The Electric Michelangelo

by Sarah Hall

  – Open books. But they know who they are. They can tell you with a punch or a stiff cock or a few words exactly who they are and where they come from. Take a country away from someone and it firms up their notions. Tells them what they want to be and what they don’t. Makes my job easier, son. A lot easier. No dawdling about deciding on a tattoo. They know what they want and why they want it.

  – They want rampant lions and the St Andrew’s cross, no doubt, or Rangers colours, eh?

  Cy remembered he had said this somewhat smugly, thinking himself capable of a certain amount of discerning and prediction after a year’s apprenticeship. The Scots were singing a song about virgins in Inverness, happy to have arrived at last on their annual holiday. Riley had been walking away from them but at this remark he stopped and turned back to Cy.

  – No. No, lad. I paint hearts. And I paint souls. That’s what I do.

  Back then it had seemed a ridiculous thing to say. Too much like the great Eliot Riley on a flight of fancy, getting wordy and profound, trying to make Cy feel like the village idiot again. But the comment stuck with Cy for some reason, perhaps because it sounded good, the sound of the words themselves had a note of quiet percussion to them, unlike Riley’s usual loud and boasting bluff, or perhaps just because aspects of the man were like burdock that got on to you and sank in. And Cy remembered what he said that afternoon. And then one day, years later and half way across the Atlantic Ocean, with a country lost from sight behind him, an old life scuppered and a new one about to be launched, it became true.

  – PART II –

  – Babylon in Brooklyn –

  Coney Island lay colourful and flashing and ready for revelry under a dull coat of inclement weather. It was a slow day, with pedestrian business responding to the greyish skies overhead, the glitz and hum of the parks seeming all the more stark and garish for the lack of visitors to justify their existence. The mazed walkways, the decorated blinking gateways and turnstiles into the fairgrounds were almost deserted, the rides and the shows were quiet but for their own character exertion. On days like this the whole place gave the gimcrackery impression of a bright and showy and useless thing, or a clown vigorously juggling for empty rows of seating in a circus tent, primed and pathetic and somehow futile. Coney’s beach could seem as dire against the damp and drizzle as it could be inviting on days of clear sunshine. The sand looked logged with water, heavy and turgid. The Wonder Wheel in Luna Park was turning through the mist, providing a view of nothing but cloud for the few in its carriage seats, perhaps a stray patch of the city in the distance where there was an opening in the fog. For the past half hour Cy had been chatting with the hotdog vendor opposite his booth in the alley, smoking cigarettes, passing the time under the rattling, dripping awning of the meat stand. The grease-aproned man was stirring up his sauerkraut with a spoon and complaining halfheartedly about trade as if for something to do rather than with earnest concern.

  – Half my stock will go bad if I can’t boil it by the week’s end. I’m going to have to ditch it with the fishermen for bait, the fish really go for the fat see, chicken bones too, go figure, or I end up eating fifty a day myself and I ain’t that hard a worker. Nobody will put up with old meat these days, not that I’d serve it mind with those sanitation chumps breathing down my neck. Listen, you come back when you leave and take a box of bratwurst home with you. Hate to see it go to waste. You gonna take off, board up early?

  – No, no. I’ll hold on a spell. Never know, do you?

  – Nope. Never know what they’ll hand you down here. Hey, you gonna do my Rosie over sometime? Her tits are beginning to fade. Gotta have those red tits! Old Grady Feltz did a good job on her for one of them navy yard boxer guys, and blind in the eye and wearing that damn patch and all, but she’s beginning to go a little at the chest. Her and the wife, I love my wife but you know what I mean. She’s my lucky charm, my Rosie, got to keep her looking sweet and shiny, right?

  – Come on by later if there’s nothing doing.

  Some of the other tattoo artists did not bother opening on wet days at Coney. For Cy it was a different matter – had he closed up shop in Morecambe on every poor day he would have lost two-thirds of his business or more. Besides, there were those who felt an urge to come to him on broody, overcast days, or the rain would pull them in off the boardwalk and beach to the inside venues past his place of work, and they might be struck with the inspiration to get tattooed. Sure enough two men were walking up the narrow avenue with caps turned slightly down against the first mention of rain coming in off the Atlantic and when they got to Cy’s booth they paused to look at the bright, fluttering walls of the small hut. The vendor gestured with an uncooked sausage to him that he had customers and better go. Cy ground out his cigarette under his heel and approached the men, his hands in his pockets, his stride long. And without a moment’s hesitation the brassy polished voice of his profession left his mouth.

