A week on Gorgasali Street, from the logging book

Monday. Elene logged three envelopes. One was a clean month of reprint counts from a printer’s counter in Marjanishvili. One was a photograph of a whiteboard with smudged tallies; it went back with a note. One was a configuration reading booked for Thursday, with a deputy named instead of the person who sets the latch. She wrote to ask for the person who sets the latch.

Wednesday. Giorgi held a plate because the Friday overtime column used a different unit from the rest of the week. The client telephoned. Nino said the plate would wait. The client said the partner would be in the building on Friday. The plate still waited.

Friday. The warehouse sitting from Avlabari, the one we have already described elsewhere, ran past the two-hour mark. Not because the plates were many — there were four — but because the blank Tuesday became a conversation about who holds the night sheets when the clerk is away. That conversation belonged in the room. It did not belong as ink.

The logging book is dull on purpose. It is how we know whether a pack was late because of us or because the records were. If you ever sit with us, Elene will have written your name on a Monday line before anyone sharpens a pen.