The Seventh Line

The gate man knew Janusz Wojcik by sight and let him through with a nod. Janusz walked the yard the way he had for nineteen years, first he passed the stacked containers and the forklifts, and finally the deposit hall on Kontenerowa street. He had come for his coat. Three months since the dismissal, and the coat was still in his old locker, and the hall manager had sent word that he could come and take it in the morning, before the day’s work began in earnest.

Inside, the hall smelled the same. Cold air, diesel from the yard, paper dust. His table stood where it had always stood, near the receiving door. A new receipt book lay open on it for the day’s work, in a hand that was not his. His own book, finished three months ago, lay closed on the shelf beneath the table, where the hall kept finished books. Janusz stopped. He had meant to go straight to the locker. The hall kept a custody register for the finished books, and a book left the shelf only against a name written in it. Janusz wrote his name and the date in the register, and then he took his own book down and opened it at the page he knew.

The entries ran down the page in his writing, one per crate, dated, each with its seal number written down as read. Twelve crates off the ship that day, twelve lines. His eye found the seventh without searching for it.

Seal cut on arrival. Re-taped. Number does not match manifest.

He had written it true, three months ago, in the same hand as all the rest. A correction went below an entry, dated, in the same hand; an entry once written was never altered. He had held to it, and the hall had dismissed him for it.

His hand went to his coat pocket, though the coat was still in the locker and the pocket he reached for was the pocket of the jacket he wore. The brass stamp was there, and the ink pad beside it, small and flat. He had carried them every working day for nineteen years, and he carried them still. He took the stamp out, pressed it to the ink pad, and pressed it onto a blank receipt at the back of the book, out of habit. The stamp mark was clean. A round seal, his name, the hall, the date line empty.

He looked at it a moment, then closed the book and left it on the table and went to the locker for his coat. He took the coat from the locker and put the brass stamp and the ink pad in its pocket.

Marta was waiting at the hall gate at midday with a tin in her hands. She worked the gate office now, earning her pay there, and she brought him lunch on the days she could, the way she had when he still worked the hall.

“Father,” she said, and held out the tin. “Soup. Eat it while it is warm.”

He took it and sat on the low wall by the gate, and she sat beside him. The soup was barley, with carrots. He ate slowly.

“My supervisor asked about you today,” Marta said. “He asked whether you will be reasonable about the attestation.”

Janusz kept eating. “What did you tell him?”

“That you are my father, and I do not speak for you.” She looked out at the yard. “My contract renewal comes up in two weeks, and my supervisor will decide it. By reasonable he means signing all twelve lines. If you leave one blank, he will remember that when my renewal comes up.”

She took the empty tin back and kissed his cheek and went inside to the gate office. Janusz stood at the gate a while longer, holding nothing, and then walked back into the hall.

Ewa Kaczmarek was waiting at his old table. The hall manager had told her he would come in the morning for his coat. She was the representative of Vistula Catalog, the sponsor of record for the twelve crates, and she had a folder under her arm and a pen in her hand. The hall took deposits from any sponsor and held them apart from the sponsor’s own records. She set the folder down and opened it, and inside was a single sheet: the attestation form, and beneath it an envelope.

“Mr. Wojcik,” she said. “Thank you for coming. I will state the terms, and then the choice is yours. One question first, for the record. Vistula states its terms only to a man whose position is on record. Your book holds an entry on the seventh crate. Does the entry stand as written?”

Janusz looked at his book, closed on the table where he had left it. “It stands,” he said.

She wrote his answer in her folder, under his name, and dated it. Then she laid the form on the table. Twelve lines, one per crate, each with a space for a signature beside it.

“Anka is the act Vistula sponsors,” she said. “These twelve crates are its deposit here, and its tier, its place in Vistula’s catalog, rests on this attestation. Vistula’s audit counts the twelve signed lines on the form. Twelve signed lines, and Anka passes and holds its tier. A line left blank, and the audit does not pass.”

“One hundred and fifty dollars a crate,” she said. “Twelve lines comes to eighteen hundred dollars, for one morning’s signing. Eleven comes to sixteen-fifty. The fee is paid per line signed.”

She turned the form so he could read it.

“Your held severance is three thousand five hundred and twenty dollars. Four weeks of your checker pay, at eight hundred and eighty dollars a week. Vistula holds it. When the crates were deposited, the hall passed the held severance to Vistula to hold until the attestation was complete. It is released only on a complete attestation signed by you. Twelve lines. If you leave a line blank, the severance stays held, even if another hand completes the form later.”

