The Parchment

I have been in this guesthouse for three weeks longer than I intended. The owner has stopped commenting on it. After Kokořín I thought the work was nearly done. I was wrong. The notebook had one more section I had not properly read.

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What Pavel Was Pointing At

I have all three marks. Three families, three centuries, three different kinds of custody — a merchant family in Prague who asked for the sign, a monastic succession at Sázava that passed the mark from abbot to abbot for seven hundred years, a Protestant household in the Kokořín sandstone that survived everything and buried its last member with the symbol fixed to the rock above the grave. I have them. I have the photographs. I have the sketches. I do not know what to do with them.

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The Third of Three

Three weeks. I have been in the Kokořínsko region for three weeks. I am writing this from a guesthouse in Mšeno that I have been using as a base since mid-May. The owner stopped asking when I was leaving after the second week.

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