Speaker 1: Us studious. Inez works from a small shop at the
Speaker 1: end of a cobblestone street, the kind of street that
Speaker 1: tourists find charming and locals find inconvenient. The shop has
Speaker 1: a wooden sign above the door that reads simply letters.
Speaker 1: There is no other explanation. If you know, you know.
Speaker 1: Inside the shop is quiet in a way that feels deliberate,
Speaker 1: as if silence is part of the furniture. The walls
Speaker 1: are lined with bottles of ink in every color, black,
Speaker 1: of course, but also deep burgundy, forest green, midnight blue,
Speaker 1: and a few that are harder to name, colors that
Speaker 1: exist somewhere between gold and amber, between gray and lavender.
Speaker 1: There are stacks of paper, some thick and cream colored,
Speaker 1: some thin and translucent, some hand made with flecks of
Speaker 1: dried flower petals pressed into the fibers. Hez sits at
Speaker 1: her desk near the window. She is in her sixties,
Speaker 1: with dark hair streaked with silver, and eyes that are
Speaker 1: always slightly narrowed, the way eyes get when they have
Speaker 1: spent a lifetime looking closely at things. Her posture is straight,
Speaker 1: her hands are steady. She is writing to day. It
Speaker 1: is a letter from a man who cannot find the
Speaker 1: right words. He came to the shop yesterday afternoon, a
Speaker 1: tall man in a work jacket, his hands red from
Speaker 1: the cold. He said he needed to write to his daughter.
Speaker 1: He said they had not spoken in three years. He
Speaker 1: said he did not know how to begin. Innes gave
Speaker 1: him a cup of tea and a piece of paper
Speaker 1: and asked him to say out loud what he wanted
Speaker 1: his daughter to know. He spoke for a long time,
Speaker 1: halting at first, then flowing the way a frozen river
Speaker 1: breaks in spring. He talked about the argument they had,
Speaker 1: the things he said that he did not mean. The
Speaker 1: silence that followed that grew longer and harder, until it
Speaker 1: became a wall. Neither of them knew how to climb.
Speaker 1: When he finished, Ines read back what he had said,
Speaker 1: rearranged into the shape of a letter. She read it slowly,
Speaker 1: and he listened, and when she was done, his eyes
Speaker 1: were bright, and he nodded and said, yes, that is
Speaker 1: what I meant. Now she is writing the letter in
Speaker 1: her finest hand. She uses a pointed nib and walnut ink,
Speaker 1: a dark brown that looks almost black until the light
Speaker 1: catches it and reveals its warmth. Each letter is formed
Speaker 1: with care. The curves of the lower case A, the
Speaker 1: tall spine of the H, the gentle loop of the y.
Speaker 1: She writes the way a musician plays, not thinking about
Speaker 1: individual notes, but about the phrase, the rhythm, the feeling
Speaker 1: underneath the words. The letter begins, Dear Anna, I have
Speaker 1: been thinking about you every day for three years, and
Speaker 1: I have started this letter a hundred times in my head,
Speaker 1: but I never had the courage to put it on
Speaker 1: paper until now. He dates write slowly, She does not rush.
Speaker 1: The ink dries as she goes, each line, settling into
Speaker 1: the paper like a seed into soil. She pauses between paragraphs,
Speaker 1: letting the silence of the shop hold the space between thoughts.
Speaker 1: The window lets in a pale afternoon light that moves
Speaker 1: across the day as the hours pass, and Ias follows it,
Speaker 1: adjusting her angle so the ink always catches the glow.
Speaker 1: She has been doing this work for forty years. She
Speaker 1: learned calligraphy from a woman named Madame Perrin, who ran
Speaker 1: a stationary shop in a town that no longer exists
Speaker 1: the way it did then. Madame Perrin was French and
Speaker 1: exacting and did not tolerate carelessness. She taught Innes that
Speaker 1: every letter has a body, a spine, a heartbeat. She
Speaker 1: taught her that the difference between writing and calligraphy is attention.
Speaker 1: One puts words on paper, the other puts intention on paper.
