Scharte is the last place before the only pass that leads out of this world. Every night the gate under the pass opens from dusk until first light, and every night the tower calls a number: that many may go through, no more. Whoever passes never comes back; a year later a single object returns through the gate, a shoe, a photograph, a key, and the chapel keeps it. Whoever is refused stays one more day in the Lower Town, which is full of the refused, some for decades. The Bureau appoints the night officer, a stranger, because nobody from Scharte can be fair: everyone has someone on the list. You hold the key. Tonight the number is three, and everyone wants to go.
THE GATE BOOK OF SCHARTE Entry of the night officer. Bureau number 4471. First night. I was told that the night begins when the number is called and not before, and that I should be at the Bureau house by then with the chit, and I was, and I still heard it late, because I was not expecting a word. ...
THE GATE BOOK OF SCHARTE Instruction of the old keeper, written into the Book at the Bureau's request, for the use of officers. You will be given the key at dusk by the one who held it last. Since I retired, that is me. Take it from my hand with your hand. It is never laid down, not on the table, n...
THE GATE BOOK OF SCHARTE Entry of the night officer. Bureau number 3906. Written in the morning, against instruction, at the inn. I am writing this at the long table because I did not go down the valley at first light as I was told, I went down to the inn, because I wanted to see where the twelve w...
THE GATE BOOK OF SCHARTE Rules of the hour, as drafted by the Bureau and amended in the margin by the old keeper. Copied into the Book by the officer of the night. Bureau number 5120. RULES OF THE HOUR 1. Every person on the road may claim one hour with the officer in the customs room before the w...
THE GATE BOOK OF SCHARTE Inventory of the Chapel of the Returned, excerpted and copied into the Book by the officer of the night, Bureau number 2288, with the chaplain's marginal notes as he dictated them. The chapel stands at the first bend above the gate and has no altar. It has shelves. On the s...
THE GATE BOOK OF SCHARTE Three pages of the smuggler's ledger, bought for the Book by the officer of the night, Bureau number 4019, at the price of his own page. I went down to the cellar before the number was called, against the keeper's advice, because I had been told that there was a book about ...
THE GATE BOOK OF SCHARTE The landlady's register of the stories of Evert Lund, as told at the chair on nineteen nights, copied into the Book by the officer of the night, Bureau number 4471, with her permission and his. The landlady keeps a register of every story told at the chair by every guest of...
THE GATE BOOK OF SCHARTE Entry of the night officer. Bureau number 4471. On the courier. A woman comes up the road every night at the ninth hour with a flat leather satchel chained to her wrist and asks for the hour, and in the hour she asks for nothing for herself. She asks that the letter in the ...
THE GATE BOOK OF SCHARTE Entry of the night officer. Bureau number 4471. On the pair. The town loves a pair and has one. They came together, a boatbuilder who sold his father's yard for a story about a pass and the schoolteacher he married the week before he walked, and the number has never once be...
THE GATE BOOK OF SCHARTE Entry in the hand of the old keeper, written nineteen years after the night it concerns, at the request of the officer of the night, Bureau number 4471, who read the Book and asked. The Book has, for that night, in my hand: ZERO. And under it, one stroke. No officer has ask...
THE GATE BOOK OF SCHARTE Memorandum of the Bureau's surveyor at Scharte, copied into the Book at her request so that every officer may read it in the hour before the number, since none of them reads it after. TO THE OFFICER OF THE NIGHT. You will be asked at dusk, by me, what you will do if the num...
THE GATE BOOK OF SCHARTE Three of the surveyor's nine interviews with Mira Scholl, copied into the Book by the officer of the night, Bureau number 4471, who went up to the hut, which officers do not do. The Book has her: Mira Scholl, musician, let through eleven years ago by an officer whose name i...