The Typsetter

FURTIVE. Orla let the word rest in her hand for a moment, feeling its weight. There was something about seven-letter words. None of the flighty lightness of fives or sixes, but somehow still delicate enough to dance their way into the composing stick. They were Baryshnikov, at once immovable and in motion. 

FURTIVE. What a word. She allowed herself a last moment with it and then, with a deft movement, flipped it over and slid it into the composing stick as one. FURTIVE. Yes. That would do nicely.   

She understood that most practitioners of the craft preferred to move around the type case, adding letters one by one as they went. She had tried it this way once, but to her, it was a frenzied panic. It turned her beloved process into a strange, solitary race against time. An attempt at grotesque mimicry. Man playing machine. 

Speed was not why Orla had become enamored with the art of typesetting. She couldn’t understand how that would possibly be anyone’s motivation. In an age when words could be conjured up and cast aside by their hundreds with a few flicks of the thumb, why on earth would you choose to set type quickly? And yet, they existed. Orla set type because it felt like the least she could do to honor the gravity of words.

—

Orla had always had a sense for the weight of words. While other children around her had begun to blab and natter as soon as they could, she had remained quiet. She couldn’t imagine just allowing such powerful things to come tumbling out of her like that. Instead, she would sit on her own in bed, when the lights were out and the world was quiet, and let them out carefully. One at a time she would speak them into existence, feeling them on her tongue as they took shape. 

By the age of four, Orla had yet to utter her first word in public. The doctors and specialists had run countless tests - ears, mouth, brain - all to no avail. Eventually, they concluded that it was a developmental issue and placed her with a speech language pathologist two times a week. There Orla would sit, watching intently as the strange woman opened her mouth wide to demonstrate how she formed her vowel sounds. 

She could still remember every detail of the brightly colored room. The inspirational posters featuring an assortment of cartoon animals. The potted plant in the corner whose leaves were forever one skipped-watering away from curling up and dying. The hint of air freshener failing to mask the inevitable accumulation of smells caused by a daily parade of small children. 

—

“Tea?”

Thembiso’s voice drew Orla gently back into her studio. She adored his voice. It was deep and soft, like the sound of distant thunder heard from the comfort of a warm bed. 

“Hmm?” she replied. 

“I’m making tea. Do you want some?” 

“Please...” she said, part of her mind still drifting peacefully in the quiet of her childhood. “Thank you!”

They had met at one of her shows. He’d been dragged there by a friend and then promptly abandoned in favor of the pretty gallery assistant. She had found him standing in front of Marvelling at the Universe (Redacted). It was her favorite piece. She had hidden it away in a corner so she could be close to it.

“What do you think it means?” she asked him. 

“I haven’t read it,” he replied, “but it’s beautiful.” 

It was the first time she heard him speak. It took her a moment to find the words to respond. 

“I think that’s probably the point,” she finally managed to get out. 

“Well, then I must be better at this art thing than I thought,” he said, flashing a broad grin at her. 

Orla fell in love with him then and there. 

—

LOVE. She let the sorts tumble in her hand as she rolled her fingers back and forth, like a craps player feeling out a pair of dice. LEVO. EVOL. VOLE. Yes. LOVE was right. In it went, registering a satisfying clack as it slotted into place. 

Nearly there now. Her left arm was beginning to tire. She always let the composition stick decide when it was finished. It told her with its weight when the time came. All that remained was the final sort. The magical dot that sealed it shut, frozen in time. 

Her fingers danced across the case, fingering the rows of punctuation marks like a pianist playing some unheard melody. Then, as if her hand had struck a wall, she stopped. She had found the right one, her fingertips picking out the imperceptible burrs and flaws that make each sort unique. It was perfect. Crisp, clean edges. Abrupt. Final. 

She stood there for a moment, her body frozen as her whole being traversed the landscape of the sort. Then, with a deliberate movement, she plucked it from the case and brought it up to her eye. There was no reason for the inspection. She already knew it was the right one. But, she enjoyed trying to make out the crevices and escarpments that she had felt with her fingertip, seeing how tiny they appeared to her now. 

The final sort slid into place as if it had been cut from the exact spot. In reality, Orla knew that they all fit together perfectly enough, but still… she could tell when it was right. With the delicacy of a surgeon, Orla brought the composing stick across and transferred the final stanza to the chase. As she did, she felt the lightness of their absence in her hands, her burden released and forged into something more. With a twist of the handle, she locked the words into place.  

