Alva and Irva - Edward Carey [53]
‘What do you want?,’ he asked, ‘The Chinese symbol of strength on your ankle, or a daisy on your shoulder or a barcode on your arse?’ ‘I wanted, if it pleases you Mr Mikel, a map of the world.’ ‘Call me Pig,’ he said pointing to his forehead, ‘I think I’ve got a small globe design somewhere, where do you want it, not on your biceps, I suppose?’ I took a deep breath and proclaimed, ‘All over me, all over me. All over me. All over me. All over me. All. Over. Me.’
MY INSTRUCTIONS were neatly written out on post office paper. From the centre of me spreading east and west: Europe. Down my right side: the Americas. Down the left leg and waist: Africa. Curving round my right arm and taking up most of my back: Asia. Australia must take up much of my right buttock, and a proportion of the left.
Pig, incredulous, burst out laughing. I took out some money and pressed it into his hand. ‘It’ll take time,’ he said, ‘preparation.’ I nodded. ‘But can you stomach it? You’ll feel like I’m tearing you to ribbons, you’ll lose blood, your nerves will yell at you, and you’ll have to be patient, you’ll have to live with that pain day after day.’ I nodded. ‘And the seas,’ he said, ‘we’ll have to squeeze them in here and there, cover all the rest of your skin with them, and what blue shall we make it—ultramarine, like in the Caribbean?’ I nodded and smiled. ‘Everyone,’ he said, ‘will want to swim in you. And your head,’ he said, ‘what’ll that be—Scandinavia?’ But then I said, ‘No, you mustn’t touch it, neither that, nor my arms beyond the wrists, I want to keep all of it hidden beneath my clothes, no one must suspect.’
‘Once it’s done you realise,’ said Pig, ‘it won’t come off, it can’t be undone, unless you want your whole body scarred.’ I nodded. ‘How old are you?’ ‘Nearly eighteen,’ I said. Pig shrugged, sniffed, ‘Payment in advance, shall we say, of each continent?’ I nodded. Pig and I shook hands.
And so, a week later, the pain began.
SOME PEOPLE have been known to say that after two or three minutes the pain of tattooing goes and the skin just feels numb. Some people have been known to say that the pain of tattooing is a deep sexual pain that can induce orgasms. Some people have been known to say that the pain of tattooing is unbearable, a kind of blue pain that upsets the entire body, and, coupled with the sight of the tattooist’s gloved hands wiping blood and ink away from the needle’s path, can induce vomiting and severe mental stress. It is generally young people who subscribe to this pain, and those young people are often advised not to have the tattoo placed on a portion of their skin which will become, in time, wrinkled, so that as the beauty of the skin’s elasticity fails, as our surfaces become corrugated and slack, that little piece of painted beauty on an ankle perhaps or a shoulder remains for ever taught, undistorted, immortal. Our teeth may fall out, our hair may desert us, our eyes may fail us, but our tattoos will go on, loyal even beyond the departure of our minds. So as aged and senile babies we may look at that strange person in the mirror who we are certain we have never seen before and wonder why on earth that person had chosen to have a phoenix drawn upon his chest.
Pig Mikel was a professional at his job, after all there are health risks with tattooing—inadequate hygiene can cause the spread of many types of viral infection. But Pig’s needles were never less than sterile. It was with a certain pleasure that Pig viewed my half-naked nearly eighteen-year-old self, his blank canvas, goose pimples, small twin mounds of breasts and all, and it was with even greater pleasure that he advanced towards me, having made