Herminia Sasal wrote chapter four and was never paid

Previously: in the 1974 originals, chapter four had been typed on a different machine. Ainhoa Cortabarria has eight days and no name.

There were 142 titles left to verify when Otilia Bergua, cataloguer of the old collection, came up from the basement with a cardboard box tied with string and set it down on table nine.

"Ayerbe school," she said. "Enrolment books, minutes and monthly returns, from '68 to '79. The town council brought it over when they closed the building, and it has been sitting here uncatalogued for thirty years."

Ainhoa Cortabarria, book restorer at the Provincial Library of Huesca, had the twenty-two sheets of chapter four in front of her: the ones that reached the Tramullas print shop on 14 January 1974, typed on a machine that was not the author's. Round characters, a left margin two centimetres wider, and the letter c with a nick in its curve, always in the same place.

Otilia undid the knot, pulled out a monthly attendance return and laid it alongside without letting go of it.

"Look at the c."

It was nicked. The same nick, the same curve.

"How many returns are in there?"

"A hundred and something. Every month of every school year since '68."

They went through them two at a time, without taking them out of their folders. The first four years were signed "The schoolmaster, S. Anzano". From October 1972 the signature changed to a small, very upright hand, and beneath it, typed: "Herminia Sasal Nogueras, schoolmistress".

"Twelve years in that school," said Otilia. "Until it closed, in '79."

Fabián Oyarzun, floor manager and the man in charge of the cull, stopped by the table with his trolley half pushed.

"Ainhoa. A hundred and forty-two titles, eight days. This is not a title."

"This is title 215."

"You verified 215 on Thursday."

"I have it open. That is not the same thing."

On the return for January 1974, the month the sheets arrived at the print shop, the schoolmistress had written two lines by hand in the remarks box. Ainhoa read them twice: "The older children have collected the winter trades from their homes. Twenty-two sheets. Handed to our neighbour C. Lete on the 12th."

The twelfth of January. The sheets reached Tramullas on the fourteenth.

"She wrote chapter four," said Ainhoa. "With the children, in class hours, on the school typewriter."

"She wrote it and did not sign it," said Otilia.

"Nobody signed it."

The print shop's box held the other half. In the settlement folder was the edition's account sheet: five hundred copies, paper, binding, two rounds of corrections and a single author's line, with an amount and a signature of receipt. The name on that line was Casimiro Lete Arbués. There was no other line with a person's name on it.

"Not one peseta," said Otilia. "Not even the credit."

At ten past twelve Ainhoa rang the district school that had taken in the Ayerbe pupils. Mabel Cortés, the school secretary, answered and took four minutes to come back to the phone with the file in her hand.

"Herminia Sasal Nogueras. Schoolmistress, permanent post in Ayerbe from October '72. The school closed in June '79; she was transferred to Huesca and retired in '91."

"Is she still alive?"

Two seconds of paper moving.

"She died. I have the closing entry here: 4 March 2011, in Ayerbe. Eighty-four years old. Are you family?"

"I'm the one who verifies her books."

Ainhoa hung up holding the twenty-two sheets, with the 1974 edition open at page eleven, where the author had written in pencil "I did not write this". On page one hundred and nine, in the same pencil, it said "put the name in".

Fabián came back with the trolley empty and stood on the other side of the table.

"All right. It's true and it's late. So now what?"

"Now the name goes in."

"A name doesn't go into a book. It goes onto a record, and we don't keep the records: the National Register does." He rapped his knuckle twice on the edge of the table. "And to change a 1974 record you have to file an amendment of authorship with the author's signature."

"Casimiro Lete is alive."

"Casimiro Lete is eighty-seven and he signed that cover on his own. And that register has never changed the authorship of a book for a dead person. Ask them if you like, but ask them today: on the nineteenth, at six in the morning, two lorries come in through the back dock."

Otilia started tying the school box up again, slowly, leaving the string loose enough to open it once more.

"Twelve years teaching, twenty-two sheets and a receipt in someone else's name," she said. "I have four thousand two hundred titles down there and they let me keep four hundred. You choose too."

On the schedule sheet, under the 142 titles and the eight days, Ainhoa wrote a line with two facts and no question in it: Herminia Sasal Nogueras, schoolmistress, died on 4 March 2011 in Ayerbe, and her name is not printed in any of the five hundred copies.