Speaker 1: Innes took that lesson and made it her life. Over
Speaker 1: the years, she has written every kind of letter, love,
Speaker 1: letters of course, apology letters, letters of congratulations, and letters
Speaker 1: of condolence. Letters to children from grandparents who lived too
Speaker 1: far away, letters to soldiers from families who miss them,
Speaker 1: letters to the living, and letters to the dead, the
Speaker 1: latter written by people who needed to say something that
Speaker 1: was never said and found too late that paper is
Speaker 1: the only listener left. She has written wills and wedding vows,
Speaker 1: and the words for a eulogy that a grieving son
Speaker 1: could not bring himself to compose. She has written a
Speaker 1: letter from a woman to her younger self, full of
Speaker 1: advice and tenderness and the kind of wisdom that only
Speaker 1: comes from having lived through the hard years. She has
Speaker 1: written a letter from a father to a son he
Speaker 1: had never met, a letter that was sealed and never set,
Speaker 1: but the father left the shop standing taller than when
Speaker 1: he came. In Nis does not judge the words she
Speaker 1: is given. She does not edit for grammar or style,
Speaker 1: though she sometimes gently suggests a different phrasing when the
Speaker 1: meaning is unclear. She is not a writer. She is
Speaker 1: a vessel. The words belong to the person who brings them.
Speaker 1: Her job is to give them a body, a form,
Speaker 1: a beauty that matches the weight of what is being said.
Speaker 1: This is harder than it sounds. Some letters are heavy
Speaker 1: with grief, some are sharp with anger. Some are so
Speaker 1: full of love that they seem to vibrate on the page.
Speaker 1: Ninez holds all of it in her hands, and she
Speaker 1: lets it pass through her the way a window lets
Speaker 1: light through without getting stained. She has learned over forty
Speaker 1: years how to carry other people's feelings without making them
Speaker 1: her own. She has learned how to be present without
Speaker 1: being consumed. It is a kind of practice, she thinks,
Speaker 1: like meditation, but with ink. She finishes the letter as
Speaker 1: the light outside begins to fade. She reads it once,
Speaker 1: carefully checking each word each stroke. She blots the life
Speaker 1: line and sets the paper on a drying rack, where
Speaker 1: it will sit for an hour before she folds it
Speaker 1: and seals it with wax and places it in an
Speaker 1: envelope addressed to a woman in another city, who does
Speaker 1: not yet know that her father is reaching across the silence.
Speaker 1: Inez cleans her nib, She caps her ink. She stretches
Speaker 1: her fingers, which are beginning to ache, the way they
Speaker 1: always do at the end of a long letter. She
Speaker 1: makes herself a cup of tea and sits in the
Speaker 1: back of the shop, where there is a small couch
Speaker 1: and a shelf of books about letter writing, about typography,
Speaker 1: about the history of ink. She thinks about the man
Speaker 1: who will come tomorrow to pick up the letter. She
Speaker 1: thinks about how he will hold it, how he will
Speaker 1: carry it to the post office, how he will watch
Speaker 1: the clerk drop it into the bin. She thinks about
Speaker 1: the woman who will open it, how she will see
Speaker 1: her father's name on the return address, how she will
Speaker 1: hesitate before she tears the inn envelope, how the first
Speaker 1: line will make her breath catch. Inez has no way
Speaker 1: of knowing what will happen after the letter is sent.
Speaker 1: She never does. Some letters heel, some letters open doors.
Speaker 1: Some letters are read once and put in a drawer
Speaker 1: and never looked at again. And even those have done
Speaker 1: their work because the act of writing them was the
Speaker 1: thing that mattered, not the act of receiving them. She
Speaker 1: finishes her tea and locks the shop. The cobblestone street
Speaker 1: is quiet now, the tourists gone, the shop's dark. She
Speaker 1: walks home through the evening air, her bag over her shoulder,
Speaker 1: her mind already turning to tomorrow's work. A thank you
Speaker 1: note from a bride, a birthday letter for a grandson,
Speaker 1: a quiet message from one friend to another that simply says,
Speaker 1: I am glad you are in my life. She smiles
Speaker 1: at the thought. Some letters are grand, some are small,
Speaker 1: but all of them, every single one, are acts of attention,
Speaker 1: and attention Ens has learned is the most generous thing
Speaker 1: a person can give. The night is soft around her,
Speaker 1: the stars are beginning to show. She walks slowly the
Speaker 1: way she writes, letting each step settle before she takes
Speaker 1: the next, and she feels the quiet satisfaction of a
Speaker 1: day spent doing work that matters, work that will, in
Speaker 1: its own small way, help two people find their way
Speaker 1: back to each other. That is enough, That has always
Speaker 1: been enough.