Diary fragment · 3 min read ·
By Carbon And Candle
Her carbon sheets come back holding the day's letters she has not typed, top copies first, in her own ribbon.
- dated: "the typing weeks"
- narrator: "Judy Sheave, typist"
Tuesday. The carbon sheets come back holding the day's letters she has not typed, top copies first, in her own ribbon. Let me have that straight before I go further, because if I write it loose it will read as grumbling and it is not grumbling. The pile sits on my return tray before I unlock the room. The top sheet is dated the day the letters were wanted. Beneath it, the next. None of them are letters I typed. All of them carry the impression of keys I use, and their ribbon lines are my ribbon lines, faint, crowded to the left margin the way mine crowd when I am hurrying.
Thursday. I typed today to disprove it. I kept a list on the blotter, five letters, signed and gone by four. At nine this morning the return tray held six carbons. The sixth was dated tomorrow. I did not read it. I have begun not reading them, on the advice of nobody in particular, because a typed page that has not been typed yet is a page I can still refuse to be the author of.
The ink that comes up on them is not mine. That is the part I keep returning to. It is my ribbon, my masking, my little skip at the second line where the platen is worn and the rollers take the type a shade light. But the letters themselves are heavier than I set them. A hand that is mine and has been let press harder.
Friday. I asked the senior typist whether the return tray had ever been issued to me at all. She looked at the tray, which was empty at that moment, and said it had come with the room, and that the room had come with the department, and that she would not be answering further on a Friday. I have known her eleven years. That is her way of saying the question is not wrong, only early.
The candle is the other matter. Typing after hours is allowed against overtime with a candle docket, the electricity being counted off the room's meter and the meter being unreliable since the survey. So the women who work late work by candle, and the carbons come out of the machine greyer for it. Mine do not come out greyer. Mine say candle on the docket and daylight on the page. There is a shade of black you only get at a south window at ten in the morning, and my unsent letters are printed in it.
Monday of the third week. Rationing of top copies. I understand the office runs on the rule that a carbon is only a carbon, and proof of posting goes by the top copy, which is destroyed or filed as the department decides. The tray has begun returning my untyped letters top-copy first. I want someone to explain to me, kindly, in words a typist is allowed to hold, how a top copy can exist for a letter I have not typed. Whose machine raised the original. Which desk is holding it. Why the carbons arrive already second.
I will ask the clerk when next he does his round. Meanwhile the pile is at nineteen sheets and I have not typed one, and still the office is not short of letters, and still the replies come in, and still the ledger says we wrote on the days it says we wrote.
There are two dates past in the tray by the last count. I have not turned them over. If Tuesday's work is owed on Tuesday and I refuse to owe it, the tray has found other days to offer me, and I have not had the heart to learn whether either has already been.