Diary fragment · 2 min read ·
My Poste Restante
An overseer holds mail at his counter addressed to Poste Restante care of a man who is not entered on any register the office keeps.
- dated: "the counter weeks"
- narrator: "Hugh Ansley, postal overseer"
Monday the eleventh. Quarterly count of the restante pigeonholes today, which is my own ritual, one hole at a time, entered in the overseer's book. Hole 9 broke the pattern. It holds eight letters, all addressed the same way: Poste Restante, Murrow, for the attention of E. Marlow. No forwarding address given. I turned up the register, which is the law of my counter, and there is no entry for any Marlow. A name has to be entered before mail may be issued, and a mailing address has to exist before a name may be registered, and mail may not be returned without an address to return it to. Eight letters sit in a hole that the register says does not exist for anyone.
Thursday the fourteenth. Recounted hole 9 with the ledger open. Eleven letters now, and the ledger's line for the hole has grown its own arithmetic: postage assessments accruing neither charged nor chargeable, fees calculated against a scale I do not have posted, and the line balances. I have worked this counter twenty-two years and I have never known a line to balance itself.
Second Thursday. A parcel for the same care-of came up on the van, small, tied, properly labelled, weight slip filled in and signed by the sender. Hole 9 is letter gauge. The parcel is not. It went in anyway, and the hole shut over it the way a hole does when it is the right size, and I have decided not to measure things I do not wish to confirm.
Sunday evening, late, the counter shut and the grille down. I was doing the light booking and the inquiry tray on the public side held a slip. Inquiries after the three oldest letters in hole 9, set out by number, in a plain unhurried hand, unsigned. The slip is dated tomorrow. Our printed inquiry slips carry the date of asking, and this one asks in advance, politely, as though the asking were a formality already arranged. I have put the slip in the drawer with the overnight book and I have not written anything next to it.
So there it stands. Eight letters, then eleven, then a parcel, held on no register, for a man entered nowhere, whose inquiry slips arrive the day before he is due to make them. The question I cannot put down is the simple one: when he does come to the counter for the mail that is being kept so carefully for him, how will he sign the collection book — since every signature the book has room for is dated, and his dates so far all fall ahead of mine?