‘Now I’m going to show you something that you must be able to recognize, if you want to become a good tattooist…’
We crossed the room and went out into the back yard, where there was a small garden with a few fruit trees. We entered a small toolshed made of wood and rusty corrugated iron. My master lit a lamp which hung down from the ceiling, dangling at the level of my face.
On the floor lay a large object which had been covered with a sheet of coarse cloth. My master removed the sheet: underneath was a dead man. He was naked, and there were no signs of knife wounds or blood, only a large black bruise on the neck.
Strangled, I thought.
The skin was very white, almost like paper; he must have been dead for several hours. The face was relaxed, the mouth slightly open, the lips purple.
‘Look here, Kolima, look closely.’ Bending down and turning towards me Grandfather Lyosha pointed to a tattoo on the dead man’s right arm.
‘Well, what do you say? What is this tattoo?’
He asked me this with a kind of mystery in his voice, as if the time had come for me to show what I had learned from him.
Without really meaning to, I began to analyse the tattoo and express my conclusions out loud. Grandfather Lyosha listened to me very patiently, keeping the corpse turned towards me.
‘It’s the signature of a Siberian Authority nicknamed “Tungus”. It was done in Special Prison no. 36, in the year 1989, in the town of Ilin, in Siberia. There is also the blessing for the reader, a clear sign that the tattooist who did it is a Siberian Urka…’
‘Is that all? Don’t you see anything else?’ my master asked me suspiciously.
‘Well, it’s fine, as a tattoo: it’s well executed, perfectly legible, has a classic combination of images and is very clear… But…’
Yes, there was a but.
‘It’s the only tattoo on the body,’ I continued, ‘and yet in the image there are references to other tattoos, which are missing here… It was done in 1989, but it seems to have healed only a few months ago: it’s still too black, the pigment hasn’t faded… Also, this signature is in a strange position. Usually the arm is where you draw “seeds” or “wings”,[7] whereas signatures act as a kind of bridge between two tattoos. They can be done on the inside of the forearm, or more rarely just above the foot, on the ankle…’
‘And why are they done there?’ my master interrupted me.
‘Because it’s important for the tattoo to be in a place where it can be easily displayed in any situation. Whereas this one has been put in an inconvenient place.’
I stopped for a moment. I made some calculations and deductions in my poor head, then finally gazed at my master wide-eyed:
‘I don’t believe it! Don’t tell me, Grandfather Lyosha… He can’t be a…’ I stopped again, because I couldn’t utter the word.
‘Yes, my boy, this man is a cop. Look at him closely, because who knows? Some time in your life you may come across another who tries to pass himself off as one of us, and then you won’t have time to think, you’ll have to be a hundred per cent sure and recognize him straight away. This guy somehow found out that one of us wore a signature, and he copied it exactly, without knowing what a signature really is, how it’s made and how it’s read and translated… He got himself killed because he was too stupid.’
I wasn’t shocked, either by the body of the strangled policeman or by the story of the tattoo copied from a criminal. The only thing that seemed strange, unnatural and alien at that moment was the cop’s empty, tattooless body. It seemed to me an impossible thing, almost like a disease. Ever since I was a baby I had always been surrounded by tattooed people, and to me this was completely normal. Seeing a body with nothing tattooed on it had a strange effect on me – a physical suffering, a kind of pity.
My own body, too, seemed strange to me – I found it too empty.
According to the rule, tattoos are made in particular phases of life; you can’t have all the tattoos that you like done immediately, there is a particular sequence.
If a criminal has a tattoo done on his body which doesn’t convey any real information about him, or has a tattoo done prematurely, he is severely punished, and his tattoo must be removed.
After having a particular experience, you describe it through the tattoo, like in a kind of diary. But since the criminal life is hard, tattoos are not said to be ‘done’, but ‘suffered’.
‘Look! I’ve suffered another tattoo.’ The expression doesn’t refer to the physical pain felt during the process of tattooing, but to the meaning of that particular tattoo and the difficult life that lies behind it.
Once I met a boy called Igor. He was always getting into trouble, and a lot of people regarded him as a hothead. He was the son of a Moldovan woman who worked in a factory and had no connection with the criminal life. She had been married to a Ukrainian criminal who had gambled and owed money to half the town. Then one day he had been killed – someone had cut his hands off and thrown him into the river, where he’d drowned. There was only one thing left of him: his son Igor.
His son was a lot like him in some respects – he stole money from his mother and then went and squandered it playing cards; he did dirty little jobs for certain criminals of the Centre district, who used him in small-scale scams. Once he was caught at the market trying to steal the handbag of my friend Mel’s mother. In revenge Mel had permanently disfigured and crippled him.
Anyway, this boy was eventually caught by the policemen of a Ukrainian town trying to rob an old woman by threatening her with violence. Since he was scared of going to prison for this kind of crime, which is despised by the criminal community, he made up an incredible story: that he was an important member of the Siberian community, the police were out to frame him and the old woman was in league with them. To lend his story added credibility, the idiot gave himself some tattoos while he was in a cell at the police station. Using a piece of wire and the ink from a biro, he scored some Siberian images on his fingers and hands, without even knowing their meaning.
When he got to prison he told his story, hoping his cellmates would believe him. But since the jails are usually full of experienced people who are capable of understanding the psychology of other human beings, they immediately became suspicious of him. They contacted the Siberian community, asking if anyone knew Igor and knew anything about his tattoos. The answer was negative. So they killed him, throttling him with a towel in his sleep.
Usurping someone else’s tattoo is, for the Siberian tradition, one of the biggest mistakes you can make, and is punishable by death. But this is only true of an existing tattoo, which someone already has on them and which represents codified personal information. By contrast, using the tradition to create tattoos for strangers is like giving them a lucky charm. Many people who do business with people who belong to the Siberian criminal community – friends and supporters – may wear traditional tattoos, provided that the person who tattooed them and prepared the design is a Siberian tattooist and an expert.
The relationship between the tattooist and his client is a complex one, and requires a separate explanation.
As well as being able to tattoo, create designs and read them on the body, the tattooist must know how to behave and how to follow certain rules. The process of requesting a job is a very long one. Before ‘suffering’ a tattoo, the criminal must be introduced to the tattooist by a friend who vouches for him – only if these conditions are met may the tattooist accept the job.
The tattooist may only refuse a client if he has grounds for being suspicious of him. In this case, he has the right to ask the criminal to contact a well-known Authority in Siberian society who can give him formal permission to be tattooed. The tattooist must, however, behave politely, so as not to offend anyone. He cannot talk about his suspicions, he must simply ask his prospective client to do him a favour – that of ‘taking some news’ to an old Authority. And even when the criminal reaches this Authority, he must never say straight out ‘I want permission to have a tattoo’, but only ‘Tattooist x requests permission to send you his greetings through me.’ In response, the Authority gives him a letter or sends one of his men to accompany him.
7
The tattoos so called do not represent seeds or wings: they contain various images which allude to the criminal’s personal characteristics, the promises he has made and any romantic attachments he might have.