V. FILE 47-B

V. FILE 47-B

The file identified the wedding hall, the family surname, and one possible first name for the grey-coated man: Gabriel Haddad. There was also a box marked PRESENT CONDITION. It was empty. N. began with old directories. He found three Gabriel Haddads. One had died before the video was recorded. One was forty-two in 2003. The third had no date of birth, only an address on a street that had since been renamed. N. copied the address. He disliked the speed with which bureaucracy turned obsession into procedure. A private fear could still feel irrational; a form made it appear necessary. At the bottom of the page, in handwriting that was not the clerk’s, someone had written: “Do not ask whether he is alive until you have decided why you need him to be.” N. read the line repeatedly. He had no answer, which felt like an accusation.

The renamed street lay across the river in an older district. N. went there on Saturday. Number 18 was now a pharmacy. The pharmacist had worked there for twelve years and remembered the previous tenant only vaguely. “An old family,” he said. “They left before I came.” “Was there a man named Gabriel?” The pharmacist shrugged. “There are always men named Gabriel.” N. showed him the frame from the wedding video. The pharmacist studied the pixelated face longer than necessary. “Maybe dead,” he said. N. flinched. “Why do people say that so easily?” “Because old men often become dead men.” The pharmacist returned the picture. “You wanted probability. Do not be angry when it behaves like probability.” Behind the pharmacy, an alley led to a courtyard where three balconies faced one another. An elderly woman was watering plants. N. asked whether she remembered the Haddad family. “Which one?” “Gabriel.” Her expression altered slightly. “He had a son who moved north.” “Is Gabriel alive?” She looked at N. as if he had skipped several required questions. “Who are you?” “No one.” “Then why do you need to know?” Again the question. Why need him alive? N. said, “I saw him in a video.” The woman smiled without amusement. “Then you saw what you were meant to see. A man in a video. Why must the video also provide his ending?” N. left with the sense that he had failed an examination whose subject had never been announced.

That night he dreamed of the old man. They sat across from each other at a wedding table. Music played, but the guests moved soundlessly around them. “Are you alive?” N. asked. The old man smiled. “At which moment?” “Now.” “Your now or mine?” “There is only one now.” The old man leaned forward. “That is the superstition that makes clocks possible.” N. woke with his heart pounding. His laptop was open on the desk though he remembered closing it. The wedding video was paused on the exact frame of the old man looking into the camera. Below the video, a new file had appeared on the desktop. It was named N_CURRENT_STATUS.docx. He did not open it.

For two days N. avoided both the file and the Department. He went to work, answered messages, bought groceries, and tried to imitate the habits of a person whose life was not under investigation. But ordinary time had become contaminated. A colleague mentioned a former teacher and N. wondered whether the teacher still lived. A bus passed an abandoned cinema and N. imagined the ticket seller from twenty years ago. A child dropped a toy in the street and N. thought: one day he may remember this exact afternoon and not know what became of the stranger who picked it up for him. The world had become an archive before it had finished happening. On the third night N. opened N_CURRENT_STATUS.docx. The document contained one sentence: SUBJECT HAS BEGUN TO SUSPECT THAT HE, TOO, IS TEMPORARY. Beneath it blinked an empty checkbox.