  – Grand day, gents. Seems this is fine English weather we’d be experiencing here. I knew it wouldn’t take too long for it to find me hiding in your great country. I suppose my old missus must have sent it as a present for our happy parting. What’ll it be for you? I can see you’re both men who know your minds, which means you know you want the best and you’ve found it. Your girls’ names with a red rose perhaps, in keeping with this fine English weather, eh? No better way to say you love ’em than their name on your shoulder. This one here’s a beauty. A prize-winner, I’d say, perfect as any from the King of England’s palace gardens, am I right? And since it’s my national weather day I’ll work you both for two dollars and the King’ll think you stole those roses right out of his garden from under his nose.

  The patter of rain, the patter of the trade, it was as easy as that now, when he wanted it to be, when he switched to a higher gear in his brain. It was as easy as starting anew in another country and introducing himself as a brighter version of what he had been.

  The men continued looking at the flash. A bulb was flickering on the sign festooning the doorway. Cy reached up and moved it in its hub and it calmed its erratic light. Underneath that was a painted sign that read ‘The Electric Michelangelo, Freehander, Antiseptic treatment, Crude Work Removal, No Tattoos under 18 years of age’. There was a picture of an artist’s palette with a paintbrush resting on it underneath the lettering. Cy’s hair was tied back with a piece of black ribbon, and in his left ear was a pearl, as if he were a character from another century. This was his life now. This was who he was.

  One of the men seemed more serious than the other, examining the pictures lengthily while his pal chuckled at bare ladies and grinning, horned faces. Cy turned his attention to the first man.

  – Sir, you look like a boxer to me, am I right about that? It’s in the shoulders, if you’ll pardon the interpretation. What do you say to a champion middleweight puncher right along your back and your name alongside it? What’s your name, sir?

  – Eddie.

  – Nothing fits on a man’s back better than his ability to fight, Eddie. That’s a talent to be proud of. That lets other men know the situation right off the bat. Repels the rivals. Keeps the public informed, you could consider it a service.

  Eddie shook his head and started talking, softly, a little embarrassed.

  – I’m not a boxer. Glass jaw, see. Do kinda like the Dodgers though. Gonna take my kid when he’s old enough. Been going since I was six. My old man took me, back then there was Dazzy Vance, that guy could put ’em past a hornet’s tail, had this funny little wait before he pitched. Sweetest right armer there ever was, my daddy used to say. Saw Ol’ Stubblebeard pitch back when he played, before he took to managing.

  And there was the in, the doorway into which a professional boot tip could be inserted. Cy himself had never stepped foot through the gates of Ebbet’s Field, he had never been amid the almighty ballpark cheer, though he’d lived in Brooklyn for several years now. But he could walk into any drinking establishment or bakery or butcher�
��s in the district, in the entire borough, and there would be daffy Dodgers talk, so all he had to do was collect pieces of their history and recent programme along with his bread and his meat and beer. Cookie Lavagetto, Al Lopez, Van Lingle Mungo. These were names he could produce with confidence in a conversation to gain a local confidence, like a handshake between allies. The feuds, the players, the shares bought and sold and inherited and disputed. It was revered territory, daily exchanged Brooklyn currency, one of the glues of the people. There were those that believed in the heroes and ghosts of the game so fervently that even the curse of Charlie Ebbet’s grave which had struck McKeever down was real to them. And this was how Cy worked the crowds. He had learned to tease out a splinter of interest in a customer just by working loose its tip.

  – Brooklyn Dodgers, best team in the country right now without a doubt, though I’m no expert I’ll confess, more of a cricket and rugby man, but anyway, I’m sure you know the business. What with Camilli coming in from Philly, and Grimes at the helm, and who knows more than Grimes let’s face it, those Giants won’t stand a chance. Teach Fat Bill Terry to have ever asked if Brooklyn’s still in the league, eh Eddie lad? Teach them all another lesson,

  Eddie’s eyes got a glint and a luminescence like the unshuttering of blinds in a dim room. He took Cy by the elbow and leaned in.

  – You know they got Ruthie coaching first base too this season, don’t ya? I seen him play last month, that exhibition game for the night-lighting. Oh, he’s still got it, he may be the same age as my old daddy woulda been, God rest him, and I ain’t saying forty-three is old, but oh brother is he a slugger. Why, those lights light up the ground like something holy … like some kinda holy thing … like I don’t know what …

  The chuckling friend pitched in a comment suddenly.