She stepped back, admiring the slab of steel before her. The letters ran back to front and upside down, stripped of their meaning. Satisfied with the shape of the thing, she lifted it up and inserted it into the press. The feeling of the chase slotting smoothly into its housing reminded her of the last puzzle piece finding its place. With a wooden mallet, she gently knocked around the edge, bringing them flush with each other. 

On a table to her right sat a small inking tray and her roller. Orla had tried several before settling on this one. It had just the right amount of give, firm enough to feel the words as she inked them. She lifted the roller out and wiped it down with a cloth, setting it to rest on the edge of the tray. 

With the back of an old teaspoon, she pried open her pot of Van Son Holland Rubber Base Plus printing ink, black. She leaned in close and let the smell of the ink slowly envelope her. It was her favorite smell in the world, like the air of a musty old library and the first page of a crisp new book all rolled into one. 

Holding her cloth at the base of the pot, she poured a shallow pool of ink into the tray. It reflected back the lights above her, at once a mirror and an endless void. An infinity of words drifted back and forth in the pool, waiting to emerge. Sometimes, if she looked long enough, she felt as though she could see them writhing just beneath the surface, like a school of fish so dense they appear as one.  

Assuming a steady stance, Orla plucked the roller from the side of the tray and ran it slowly through the infinite depths. She let it drift back and forth just below the surface until the cartridge glistened like liquid obsidian. Bringing the roller to a forty-five-degree angle, she let the excess ink form rivulets of midnight that plunged back into the endless dark below. 

—

The darkness of the ink reminded her of her secret place beneath the blankets where she would utter solitary words into the silent emptiness. It had been a refuge for her, from a world filled with people who had no sense of reverence for the words that she so cherished. It was as though people didn’t realize the power that they unleashed with each syllable. 

Her father was one of them. He’d come home from work and crack his tongue like a whip if her mother hadn’t prepared dinner yet. If Orla had dared to interrupt his time with his newspaper, she would get it too. He didn’t seem to notice the weight that his words carried in the slightest, dealing blows without even pausing to assess the damage. 

Sometimes she would hear her parents hurling them at each other from down the hall. Their voices would break through into her special place, the angry sounds muffled by her impenetrable barrier of blankets. The precise meaning of the words would be lost, but their intentions remained clear. In those moments she would close her eyes and let her mind drift away until the sounds were left far behind. There she would speak her favorite word: QUIET. 

—

The roller made its last pass across the plateau of nascent words on the slab before her, Orla’s hand following behind. The black forms of the letters appeared sunken, cast in relief within the gunmetal grey behind. Orla shifted her head slightly, side to side, watching the shine of the lights above shimmer its way across the text, breaking the illusion. 

The paper was already loaded into the holder. 199 GSM cold-pressed card stock. Sturdy enough to hold the indent of the words. She loved the idea of her poems being a physical part of the piece, even if no one else would ever feel it. Taking one last moment to appreciate the letters in their raw form, she folded the paper over and slid the entire apparatus under the press.

Her palms felt a little clammy. They always did before printing. She only had one chance. It was her own rule, and yet it made her nervous every time. Besides, if we can’t live by our own rules, then whose can we live by? She took a deep breath, grasped the devil’s tail, and pulled. The weight of the press came down on the paper below. She felt it meet the letters of the slab, translating them to the page. She gave it one more pull, feeling the give of the card as the words were stamped into it. 

Orla paused here, taking the moment in. This was her favorite part of the process. The moment when what was inside the press could be anything at all. Schrödinger’s poem. Almost reluctantly, she freed apparatus from the belly of the press and lifted the paper out of its holder. She quickly strode over to the rear wall and hung the sheet to dry with a pair of pegs. The still-wet letters glinted slightly as a breeze drifted through the studio:

A grand spectacle

It was not

They were never ones for

The spotlight

Stolen in little moments

Of thievery

And furtive collaboration

Theirs was a

Quiet love.

“Hey! Are you done? Ow, damn it!” Thembiso stood in the open doorway, a fresh wet patch of tea on his jeans. 

“Yeah,” replied Orla. 

“Here.” Thembiso handed her a cup of tea. 

“Thanks.” She took a sip. Peppermint and honey. Her favorite. 

“No problem,” said Thembiso. 

“So, what do you think it means?” asked Orla. 

“I haven’t read it yet,” he replied, putting his arm around Orla’s back and pulling her into him.

END