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One, or perhaps seven, of the researchers claim to have seen the faces of God in the innumerable books below our streets. Numbers are uncertain because our minutes, such as they are, disintegrate as we attempt to certify them. I have seen the pages slough from their bindings like old bark; I have seen the names of the living fade.

I do not know which of the researchers wrote to me first. If you insist, I will say there was a man called Finch, and that he was the one; but the envelope bore no stamp and the letter itself read like dictation, as if he had repeated it in his head many times and only then allowed a younger hand to set it down.

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