The twenty-third of November. Eight in the morning. The twenty-third had become today, and beneath the date a line had filled in the night. This far, it was the same as yesterday.
What differed was the shape of the line. For the past three days, what came up in the sending column had been two things only: a date and a number. But today a second cell had been ruled beside the number. It was the cell I knew from the ledgers' transfer form — the left one the sender's place, the right the receiver's. All winter, when I opened a box, that form lay on top: which company's ledger went to which department, sender and receiver set down side by side. This morning, the right-hand cell of that form had been ruled into the sending column. It was the receiver's place.
And that place was empty.
The number was on the left — the one I would read and send that morning. On the right, in the receiver's place, there was nothing. Empty, without a single stroke. On a transfer form a department name or a clerk's number belonged there. Where it was bound had to be written, or it was no form at all. A transfer form with no receiver was not a form. I looked at it a long while. The sender's place was filled; the receiver's place was empty. I was the sender. And there was no receiver.
At noon the disposal sheet came down. The company of the number I'd read that morning stood at the top — in the order that had repeated now for three days. What was sent came at noon. One company crossed past its disposal term, and by evening its number would dim. This much I could have known without any form.
What I hadn't known came after. The disposal sheet named a sending department and a receiving one: the archive sent, the disposal desk received. On the paper form there was a receiver. But the form I'd seen in the sending column that morning had none. Same company, same number — on paper a receiver, in the sending column none. The paper sent that ledger to the disposal desk. The sending column sent the number nowhere. Sent nowhere, and still the number dimmed.
Sent, and yet no receiver — I turned it over until evening. What was sent had come to pass. The company was disposed of; the people's numbers went unpreserved. The realization was plain enough. Only, the form didn't say to whom the realization had gone. The paper's disposal went to the disposal desk. The sending column's dispatch went nowhere. It came to pass while going nowhere. The price had been paid, and the seat that took it stood empty. I couldn't tell where the price was charged. With no receiver, the price too had no owner.
I thought of the telegraph operator again. He was a receiver. Tomorrow's dispatch came addressed to him, and he received it. The sender never showed on the film, but the receiver was plainly him. Now I was a sender. A number went out before me, and at noon its business arrived. The sender was plainly me, but no receiver could be caught. As there had been no sender in the seat where he received, there was no receiver in the seat where I sent. One end of the mirror was always empty. When he received, the sending end stood empty; when I sent, the receiving end stood empty. Only the one seated on the filled side saw his own place; the empty side, in the end, had no face.
Happening because sent, or sent because it would happen — on the fourth day, too, I couldn't tell them apart. And today a further layer was added. If it had happened because sent, then I must have sent that number to someone. A receiver had to exist for the sending to hold. Yet the receiver's place was empty. If I had sent with no receiver, was that a sending at all? If I had merely read in advance what was to happen, then I had sent nothing to begin with, and the absence of a receiver was only right. The receiver's blank could be proof that I hadn't sent, or proof that I had sent and it reached no one. The two proofs stood opposite, and yet on the sending column they showed as the same blank. In a seat where two opposite possibilities remain the one same blank, I couldn't fix even whether I was the one who had sent or the one who had read.
That day the head archivist stamped the disposal sheet, checking the receiving department. To see whether sending place and receiving place matched, he ran his finger along both cells of the form. On the paper form there were two cells to touch. He touched both and stamped. Watching his hand, I thought how the morning's sending column had held only one cell to touch. The sending column was there and the receiver cell empty, so touch as one might, one side was thin air. He had two cells; I had one. He knew where a thing was bound; I did not. Over the same company, one of us touched the receiving place and the other looked at an empty seat.
A dispatch with no receiver — today was the first. Once, it was a single blank. But in three days the sending column had never once ended at one. Send, and the next date came up; beneath the next date the next line filled. If lines with no receiver piled up one a day, they would gather somewhere, having gone nowhere. If there was a place where dispatches that reached no one collected, that place, having no receiver, would have no owner either. I didn't yet know that place. I knew only that the hand which ruled and sent the first blank today was mine.
In the evening the sending column raised the twenty-fourth. This far it was the same as yesterday. What differed was today's empty receiver cell. By evening that place was no longer empty. In the right-hand cell, where there had not been one stroke, two last digits began to rise faintly. They looked like a date and were not a date; they looked like the tail of a number, but whose I couldn't tell. The receiver's place was trying to fill itself. I looked at those two digits a long while. The sender's place had been filled that morning; the receiver's place was filling itself, of its own accord, by evening. Once both cells of the form were full, it would at last be a transfer form — a form with where-from and where-to written on it. I didn't yet know what would rise in that receiver's place. Only that it was rising: that much, now, I could tell with the eye that lays one thing over another.