“So what’s the problem?”
“They were assuming they could just take the other tattoos to sell on the black market. There’s quite a demand for my work now, mostly in Japan among the yakuza, who use them as status symbols-the way Japanese businessmen used to keep Van Goghs in safes and only take them out at bragging time. It’s quite depressing for an artist who wants exposure. After all, Van Gogh’s financial problems are over.”
“Where are the other tattoos?”
“Upstairs. The most recent are still being cured. Did you know the process is identical to that for pigskin?”
“How long has this-ah-trade been going on?”
“It’s a long story. You could say Mitch Turner was the first. I never intended it to get out of hand like this. I didn’t really intend to kill anybody except him.” He gives a matter-of-fact flick of the hand in Chanya’s direction. “I couldn’t have her, but I couldn’t stand any other man to have her either. You would have been next. But if one is going to kill, why miss the opportunity to make a profit? I’ve coveted that creamy white flesh of yours since the night we met, especially on your back.”
I had already guessed all this, of course. Standing quite still about six feet from the table, speaking like a man calling across a valley, my voice echoing in the cavernous room, I say: “So why can’t they take the other tattoos, cured and uncured?”
Ishy shakes his head at my obtuseness. “Because I’ve mortgaged them to the Japs already. The yakuza loan sharks. They’re sending a team with a lawyer. Should be here any minute. With the Italian.” At my baffled glance: “My dear fellow, you didn’t expect a war, did you, in this day and age? I called the Japs with the full agreement of Mr. Chu.”
“That is correct,” confirms the Chinese in the open-necked shirt, speaking in a monotone. “We’re all part of the global business community. It would be unfortunate if this little contractual matter were to come between us when we have so much trade with our Japanese colleagues. It would be unthinkable for us simply to take the works away, now that we are aware of a possibly prior and more lawful claim. I’m afraid Mr. Ishy is too much of an artist to trouble himself with legal niceties. He has mortgaged everything at least twice.” A pained smile. “That is the problem.”
Ishy opens his hands helplessly and makes a guilty face. With sudden eagerness: “D’you want to see them?”
He leads us up the stairs to a narrow corridor with two doors. The first opens onto a bedroom, the walls of which are covered with tattoo designs of the most intimate-and pornographic-variety. He points to a pale skin curing on a single wooden plank.”I figured if I was going to kill people for their hides, I might as well combine it with some form of community service. He was a yakuza thug, basically, very senior though, CEO of that phony corporation that is forcing peasants off their lands in Isaan so they can grow fucking chopsticks. He was the one who ordered the killing of that journalist who was a friend of mine-that butterfly tattoo was one of my best. Actually, this godfather was one of my first customers over here. Of course, he wanted a damned samurai on his back-my people really have a problem with mythology. Samurai were mostly drunken homosexuals with a psychotic streak, but don’t say that out loud in Japan. I had to be subtle. Fortunately, he was too stupid to understand the message in his own skin. Not bad, is it?”
The tattoo on the hide on the board is, as a matter of fact, a triumph of subtle satire. To a cursory glance, the samurai in magnificent armor and helmet on the back of a great black stallion, wielding his voluptuous bow, is the very image of the perfect warrior. Look a little closer, however; with just a few deft strokes, Ishy has made his point: drunk and gay, there’s no doubt about it, a bombastic narcissist all dressed up with nowhere to go.
“May I ask why you had to sever their cocks?”
Ishy frowns and scratches his head, then jerks a thumb at Chanya. “Her karma. I did it to Mitch Turner in a jealous rage, but after that I realized any man could have her. Any jerk in the street. He only had to pay, right?” Chanya winces and looks at the floor. “I would have castrated the whole city for her. That’s love.”
“But the men you castrated were already dead.”
“I said love, not logic. Love is a language of symbols-you should know that.”
“Why did you have to kill people you’d already tattooed? Why not kill anyone on the street, then tattoo them later?”
He shakes his head gravely. “A recipe for mediocrity. For a start, the ink needs to penetrate far below the surface before you get that quality of color and shade. Secondly, you’ve failed to understand the market. I’m not just selling tattoos, I’m selling murder at the same time. People want that frisson, the cachet of owning the decorated skin of a murdered man, the very skin he wore in life, before he was cut down like a tree for the purpose of art. It’s the civilized equivalent of collecting shrunken heads.” A swig from the sake bottle he brought with him: “I’m also selling notoriety, of course. When this gets out, the prices of my work will increase a hundredfold.” Thoughtfully: “What is murder but suicide by an extrovert? We are all part of the human family after all, and only murderers experience the unbearable passion of true love.”
The man in the open-necked shirt nods in agreement.
The room next door contains only two wall hangings, both covered in silk cloth. Ishy uncovers the first. “A sad case, that young CIA spy. It was what he wanted-he was quite pleased with it. I guess it was all he expected from life, but he ended up with a Thai whore instead.” The tattoo is deeply sad for anyone who knew Stephen Bright: a young woman, a Caucasian with long blond hair, cradling an infant in the tradition of Madonna and child. The sheer simplicity of the lines (perhaps Ishy was making a point, for it is a touch too simple) makes it all the more poignant.
“It’s brilliant,” I find myself saying with a gulp.
“But it’s not as good as this,” Ishy declares as he pulls the cover off the second, larger work. Chanya gasps at the sight of a familiar image in an unfamiliar situation. I also gasp, as does the man in the open-necked shirt. Even his thugs are impressed. “Mitch Turner,” Ishy explains. “It was his idea, something he got from a book or an opium dream, or some spell he was under. Of course, I insisted on my own interpretation.”
But for once Ishy has maintained a fierce discipline, which is a big part of the magic. An amazingly dense and virile green vine fills the whole of the tattoo with such vividness, it seems to grow up the wall on which it hangs. The rose blossoms themselves are downplayed, hardly more than crimson afterthoughts, highlighting the leaves, each of which, even the tiniest, bears the legend in blood: There is no god but God, Muhammad is the prophet of God.
Chanya bursts into hysterical sobs as we hear a polite knock on the front door.
46
We have all returned to the great downstairs room. Hours have passed. The man in the open-necked shirt speaks fluent Japanese, and the negotiations have been continuing in that language with the newcomers, a somewhat muscular band of Japanese men in black business suits, all of whom have at least one pinkie missing. They are lined up against one wall, while the Chiu Chow thugs are lined up against another, each warrior perpetually marking his opposite number, while Chanya and I sit on cushions on the floor. Ishy, the chief Japanese negotiator, and the man in the open-necked shirt sit drinking sake at the long table. Quite drunk now, Ishy has undone most of his shirt, perhaps intentionally displaying his hero Admiral Yamamoto, who stares sternly out between the linen folds. The Italian, a slim, gaunt fellow with a mass of curly dark hair, wears a black short-sleeve shirt and a pair of jeans, slippers without socks. He squats in a corner of the room with his back against the wall. Ishy has explained, not without some disdain, that he is an art restorer, flown in from Rome. The Japanese, it seems, are taking no chances. (He can peel a micron of paint off a five-hundred-year-old masterpiece, Ishy reported.) It seems that at least one of the Japanese thugs is also a surgeon. In the circumstances, Ishy’s good humor is inexplicable. He grows more cheerful by the minute. Finally there is a pause in the intense discussions.