The Electric Michelangelo (39 page)

It would have been easy to examine her more closely while he worked, the black hairs at the side of her slip, her soft dark seam, revealed when she pushed the thin material to one side. It would have been easy to brush his hand along an area of tenderness, accidentally or with deliberation, to see if her breathing changed, or if her eyes went under the first glaze of arousal. But he held back. With more difficulty than he ever had before, and with more of a sense than ever that to fail would be contemptible, he remained professional. So it was that her body slowly became known to him, as readily as if they had been lovers, though it was expressionless, voyeuristic discovery. And he fought to keep control of that aspect, swallowing his inclinations, forcing back the longings, denying his end of it. There were erogenous areas that were so alluring and so tightly sewn together with their visual stimulation, the simply seen desire to touch or run his tongue along, that it took appalling discipline to unpick the hem and separate the two, and he wondered if he were not undoing instinct itself. Love was truly one of the oldest feelings in the world, he thought, one of the original emotions, such was its magnitude, so convincingly did it exercise its power.

– How are you managing? Need a break?

– Nope. You need a break?

– Just a quick cigarette. Helps me concentrate.

Her coat on the stool smelled faintly of the horse and sometimes outside the booth Cy could hear Maximus clopping a hoof on the alley paving as he turned to face the frothy breeze off the sea, grinding his teeth or whinnying or shaking his mane, and they might have been sharpening stone together or skinning rabbits in a peasant shack on the wild Mesolithic moor of another age, not situated at the last riotous edge of a vast modern city.

Grace was not immune to pain. It pierced her eyes and deepened the horizontal lines in her brow. For the first few minutes of every session her hand would agitate against the closest surface or the fingers would seize into fists, becoming knaggy and rigid. Her muscles quivered, protested. Her breath was now and then drawn quickly and blown out with difficulty, if in the barbed tension she had forgotten to breathe or his equipment had hit a sensitive, easily offended area of flesh, a spur of bone. It gave him imprecise satisfaction to know that she was human after all, that while she had the will and wiles to make any argument mature, demanding all-out warfare or surrender, while she spoke a dozen languages and was hard boiled with mystery, she could also be hurt. But she quickly pushed past the discomfort, making herself relax as she had herself instructed the unfortunate soldier to, letting her body absorb and dilute the pain of incursion into its skin. She endured long, long sessions. And he worked slowly, meticulously on her.

– You’re doing very well. Must have had your Bovril.

– My what?

– Never mind, it’s just an expression. It’s what they forced us to take as children telling us we wouldn’t get rickets and polio. That and cod liver oil. I just meant you are taking it well. Never mind.

– Sometimes it’s like burning. Today just nails. I prefer the nails.

This was a strange period of work for Cy. Soft. Honest. Intimate. He put away all the barking and braggery of the trade, the slapdash rhetoric, the rude commentary. It was not necessary in any case to sideshow her; she was in it for the duration. They conversed about many things, cultural, political, the new psychology of warfare, subjects which ordinarily found no relevance at his place of work. Or they remained quiet, contented to be so. Grace liked to call him by his moniker, as if she thought it was appropriate or humorous or simply more valid than his true name, and it was how she always addressed Cy. The irony was that during the hours spent with her in the booth he never felt quite so much himself as he worked.

– Look at these things on your wall. Do you think these symbols you have will always remain appropriate, Electric Michelangelo?

Grace was on her back looking up at the flash designs. They were midway through a session. Only an occasional bluster of wind made its way into the booth, lifting the corners of the papers delicately, so the walls seemed to be covered with bright, twitching-winged butterflies.

– Oh, I don’t know, I suppose so. Some are hundreds of years old, and everybody understands them. I’ve been here several years, and I’ve been doing this for a lot longer than that, and they’ve not gone out of fashion yet. I hope you aren’t trying to put me out of business, petal.

– Petal! So funny! No, but look, I’ll give an example. Lots of people do not believe in God. He’s a joke, a big hole. Almost gone. They have money now, in their lives – no need for a heaven lined with gold any more. That was just to get the poor to believe.

– People will always believe in God. They need to, especially lately. We’re all weeny in the grand scheme and unsatisfied, money or not. Besides, have you seen how many new temples are going up in Brooklyn?

– OK, yes, yes, when you are getting persecuted and killed for your faith abroad you have to make it mean something, otherwise why did you die? But what about these little girls? So silly – not like any girl I know. Who goes round with the boots of a pirate and tits out like balloons? Huh? Shouldn’t they be different? Since they have discovered that we have brains and we can vote now and work and we don’t have to marry you stinking brutes to buy a house.

Cy smiled. Quickly, he had come to realize that there was no matter, no issue, no problem which she considered unnavigable by human intellect. She was the least agnostic person he had ever met.

