The Forged Letter

Thaddeus had volunteered at the Harlow Bay Archive for six years, and in that time nothing had been more reliably loved than the letter in the glass case by the door. It was the poet's farewell to the town, written on the eve of his departure in 1931. Every schoolchild in the district could quote its last line: "Keep the lamp lit; I know the way back." Visitors stood in front of it with their hands behind their backs, as though in church. Thaddeus, who dusted the case on Thursdays, had never looked closely at the paper itself until the week the catalogue needed new photographs.

Thaddeus sudah enam tahun menjadi sukarelawan di Arsip Harlow Bay, dan selama itu tak ada yang lebih konsisten dicintai daripada surat di dalam kotak kaca dekat pintu. Itu surat perpisahan sang penyair kepada kota ini, ditulis pada malam keberangkatannya tahun 1931. Setiap anak sekolah di distrik itu bisa mengutip baris terakhirnya: "Jagalah agar lentera tetap menyala; aku tahu jalan pulang." Para pengunjung berdiri di depannya dengan tangan di belakang punggung, seperti sedang di gereja. Thaddeus, yang membersihkan debu kotak itu setiap Kamis, tak pernah memperhatikan kertasnya dengan saksama sampai minggu ketika katalog membutuhkan foto-foto baru.

He took the letter to the window for the light, with the committee's permission and a pair of cotton gloves, and it was there, held up against the afternoon, that he saw the watermark. It was a tiny crescent and a number, the mark of a paper mill that, according to the trade directory on the reference shelf, had not begun production until 1958. He checked it twice. Then, because he was the kind of person who checks things a third time, he checked it again. The poet had been dead for nine years by then.

Dengan izin panitia dan sepasang sarung tangan katun, ia membawa surat itu ke jendela untuk mendapat cahaya, dan di sanalah, saat diangkat menghadap cahaya sore, ia melihat tanda airnya. Sebuah bulan sabit mungil dan sebuah angka, cap sebuah pabrik kertas yang, menurut buku direktori perdagangan di rak referensi, baru mulai berproduksi pada tahun 1958. Ia memeriksanya dua kali. Lalu, karena ia tipe orang yang memeriksa sesuatu untuk ketiga kalinya, ia memeriksanya lagi. Sang penyair sudah sembilan tahun meninggal pada waktu itu.

For several days he told no one, which was uncomfortable, since he was a poor liar and a worse keeper of secrets. Never had he wanted so badly to be wrong. Archive work trains the eye to distrust anything too tidy, and the more he looked, the more he found. The ink had faded evenly, as it never does on a genuinely old page, and the handwriting leaned a fraction too carefully, like a signature practised in a mirror. It was not the forgery itself that unsettled him so much as the patience of it. Whoever had made this had wanted it to be believed, and had wanted that for a reason.

Selama beberapa hari ia tidak memberi tahu siapa pun, yang membuatnya tidak nyaman, karena ia pembohong yang buruk dan penyimpan rahasia yang lebih buruk lagi. Belum pernah ia begitu ingin keliru. Pekerjaan arsip melatih mata untuk tidak memercayai apa pun yang terlalu rapi, dan semakin lama ia memandang, semakin banyak yang ia temukan. Tintanya pudar merata, sesuatu yang tak pernah terjadi pada halaman yang benar-benar tua, dan tulisan tangannya miring sedikit terlalu hati-hati, seperti tanda tangan yang dilatih di depan cermin. Bukan pemalsuannya sendiri yang paling mengusiknya, melainkan kesabaran di baliknya. Siapa pun yang membuat ini ingin agar ia dipercaya, dan ingin itu karena suatu alasan.

The reason took him three weeks. The donation ledger recorded that the letter had arrived in 1968, presented by the poet's sister, with a covering note in a different, rounder hand. The note was signed by the assistant librarian of the day: Rita. Thaddeus found her, after a good deal of asking, in a flat above the hardware shop, eighty-eight years old, sharp-eyed, and entirely unsurprised to see a man holding a folder.

Alasannya memakan waktu tiga minggu. Buku sumbangan mencatat bahwa surat itu tiba pada tahun 1968, diserahkan oleh saudara perempuan sang penyair, dengan sepucuk catatan pengantar dalam tulisan tangan lain yang lebih bulat. Catatan itu ditandatangani oleh asisten pustakawan saat itu: Rita. Setelah banyak bertanya, Thaddeus menemukannya di sebuah flat di atas toko perkakas, berusia delapan puluh delapan tahun, bermata tajam, dan sama sekali tidak terkejut melihat seorang pria membawa map.

"You've found the paper," she said, before he had sat down. "I always said it would be the paper."

"Kamu sudah menemukan kertasnya," katanya, sebelum Thaddeus sempat duduk. "Aku selalu bilang pasti kertasnya."

She had made the copy, she told him, because the original was lost in the flood of 1967, along with half of the poet's papers in his sister's cellar. The sister was ill by then and wanted only to read the letter once more. Rita, who had heard it read aloud so often in that house that she could have recited it in her sleep, wrote it out from memory. "Word for word, or near enough," she said. "She read it, and she cried, and she said it was exactly right. Then she gave it to the archive, and nobody asked, and I didn't like to say."

Ia membuat salinan itu, katanya, karena aslinya hilang dalam banjir tahun 1967, bersama separuh dokumen sang penyair di ruang bawah tanah saudara perempuannya. Saudara perempuan itu sudah sakit waktu itu dan hanya ingin membaca surat tersebut sekali lagi. Rita, yang begitu sering mendengarnya dibacakan di rumah itu sampai bisa melafalkannya sambil tidur, menuliskannya dari ingatan. "Kata demi kata, atau hampir," katanya. "Ia membacanya, lalu menangis, lalu bilang itu persis seperti aslinya. Setelah itu ia menyerahkannya ke arsip, dan tak ada yang bertanya, dan aku tak enak mengatakannya."

Thaddeus turned his hat over in his hands. Had Rita confessed in 1968, the letter would have been catalogued as a copy and forgotten within a year; it was precisely the small lie, he understood, that may well have kept the words alive. What he could not decide was whether that made the lie a kindness or merely a very successful one.

Thaddeus memutar-mutar topinya di tangannya. Seandainya Rita mengaku pada tahun 1968, surat itu akan dicatat sebagai salinan dan terlupakan dalam setahun; justru kebohongan kecil itulah, ia mengerti, yang mungkin telah menjaga kata-kata itu tetap hidup. Yang tak bisa ia putuskan adalah apakah itu menjadikan kebohongan tersebut sebuah kebaikan atau sekadar kebohongan yang sangat berhasil.

"The words are his," Rita said. "The hand is mine. I wouldn't call that a forgery. I'd call it a loan." She waved a thin hand towards the window. "Leave it be, Thaddeus. Nobody ever came to look at the paper."

"Kata-katanya milik sang penyair," kata Rita. "Tulisan tangannya milikku. Aku tak akan menyebutnya pemalsuan. Aku menyebutnya pinjaman." Ia melambaikan tangan kurusnya ke arah jendela. "Biarkan saja, Thaddeus. Tak seorang pun pernah datang untuk melihat kertasnya."

He said he would think about it, and meant it. On Monday he went in early and stood in front of the case for a long time before he switched on the light.

Ia berkata akan memikirkannya, dan sungguh-sungguh. Hari Senin ia datang pagi-pagi dan berdiri lama di depan kotak kaca itu sebelum menyalakan lampu.