the two and the months wheel to October, pressed it on the pad twice because the pad was nearly dry, one press would not have left the date legible; then, not because he had decided in that moment, nor because Bekzod had given him any order one way or the other, but because the application was filled out, the envelope was open on the table, the outgoing post sack was on the chair by the door with its strap already loosened, and the register lay open at the day's page with the date box blank beside the file number he had himself written twenty minutes earlier, he brought the stamp down on the box.

The click was one.

Beside the date he wrote the addressee, district court, then the matter, application for a judicial order in respect of a person detained, and after the matter the initials, two letters and a full stop, which were his, the same as stood at the foot of the four thousand records in the metal cabinet, with the difference that those had been dictated by someone else. He put the sheet in the envelope, closed the envelope, slid it into the sack beneath the other three. He pulled the strap tight.

In the corridor, through the open door, Bekzod could be heard signing the duty notices leaning on the sill, one after another, each signature making the same sound of paper.

At five past five Davron carried the sack to the gate, where the driver was waiting with the engine running because the post van had an old battery, switching it off meant pushing it; he signed the receipt on the bonnet; and holding the receipt by one corner, raising it towards the window of the sentry box to see whether the carbon had taken, he saw that the date could be read from the back as well, the second of October, reversed, through the thin paper, the figures from that side looking like other figures and yet being those.

The van pulled out.

On his way back, in the corridor, the duty notice board had four new sheets, pinned under the same drawing pin, the fresh signatures having taken the damp of the wall and spreading a little for that reason in the curves of the letters. The third sheet was the week's shift allocation. Under barrier, night shift, from Monday, there was a single name, and the name was his; and under records window, which was the line above, there was the name of the boy who did the photocopying, written with the same pen.

Davron read the four notices from the first to the last, even the ones that did not concern him, as he read everything back.

Then he went into the office, slipped the cover over the typewriter, and opened the first drawer to take out the small spoon, which had been there four years and served to open envelopes. He left it where it was. He closed the drawer. The printer on the right had been left on, as it was every evening, and its green light was reflected in the glass of the metal cabinet, behind which, in the second drawer, the hundred and twenty forms of the old kind lay where they had always lain.