The twenty-third of November. Eight in the morning. The twenty-third had become today, and beneath the date, over the night, a line had filled. This far was the same as yesterday.
What differed was the shape of that line. For the past three days, what rose in the sender field had been two things only: a date and a number. But today a further column was ruled beside the number. It was the column I knew from the ledgers' transfer form. The left the sending seat, the right the receiving seat. All winter, when I opened a box, that form sat on top. Which company's ledger passed to which department, sender and receiver written side by side. The right column of that form was ruled, this morning, in the sender field. It was the receiver's seat.
And that seat was empty.
The number was on the left. It was the number I would read and send this morning. In the right, the receiver's seat, 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 going had to be written for it to be a form. A transfer form without a receiver was not a form. I looked at it a long while. The sending seat was filled, the receiving seat empty. I was the sender. Yet there was no receiver.
At noon the disposal sheet came down. The company of the number I had read that morning sat at the top. It went in the order repeated for three days now. What was sent came at noon. A company crossed into disposal, and by evening its number would dim. This far could be known without a form.
What I had not known was what came after. The disposal sheet named a sending department and a receiving department. The archive sent, the disposal desk received. On the paper form there was a receiver. Yet the form I had seen in the sender field that morning had no receiver. The same company, the same number — on paper there was a receiver, in the sender field there was none. The paper sent that ledger to the disposal desk. The sender field sent that number nowhere. Sent nowhere, and yet the number dimmed.
That I had sent, and yet there was no receiver — I turned it over until evening. What was sent was realized. The company was disposed, and the people's numbers were not preserved. The realization was plain. Only, the form did not say to whom the realization went. The paper's disposal went to the disposal desk. The sender field's dispatch went nowhere. It happened while going nowhere. The price was paid, yet the seat that received the price was empty. I could not tell where the price was charged. With no receiver, the price too had no owner.
I thought again of the telegraph operator. He was the receiver. Tomorrow-dated dispatches came before him, and he received them. The sender was never caught on the film, but the receiver was plainly he. Now I was the sender. Before me a number went out, and at noon its matter came. The sender was plainly I, yet the receiver was not 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 side was empty; when I sent, the receiving side was empty. Only the one seated on the filled side saw his own seat; the empty side had, in the end, no face.
Whether it happens because sent, or what is to happen is sent, on the fourth day too I could not part. To this, today, one layer was added. If it 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 seat was empty. If I had sent with no receiver, was that a sending? If I had read in advance what was to happen, then I had not sent at all, and it was right that there be no receiver. The empty receiver column could be proof that I had not sent, or proof that I had sent and it reached no one. The two proofs were opposite, yet on the sender field they showed as the same blank. In a seat where two opposite possibilities remain the same blank, I could not fix even whether I was the one who sent or the one who read.
The head archivist stamped the disposal sheet that day, checking the receiving department. Whether sending and receiving matched, he ran his finger down both columns of the form. On the paper form there were both columns to touch. He touched both and stamped. Watching his hand, I thought how the morning's sender field had only one column to touch. The sending column was there, the receiving column empty, and touch as one might, one side was air. He had two columns; I had one. He knew where it was sent; I did not. Over the same company, one man touched the receiving place, and one man looked at an empty seat.
A dispatch with no receiver, the first today. Once, it was a single blank. But in three days the sender field had never ended in one. Send, and the next date rose; beneath the next date the next line filled. If lines with no receiver piled one a day, they would gather somewhere, having gone nowhere. If there is a seat where dispatches that reach no one gather, that seat, having no receiver, would have no owner either. I did not yet know that seat. I knew only that the hand which ruled and sent the first blank today was my own.
In the evening the sender field raised the twenty-fourth. This far was the same as yesterday. What differed was today's empty receiver column. That seat was not empty by evening. In the right column, where there had been not one stroke, two last digits began to rise faintly. They looked like a date, yet were not a date; like the end of a number, yet whose, I could not tell. The receiver's seat was trying to fill itself. I looked at those two digits a long while. The sending seat had been filled in the morning; the receiving seat was filling itself in the evening. When both columns of the form were full, it would at last be a transfer form. A form on which where-from and where-to were written. I did not yet know what would rise in that receiver's seat. Only that it was rising — that much, now, I could tell with the eye that lays one over the other.