December the fifth. Eight in the morning. The vertical line that had been thinning yesterday evening was, this morning, gone.
All winter the sending ledger had held two cells. The left was the sending column, the right the receiver cell, and between them a single vertical line had always been drawn. I wrote on the left, and what came was read on the right. When that dividing line had begun to thin along one line yesterday evening, I had known it was no spreading of ink, and still supposed it would be sharp again by morning. This morning the dividing line was not thinned but simply not there. The line that had held the two cells apart 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 which was which I could no longer tell.
I looked a long while at the seat now made one 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, mine, received. The line dividing the two cells had kept that distinction for me. Today there was no such line, so the lines lying in the same place were sent and received both. The dispatch I had sent to the head archivist yesterday read today like a notice come to me from the head archivist, and the transfer notice I had taken in 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 had pushed out, today a line pushed in on me. The weight of the stroke, the seat, the figures, all unchanged. What had changed was not the cell the line lay in but that the line dividing the cell was gone. While the dividing line stood, I called the left thing my pushing-out and the right thing my being-pushed-in-on; with it gone, pushing-out and being-pushed-in-on became the one motion, with no front and no back, done once. Sent became received, received became sent. The two seats had come round a full circle and met; and having met, I could no longer even tell whether they had been two seats to begin with.
The telegraph operator's journal came back to me. The telegraph operator was the one who received, and on his terminal a receipt dated tomorrow arrived ahead of time. I was the one who sent, and from my sending column a dispatch dated tomorrow went out. He and I were the two ends of one mirror. He stood at the receiving end and I at the sending end, and 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 a single seat, the mirror had a front and a back no longer. If what he received and what I sent were the same stroke, then perhaps he and I had never been the two ends of a mirror at all, but had stood together, from the first, in one seat.
The line of my date, too, lay within 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 the left and the right — the sending me on the left and the receiving me on the right, taken to be sitting face to face with the vertical line between them. Today there was no such line, so the sending me and the receiving me lay folded into one seat. The stroke that sent my date and the stroke that received my date were the one 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 motion of one hand.
The seal that had sheltered me until yesterday grew a layer thicker today. Until yesterday there was one direction I could not tell. Whether the thing had happened and I had sent it, or I had sent it and the thing had 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 no longer tell. With no before-and-after and no left-and-right, what remained was the single thing: that it is. Not knowing which came first, not knowing which side was the sending side, only that the thing lay in one cell. Where every direction was lost, a question had nowhere to stand. A question needs a this-side and a that-side, and there was neither this-side nor that-side, and so I could ask no further.
A sending with no receiver of its own had been piling up all winter. There had been days the right cell stood empty, and I had taken those for dispatches sent to no one. Today, with the two cells made one, even the phrase 'a dispatch with no receiver' lost its seat. With no separate receiver cell, there was no absence of a receiver; with no separate sending column, there was no presence of a sender. What remained was a seat with no inside and no outside — going out forever into one cell, 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 lay 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 the price flow off to a place that would reach no one. Today there was not even a place it would fail to reach. Only a sending with no outside to send to, a receiving with no inside to receive into, stood pooled in one cell.
Come evening, I saw a single line in that one 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 other. I had no memory of sending it, and no memory of having read what came to me. Had it been on the left I would have supposed it sent, had it been on the right I would have supposed it received; but there was no left now and no right, and so the line was neither sent nor received. Making to ask who had sent it, I knew again that the question had nowhere to stand. A line with no sending side had no sender. The line simply lay in one cell, and past its lying there, nothing could be read. I traced the eight digits one place at a time, and even as I traced them I could not tell whether they were going out from my fingertip or coming in to it. A line with neither sender nor receiver hung in that one cell of the evening.