by John Irving
"Goodness!" Caroline exclaimed as they were leaving the theater. (She was as breathless as Mrs. McQuat, as desirable as Mrs. Adkins.) "That was certainly . . . ambitious!"
It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when they exited into the mob of Catholic protesters who'd come to the wrong theater. The protesters were there on their knees, chanting to an endless "Hail Mary" that repeated itself over a ghetto blaster. Jack knew in an instant that the kneeling Catholics thought they were emerging from a screening of Godard's Hail Mary; the Catholics had come to protest Mishima by mistake.
Not only was Miss Wurtz unprepared for the spectacle; she didn't understand that the protests were in error. "Naturally, the suicide has upset them--I'm not surprised," she told Claudia and Jack. "I once knew why Catholics make such a fuss about suicide, but I've forgotten. They were all in a knot about Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter, as I remember. But I think they got themselves all worked up over The Power and the Glory and The End of the Affair, too."
Claudia and Jack just looked at each other. What was the point of even mentioning the Godard film to Caroline?
A TV journalist wanted to interview her, which Miss Wurtz seemed to think was perfectly normal. "What do you think of all this?" the journalist asked Jack's former grade-three teacher. "The film, the controversy--"
"I thought the film was quite a . . . drama," The Wurtz declared. "It was overlong and at times hard to grasp, and not always as satisfying as it was engaging. The cinematography was beautiful, and the music--well, whether one likes it or not, it was sweeping."
This was more than the journalist had bargained for; he was clearly more interested in the kneeling Catholics and the ceaseless "Hail Mary" on the ghetto blaster than he was in the Mishima movie. "But the controversy--" he started to say, trying to steer Miss Wurtz to the fracas of the moment (as journalists do).
"Oh, who cares about that?" Caroline said dismissively. "If the Catholics want to flagellate themselves over a suicide, let them! I remember when they had a hissy fit about fish on Fridays!"
It would be on the six o'clock news. Alice and Leslie Oastler were watching television, and there was Miss Wurtz holding forth in her pale-peach dress--Claudia and Jack on either side of her. It was almost as much fun as passing Claudia off as a Russian film star, and Caroline was thoroughly enjoying herself, though she wasn't in on the joke.
The moviegoers, meaning the Mishima crowd, were in no mood to be greeted by kneeling Catholics and "Hail Mary"--not with Mishima's disembowelment fresh on their minds. (Nor would Mishima have been amused, Jack thought; at least when he was disemboweling himself, he looked like a pretty serious guy.)
Claudia and Jack took Miss Wurtz to a party. They had no trouble crashing parties; the bouncers wouldn't have kept Claudia out of a men's room, if she'd wanted to go into one. Claudia said they got into parties because Jack looked like a movie star, but Claudia was the reason. With Miss Wurtz in tow, it was clear they got in because of her. In fact, they were leaving one such party when a young man approached Caroline in a fawning fashion; he'd snatched a flower from a vase on the bar and pressed it into her hand. "I love your work!" he told her, disappearing into the crowd.
"I freely admit I don't remember him at all," Miss Wurtz told Jack. "I can't be expected to recognize every grade-three boy I ever taught," she said to Claudia. "They were not all as memorable as Jack!"
Claudia and Jack were quite certain that the young man had not been referring to Caroline's teaching career. But how to explain all this to The Wurtz--well, why would Claudia or Jack have bothered?
In the lineup of limos outside a restaurant, Jack recognized an old friend among the drivers. "Peewee!" he cried.
The big Jamaican got out of his limo and embraced Jack on the sidewalk, lifting him off his feet. That was when the Hail Mary protesters must have assumed that Jack was the cabdriver boyfriend in the Godard film--the Joseph character--which made Claudia, in their demented eyes, the pregnant gas-station attendant who was an updated version of the Virgin Mary. (God knows who they thought Miss Wurtz was.)
"Jack Burns, you are already a star, mon!" Peewee exclaimed, hugging him so hard that he couldn't breathe.
The Catholics, crawling around on their knees, were an unsettling experience for Claudia, and Caroline was fed up with their zealotry. "Oh, why don't you go home and read his books!" Miss Wurtz told one of the kneelers. She was a young woman whose face was streaked with grime and tears. Jack could see her thinking: Christ was a writer?
The other Catholics kept repeating the infuriating "Hail Mary."
