THE GATE-BOOK

Being an Exact and Honest Register of Every Soul That Passes the Drudgeford Gate, and the Toll Each Paid, to the Ha'penny.

Kept to the ha'penny by Obadiah Tuck, Keeper of the Drudgeford Gate these twenty years, who has never once let a soul through unrecorded — nor, he will have you know, unpaid.

Halt. State Your Business. Have the Exact Coin.

Everything that goes anywhere in this realm comes, in the end, to a gate, and the great gate — the one that matters, the one on the King's Highway where the whole traffic of the kingdom must pinch through — is mine. I sit at it. I record what passes. I take the toll.

And I record it properly. Not like the Committee, up in Murkminster, with their surveys and their estimates and their "in the region of" — estimates, they call it a census. My book is not an estimate. My book is every soul, by name where I can get it and by description where I cannot, with the toll each paid, to the ha'penny, in twenty unbroken years. If you want to know who moves in Sogmarsh, and when, and where to, you do not want the Committee. You want me. You want the Gate-Book.

Each entry: The Passage · The Toll · The Business — the Business being none of mine, which I therefore record in full.

1 · The Foot-Passenger

The Passage. One soul, on foot, wanting through. The Toll. A ha'penny. Exact. I do not make change; a gate is not a bank. The Business. Recorded in full, whether they will state it or no. A man who will not state his business is himself a business, and I note that.

2 · The Cart

The Passage. A cart, a horse, a load. The Toll. A penny, and I count the wheels, there being men who will hide a third wheel to save a farthing, and I am not, I promise you, that man's fool. The Business. Grain, mostly. Or "grain." I write what they say, and, in the margin, small, what I think.

3 · The Gentleman

The Passage. Quality. A good coat, a good horse. The Toll. Paid at once, without a word, which I take as the mark of a gentleman and record admiringly. The Business. None stated, none asked. There is a courtesy owed to a coat, and I extend it, and note it extended.

4 · The Haggler

The Passage. One soul, and a ha'penny, and forty minutes. The Toll. A ha'penny — the same ha'penny it has been since before I was born — argued, disputed, appealed, and, in the end, paid. The Business. Wasting my time, chiefly. There is a special page for hagglers. It is long. I know every one of them by their walk.

5 · The Last Passage

The Passage. A funeral, going out to the churchyard side. The Toll. Free, by custom, which I honour, though it goes against the grain of a keeper to pass a thing unpaid. The Business. Grief. I record it, and doff my cap, and enter the nil toll in red, so that the book shows I was not slack, only reverent.

6 · The Matter of the Exact Coin

The Passage. — The Toll. Exact. Always exact. The Business. I do not make change, on principle. A realm that kept exact coin would be a tidy realm, and a keeper may dream. I have turned back a duchess for a farthing short. I would do it again. The Gate does not know rank; it knows the toll.

7 · The Completeness of the Record

The Passage. All of them. Every one. The Toll. Every ha'penny of it, banked and booked. The Business. Twenty years, and not one soul through my gate unrecorded, not one toll unpaid, not one wheel uncounted. There is no book in Murkminster to touch it for exactness. I have the whole moving realm, to the ha'penny, in this book.

8 · The Ford Is a Mile Down and Dry in Summer

The Passage. The ones who do not come to the gate. The Toll. None. There is the whole of it. The Business. I have, this long while, kept the perfect record of everyone who stops — and it is only lately come to me, and I do not much like it, that the ones who stop are the honest ones, the paying ones, the ones content to be seen, and that they are the smaller and duller half of any realm. The ford is a mile down and dry all summer. The towpath takes a cart round the back of me in the dark. The Griddler's assortment, and the poor with nothing to toll, and every soul whose business truly is his own, go by water and by night and round the long way and never once touch my gate — and my flawless book, exact to the ha'penny, is a census of the law-abiding, which is to say a census of the part of Sogmarsh that was never trying to get past me. The interesting realm, the moving realm, the realm that matters, flows round me in the dark while I sit at my gate with my lamp and my exact coin, recording, with tremendous and useless accuracy, the half of the world that agreed to be counted.