The Living Number

If a balance I had not filmed grew three figures at the end, the control was already meaningless.

A dead ledger, touched only now and then by one hand, grew a figure or two in three days. A living ledger was different. Our short-term foreign borrowing was entered into every terminal, set down at every close, reported to head office, to the Bank of Korea, and beyond. Hundreds of hands copied that number, several times a day. Take away my one hand, and the balance grew with the weight of hundreds.

I began, as assigned, to film that living ledger. If the number would grow regardless, I would at least measure the rate of its growing. As the surveyor measured a shaft's depth.

Each day I filmed the closing balance one frame at a time, and without copying it to the index I counted the increase with my eyes alone. To a fractured eye the figures arrived apart, but in exchange how many places the figure grew in a day showed clearly.

Where there was a number that grew, there was a number that shrank. On the daily foreign-currency status board head office posted, the reserves stood beside the borrowing. The foreign currency to repay with. That number did not grow. It fell. While the borrowing swelled from its last figure, the reserves were pared down from their first. As much as one side grew, the other wore away — as the surveyor's shaft deepened by as much as the plumb line paid out.

I set the two rates side by side. The rate at which the borrowing grew, the rate at which the reserves fell. Draw the two lines, and somewhere they met. The day the reserves reach zero.

I reckoned the date. With a fractured eye I traced the two rates, and found the point where the two lines met. It was the tail end of November. Around then, the foreign currency to repay with reaches zero. The number the nation borrowed swallows the nation.

There was only one way to stop a growing number. To have no one record it. Copy it not, and it does not grow — as the dead ledger's control balance had not. But there was no way to make the living foreign debt go unrecorded by all. One cannot stop hundreds of hands, every terminal, the Bank of Korea.

In all the world there was only one number no one recorded.

My resignation date. That blank field on the personnel card. The date no one had written, and so a day not yet come.

If no one records it, I do not vanish. So long as it stays a blank field, that day does not come. I had only to keep that one field untouched by any hand.

But I had already seen. My predecessor's film, that half-exposed final frame. Between the digits of the growing balance, December ██ was written. My resignation date was not a blank field. Someone had already written it.

Hundreds of hands recorded the foreign debt. Every terminal recorded the balance. But my resignation date — which I had not written, and the personnel office had left blank — was already written on my predecessor's film, before he vanished.

Who wrote it. If not I, and not the personnel office.

I knew the answer. The one line stamped on the cover of each of the four bundles was the answer. We are watching a little further — not only watching, but writing. The next recorder's resignation date. Between the digits of the growing number.

Each morning a cash-position report slid in under the records-room door, one sheet at a time.

The cash position. The cash balance at that day's close. The money the company held in hand, that it could repay at once. The funds division printed the previous day's closing position each morning and circulated it to every department, and one sheet came to the records room too. I only tucked it among the film files — filming the living foreign debt took all the hands I had.

On the morning of November 15th, I picked up the report that had slid under the door. I read the date at the top with a fractured eye.

November 16th. Tomorrow. Not the previous day's closing position, but the closing position of a tomorrow not yet come, printed and circulating this morning. The same as the tomorrow's balance the terminal had thrown onto its screen (November 1st). Only this time it was not a screen but a sheet of paper one could hold. Paper circulated to every department, already touched by many hands.

The cash in the report was small. Too small. Several maturities of short-term foreign currency to repay fell due tomorrow, and the cash to repay them — tomorrow's position — fell short of the maturing sum. Tomorrow, the company cannot repay. That fact was already written on this morning's paper.

The wireless operator's log rose to my mind. The one line I had been told not to read to the end, and had already read.

The operator broke the one line — copy it down, do not answer — and answered for the first time. In that instant he turned from one who listens into one who transmits, and at last became the caller who sends the dispatch dated tomorrow. Recalling that log, I looked at the paper in my hand. Copy it down, but do not answer. If I did something with this paper that said the company cannot repay tomorrow — warned the funds division, covered the maturity — I become one who answers.

I resolved not to answer. I would confirm only one thing — where the tomorrow-dated report had been printed. At the foot of the sheet, the identifying number of the printing terminal and the time were stamped small. If it was a funds-division terminal, I could lay it to someone's clock slipping by mistake. I traced and read the number with a fractured eye.

It was not the funds division's number. It was the records room's. The credit terminal I had turned on after five months buried away — the one whose boot screen showed NUMERUS NON MENTITUR. The terminal on my desk.

I had never printed a cash report from that terminal. With it I had only queried the foreign balance. But the time at the foot of the sheet pointed to early this morning, an hour when no one was in the records room. Tomorrow's cash report had been printed from my terminal, by a hand I had not laid to it, and circulated to every department.

I had not yet resolved to answer. And yet my terminal was already printing tomorrow and circulating it to every department. Before I had resolved to become the sender, I was already sending.