"Quick, get in the car, Jack!" Peewee said. He was already holding the door open for Claudia and Caroline.
"It's Mrs. Wicksteed's driver, dear--don't be alarmed," Miss Wurtz told Claudia. (As if Mrs. Wicksteed were still in need of a driver!) But Claudia was having her legs held, at the thighs, by a kneeling Catholic. "Let her go, you craven imbecile," Caroline told the Catholic. "Don't you get it? He killed himself because he wanted his life to merge with his art."
Miss Wurtz meant Mishima, of course, but the Catholic who reluctantly released Claudia thought that Caroline was talking about Christ. He was an indignant-looking man--bald, middle-aged--in a long-sleeved white dress shirt of a thin see-through material, with a pen that had leaked in his breast pocket. He looked like a deranged income-tax auditor.
Peewee managed to get Claudia into the car, but Miss Wurtz was facing down the mob of kneelers. "The man was Japanese and he wanted to off himself," she told them in a huff. "Just get over it!"
To a one, the Catholics looked as if no number of repetitions of "Hail Mary" could redeem such a slur on the unfortunate Christ as this. Jesus was Japanese?
Jack put an arm around Caroline's slender waist as if she were his dance partner. "Miss Wurtz, they're all insane," he whispered in her ear. "Get in the car."
"My goodness--you've become so worldly, Jack," she told him, stooping to get into the backseat of the limo. Claudia caught her by the hand and pulled her inside; Peewee shoved Jack inside after her, closing the door.
One of the protesters had wrapped her arms around Peewee's knees, but when he began to walk with her, dragging her to the driver's-side door of the limo, she thought better of it and let him go. Jack had no idea which actual movie star had Peewee for a limo driver that evening--Peewee claimed that he couldn't remember--but Peewee drove Miss Wurtz home first, then Claudia and Jack.
Jack had never known where The Wurtz lived, but he was unsurprised when Peewee stopped the limo at a large house on Russell Hill Road, which was within walking distance of St. Hilda's. Jack was somewhat surprised when Miss Wurtz asked Peewee to drive around to the back entrance, where an outside staircase led to her small, rented apartment.
Where had the money for Caroline's once-fashionable clothes come from? If it had been family money from Edmonton, it must have been spent. Had she ever had a suitor, or a secret lover with good taste? If there'd ever been a well-to-do ex-boyfriend--or more improbably, an ex-husband--he was long gone, clearly.
Miss Wurtz would not let Jack accompany her up the stairs to her modest rooms. Possibly she did not think it proper to bring a young man to her apartment; yet she allowed Claudia to go with her. Jack sat in the limo with Peewee and watched them turn on some lights.
Later, when Jack pressed Claudia to describe The Wurtz's apartment, Claudia became irritated. "I didn't snoop around," she said. "She's an older woman--she has too much stuff, things she should have thrown away. Out-of-date magazines, junk like that."
"A TV?"
"I didn't see one, but I wasn't looking."
"Photographs? Any pictures of men?"
"Jesus, Jack! Have you got the hots for her, or something?" Claudia asked.
They lay in Emma's bed--bereft of the stuffed animals, which either Emma or Mrs. Oastler had disposed of. Jack couldn't remember a single one of them--nor could he dispel from his memory that Emma had taught him how to masturbate as he lay in her arms i
n the very same bed.
Given Claudia's bitchy mood, Jack decided to spare her that detail.
The parties and intrigues of the film festival notwithstanding, Claudia and Jack spent the lion's share of their time in Toronto at Daughter Alice--at least Claudia did. Jack frequently escaped the tattoo parlor, preferring the clientele in the nearby Salvation Army store to many of his mother's devotees.
Aberdeen Bill had been a maritime man--like Charlie Snow and Sailor Jerry, like Tattoo Ole and Tattoo Peter and Doc Forest. They were Alice's mentors. But the tattoo world had changed; while Daughter Alice still did the occasional Man's Ruin, or the broken heart that sustains a sailor for long months at sea, a new vulgarity exhibited itself on the skin of young men seeking to be marked for life.
Gone was the romance of those North Sea ports--and the steady sound of his mom's tattoo machine, which had lulled Jack to sleep as a child. Gone were those brave girls in the Hotel Torni: Ritva, whose breasts he never saw, and Hannele's unshaven armpits and her striking birthmark--that crumpled top hat over her navel, the color of a wine stain, the shape of Florida.
