The Tattoo Artist

Table of Contents

Acclaim for Jill Ciment’s

THE TATTOO ARTIST

“The clarity with which Ciment describes Sara’s illustrated body, tattoo by tattoo, is breathtaking—not a word is out of place.” —
San Francisco Chronicle

“There is nothing cliché; on the contrary . . . [Ciment’s] use of her tattoo story as an image for the processes of art is a success. That’s because it is more than an image.”

—
Los Angeles Times

“Boldly conceived.” —
The New York Times Book Review

“Art’s purpose and the relationships built around it are at the center of this sensual, exotic novel.” —
The Miami Herald

“A powerful allegory of the 20th century. . . . Ciment’s portrait of modernity is elegant, powerful and, ultimately, tragic.”

—
Newsday

“A remarkable story with an artist’s touch. . . . Art history like no other.” —
The Advocate

“Ciment’s book is a frank and refreshing discourse on art and artifice, and the unexpected path of an authentic life.”

—
Colorado Springs Independent Review

“A page turner. . . . One woman’s journey into the ‘heart of darkness’ and back, or perhaps beyond.” —
Jerusalem Post

“This is a beautifully written novel. Ciment transported me to another world where both art and dignity matter. Fantastic!”

—Alice Sebold, author of
The Lovely Bones

“Start to finish,
The Tattoo Artist
is rich in Ciment’s trademark wit, intelligence, and gorgeous prose. I shall not soon forget this story.” —Lynn Freed, author of
The Curse of the Appropriate Man

“Jill Ciment’s new novel, like her previous books, is beautifully written and reaches even beyond them as a stunning work of the imagination. I read
The Tattoo Artist
on one long plane ride, totally immersed and fascinated.” —Howard Zinn, author of
A People’s History of the United States

JILL CIMENT

THE TATTOO ARTIST

Jill Ciment was born in Montreal, Canada. Her books include two novels,
Teeth of the Dog
and
The
Law of Falling Bodies
; a collection of short stories,
Small Claims
; and a memoir,
Half a Life.
She has been awarded two New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowships and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Ciment is a professor of English at the University of Florida. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.

ALSO BY JILL CIMENT

Teeth of the Dog
Half a Life
The Law of Falling Bodies
Small Claims

For Arnold

PART ONE

CITY OF COFFINS

esterday, on the corner of Broadway and Fifty-seventh Street, a perfect stranger introduced himself to me and said, “I just want to tell you how very brave I think you are.” I was about to flee on foot (no small feat at my age), when the stranger qualified his statement, “I mean, you’ve done nothing to disguise yourself, you look just like your photograph in
Life
magazine. Desecrated.”

Another time, another stranger came up to me in the lobby of my hotel and, without prelude or warning, touched my cheek. “How could you have done this to yourself?” the woman asked. “Please tell me it washes off.”

The tattoos that most disturb people are the ones on my face. There’s no way of getting around them. There’s no way of asking me, “Ma’am, you think the Yankees will take the pennant?” or “Mrs. Ehrenreich, do you believe that Bauhaus furniture is coming back into fashion?” without the tattoos turning the cordial exchange into a mockery of chitchat.

That is the point. That’s the reason for their existence.

They begin on my cheeks and work their way down, covering every inch of me—my lips, tongue, throat, breasts, hips, thighs, even the soles of my feet. Though I didn’t actually do all the procedures myself (How could I have? The pain renders one insensible), I am responsible for their design; all except for the tattoos on my face. As for my facial tattoos, I am more than responsible; I am culpable. But I’m getting ahead of myself, and you don’t even know what my tattoos look like. They are not your usual crude sailor’s fare, though to give credit where credit is due, I did incorporate a certain garishness, a seaman’s vulgarity, into some of the imagery. Nor are my tattoos the intricately patterned signature of the Ta’un’uuans, the Michelangelos of South Sea tattooing, though once again, certain traditions have been alluded to. No, my tattoos, like all my art, are mine and mine alone, and herein lies my need to steel myself before revealing them to you. To have to endure one’s own art, to be covered by it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, seeing every flaw over and over again, or worse, every act of unnecessary bravado, is simply unbearable.

