At this point, the tattooist, according to the criminal rule, may only refuse a job in the event of bereavement or serious illness. The criminal, for his part, cannot compel the tattooist to meet a deadline imposed by him – consequently, a large tattoo often has to wait for several years.
The methods of payment, too, follow a ritual. Honest criminals, as a matter of dignity, never speak of money. In the Siberian community all material goods, and particularly money, are despised, so they are never even mentioned. If the Siberians speak of money, they call it ‘that’, or ‘rubbish’, ‘cauliflower’, or ‘lemons’, or they simply specify the figures, pronounce the numbers. The Siberians do not keep money in the house because it is said to bring bad luck into the family – it destroys happiness and ‘scares off’ good fortune. They keep it near the house, in the garden, for example, in a special hiding place, such as an animal hutch.
So before beginning a tattoo they never mention a fixed price – they don’t mention anything connected with money. Only afterwards, when the work is finished, does the client ask the tattooist ‘What do I owe you?’ and the tattooist replies, ‘Give me what is right.’ This is the answer that is considered most honest, and is therefore most frequently used by the Siberian tattooists.
Free criminals pay well for the tattooist’s work: in money, weapons, icons, cars, and even property. In prison it’s different. There the tattooist will settle for a few cigarettes, a packet of tea or a jar of jam, a cigarette lighter or a box of matches, and occasionally a little money.
Among tattooists there is complete cooperation and a sense of brotherhood. When they are not in prison they go and visit each other and exchange the latest techniques.
In prison tattooists often share clients, because one may like doing one type of image, another a different type. Generally the older tattooist supervises the younger, coaches him a little and teaches him what he has learned in life. Many tattoos are done by more than one tattooist because criminals often change prison or cell. So the work begun by one tattooist may be continued by a second and finished by a third, but tradition requires that each subsequent tattooist ask the permission of the one who began it. And the process of asking is complicated. In the Siberian criminal community nobody ever asks for anything directly: there is a form of communication which satisfies people and takes the place of explicit requests. For example, if a new criminal with an unfinished tattoo arrives in a prison where a tattooist works, the tattooist asks him the name of the master who began that work. The new tattooist writes a letter in the criminal language, which finds its way, via the prisoners’ secret postal system, known as the ‘road’, to the first tattooist. The letter appears to be extremely polite and full of compliments, but in fact it is very formulaic: it follows the principles of Siberian education. If this letter were read by a person who did not belong to the criminal world it would seem to him a jumble of incoherent words.
I’ve often written this kind of letter myself, both in prison and outside. I remember one particular case: I was serving my third sentence, by now an adult, when a Siberian criminal arrived in our cell who had a beautiful tattoo on his back that needed finishing. It had been begun by a famous old tattooist, Afanasy ‘Fog’. I had heard a lot about this legendary man. Apparently he had taken up tattooing quite late in life, at the age of about forty; previously he had been an ordinary criminal, a train robber. During a gunfight he had been shot in the head and left deaf and dumb. Suddenly he had started doing drawings which were considered far more than beautiful – they were perfect – and then he had learned how to tattoo. In a diary that he kept he explained it like this: he said he was constantly hearing in his head the voices of God and the angels suggesting to him iconographical subjects connected with Siberian Orthodox religion. This diary was very well-known in our community – people passed it around and copied it out by hand, as is customary in the criminal society with any document or testimony written by a person who is considered to be ‘marked’ by God. I had read it myself when I was a boy, my master had lent it to me and I had copied it out into an exercise book, and as I did so I felt I learned many things.
I had only seen examples of his work on two occasions and had been struck by how full of suffering those images were. He had an unusual technique. It wasn’t very refined, in fact I’d say it was downright coarse, but he succeeded in creating forms and subjects which fed the imagination. They were different from all others. When you looked at them you didn’t feel as if you were seeing a body with a tattoo on it; it was the tattoo itself that was a living thing, with a body underneath it. It was stunning – more powerful than any other thing I had ever seen on human skin.
I had long yearned to meet Fog, and I dreamed of finding a way of telling him about myself, and about my work.
The criminal who had come to our cell had a tattoo on his back called ‘The Mother’; it was very complex and full of hidden meanings. Like all large tattoos, the Mother is the centre of a galaxy; within the design the meanings of the smaller images intersect and sometimes overlap, whirling around in a spiral until they enter the principal image and disappear at the very moment when the study of the details focuses the observer’s attention on a single subject.
When the criminal asked me to finish the tattoo I couldn’t believe it: to follow the lines traced by Fog would be an honour. At once I wrote a letter to him using all my knowledge of the rules that regulated relations between criminal tattooists:
Dear Brother Afanasy Fog,
The writer of this letter is Nikolay Kolima, with the help of the Lord and all the Saints a humble kolshik.
Praying to the icons, I hope all of us will continue to enjoy the blessing of the Lord.
Into the house which, thanks to Our Lord, I share with honest people, there has descended and, with the help of God, taken up residence an honest, orphan vagabond, Brother Z…
He holds, with the grace of the Lord, The Mother, which sings your miraculous hand, guided by God himself.
Through the love of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, The Mother is illuminated; not much is lacking to the completion of her splendour.
With brotherly love and affection, in the grace of Our Almighty Lord, I wish you good health and many years of love and faith in the Marvellous Siberian Cross.
I was simply asking him for permission to finish his work, but in order to do this I was using codified phrases which formed a kind of poetry with hidden meanings. Let me explain.
If a criminal calls another man brother, he does so not out of politeness, but to make him understand that he is not merely a member of the criminal society like him, but a colleague of his.
It is very important in the law of criminal communication to introduce yourself immediately – name, nickname and trade – otherwise the words that precede and follow have no importance.
Humble kolshik – that is, humble ‘stinger’ – is another way of describing the tattooist’s trade. The word kolshik is slang and ancient, and must always be accompanied by an adjective such as ‘humble’ or ‘poor’, which emphasizes the unambitious position, devoid of the least vanity, that is characteristic of those who carry on that trade.