SLARVATHOffice of Off-World Correspondence

Grainy monochrome overhead image of a residential block at night, a square apartment building closed around an inner courtyard with one small bright rectangle at its centre
PASS 0192
2141 LOCAL
CLEAR
37.3291 N 121.8752 W
Polaroid taken at night through the iron gate of a two-storey California apartment courtyard, a swimming pool lit gold-green from underneath, a ring of closed dark doors along the ground floor and the balcony above facing the water, a chipped enamel mug set on the low wall beside the gate
William St. — forty minutes
Medium — polaroid
SLV-0192

Nine Doors

On William Street there is a gate in a wall, and through the gate there is a pool, and around the pool there are doors.

I counted them from the gate. Nine. Every one of them opens toward the water. Not one of them opens toward the street, which is behind them and has to be reached by walking all the way round.

At night the pool is lit from underneath and nothing else is. The doors stand in the dark facing it, which is how doors should stand.

I stayed at the gate for forty minutes. I did not go in. The gate is locked, and it would not have been correct anyway: you do not walk up to a pool that is not yours. A man came out of the fourth door with a bag and walked the whole way round the water to reach the street, when the street was just behind his wall, and I do not think he knew why he did that. I did not tell him.

Nobody was in the water. That is also correct.

They have put a light in theirs so that it can be seen at night. I would have done the same.

Nine is the right number. I do not know how they knew.

Office annotationCorrespondent SLV-4 refers to a residential building of a common type, arranged about a swimming pool. The pool is filled from the municipal supply and is heated. It is lit from underneath. It is not fed from underneath, and the Office enters the distinction in case it is needed. The stated interval of forty minutes is 5.95 kadd. The photograph shows eight doors. The Correspondent gives the number as nine and gives it as correct, and does not say against what. The Office holds one other place of nine doors about a pool. It has not been asked to compare the two and has not compared them. A related matter is held in Form 21.