– Men will always like the girls. It’s just a basic fantasy, a bit of fun. It’s just one way of talking, that’s all.

– Oh is it? Well, what will be our fantasy? A big prick waving in the open air? Strong muscles? Shit. Are we really so simple? Things change, you know, signs change. Look at the swastika. It’s very old. Look what it’s become, goddamn it, turned on its side, they are using it to torment us. These terrible armies that have it now, who will want it any more when the Reich is done with it?

He sat back from her, shrugged, and put down his equipment. He wiped his brow on the back of his wrist. Sweat had gathered along the lines of his palms and he wiped them on his trouser leg. He was conscious from time to time that she might be on the verge of some kind of personal disclosure. Of the things he had come to know about her there was little in the way of confidences. He knew facts, she was a trained funambulist and she set up a flatrope between two trees in the park to practise, she suffered from asthma, her drink was Pernod. But nothing personal had been offered.

– No. I understand that.

– Do you? You know what they are saying now? That in these places where they are keeping the Jews they tattoo a number on to them. Tattoo them. Like branding cattle. Like stamping eggs. You cannot know how awful this is for them, for so many reasons. Some of these indignities are carefully designed, some are merely accidental. But this one, this one is both.

She said this so plainly, plain enough that it left too much room to hide the accusation. He balked. She could be, with little if any effort at all, a menace to his sobriety.

– Where on earth did you hear such a horrible thing? A spy? An informer? Who?

Her eyes swept across him, dismissive and scant. Either she did not consider it an important enough question to address or she was not going to reveal her source.

– We are just so complicated now. I just wonder why we want such simple things. A picture stops working at some point. Now you can wire money from bank to bank – not just put it in a box under the bed. It doesn’t exist, not really, it’s like a dream of money, an idea of money. Look at these abstract artists that break everything up and tell us tradition is not worth keeping. You’ve seen Braque?

– Yes.

– And?

Her bare belly was stretched across the chair like tight hemp on an easel. She had that look in her dark eyes that she always got when the conversation turned weightier, became more profound. An insulted look. The beginning of ire, a smoulder that would, if blown upon for any length of time, turn from an ember into blazing fury. Cy was not keen to have her become fervent under the needle, she moved around too much, gestured too violently in that condition, making it impossible to work so he took care not to provoke her when his hand was engaged. Then again, in these moments of respite, when he was smoking or preparing a new part of her skin, she did become rather compelling and fetching as she ranted. He shrugged again, he seemed to do that frequently in her company.

– Well. I for one do not understand this new abstract art. I don’t understand Picasso. And I don’t understand Braque. It’s too messy. Where does the picture begin and end and what does it mean? Maybe people like simplicity because everything else is so troublesome and vexing. Symbols are powerful. They convey a lot without words.

– No, no. It’s good to have such complication. I like it – sometimes I have to get up and walk around the chessboard to see all the angles at once, otherwise perhaps I’m missing a move.

– OK, steady on now, Sally-Ann. We’ve some eyes to finish up here before nightfall.

He picked the equipment back up, nipping the cord out of the way, and Grace perused the booth walls again.

– But you know, you see that one there … look now …

Cy followed her pointing finger to a red heart, levitating among many others.

– … that will probably never go out of fashion, as you say. We remain truly crazy, don’t we?

She reached behind her and unhooked her brassiere, brought the garment forward off her body, over her arms, and placed it on the floor. Cy leaned forward, spread the fingers of his right hand out along her breastplate, rubbed the area with alcohol solution and petroleum jelly, and then moved the needle to her upper body so that it was sitting directly above her own version of the red organ.

– Shall I make this eye smaller to your shoulder?

– No. I don’t think so, just until it would come to the hem of a dress. Not past the collar though. No point in paying to see the Lady of Many Eyes if you can see her tattoos on the street when she walks, is there? The people will only stare when they have paid bucks to stare and they are stared back at.

– It’s just that it may give it more beauty to be left alone on a surface, away from others – the eyes are quite close together and crowded this way.

Grace smiled patiently. She looked up at him, he was working near her collarbone. She had on a tweed skirt that was dampening with perspiration. Her upper body was naked, her breasts suspended by the air. There was a large scabby, healing tattoo exactly centre on the flesh of her stomach, already observing the world through its conjunctive, crusted eye. It looked like something deformed from one of the freak shows. Several more tattoos on her breasts and arms were still too new to have scabbed and one or two were temporarily hidden under gauze. Her arm was raised on the counter and held back, flattening the plane of skin he was currently working on. In another situation she might have been offering herself to him erotically, arching her back and eager to feel the pressure of his mouth on her breast. She had recently shaved under her arm, there was just a small, dark growth there. She continued to smile at him. Cy rolled his eyes humorously and answered his own question.