The Young Printer

     The air gushed inwards, swelled his lungs and held at capacity. He savoured the sharp aroma of ink in his nostrils and the deep swathing of satisfaction the air carried with it into his heart. He opened his eyes and exhaled through his slightly parted, faintly smiling lips. He reached for the ‘E’ and contemplated it between his thumb and forefinger. It was cold and lifeless to his fingers but not to his spirit. He looked at the ‘E’ and then at the table of small metal towers with other letters embossed on their steeples. This here was a powerless droplet in his fingers but, joined thoughtfully with its brethren, became as mighty as the sea. He looked back at the ‘E’ and clunked it familiarly into the carefully arranged block ready for printing.

Father Renée was the catalyst behind the flare of devotion the young printer felt for letters. Since he could form words in his mouth he had been under the tutelage of the holy man who opened the flood gates for the procession of letters toting ideas en masse. The learning of letters had brought the young printer wealth. Pecuniary reward for his qualifications came in trickles but the torrent, the real weight of wealth, lay elsewhere. The young printer, overwhelmed by the power of words, prostrated himself in exulted obeisance before the machine which exploded the capability for these printed words to fly to the far reaches of the world. The toiling hands of monks and scholars could now rest at ease, their calloused fingers could grow soft and cradle heavy heads to stoke the furnaces of knowledge that reside within. He often stammered over the words to describe his hope for the future of man. Armed as they could be, with letters, words, knowledge; mankind could know greatness from its depths to its heights.

A consonant, a vowel, check the word before breaking the symbol and beginning another. His diligence wrestled with his exultation as he picked up, contemplated and scrutinized every letter of each word. Although the power of such words was divine, he was responsible for each one. Whose eyes might fall on this letter’s impression? On whose mind will the young printer stamp a thought or idea as if he himself had been sitting next to them pressing each letter onto the recipient’s soul? This was no menial task; he was a conduit, a conductor. His hands were the levee through which the ideas of genius were guided to the ocean of mankind’s mind and he had to concentrate to stifle the delight which made his fingers tremble.

Sometimes his young heart bubbled and frothed, demanding to be heard by his beleaguered brain so his hands slowed to accommodate. “Though you’re printing words here,” it said “what words are being printed in France? Or Italy? What words?!” His heart screamed until his ears hurt inside. “At the speed of a rider what news could be brought? What knowledge could spread?” Like seaweed in the shallows each new idea would stretch up towards the surface and all would drift and sway with the ebb and flow of time until the world was united and dancing together as one. The words of a king would be as near as whispered in the young printer’s ear! The words of a king … or a knave.

The young printer’s hand froze, suspended mid-air on the return journey from the sea of letters before him. The letter ‘W’ gripped between his thumb and forefinger, he stared at it. Cold thoughts from the very peak of his brain began to ooze down and quench the fire his heart had sent up. The speed in which he could know a king’s speech would be the same that it would take for a king, or anybody, to know the speech of a knave. It was much more than fearful pride and ashamed censorship which made the young printer’s skin pale; it was fear. The young printer knew a lot about incendiary words; the workshop was steaming with them. Knaves with quick tempers are adept at starting fires; insults and insinuations fly as fast as falcons when spoken without thought. What if that ebb and flow of words brought in eulogies from kings and sent out cacophonies from paupers? What if the incendiary words spoken in a moment of thoughtless passion could travel continents and light fires all across the world? War, merciless war, started from idiocy and incomprehension? These words, these vessels carrying knowledge could easily be ignored. They could easily be cast aside, misinterpreted and twisted by knaves to make a pit for souls at which to claw.

The ‘W’ bit into the young printer’s flesh, its soulless corners embossing his forefinger and thumb with blue panic. What if those very words, fired true with veracity, were swallowed by raw merciless eyes? The deeds of soldiers and the horrors of war, retold with apathetic honesty to redefine ‘humane’? Would knowledge of these horrors, this trauma, the depraved depths of man he had only read on the steely eyes of soldiers back from war; would it corrupt innocent minds? Could good men, honest and true, become numb to violent misadventure? Their ability to go one more step unto the brink of evil emboldened by every callous truth gleaming before their eyes.

The ‘W’ started to make his hand shake, the power of this symbol scorched and would soon pierce his skin and bring forth a flow of - once torrid now tepid - blood. Fear, not muscle, gripped this powerful little tower and caused the young printer’s heart to race and beads of sweat to burst from his forehead. Could man be trusted with such an amount of power? In villages and hamlets, where everybody knows the business of their neighbour, animosity breeds and multiplies like rats. Would the world dwindle to the size of a village with the spread of letters and news? Would the flash-flood of knowledge spread through it like the biblical deluge? From this little printers’ workshop, and countless like it, could man be trusted to be honest and true in their accounts of atrocities while exercising caution, prudence and empathy? Can man, can mankind control and embrace the onslaught of ideas and knowledge for what the young printer knew it could be: the making of mankind and the liberation of the lesser to greater heights of existence?

The young printer’s forehead curled and folded into deep, moist ripples of worry. Paroxysms of fear and waves of panic flooded from the young printer’s mind, lathered the fire of his heart and rushed down his arm into the vice of his forefinger and thumb. Then his forehead retracted, the skin smoothing with transparent resolve. The algid waters of his mind subsided and the warmth from his heart eased his taught muscles. He turned his hand and let the ‘W’ fall gently into his palm. He contemplated it, as he had done before, but this time with the assurance a father has in his son making the right choice in any endeavour. Passing the torch to the next generation and relinquishing control to the other. He rolled the little tower masterfully up his soft fingers and manipulated it gently between the knuckles before he made his decision. Then snapped the familiar ‘clunk’ as before.

END