Paper and Ink

When the panel discussion ended and I came down from the stage, a young nun blocked my way, with a puzzled expression behind her glasses.

“What did you mean by your answer?”

“So you sent that question to the moderator,” I said, smiling.

“What did you mean,” she insisted, “by that about the blank sheet?”

“I usually let my answers explain themselves,” I remarked, “but since you ask… You asked the writers at the head table what we would want written about us if we were a sheet of paper. When I answered that I preferred to remain blank, I meant that, no matter how masterful the text written on it, a used sheet loses the potential it had when it was empty, of becoming any text, of harboring a new idea or feeling. I refuse to give up this freedom indefinitely.”

“I see,” she nodded.

I started to walk away, but she stopped me again.

“May I rephrase the question?”

My approval was not needed, because she went on.

“If you were a blank paper that, by an inevitable design, of destiny if you like, is going to receive upon its purity the stain of the pen, what would you want written on you?”

I sensed that with this question, which, as I learned later, she put to many writers at panel discussions, that young woman was seeking an answer to the problem of her own virtue.

“How much ink do you have?” I asked.

“As much as it takes.”

“Then I would like you to spill it all on the sheet, until it is completely black.”

The puzzled expression reappeared, so I anticipated her.

“Because that way, all possibilities would coexist in me, at the same time. All the masterpieces of literature, past and future, would be prefigured on my surface. Together, already written, right there, in a single moment.”