Indelible ink - Page 3
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 13: The Next Big Thing
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Fiona McGregor
She longed to rest her swaddled ankle on the chair beside her. Opposite, a well-dressed young man was reading the paper. On the front page, Marie saw the familiar image of a torture victim, naked and blindfolded, hands tied behind his back, curled on the ground by the boots of a soldier. The young man saw her looking and smiled over the newsprint then went back to his reading. So many people out there getting away with murder, day after day, so many bodies, so many crimes. And this, now, in her own smug heart, this pounding lust for taboo and severance, this blood seduction. Like coming home after a tryst with Jonesy in the boathouse to her husband and children. Serving dinner slick with lies and another man's sperm, drunk with orgasm. Full of love. This bliss, this murder.
The waiter placed the bill on her table and she saw the sacred heart tattooed on the inside of his forearm. Wreaths of thorns encircled the red organ, a drop of blood spilt down his wrist, all of it nestled in a bed of flames. So the bells had rung, the bets been laid, and she made her way back into the ring, terrified of fighting again, terrified of death equally if she reneged.
When she entered the tattoo parlour, there was nobody behind the counter. From the back room, the buzz of the iron and a fat white back reclining on the couch. The tattooist came to the counter and eyed her warily.
"I want another one on my right ankle."
"Whoa," he said.
She stood her ground with the arrogance of the initiate. And a woman who always had money to buy.
"Are you sure you don't want to wait a while and think about it?"
"I have thought about it. I feel unbalanced."
Through the door she could see the owner of the back. A man in jeans with copious ginger grey hair that gathered up his body to a bush around his face. He twisted his head around to look at her and grinned. His chest a blur of hair and old tattoos, the afternoon's work a lurid expanse down the inside of his forearm.
"I don't recommend getting so many tattoos so fast," said the tattooist.
"It barely takes an hour."
"And you shouldn't be getting tattooed when you've been drinking."
She looked at him with amazed resentment. "I had one glass of wine with lunch." She said it quietly, conscious of her breath travelling through the air.
"Apart from the fact it's not a good state of mind to make decisions in, you bleed a lot more."
How dare he speak to her like that ... a grubby tattooist.
"I'm not a teenager for God's sake." She put the money on the counter.
"You'll have to wait."
"How long?"
"Maybe an hour."
"I'll wait."
He sighed and picked up her money. Nobody paid beforehand. "I'll do it this time then. But you're going to have to take a break after this, and think about what you're doing."
He looked at Marie authoritatively. "You might want the same design." He opened a folder and pushed it towards her. "Or you can choose a different one. Think about it."
He turned to walk into the back room, stopping in the doorway. "It's for life, you know."
FOR OVER AN HOUR SHE SAT IN THE SMALL WAITING ROOM plastered floor to ceiling with designs. She chose a slightly different floral band for her right ankle, based on lilies. She remembered Blanche, the inveterate art director, at her wedding, shifting an enormous vase of day lilies to a better position, her head tilted to one side. An hour later, seated beside her at the long head table, Marie saw a delicate track of yellow pollen smeared across Blanche's white neck. She was filled with a sorrowful pang and wanted to grab her daughter and tell her everything would be alright. But Blanche flushed and gregarious, busy with her friends, seemed to be convinced that it would be alright anyway.
Night fell on the street outside and, as the alcohol receded, Marie's desire remained white and certain as a bone. She began to look through the pile of dog-eared magazines, hoping vaguely to find somebody like herself. A fried egg and bacon on top of a bald head, the knife and fork angled like flowers over each ear. A girl with an airbrushed stallion cantering across her back, sundry bikers wearing their totems with surly pride. Blanche reappeared briefly to scoff at the designs and Marie for once found herself in genuine agreement. All of them left her cold.
The next magazine was better. A Louis XIV sun shining on a plump shining chest muscle, its eye a pierced nipple. A Yakuza in a loincloth photographed full length, his entire body a floating world. Then yes, at the end, a woman older than forty. Well, probably only just, the photograph itself at least forty years old so the patchwork of bluebirds, hearts and sailing ships on her skin was as faded as the print itself. But nor was Marie a tattooed lady for exhibition in sideshows across the land; she could not picture herself amongst these people.
She was nowhere. She belonged to nobody.
She realised when the tattoo was completed that she didn't even know the tattooist's name. ♦