The Mallard Who Delivers the Archival Boxes
Fred Mallard arrives each Tuesday at approximately nine-forty, pushing a handcart that rattles against the floorboards of the vestibule with the kind of rhythmic indignation only old metal can achieve.
He is a man of perhaps fifty-five, built like a fireplug but with shoulders that have widened from years of carrying boxes that were never meant to be lifted by human hands. His uniform is the Foundation’s beige, slightly frayed at the cuffs, and he wears a cap that he removes only when entering the building, as though he respects the archive more than he respects the weather.
I am too busy to fetch the boxes myself, and often not strong enough to carry them from the top floor where Arthur Blandy inhabits his peculiar kingdom of paper and possibility. Arthur has a propensity to create—or rather, tidy—something from nothing that I find both admirable and exasperating. He will spend three weeks gathering receipts from the 1970s, then arrange them by colour rather than date, and then claim he has discovered a new archival methodology. I say he has no method, only obsession. I am scathing of this, publicly. Privately, I admire it. But I would never be the first to admit it.
Fred, however, admits nothing. He is a man of tidbits. As he unloads the boxes from his cart, stacking them with the kind of practised efficiency that suggests he has done this for decades, he will lean against the wall and say something like, “The In View Of team’s been arguing about the marginalia again. Says it’s ‘epistematogenic,’ but I reckon it’s just scribble.” Or: “Building 2’s got a new project on medieval cookery. They’re calling it ‘Gastronomic Ontology.’ I told the fellow, if you can’t boil a kettle, you can’t eat a pie.”
I record these tidbits in my catalogue, along with the latest labels applied to the boxes. The labels are always new, always slightly different, always the product of Arthur’s particular obsession with what he calls “mu”—a word he claims to have invented, I suspect, to sound more impressive than “labelling.” Fred will tell me that Arthur has been at it again, that he’s tidied the top floor into something that looks like a library but is actually just a collection of boxes arranged by the colour of their tape. Fred says Arthur “creates order from nothing,“ and I say he creates clutter from nothing, but I record Fred’s words in the catalogue because they are the only gossip I have.
The building is a Victorian one, three floors of brick and wood that have seen more intellectual ferment than most universities. Building 2 and Building 3 are newer, modern in the way that means glass and steel and no soul. I rarely visit them.
Fred visits them often. He tells me about the projects there: the medieval cookery team, the statistical outliers group and the In View Of editorial team that Thasselcroft leads: those people who interrupt me whenever I boil a kettle. Fred knows them all. He knows their names, their habits, their teas. He knows that Thasselcroft prefers his tea tepid, that the In View Of team will knock on my door three times before I answer, that Arthur has been at it again.
Fred has watched me stand over the boxes, reading the labels, noting the colours of the tape, and he has seen me write Fred’s tidbits into the catalogue. He knows I am scathing. He knows I admire. He does not say either. He just unloads the boxes, leans against the wall, and gives me another tidbit.
“Building 3’s got a new fellow,” he says last Tuesday. “He’s working on something called ‘The Archival Resonance of Forgotten Receipts.’ I told him, if you can’t find the receipt, you can’t claim the expense.”
I record this in the catalogue. I note the latest label: “Forgotten Receipts, 1974–1982, Colour: Beige.” I note Fred’s tidbit. I note the colour of the tape. I do not note that I admire Arthur. I do not note that I am scathing. I note the boxes. I note the labels. I note the tidbits.
Fred leaves at ten-fifteen, as always. The cart rattles away. The vestibule is quiet again. I stand over the boxes, reading the labels, noting the colours of the tape, writing Fred’s tidbits into the catalogue. Arthur is on the top floor, tidying something from nothing. I am here, recording it. Fred is outside the vestibule, getting more gossip. The archive is what it is.
And I am the only one who records it all.
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