Two accounts are both called first. In one he renews; in the other he does not. Both make him fifty-three, with a wife dead eleven years, and both stop before the ninth, while the money is still his. One corrects the tense of her interest in a removed tree. The other places him at a school gate with his hands in his pockets. His later written intention to renew does not complete either future.
He treats the pages differently. The boxed statements about comfort remain because he regards them as true. Folding the laugh question over the woman's passage makes a stranger's answer adjacent to her. He cuts out and swallows the school-gate lines, leaving a slot through which receipts are visible. He signs a third account and places it beneath the others. These are changes to a copy, not demonstrated changes to people or the city.
The index redirects his search for an original statement. It sends him to the preceding woman's account, where she sees four years of receipts although he has eleven. Refusal points to reinstatement. A third first account has no page number and begins with his own request for the book. Another account repeatedly replaces the answer to his question. None of these routes confirms an identity or reconciles the competing records.