West Vestibule of Floor 11,304

Overview

The West Vestibule of Floor 11,304 is a vestibule of the western approach on Floor 11,304, designated a Concordant Vestibule of the Second Grade under Fourth Concordance, Annex 6. It is chiefly known — and chiefly visited — as the site on which the Calendar of Unspoken Apologies is reset. The reset is not performed by any officer of the Tower. It is triggered by the completion of the growth cycle of a stand of moss native to the vestibule's north wall, which the Vestibule of Measure has catalogued under the working name apologia repens, though the name is contested.

The vestibule occupies 31 by 19 cubits and has one bench, which is not for sitting. Its floor is numbered 11,304 in the western series; its eastern approach bears a separate and unrelated number, a discrepancy discussed below.

The Moss and the Reset

The moss grows in three patches along the north wall, at heights of 4, 9, and 14 hands respectively. Each patch completes a cycle in 412 days, but the patches are staggered, so that at least one completes in any given year and occasionally two complete within a fortnight. Only the completion of the lowest patch resets the Calendar. This was not always so. Until the revision of Ninth Concordance, Annex 2, all three patches were held to be resetting, and the Calendar accordingly advanced up to three times in a year — a circumstance the Vestibule of Unspoken Appeals ruled, in the matter of the Winter of Three Apologies, had caused "a deficit of contrition that the floor has not since made good" (Vestibule of Unspoken Appeals, Ruling 88, cited in Third Concordance, Annex 4).

Attendants are instructed not to touch the moss. Watering is the responsibility of the Floor Steward and is done from the east side only. On the two recorded occasions when the moss was watered from the west, the cycle shortened by eleven days and the resulting apology could not be dated to any party, and was entered in the Calendar as owing to no one.

Dispute of the Two Approaches

Scholarship is divided on whether the vestibule is a single chamber or two chambers sharing a wall. The Fifth Concordance describes it as "the western vestibule, being one room, with a bench"; the Seventh Concordance describes "the vestibules west of the eleventh-thousand-three-hundred-and-fourth landing, being two, each with its proper bench-bearing." The West Wing of Floor 1024 holds the older recension and the Granite Library the newer, and the two libraries have not exchanged a copy since the dispute began.

The practical difficulty is that the eastern chamber — which the Fifth Concordance does not admit exists — is where the Calendar is physically kept. Clerk Meridian of the West Stack, who served the floor from 1901 to 1933, recorded in her day-book that she had been obliged to carry the Calendar through a wall "which is present on Tuesdays." Her successor's marginal note reads simply: "The wall is present. I have not been able to establish the day."

"The Calendar shall be kept in the western vestibule of the eleventh-thousand-three-hundred-and-fourth floor, which is one room."

— Fifth Concordance, Clause 12

Administration

The vestibule answers to Vestibule Epsilon of Floor 312 for purposes of inventory and to the Floor 412 Vestibule of Provisional Tenancy for purposes of materials, which arrive through the latter and are logged at the former. It has no resident officer. The post of Keeper of the West Vestibule of Floor 11,304 has been vacant since 1957, when its last holder, Ardis of the Lower Margin, resigned by walking east and was not followed, it being unclear which chamber she had resigned from.

Visitors reach the floor by the long west flight and should present themselves at the bench. The bench is not for sitting. Enquiries concerning the moss are heard on the ninth day of each cycle and not before.

Recorded Incidents

In the winter of 1844 the moss failed to complete its cycle for 511 days. No apology was reset during that period, and the Vestibule of Unspoken Consensus on Floor 11,507 recorded a backlog of 1,204 apologies, of which 61 remain unassigned. The cause is given in the floor ledger as "cold, and the wall being absent."

A lesser incident is recorded for 1972, when a visiting scholar of the West Spiral of Floor 4,112 brushed the middle patch while measuring the bench and was thereafter unable to state her own name in a manner the vestibule would accept. She was restored on the completion of the middle cycle, 279 days later, and her account of the interval — Notes from a Bench I Did Not Sit On — is held at the Granite Library under restricted access. Requests for the volume are heard at the bench, on the ninth day, and the bench is not for sitting.