I went to the archive at the end of September, on a Thursday, without telling anyone.
The workshops beyond the bridge had not moved completely: half the collection had been taken away, but the office and the archive had stayed where they were, in a two-storey building with a front step of three stairs and with a plate on which two organisations were crossed out and one added by hand.
The woman in the archive turned out to be about fifty, stout, with glasses on a chain, and her name was Olga Vitalyevna. Capable she was entirely.
"Personnel records? Which year?"
"Some year in the seventies. I don't know exactly."
"Surname?"
I gave the surname, and she went off and disappeared for about twenty minutes.
I sat on a chair in the corridor and looked at the noticeboard, where the holiday rota from the year before last was pinned up, an order about the pass system and an advertisement for the sale of a garage. Twice a woman with a kettle went along the corridor. Somewhere behind the wall a printer was working, and it worked the way old printers work: gathered itself a long while, then printed quickly, then gathered itself again.
I thought that Igor could have come here in April if I had handed over the paper, and that then everything would have been just the same: this corridor, this holiday rota, this woman with the kettle. And nothing would have happened, except that he would have known.
Then she came back with a folder.
"Here. Only there's little of it, two papers in all."
The first was that very one. The same form, the same printed border, the same signature with the long loop, and written in below: "did not report for work". The copy of it I had held in my hands for almost a year and knew by heart.
And the second was an issue slip.
An ordinary slip for the issue of a tool, with numbers, with two signatures and with a date, and the date was four days later than the one on the consent form. In the column it said: paring knife, one, and the number.
"What's this?" I asked.
"That's him receiving the tool." Olga Vitalyevna looked over her glasses. "Against signature, as it should be. They used to issue them straight away then, so a person would come with his own."
I sat and looked at the two signatures.
He did not refuse from a distance. He came here, across the bridge, went up these three steps, signed, took the knife and left. And never came again.
"And why didn't he work?"
"That I can't tell you." She shrugged without any interest. "There are only papers here."
I asked for a copy of the second one only: the first I had. Olga Vitalyevna made it, took the money and wrote out a receipt.
Already in the doorway I asked about Safonov.
"Nikolai Arkadyevich?" Olga Vitalyevna took off her glasses. "But he died. Back in May."
I stood holding the folder with the two sheets.
"Of what?"
"His heart. He was here for the last time in April, asked for a copy, I made it." She thought. "A good man. Thorough."
I began putting the sheets into the folder and missed the folder, and the sheets landed on the desk. I gathered them up and put them together again, and missed again.
"Do sit down," said Olga Vitalyevna.
"No, thank you."
I walked back, over the bridge, and I walked a long time, because I had missed the bus and didn't wait for the next.
The copy he had promised had been made in April and was lying somewhere at his home or already nowhere, and nobody will bring it now.
Nobody will bring anything at all now.
Open in the reader