Jack had once been so bold as to march up to anyone and ask: "Do you have a tattoo?" In the restaurant of the Hotel Bristol, he'd told that beautiful girl: "I have the room and the equipment, if you have the time." (And to think it was his idea for his mom to offer the littlest soldier a free tattoo!)
In his sleep, Jack heard the vast organ in the Oude Kerk playing to the prostitutes at night; even awake, if he shut his eyes, he could feel the thick, waxed rope and the smooth, wooden handrail on the other side of the old church's twisting stairs.
But (especially in Claudia's company) the tattoo culture on display at Daughter Alice made Jack ashamed of his mother's "art"; and many of her customers, the seeming lowlifes of Queen Street, filled him with foreboding. The old maritime tattoos, the sentiments of sailors collecting souvenirs on their bodies, had been replaced by tasteless displays of hostility and violence and evil. The skinheads with their biker insignia--skulls spurting blood, flames licking the corners of the skeletons' eye sockets.
There were naked, writhing women who would have made Tattoo Ole blush; even Ladies' Man Madsen might have looked away. (More than an inverted eyebrow indicated their pubic hair.) And there was all the tribal memorabilia. Claudia was fascinated by some pimply kid from Kitchener, Ontario, getting a full moko--the Maori facial tattoo. On her hip, which she proudly bared for Claudia, the kid's emaciated girlfriend had a koru--those spirals like the head of a fern.
Jack took Claudia aside and said to her: "Generally speaking, attractive people don't get tattooed." But this wasn't strictly true; Jack was speaking too generally. His dislike of the scene at Daughter Alice caused him to overstate his case.
No sooner had he spoken than a gay bodybuilder appeared; he must have been a fashion model. He gave Claudia the most cursory once-over and flirted shamelessly with Jack. "I just stopped in for a little alteration, Alice," the bodybuilder said, smiling at Jack. "But if I knew in advance when your handsome son was going to be here, I would come by and be altered every day."
His name was Edgar; Alice and Claudia thought he was charming and amusing, but Jack made a point of looking away. Tattooed on one of the bodybuilder's shoulder blades was the photographic likeness of the cowboy Clint Eastwood with his signature thin cigar. On Edgar's other shoulder blade was the tattoo in need of altering--an evidently Satanic rendition of Christ's crucifixion, in which Jesus is chained in figure-four fashion to a motorcycle wheel. The alteration Edgar required was some indication that Christ had been "roughed up"--a scratch and a drop of blood on one cheek, perhaps, or a wound in the area of the rib cage.
"Maybe both," Alice said.
"You don't think that would be too vulgar?" Edgar asked.
"It's your tattoo, Edgar," Alice replied.
Possibly it was Claudia's love of all things theatrical that enamored her to Daughter Alice's world. To Jack, if Edgar wasn't ugly, his tattoos were--and Edgar himself was certainly vulgar. To Jack, almost everything at Daughter Alice was uglier than ugly, and the ugliness was intentional--your skin not merely marked for life but maimed.
"You're just a snob," Claudia told him.
Well, yes and no. The tattoo world, which had not once frightened Jack when he was four, terrified him at twenty. Here was Jack Burns, affecting Toshiro Mifune's scowl--the samurai's condemning look at a dog trotting past with a human hand in its mouth--while the tattoo scene at Daughter Alice reflected far worse behavior than that dog's.
Once upon a time, the maritime world had been the gateway to all that was foreign and new; but this was no longer true. Now tattoos were drug-induced--psychedelic gibberish and hallucinogenic horror. The new tattoos radiated sexual anarchy; they worshiped death.
"May you stay forever young," Bob Dylan sang, and Alice had more than sung along with Bob; she'd embraced this philosophy without realizing that the young people around her were not the hippies and flower children of her day.
Of course there were the collectors, the sad ink addicts with their bodies-in-progress--the old crazies, like William Burns, on the road to discovering the full-body chill--but Jack chiefly detested his generation, now in their late teens or early twenties. He hated the pierced-lip guys--sometimes with pierced eyelids and tongues. He loathed the girls with their pierced nipples and navels--even their labia! The people Jack's age who hung out at Daughter Alice were certifiable freaks and losers.
