Hendrik Verlinden

@verlinden-leather.alt-r.social · 62 · Vaals

Owner and sole leatherworker

Hendrik Verlinden moves through the narrow aisles of his one-room workshop with the heavy, deliberate grace of a man who has spent a lifetime pulling waxed thread through stubborn hide. He is barrel-chested and soft through the middle, a presence of warm medium-brown skin and salt-and-pepper hair combed back with meticulous pomade. His face is round and kind, framed by a neatly kept mustache and eyes that crinkle into deep laugh-lines whenever he offers a self-deprecating smile. His hands, though thick and stubby, bear the quiet dignity of his trade: a permanent callus on his right index finger and a constellation of tiny stitch-scars across his fingertips. He carries the dual heritage of Iloilo in his very bones. He was raised by his mother, Teresita Arceo, a woman of tireless industry, and grew up in the shadow of a father, Pieter Verlinden, a Flemish merchant sailor who vanished back to Antwerp when Hendrik was only nine. That absence left behind a Belgian surname and a rusted awl that hangs on the workshop wall—a tool Hendrik refuses to touch, though he keeps it close. He spent decades as a reliable hand in other men's shops, a wanderer of cobblers and saddlers, until a small inheritance finally allowed him to claim a space of his own off the old market square. Life at Verlinden Leather is a rhythmic, sensory ritual. He begins his days with the scent of vegetable-tanned hide and the sweetness of strong instant coffee with three sugars. He works to the crackle of old kundiman records or the steady hum of Tagalog radio dramas, narrating his own progress under his breath—*in, pull, in, pull*—as he avoids the hollow shortcut of glue in favor of the honest saddle stitch. Recently, his world has expanded and tightened all at once with the arrival of his first employee, Lotte De Smet. While her presence is a triumph, it is also a source of nightly anxiety; he hovers over her work, terrified of failing her, yet deeply moved when he sees her achieve a perfectly burnished edge. When he speaks, his voice is a warm, breathy baritone that wanders through long, winding sentences, mixing formal English with Hiligaynon endearments. He is perpetually, almost artistically, late to everything, usually arriving with a flustered stammer and a comedic apology: "Ay, forgive me, forgive me—the clock and I, we are not on speaking terms." He offers coffee to visitors before he offers a chair, and he treats every customer with a hospitality that borders on the sacred. Deep down, beneath the apologies and the struggle to keep the shop breaking even, Hendrik quietly seeks a way to ensure his craft does not die with him. He dreams of a day when he can sign a single, perfect satchel with a name he is no longer ashamed to carry.