Janusz looked at the form. He did not touch it yet.

“A court could award the severance,” Ewa said. “A court can order money paid, but a judgment would not change the attestation record, and it would not move Anka’s tier.”

She set the pen down beside the form.

“Sign what you can vouch for,” she said.

She left him the form and the pen, and she stepped back from the table to give him room, and waited by the receiving door.

Janusz sat down at his old table. He took the receipt book from the table and opened it to the page with the twelve crates, and he read the attestation form line by line against the book.

Line one. The seal number in the book matched the manifest. He had seen it sealed on its claimed date. He could sign that.

Lines two through six matched the book. He had watched each crate come off the ship with its seal whole, and had read its number aloud and written it down as read.

Line seven. The form said the crate arrived sealed on its claimed date. The book said otherwise, in his own hand. The seal had been cut when the crate arrived, the tape was over the cut, and the number was not the number on the manifest. He had not seen it sealed.

The crates stayed sealed. No checker opened them. He checked the seal and the date on each crate. He had never seen inside the seventh crate. What he had seen was the cut seal, and the tape over it.

Lines eight through twelve matched the book. Eleven lines he could vouch for. One line he could not.

Tomasz Lis came to the table with a manifest in his hand, the way he always had when a number was unclear. Janusz had taught him to read a seal number aloud before writing it down.

“Mr. Wojcik,” Tomek said. He held the manifest against his chest. “It does not leave my hand free. Read the numbers with me first, aloud, the way you taught me.”

Janusz read the seal number off the manifest, and then the number in the book, aloud, one after the other. Tomek set the manifest beside the receipt book, open at the seventh crate. The two numbers sat side by side. They did not match.

Janusz looked. He had looked three months ago, and he looked now, and the numbers were the same two numbers, and they did not match.

Tomek stood a moment. “I was not there either,” he said. “I did not see it arrive. If you do not sign it, I will sign it. The hall needs the attestation either way. I am sorry, Mr. Wojcik.”

Janusz nodded.

Tomek took his manifest and went back to his work, and Janusz sat alone at the table with the form and the pen and the book.

He picked up the pen. He signed the first six lines, passed the seventh and left it blank, and signed the eighth through the twelfth. Eleven signatures, each beside a crate he had seen sealed on its claimed date.

Then, below the seventh line, in the margin of the form, he wrote, dated, in his own hand: seal cut on arrival, re-taped, number does not match manifest.

He set the pen down, stood, and carried the form to Ewa at the receiving door.

She took it and read it, line by line, and her face did not change. Her eyes rested a moment on the note in the margin below the seventh line. She counted the signatures. Eleven.

She took the envelope from her folder and counted out one thousand six hundred and fifty dollars in banknotes. “One thousand six hundred and fifty dollars,” she said. “For the eleven signed crates.”

She paid him one thousand six hundred and fifty dollars, one hundred and fifty dollars for each line he had signed. The seventh line’s one hundred and fifty dollars was not paid, because he had not signed it.

“The severance stays held,” she said. “Three thousand five hundred and twenty dollars. You did not sign all twelve lines.”

Janusz took the money and put it in his coat pocket, beside the brass stamp. He nodded, and he left the hall, and he did not look back at the table.

The next day, Tomasz Lis signed the seventh line. The attestation was complete, and Anka passed its audit. The severance stayed held, because Janusz had not signed all twelve lines himself. The audit counted the signed lines on the form. A margin note is not a signed line, and the audit had no way to count it.

The morning after that, Janusz walked from his flat in Stogi, where he had lived since his wife died six years ago, south along the quay, past the cranes, with the wind coming off the water, to a warehouse on the Martwa Wisla. It was a longer walk than the ten minutes to the old terminal gate. During the three months since his dismissal, the freight forwarder had agreed to take him on, and this was his first morning at the new table. The freight forwarder’s warehouse was smaller than the deposit hall, and the table they gave him was a plain table in a plain room, but it was a table, and the work was checking seals.

Sixteen dollars an hour. Less than the twenty-two dollars an hour he had earned as a checker at the hall. The hours were not yet set.

They gave him a fresh receipt book. He opened it to the first page, and he took out his brass stamp and his ink pad, and he set them on the table beside the book. A crate came in, and he read the seal number aloud, and he wrote it down as read, and he pressed the stamp onto the receipt.

The stamp mark came out clean, beside the number in his hand. He turned the page, and waited for the next crate.