  – Hey. Get this mermaid here, Eddie, she’s a beauty. Yeah, I like her, Eddie; c’mon take that one. Look at her on that rock, like she’s been swimming all day and now she’s resting, well, she’s a sweetheart. I like the way her little tail tips up. And her cute little pout. She has a flower in her hair like one of them hula girls! Can you get that green of her tail just the same when you put it on a fella?

  – Green as you see it on the page there.

  Eddie wasn’t sure he liked the mermaid being pointed out to him. He furrowed up his brow while his friend tried to convince him. He was a browser apparently, not an impulsive man, he could have talked about baseball until the sun went down and came up again without getting tattooed. The perky mermaid did not compare with the Dodgers by any measure, but Eddie’s friend would not let the idea drop.

  – Hear that? He’s going to make her just as cute. See, with the little dip at the top of the tail, you know what that’s like. C’mon. What’s the matter with you, buddy?

  By now Eddie was shrugging and backing up towards the entrance of the booth and Cy could see that if his friend kept it up, shoving the idea over to him like a helping of vegetables he didn’t like and didn’t want, he’d lose interest in the meal altogether and the sale would be gone. Some men were like children that way, they had to be guided to an outcome or they’d waste the day on nothing but idle play. And in the business every sale counted. It had been a slow week for mid-season. The rain was cool, autumnal, and premature in August. A quality of it brought to mind Cy’s hometown. Poor weather could give him a slight feeling of edginess, a sense of struggle, and he would put more effort into his sales brag. Then, the very next moment, Cy was remembering, clear as a bell chiming inside his head, his mother’s rusting Tate and Lyle sugar tin with its pennies at the bottom that blackened up and stuck together with old damp sugar close to the end of winter, close to the last of them, and how she’d make him shine them with polish before he went out to buy potatoes and beetroot from the greengrocer. Reeda Parks had possessed her own style of pride, pride in the ability to provide for her fatherless son with money that shone and looked newly handled. Even if she had walked the pier with her political plate collecting naught but laughter and buttons and fudge from the bathers and holiday-makers and gathering unfavourable reputation among the women that ran the guest houses in Morecambe Bay. Even if she had emptied the basins of consumptives like a maid and did not object to the wet slush of their diseases. Cy hadn’t thought of his mother in a while. But now he was suddenly remembering too the way she would write out in pencil in a little notebook the budget for the months of October through to March and she would be pleased with herself if there was money left over after any one week, but she would never spend it, she’d just carry the surplus over into the savings from the summer. Hatching a line through the dates, adding half-sized numbers to the next portion of the notebook, faintly, gently where she usually licked the lead tip and charcoaled darkly, as if the numbers were precious and fragile because of their diminutive status, their ghost life as money. She never once spent beyond what the small sturdy pencil marks dictated she could spend, and so if the price of pork rose at the butchers they would eat fish twice a week instead of loin, if the price of fish rose they would eat oatcakes through the winter. That kind of caution must have been hereditary, or it infected Cy where the consumption didn’t. Either way, he could calculate how long the money from the work of the last twenty customers would support him here now, if they proved to be his last twenty of the season. He realized that if he let his mind focus through the numbers, he could work out what percentage of summer income the two customers in front of him now represented, should he make the sale.

  In any case the men seemed to have reached an impasse in the discussion while his mind had been wandering. Eddie looked downright sulky while his friend had an expression of pinched impatience on his face. Cy turned to Eddie’s friend. He was a handsome fellow, with his cap on at a jocular, upturned angle suggesting that he was a man prone to humour and chaff.

  – And what might your name be, sir?

  – Richard Samuel Bender.

  – Now then, this one I could do for you, Dick. I like to think a man can find the right woman in a crowd, by instinct if you will, and you went straight for her. Eddie’s loss, he missed her and she’s a beauty, but you picked her out. Better not to give her to another chap, she wouldn’t appreciate the handoff, eh? You picked her. Like you knew her. The amount of times I’ve seen that happen with a design you couldn’t count. But there’s something to it in this trade. Oh, yes. There’s something to it all right.

  – Well, by God she is a little darling! It’s why I went for her.

  – Oh, she is at that. I painted her up from scratch, there’s not another mermaid like her at Coney, and if there is she’s stolen off me and I’ll take it up with the thief because I wouldn’t sell her on as flash. Some of the others are standard. She’s not, she’s an original, see I’ve initialled the piece in the corner there, and if you look at her closely you’ll see my shading. I had a feeling somebody would choose her today would you believe?