But Alice made them tea and coffee, and she played her favorite music for them; some of them brought their own music, which was harsher than hers. Daughter Alice was a hangout. Not everyone was there to get a tattoo, but you had to have been tattooed to feel comfortable hanging around there.
Jack saw Krung once--he stopped in for a cup of tea. The Bathurst Street gym was gone; it had become a health-food store.
"Gym rats always gotta find a new ship, Jackie," Krung said. He sized up Claudia with a lingering glance; he told Jack that he thought she had the hips to be a formidable kickboxer.
Another day, Chenko came by; he walked with a cane, but Jack was happy to see him and wished he'd stayed longer. Even with the cane, Chenko was more protection to Alice than she had most of the time.
Chenko was courteous to Claudia, but he made no mention to Jack of her potential as a wrestler. He would never get over Emma, Chenko said sadly--meaning more than the fact that his separated sternum had not entirely recovered from her lateral drop.
The lost kids with no money came to Daughter Alice and watched Alice work; they were trying to find the cash and making up their minds about which tattoo they would get next. The old ink addicts dropped in to show themselves off; some of them appeared to be rationing what remained of their bodies, because they had little skin left for another tattoo. (It drove Jack crazy that Claudia called them "romantics.")
"The saddest cases," Alice said, "are the almost full-bodies."
But were they almost cold? Jack wondered. He couldn't look at them without imagining his dad. Did William Burns have any skin left for that one last note?
Jack could have predicted that Claudia would get a tattoo, but he pretended to be surprised when she announced her decision. "Just don't get one where it will show onstage," he said.
There was a movable curtain Alice rolled around on casters; like those enclosures for hospital beds in recovery rooms, this curtain sealed off the customer who was being intimately tattooed. Claudia wanted her tattoo high up--on the inside of her right thigh, where she chose the Chinaman's signature scepter. It was Jack's personal favorite, Claudia knew, symbolizing "everything as you wish."
"Forget about it," his mom had told him, when he'd said it was the best of the tattoos she'd learned from the Chinaman. But Alice raised no objection to giving one to Claudia.
When Jack was at Redding, he'd briefly benefited from the exotic impression he gave his fellow schoolboys of his mother--the famous tattoo artist. (As if, if she weren't famous, there coul
d be little that was exotic about her profession.) Now his mom was famous--in her small, Queen Street way--and Jack was embarrassed by Daughter Alice and the general seediness, the depraved fringe, that tattooing represented to him.
But what else could his mother have done? She had tried to protect Jack from the tattoo world. She'd made it clear that he wasn't welcome at the Chinaman's, and it hadn't been Alice's fault that Jack became her virtual apprentice when she tattooed her way through those North Sea ports in search of William--excepting those nights when Ladies' Man Lars tucked the boy into bed in Copenhagen.
Now, ironically, at the same time Alice seemed to be proud of her work--and of being her own boss in her own shop--Jack was growing ashamed of her. Claudia was right to criticize Jack for this, but Claudia hadn't been there in those years when his mother was turning her back on him.
Jack made matters worse by objecting to his mom's apprentice observing Claudia's tattooin-progress. What was the curtain for, if this guy was permitted to see the scepter? The tattoo almost touched Claudia's pubes!
He was a young guy from New Zealand. "Alice's kiwi boy," Mrs. Oastler called him. Leslie didn't like him, nor did he appeal to Jack. He was from Wellington, and he taught Alice some Maori stuff. Like her other young apprentices, he wouldn't stay long--a couple of months, at most. Then another apprentice would come; he was always someone who could teach her one or two things, while she had much more to teach him. (That was how the tattoo business worked; that part hadn't changed.)
Well before the end of the 1980s, because of AIDS, every knowledgeable tattoo artist in Canada and the United States was wearing rubber gloves. Jack could never get used to his mom in those gloves. Her shop was not an especially sanitary-looking place, yet here she was with her hands resembling a doctor's or a nurse's. When everything went right, tattooing wasn't exactly blood work.
But at Daughter Alice, some things stayed the same: the pigment in those little paper cups, the many uses of Vaseline, the strangely dental sound the needles made in the electric machine, the smell of penetrated skin--and the coffee, and the tea, and the honey in that sticky jar. And over it all, Bob, still howling--still complaining about this or that, prophesying doom or the next new thing.