My tattoos, like all the tattoos of my island, are a pictorial narrative, an illustrated personal history, though not necessarily a chronological one. Time as you know it, modern time with its clocks and calendars, has no place on my island. The location of each vignette is determined by the body, and how much pain a particular limb or bone or muscle can withstand, and how much agony, or pleasure, a particular event caused the subject. And this is where the true art of Ta’un’uu’s tattooing comes in. The artist must not only create a suitable image to embody a crucial ordeal, or victory, she must also find a suitable place for it on an ever changing, forever decaying canvas.

To fully appreciate my story, you must view my tattoos in their entirety, front and back, every square inch of me at once, including the crumpled skin and sagging muscles upon which my tattoos are engraved. The islanders believe the way a body ages is as vital to the final design as the imagery. They believe that age is the final patina of art. This is why the modern world can’t bear to look at me. I mean, really look at me. They can ask, “Mrs. Ehrenreich, do you consider yourself a cargo cultist?” “Mrs. Ehrenreich, what does it feel like to be back in the modern world after thirty years as a castaway?” They can say, “Sara, we just want to tell you how very brave we think you are.”

But look at me?

No.

CHAPTER ONE

was born in 1902 on the Lower East Side, that open sore on the hip of Manhattan. My parents had immigrated to America the year before from a shtetl outside Warsaw. The Ta’un’uuans have taught me, however, that a journey never begins at the point of departure, but at the point of origin, and so I envision my parents, neither taller than five feet, my father’s face bewildered and terrified, my mother’s, arrogant and terrified, fleeing the pogroms of Russia for the pogroms of Rumania, Rumania for Budapest, Budapest for Warsaw, Warsaw for Antwerp, and finally arriving at a cold-water flat on the Lower East Side. My parents were not only exhausted by the journey, they were stupefied. In the end, the only question that truly preoccupied them was one that, in my bohemian youth, I dismissed as greenhorn sentimentality, and now, in old age, is the only question I, myself, ask: Where is home, and how do I get there?

Like the children of most fresh-off-the-boat Jews, I attended the only school my parents could comprehend, let alone afford: a landsman’s quasi Hebrew school conducted in a cellar and lorded over by a succession of rod-wielding, self-appointed rabbis. My education consisted primarily of chanting Hebrew songs without having the least notion of, or reverence for, what I was singing.

The islanders believe that language originates in song, and that the human throat is a musical instrument, a flute of flesh and blood, and that the breath reverberating through the flute is the soul, and that the music emerging from the flute is the spirit.

Aside from a few deeply ingrained Hebrew songs, everything else has been lost to me from those years. I have, after all, been gone so long. The only keepsake I have is an ancient newspaper clipping, a gift from the archivist at the Yiddish Library who’d read about me in
Life:
it’s a 1916 “Bintel Brief,” the advice column of the
Jewish Daily Forward,
in which a letter of my father’s was printed.

Dear Esteemed Editor,

I hope you will advise me in my present difficulty. I come from a small town in Russia, where, until I was twenty, I studied the Torah, but when I came to America, I quickly changed. I was influenced by progressive newspapers, and became a freethinker and a socialist. But the nature of my feelings is remarkable.

Listen to me: every year when the month of Elul rolls around, when the time of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur approaches, a melancholy begins to eat at my heart, like rust eats iron. When I go past a synagogue during those days and hear the cantor singing, my yearning becomes so great I cannot endure it. I see before me the small town, the fields, the little pond, the
yeshiva.
I recall my childhood friends and our sweet childlike faith. My heart constricts, and I run like a madman till the tears stream from my eyes and I become calmer.

Lately, I have returned to synagogue, despite the scorn of my freethinker daughter. I go not to pray to God, but to hear and refresh my aching soul with the cantor’s melodies. I forget my unhappy weekday life, the dirty shop, my boss, the bloodsucker. All of America with its hurry-up life is forgotten.

What is your opinion of this? Are there others like me whose natures are such that memories of their childhood songs are sometimes stronger than their convictions? I await your answer.

Respectfully yours,
Benjamin Rabinowitz

I offer you my father’s letter not to woo you with nostalgia, but because if there were an untouched square of skin left on my body, I would engrave it on my flesh.

Jewish law forbids tattooing: Thou shall not make in thy flesh a scratch over the soul. But what if the Ta’un’uuans are right, and the soul is breath? Then aren’t the scratches left on my soul by my needles really just the moments when my breath caught, my voice cracked, unable to find song?