Skin and Other Stories Read online

  'Then just the head,' Drioli said.

  'I could not manage it.'

  'It is immensely simple. I will undertake to teach you in two minutes. You will see. I shall go now and fetch the instruments. The needles and the inks. I have inks of many different colours - as many different colours as you have paints, and far more beautiful ...'

  'It is impossible.'

  'I have many inks. Have I not many different colours of inks, Josie?'

  'Yes.'

  'You will see,' Drioli said. 'I will go now and fetch them.' He got up from his chair and walked unsteadily, but with determination, out of the room.

  In half an hour Drioli was back. 'I have brought everything,' he cried, waving a brown suitcase. 'All the necessities of the tattooist are here in this bag.'

  He placed the bag on the table, opened it, and laid out the electric needles and the small bottles of coloured inks. He plugged in the electric needle, then he took the instrument in his hand and pressed a switch. It made a buzzing sound and the quarter inch of needle that projected from the end of it began to vibrate swiftly up and down. He threw off his jacket and rolled up his sleeve. 'Now look. Watch me and I will show you how easy it is. I will make a design on my arm, here.'

  His forearm was already covered with blue markings, but he selected a small clear patch of skin upon which to demonstrate.

  'First, I choose my ink - let us use ordinary blue - and I dip the point of the needle in the ink ... so ... and I hold the needle up straight and I run it lightly over the surface of the skin ... like this ... and with the little motor and the electricity, the needle jumps up and down and punctures the skin and the ink goes in and there you are. See how easy it is ... see how I draw a picture of a greyhound here upon my arm ...'

  The boy was intrigued. 'Now let me practise a little - on your arm.'

  With the buzzing needle he began to draw blue lines upon Drioli's arm. 'It is simple,' he said. 'It is like drawing with pen and ink. There is no difference except that it is slower.'

  'There is nothing to it. Are you ready? Shall we begin?'

  'At once.'

  'The model!' cried Drioli. 'Come on, Josie!' He was in a bustle of enthusiasm now, tottering around the room arranging everything, like a child preparing for some exciting game. 'Where will you have her? Where shall she stand?'

  'Let her be standing there, by my dressing-table. Let her be brushing her hair. I will paint her with her hair down over her shoulders and her brushing it.'

  'Tremendous. You are a genius.'

  Reluctantly, the girl walked over and stood by the dressing table, carrying her glass of wine with her.

  Drioli pulled off his shirt and stepped out of his trousers. He retained only his underpants and his socks and shoes, and he stood there swaying gently from side to side, his small body firm, white-skinned, almost hairless. 'Now,' he said, 'I am the canvas. Where will you place your canvas?'

  'As always, upon the easel.'

  'Don't be crazy. I am the canvas.'

  'Then place yourself upon the easel. That is where you belong.'

  'How can I?'

  'Are you the canvas or are you not the canvas?'

  'I am the canvas. Already I begin to feel like a canvas.'

  'Then place yourself upon the easel. There should be no difficulty.'

  'Truly, it is not possible.'

  'Then sit on the chair. Sit back to front, then you can lean your drunken head against the back of it. Hurry now, for I am about to commence.'

  'I am ready. I am waiting.'

  'First,' the boy said, 'I shall make an ordinary painting. Then, if it pleases me, I shall tattoo over it.' With a wide brush he began to paint upon the naked skin of the man's back.

  'Ayee! Ayee!' Drioli screamed. 'A monstrous centipede is marching down my spine!'

  'Be still now! Be still!' The boy worked rapidly, applying the paint only in a thin blue wash so that it would not afterwards interfere with the process of tattooing. His concentration, as soon as he began to paint, was so great that it appeared somehow to supersede his drunkenness. He applied the brush strokes with quick jabs of the arm, holding the wrist stiff, and in less than half an hour it was finished.

  'All right. That's all,' he said to the girl, who immediately returned to the couch, lay down, and fell asleep.

  Drioli remained awake. He watched the boy take up the needle and dip it in the ink; then he felt the sharp tickling sting as it touched the skin of his back. The pain, which was unpleasant but never extreme, kept him from going to sleep. By following the track of the needle and by watching the different colours of ink that the boy was using, Drioli amused himself trying to visualize what was going on behind him. The boy worked with an astonishing intensity. He appeared to have become completely absorbed in the little machine and in the unusual effects it was able to produce.

  Far into the small hours of the morning the machine buzzed and the boy worked. Drioli could remember that when the artist finally stepped back and said, 'It is finished,' there was daylight outside and the sound of people walking in the street.

  'I want to see it,' Drioli said. The boy held up a mirror, at an angle, and Drioli craned his neck to look.

  'Good God!' he cried. It was a startling sight. The whole of his back, from the top of the shoulders to the base of the spine, was a blaze of colour - gold and green and blue and black and scarlet. The tattoo was applied so heavily it looked almost like an impasto. The boy had followed as closely as possible the original brush strokes, filling them in solid, and it was marvellous the way he had made use of the spine and the protrusion of the shoulder blades so that they became part of the composition. What is more, he had somehow managed to achieve - even with this slow process - a certain spontaneity. The portrait was quite alive; it contained much of that twisted, tortured quality so characteristic of Soutine's other work. It was not a good likeness. It was a mood rather than a likeness, the model's face vague and tipsy, the background swirling around her head in a mass of dark-green curling strokes.

  'It's tremendous!'

  'I rather like it myself.' The boy stood back, examining it critically. 'You know,' he added, 'I think it's good enough for me to sign.' And taking up the buzzer again, he inscribed his name in red ink on the right-hand side, over the place where Drioli's kidney was.

  The old man who was called Drioli was standing in a sort of trance, staring at the painting in the window of the picture-dealer's shop. It had been so long ago, all that - almost as though it had happened in another life.

  And the boy? What had become of him? He could remember now that after returning from the war - the first war - he had missed him and had questioned Josie.

  'Where is my little Kalmuck?'

  'He is gone,' she had answered. 'I do not know where, but I heard it said that a dealer had taken him up and sent him away to Ceret to make more paintings.'

  'Perhaps he will return.'

  'Perhaps he will. Who knows?'

  That was the last time they had mentioned him. Shortly afterwards they had moved to Le Havre where there were more sailors and business was better. The old man smiled as he remembered Le Havre. Those were the pleasant years, the years between the wars, with the small shop near the docks and the comfortable rooms and always enough work, with every day three, four, five sailors coming and wanting pictures on their arms. Those were truly the pleasant years.

  Then had come the second war, and Josie being killed, and the Germans arriving, and that was the finish of his business. No one had wanted pictures on their arms any more after that. And by that time he was too old for any other kind of work. In desperation he had made his way back to Paris, hoping vaguely that things would be easier in the big city. But they were not.

  And now, after the war was over, he possessed neither the means nor the energy to start up his small business again. It wasn't very easy for an old man to know what to do, especially when one did not like to beg. Yet how else could he keep alive?

&nbs