The outlying settlement came into view around a bend in the river by midday: four homesteads, a bathhouse, vegetable plots under the snow.
Smoke rose steadily from the chimneys. People waited by the outermost homestead: a peasant in a sheepskin coat, two women, an old man and children hiding behind their skirts. Surveyors were seen so rarely here that every inhabitant had come out to meet them.
Kapiton consulted the sheet.
"The outlying settlement of Crooked Spruce," he said. "At the last survey, it was listed as a village of eight households."
"Four are left," the peasant said with dignity. "But we live here. We plough as far as the stream there, and the hayfields beyond the stream are ours."
The surveyors set up the plane table. Prokop carried ranging poles and listened.
"The approved scale for the belt is two versts to the inch," the second surveyor said, running his finger over the sheet. "The conventional symbol for a settlement applies from eight households. At this scale, four households are smaller than the symbol."
"Enter the outlying settlement without a symbol," Kapiton said. His voice had suddenly grown duller.
"And the hayfields beyond the stream?"
"The hayfields are smaller than the symbol."
In his even hand, Zotik wrote: structures within a locality, not subject to separate registration.
The peasant in the sheepskin coat followed the surveyors around and peered cautiously at the plane table, trying not to get in anyone's way.
"But us, where are you putting us?" he asked at last.
"We are entering you," the second surveyor said, without lying.
And they were. For the first time, Prokop saw the work from within. No one lied. Every figure was correct. The homesteads stood in their proper places, but there was no symbol for them on the sheet: the conventional mark began at eight households, the scale had already been approved, the deadline was drawing near and the belt was long.
The people stood beside their homes and watched themselves not being put on the map.
Not one of them understood what had happened. They saw that the sovereign's men had walked, measured, written and gone away. The sheet would go into the register, the register into distribution. In a year or three, a paper would arrive: the empty lands within the locality of Crooked Spruce were assigned to a contractor for logging. The peasant in the sheepskin coat would show the paper to his neighbours and ask where the mistake was. There would be no mistake anywhere.
The settlement's children ran after the party's sledges as far as the bend. The eldest girl carried the youngest on her back and waved. Frol, who had not been surprised by anything in thirty years, suddenly took off his mitten and waved back. Then he walked in silence for a long time and lost count of the versts, which had not happened since the day he took his oath.
What had been done to Burn was different, and worse. Crooked Spruce had been left off the map because of the approved scale. The surveyors had simply failed to reach Burn by the deadline, and then one wrong word turned eighteen households into burnt-over waste ground. Prokop had already known how it happened, but only now, seeing it happen to others, did he understand the whole sequence: haste produced an inaccurate entry, and the approved sheet turned it into law.
He carried the ranging poles to the sledges and returned.
"Mr Topographer," he said quietly to Kapiton. "May I ask something? What if the settlement symbol began at four households?"
"The scale was approved by the general," Kapiton said.
"And who approves things for the general?"
"The deadline," Kapiton said, and walked towards the plane table.
That evening they lodged in the settlement's threshing barn. The owners let them stay for nothing and gave them milk as well: they thought the survey had entered them in its records, and they were grateful.
Prokop did not sleep.
He went out to the sledges to check the seals on the crates and saw Zotik by the light of a candle stub. The clerk sat on the driver's bench with his back to the threshing barn and, as he did every evening, copied the day's entries into the fair journal. The rough copy lay on his left, the clean one on his right, and Zotik transcribed line after line.
Then his hand stopped.
Zotik took a scrap of cloth from inside his coat and unfolded it. Within lay a worn silver coin. He wrapped it in a sheet of paper, moistened his pencil and wrote a single word on the wrapper. Prokop had not meant to pry, but from the darkness he could still make out the word over Zotik's shoulder:
"Hold on."
Zotik hid the packet against his chest beneath the journals and sat without moving for a long time. The candle stub crackled. There was nothing in the clerk's face but weariness.
Prokop left without asking questions. Zotik had the right to keep his secret.
And the next morning he saw the sheet.
Kapiton ordered the old surveys of the belt brought out of the archive crate so that they could check the reference lines after finding the blind ranging pole. Prokop carried folders to the plane table. Deep in the third folder, he found a sheet that made him freeze.
The old cutting. The river. The edge of the bog.
And across the familiar place, over the white, ran a word written in someone else's quick hand: burn.
The very sheet. Not the copy from the register, but the original field sheet, with notes in the margins and a wax stain near the lower edge.
Prokop stood holding the death of his village in his hands.
In the corner of the sheet, where it belonged, stood the surveyor's name. The handwriting was weary and slanting, with long tails on the letters.
Yevstigney.
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