Featured legend
An Inventory of Those Who Remain
Six objects, a clerk in a hurry to leave, and the key to a workshop someone is still using.
I — An iron key
Lucius had to finish the inventory before the cart arrived. He had to count the things left in the office rooms and the storeroom across the yard, tie up the tablets and hand over the keys. That evening he was leaving with the people taking the records away.
He had set a long iron key on the table. The administrator had left it there that morning with the others. Only this one had no label tied to it.
Lucius had tried the keys to the front rooms. He had not tried this one anywhere. He had entered it at the end of the list: one key, use unknown.
The woman who came into the yard was carrying a vessel of water, her sleeves stiff with dried clay. She stopped in the doorway when she saw the iron.
‘That’s mine.’
Lucius covered the key with his hand.
‘The administrator gave it to me.’
‘I gave it to him yesterday, so he could open the storeroom while I was at the kiln.’
‘Which storeroom?’
The woman pointed to the room at the back of the yard.
‘The workshop.’
On his list, the room was marked empty. It had been locked when he went past.
‘I have to finish,’ he said.
The woman put down the vessel.
‘So do I.’
II — An oil lamp
The lamp stood on a shelf in the office. Its nozzle was blackened and a little oil remained at the bottom. Lucius had placed it beside the things to be packed, because he had worked by its light until late.
The woman wiped her palms on her apron.
‘Iulia,’ she said. ‘If you need to write down a name.’
He turned the tablet over. Iulia was looking at the lamp.
‘Are you taking that too?’
‘It was left in the office.’
‘I brought it when you ran out of oil. The day before yesterday.’
Lucius remembered that the lamp had burnt well. He had not asked who had filled it. He had searched for the right words for a letter, then forgotten to put it out.
On its underside, Iulia showed him a small dent made with her thumb before it was fired.
‘That isn’t an ownership mark,’ he said.
‘No. It slipped in my hand.’
Lucius moved the lamp away from the chest. A streak of oil remained on the wood.
He wiped it with a cloth, then gave the lamp back. In the inventory he struck through its number and wrote beside it that it had been returned.
He had still not entered the storeroom. From the street came the sound of a wheel striking the stones. He went out to the gate, but the passing cart was loaded with firewood.
III — A cup without a handle
The cup stood on the windowsill, with fresh water in it. Lucius had used it that morning and was now counting it among the vessels left behind. Iulia reached for it, but he picked it up before she could.
‘Yours as well?’
‘No. It belongs to the man who guards the gate at night.’
The man had not come for two days. He had said he was leaving to look for his daughter, and Lucius did not know whether he would return. The cup’s handle had broken off long ago; the edge had worn smooth.
‘I’ll give him another if he comes past my place,’ Iulia said.
‘How do you know he will?’
‘I don’t. That’s why I leave it here.’
Lucius drank the remaining water and set the cup back on the sill. It was the only thing he had of the gatekeeper, apart from a name on a list of payments.
He went back to the table and added the name beside the cup. Then he scraped the word ‘abandoned’ from the column heading. For now he left the space blank.
Iulia lifted the water vessel and filled the cup again.
IV — A bone tool
In the chest beneath the table, Lucius had found a piece of smoothed bone with one narrow end. He had turned it over in his hands before entering it among the things of no known use.
Iulia asked for it. He gave it to her, but kept hold of the tablet.
The woman took a small lump of clay from her pocket, dampened it and pressed an edge with her fingers. She drew the bone across it. The edge was left smooth.
‘I’ve been looking for this since yesterday.’
‘How did it get into the office?’
‘I left it beside the lamp. I’d come to ask about the rent.’
Then Lucius remembered what the administrator had said: the woman with the workshop had some payments to settle. He had not said the room was empty. Lucius had found the door locked and filled in the space beside it himself.
‘Are you still working here?’
Iulia looked at the clay on the table.
‘I have pots in the kiln.’
‘I know. But after we leave?’
‘I have more pots to make.’
Lucius walked to the door at the back of the yard. There was old dust beside the frame, and wet clay at the threshold. He lifted his sandal to avoid treading on it.
V — A coin
Iulia had a coin knotted into a corner of her apron. She struggled to undo the knot; the clay had dried on the cloth as well.
‘For the room,’ she said, putting it on the table.
Lucius did not take it. The money remaining in the office had to go into the travelling chest too, and the administrator kept its accounts. He did not want an extra sum he could not explain.
‘I don’t collect the payments.’
‘Then give me the key, and I’ll pay when someone tells me who to pay.’
‘I was told to hand over all the keys.’
‘Were you told to write that it’s empty too?’
Lucius lowered his eyes to his list. Iulia said nothing more. She pushed the coin to the edge of the table and began picking dried clay from the folds of her apron.
The administrator came in shortly afterwards, carrying a cloth bundle under his arm.
‘Much left to do?’
Lucius showed him the entry for the room.
‘I marked it empty. I didn’t go inside.’
The man looked towards Iulia.
‘We were going to settle the payment before I left.’
The woman picked up the coin. The administrator took it, counted something on his fingers and asked Lucius for a clean tablet.
Lucius pulled the key from beneath the list he had laid over it.
VI — An inventory
When the cart stopped, only the cloth, the water vessel and the tablets remained to be gathered up in the office. The administrator had gone out to speak to the man driving the horses. Iulia stayed in the doorway, the lamp in one hand and the bone tool in the other.
Lucius reread the list. The lamp had Iulia’s name beside it. The cup had the gatekeeper’s. The tool no longer appeared among the things to be taken away.
Beside the workshop, the scraped space was too small. Lucius turned the tablet over and began on the other side: room occupied, used by Iulia, potter.
He took it outside to the administrator. The man read the line, then told him to add that payment had been received. He too looked towards the workshop, as though only then noticing the vessels set beside the wall to dry.
Lucius tied the tablet to the others. It did not fit neatly into the packet; he undid the cord and passed it round again, leaving the knot to one side.
‘The key,’ the administrator said.
Lucius picked it up from the table. The iron had warmed in the light coming through the doorway.
‘It belongs to the room across the yard.’
The administrator gestured towards the woman and bent down for his cloth bundle.
Iulia put the lamp and the bone tool on the threshold to free her hand. Lucius gave her the key. She walked past the cart, nudged a potsherd away from the doorframe with her foot and fitted the iron into the lock.
She had to lift the door a little. Then the key turned, and Iulia opened the workshop.
