The Second Set of Chalk Marks

The wall on Mulov Street has two owners and one surface. By midmorning it had two sets of chalk.

The first set went up two days ago, thin white lines someone drew before dawn, low along the stone where a doorframe leans a hand’s width past where the old man says his father built it. Today a second hand added its own lines, higher, in a different white, crossing the first at an angle that makes neither survey mean anything on its own. I did not see who drew either set. I saw the old man come out at the second bell with a length of knotted string and a flat plank, kneel at the base of the wall, and measure his own version a third time, muttering the numbers so he would not forget them before the Divan hears the matter tomorrow.

His granddaughter brought him water twice before noon. The well on Ulev Street had a line at it by then — longer than usual, women filling two jars instead of one, because the water-sellers on the Archive Steps sold out before the bell and word of that travels faster than the water does. Nobody at the well talked about the wall. They talked about the sky, which gave nothing.

Marta Vels’ doorway table was already empty when I passed — her chamomile bundles gone out before I got there, one to a household, for tonight. The rope on the broken gate at the end of the street has been retied again, tighter this time, by hands I still have not caught.

The old man packed his plank away before the heat got worse. He did not erase either set of chalk. Tomorrow the Divan will look at both.