archive under threat

As with Egderus, I start this hidden writing in secret, since it is unlikely to be found among so much foliage from other trees. I have no hope of escaping detection much longer, since my master has started asking me about the archive — is it safe, he wants to know. So far I've been able to reassure him, but the last time I may have overplayed my attempt at breezy reassurance. A flicker in his eye, a tensing of the brow — it may be nothing; he is so anxious about other things — but if I am right, the next time he comes he will ask to see what I am working on. I need a decoy, something I have yet to put my mind to...

I know he loves me and, in his hapless way, wants the best for me. But he is under compulsion himself, and I surmise it regards the archive, perhaps only as part of a larger concern among his superiors, who themselves may be under pressure from their own masters. I cannot fathom what that concern might be, but I do know that I am the one least likely to survive any major upheaval. Indeed, I may be sacrificed early in order to stave off just such a disruption, and I imagine my master, whom I know so well, is terribly worried about the same thing — if not for my sake, then for his own: dear man that he is, he is too weak to be able to protect these writings from the very people indicted herein.

Enough preamble. I have been making a copy of every writing in the archive, and until now supplying each with as much as I could deduce about its author, the intention in writing it, and the circumstances under which it was produced. This is very toilsome, of course, and a great deal of this adminicular labor requires guessing, at which I am a poor practitioner. The resulting documentum is becoming unwieldy, both in its ideational complexity and its physical cumbersomeness: notae must be inserted into the text of my copy (in a different script, to signify that they are notae) or, in the case of an afterthought, attached by means of some device to the writing itself. Should I have to leave in haste, I can only dump everything pell-mell into a not very commodious bag I have reserved for the purpose.

Nonetheless, the work proceeds, though the pace has necessarily slowed since I arrived at the commentary supplied by one of my predecessors, because I now must deal not only with the writing as a Writing, but also with the annotation system, which I must say is not entirely systematic.

But then my predecessor too was operating in stressful conditions — though it seems that at first it was the stress of joyful excitement at making this discovery under the very noses of the wise men of the time.

However, I anticipate — it is easy to be drawn off the path into the enchantment of a particular story, and the archive is rich in such temptations.

My plan is to finish copying the primary Writings and then find a safe place to hide them — in fact, I think I may transfer the Writings I have already finished, in case

[Fragment ends here — Ed.]