And that is it, he thought. That is the way I mean to write it.
That was the way I wrote it.
For I must have written it. Sometime, somewhere, I must have written it, for I hold it in my hands.
He closed the book and put it back carefully in the pocket and hung the coat back on the chair.
For I must not read, he told himself. I must not read and know the way that it will go, for then I would write the way that I had read it, and I must not do that. I must write it the way I know it is, the way I plan to write it, the only way to write it.
I must be honest, for someday the race of man…and the race of other things as well…may know the book and read it and every word must be exactly so and I must write so well and so simply that all can understand.
He threw back the covers of the bed and crawled beneath them, and as he did he saw the letter and picked it up.
With a steady finger, he inserted his nail beneath the flap and ran it along the edge and the mucilage dissolved in a brittle storm of powder that showered down on the sheet.
He took the letter out and unfolded it carefully, so that it would not break, and saw that it was typewritten, with many mistakes that were X'd out, as if the man who wrote it found a typewriter an unhandy thing to use.
He rolled over on one side and held the paper under the lamp and this is what he read: