The Diamond Cutter's Apprentice – Part 1: Facets

The workshop was on the third floor of a narrow building in the diamond district, up a staircase that smelled of coffee and machine oil. Mila stood at the top in a borrowed white coat, her portfolio under her arm, and waited for someone to notice her.

Nobody did.

At the long bench by the window, a man sat with his back to her, bent over a spinning wheel. He was tall and lean, with dark curls cropped close and long, careful hands. He was murmuring something under his breath, in Flemish, to the stone in his tweezers.

"Excuse me," said Mila.

The wheel stopped. He turned, slowly, with the look of a person coming up from a long dive.

"You are the apprentice," said Joris. His voice was low and unhurried. "I am Joris. I have been expecting you since nine."

"It is nine-fifteen."

"Then I have been waiting a very long time."

She laughed, and his mouth twitched, just slightly.

He showed her the workshop: the polishing wheels, the loupes, the little grey cloth packets of rough stones. He spoke to her in short, precise sentences, and to the diamonds in a different voice altogether, soft and coaxing.

"You talk to them," said Mila.

"They listen better than people."

"What do you say?"

"I ask them where they want to be cut." He held up a rough stone, milky and dull. "Every stone has a plane where it wants to break. You find it by being patient."

"What if you cut in the wrong place?"

"Then you have a very expensive pile of dust." He smiled, faintly. "I have made a great deal of dust."

Over the following weeks, she learned to hold the stone, to read the grain, to ask. She cut her first facet in March, clumsy and crooked, and Joris looked at it for a long time without speaking.

"It is wrong," he said, at last.

"I know."

"It is also very brave. Do it again."

They worked side by side every evening, long after the other cutters had gone. The workshop grew quiet and golden in the late light, the wheels humming softly, the stones throwing tiny rainbows across the walls.

"Can I ask you something?" said Mila, one night.

"Yes."

"Why do you talk to the diamonds and not to anyone else?"

Joris was silent, turning a stone in his fingers.

"Because they never leave," he said, very quietly.

Mila's heart tightened. "I will not leave," she said.

"You have been here ten weeks."

"I will be here ten years."

He looked up. His eyes were dark and surprised. "Can I ask you something?" he said.

"Yes."

"Would you let me teach you the last cut? The one that makes it shine?"

"Yes," said Mila. "Green?"

"Green," said Joris. "Very green. Hold the stone, Mila. Slowly."

Continue the story: Part 2 – The Brilliant Cut.