  – Dollar you say?

  – Two dollars for two I’m afraid, Dickie. Freehand they take a little longer, and what with this rain set to clear up this afternoon I’ll be hard pressed to take less for the time. It gets busy quickly and if I’m stuck under-priced and out of time, well you understand that, being a business man right? But certainly, when Eddie’s chosen his tattoo, I’ll do the pair of you for that price, two for two. Not another freehander down here, and with that fine shading you know where that you pointed out to Eddie you’ll be wanting her done properly, I imagine. And if Eddie’s changed his mind, and there’s no crime to that, it happens that a man comes here on occasion and doesn’t fancy what he sees or gets a bit shy, and there’s no harm to it I say, well, then maybe just a dime extra, she is after all the siren that called to you.

  – Siren, huh? Hey, I like that, like in that story with the sailor, that’s what I’ll tell people when they see her. She called to me. C’mon Eddie, you heard the man, what y’gonna get? We came down here for you, so don’t go getting stiff on me or you’ll lose us
the deal.

  Cy handed Eddie a manila book with the page open at the sports section of flash, telling him to take his time, or, if he wanted, the designs could be changed to suit him. In the middle of the page was the Dodgers’ logo.

  – What do you say, Eddie lad, get yourself a lifelong season ticket? That’s a true sporting fan.

  An hour and a half later the two had bled a little into his cotton rags and had gone through a simple, colourful metamorphosis, and he was two dollars better off. He told them to go and celebrate with an onion Polish, they should have worked up quite an appetite. He watched them walking back up the street a minute later in the rain, demolishing their food, shirts un-tucked and loose off the skin. They were slapping each other on their sore spots, blown up on the adrenalin of having passed through a gauntlet of minor pain and being in possession of motifs they would tell others were meant for them. The sausage vendor saluted him and he hung the mermaid back up on the wall. She was crisp around her curved edges and high-breasted, with a true green tail and red along her fins. He hadn’t lied. He had drawn her from the imagination, she had been one of his first designs, and she’d sat in between the pages of a book in a cupboard for a decade when Riley wouldn’t put her up on the Pedder Street shop wall. Now she was on display, with the salty sea air surrounding her. And as Cy thought about it, putting her back amid her oceanic sisters, he hadn’t lied either when he called her a siren.

  Women and fish. It was a presumptuous and runic combination. There were some tattoos as obvious and simple in their symbolic identification as the red-flagged danger in nature or the colours of a nation. Sport was one thing, a contemporary religion to the masses, hearts and flowers were easily deciphered. Women and fish entwined was another thing altogether. That association had something instinctual to it, something primal, buried in the psyche. There were at least three dozen subtly different female fish icons in his booth – bare-breasted, bare-bottomed, arch-backed lovelies, with curved hips and hair rippling like the waves below them. They were reclining or pert on the wall, drawn riding on scaled creatures like lovers, joined with them, and gripping the harness of a whisker or gill or a reptilian tongue like a bridle on a horse as they rode, like hair on a man beneath them, the better with which to steer him. And they stirred men up, stirred up that savant batter within them. They were provocative and sultry and saucy. They were the women of the sea calling to sailors, they were finned beauties, slipping from shells, aphrodisiac as oysters. There were traditional mermaids, green tailed and cheeky, females with the lower halves of them become aquatic, human legs joined and sealed by scale, by soft, femoral meat-muscle. So that they were cuntless, or maybe they were all cunt, like their parts had been turned inside out and were spreading down their legs, melting over human limbs, becoming overt genital tails. That was all the mermaid symbol was. The sex of her. A reduction of image to the essence of what made a woman different. Then there were fish with women’s faces, women shrunk into their own symbolic parts. They were the Pisces vaginales, like that troublesomely aptly named species in Morecambe Bay for his interest in which Cy had ultimately taken a caning. Men had wed the two aspects together, and made them aesthetic. It was worship of the liquid territory between their legs. It was the smell of them. The way they were scented – it was their brine, like salt made inside the human body, that reek of the sea. And it was the feel of them inside, slippery, like fish-tail. And it was the taste, you could taste the sea in them, like in creatures manufactured by the ocean. All the slippery pictures of that deep wet place had men drawn to the tattoos on the walls like sailors to the come-hither songs of mermaids.