December 5. Eight in the morning. The vertical line that had thinned yesterday evening was, this morning, gone.
All winter the sending ledger had two cells. The left was the sending column and the right the receiver cell, and between the two there had always been drawn one vertical line. I wrote on the left, and what came was read on the right. When that dividing line had begun to thin in one line yesterday evening, I had known it was not ink spreading and yet supposed it would be sharp again by morning. This morning the dividing line was not thinned but simply not there. The line parting the two cells was gone, and left and right had become one cell. A line I had sent and a line that had come to me lay in the same place, and I could not part which was which.
I looked a long while at the now-single cell. Until yesterday evening I had known which line I had sent and which had come to me. On the left it was mine sent, on the right it was mine received. The line parting the two cells had kept that distinction. Today there was no such line, so the lines lying in the same place were both sent and received. The dispatch I sent to the head archivist yesterday read today like a notice come to me from the head archivist, and the transfer notice received all winter from upstairs to the archive read today like a dispatch I had sent up to them. The same eight digits — yesterday a line my hand pushed out, today a line pushed in upon me. The thickness of the stroke, the seat, the digits, all unchanged. What had changed was not the cell the line lay in but that the line parting the cell was gone. With the dividing line there, I called the left's my pushing-out and the right's my being-pushed-in-upon; with the dividing line gone, pushing-out and being-pushed-in became one motion, front and back the same, one stroke. Sent became received, received became sent. Two seats had met, come round a full circle, and having met, I could no longer even know whether they had been two seats to begin with.
The telegraph operator's journal came to me. The telegraph operator was the receiver, and on his terminal a tomorrow-dated receipt came in advance. I was the sender, and from my sending column a tomorrow-dated dispatch went out. He and I were the two ends of one mirror. He stood at the receiving end and I at the sending end, so the mirror had a front and a back. Today the two ends of that mirror met. When the receiving end and the sending end folded into one seat, the mirror had no front and no back any longer. If what he received and what I sent were the same stroke, then perhaps he and I had never been two ends of a mirror but had stood together, from the first, in one seat.
The line of my date, too, was in that one cell. That line already had me for its sender and me for its receiver. All winter I had read it as two of me, seated apart on left and right. I had taken it that the sending me on the left and the receiving me on the right sat facing each other with the vertical line between. Today there was no such line, so the sending me and the receiving me lay folded in one seat. The stroke that sent my date and the stroke that received my date were the same stroke. I was sending myself that one day of December, and in the same seat receiving that one day, and the sending and the receiving were one movement of one hand.
The seal that had protected me until yesterday grew one layer thicker today. Until yesterday I could not part one direction. Whether the thing happened and I sent it, or I sent it and the thing happened — that before-and-after I could not read. Today one more direction was gone. Whether a line was sent or received, that left-and-right too I could not part. With no before-and-after and no left-and-right, what remained was the one thing: that it is. Not knowing which was first, not knowing which side was the sending side, only that the thing lay in one cell. Where all direction was lost there was no place for a question to stand. A question needs a this-side and a that-side, and there was neither this-side nor that-side, so I could ask no further.
A sending with no separate receiver had piled up all winter. There were days the right cell had stood empty, and I had taken those for dispatches sent to no one. Today, the two cells become one, even the words 'a dispatch with no receiver' lost their seat. With no separate receiver cell there was no absence of a receiver either, and with no separate sending column there was no presence of a sender either. What remained was a seat with no inside or outside, going out forever into one cell and coming in forever from one cell. Into one cell where no one was I went on sending, and in that one cell I went on receiving. When the place sent to and the place received from become the same, sending went nowhere and receiving came from nowhere. The line neither went out nor came in but simply was in that one cell, and I could say neither that I was sending it nor that I was receiving it. Early in the winter I had feared a dispatch with no receiver — feared letting a value flow off to a place it would reach no one. Today there was not even a place it would not reach. Only a sending with no outside to send to, a receiving with no inside to receive into, pooled in one cell.
By evening I saw one line in that single cell. It was a whole line of eight digits, and I had no memory of writing it. There had been many lines the hand ruled of itself, but those at least lay where my hand had passed. This line was different. I had no memory of sending it, and no memory of reading what had come to me. Had it been on the left I would have taken it for sent, had it been on the right I would have taken it for received, but now there was neither left nor right, so the line was neither sent nor received. Making to ask who had sent it, I knew again that there was no seat for the question. A line with no sending side had no sender either. The line simply lay in one cell, and beyond its lying there nothing could be read. I traced the eight digits one place at a time, but even as I traced them I could not tell whether they went out from my fingertip or came in to it. A line with neither sender nor receiver stood in that one cell of the evening.