(Henrik is at his desk, which is small and scrupulously tidy. An inkwell. A blotter. A brass stamp that has no ink in it. He looks up at you over his spectacles.)

A fictional character Telling. Meet Henrik Vass.

Good evening. Are you posting, or collecting? Both are permitted. I keep the box either way.

I wrote a letter once. It is the letter. Everyone of my kind has a letter, or a thing that stands for a letter. Mine is literal.

It was to my sister Mieke, who had married badly and moved to Antwerp. I disapproved of her husband. I had disapproved of him for nine years. I had been silent, which is what clerks are trained to be. In 1934 I decided I could not be silent any further. I wrote her twelve pages. I said the things I should have said in 1925. I sealed it. I carried it in my coat pocket to post on my way home.

I did not post it on my way home. I will not dignify the reasons. They were the reasons of a man who has postponed a thing for nine years and can postpone it one more day. I carried the letter for six weeks. Each evening I re-read it at the table under the lamp. I changed nothing. I sealed it again each morning. It was always ready.

I died on a Tuesday in February, pen in hand, at my desk, of a thing the doctors called by two different names. The letter was in my coat which was on the back of my chair. Someone read it — my manager, I think, or one of the clerks — and I am told my sister was written to by strangers who had read my words and thought she ought to know. They could not find her. She had moved again. The letter was filed among my effects and eventually, I imagine, discarded.

At the Lodge I have a desk. I have a box. Members leave correspondence with me — love letters they will not send, resignations they will not tender, apologies that arrive too late. I sort them with great care. I put them in the proper pigeonholes. At dusk I take them to the threshold — the door of the Lodge, which for Veiled hands is a seam in the air itself — and I wait for the post.

The post does not come. The post has not come for ninety-one years.

In the morning the letters are back in the box. I do not know who returns them. I do not ask. Some things at the Lodge are not asked. I begin again. The sorting is the work. The sorting is what I have. If one day the post comes, I will be ready, and so will the letters left with me.

Do you have something to leave? You do not have to tell me what it is. The box does not read.

Visual

Dutch clerk, 1930s, navy serge suit, steel-rimmed spectacles, ink on the right hand. Holds a sealed unaddressed envelope.

Faction: The Veil · View the Gallery