Sarah Hall - The Electric Michelangelo

They were at the water’s edge. A swarf of broken shells littered the shoreline, the beach was all sediment, strewn with them. High tide had the boats shifting against their moorings and echoing the lapping melody of the waves inside their hulls. He felt that his body was clean and blank and unwritten. Grace had on a dress made of pieces of old thrift ribbon and mélange clothing. Her hair was unbound. From her came a quiet, elegiac song he had never heard before, with lyrics he could not understand. Then she spoke.

— I think Claudia is a little upset with me.

— Why do you say that?

— She thinks I should have gone to Turo. I’ve known him longer. She thinks it is an insult to his reputation.

— I can see how she might believe that.

She turned to him. There was a smear of blood in the corner of her mouth. A small purple bruise along her cheek made up of many tiny blue and red dots.

— You can see nothing. You don’t know what to choose.

— You remind me of someone, Grace.

— I know, that guy you always talk to when you’re drunk.

— No. Not him. Some women my mother used to know.

A trickle of blood ran from her mouth. She must have felt it for she wiped at it with the collar of her dress. As she pulled the garment up to her face the first button of it came undone. Looking down at her he could see the swell of one of her breasts revealed, the skin brightening where her chest bone pushed up against it. He felt unafraid.

— And she liked them, these women?

— Yes, very much. They were good friends.

He was certain she would not prevent him as he reached for her and she did not. Her mouth did not taste like blood, the tongue moving against his lips was warm. But her body felt cold, too cold for the temperature of the dream. After they had kissed, her face was bruised worse, severely so, black and sunken and concussed on the side like rotting fruit, and one iris was leaking ink into the white part of her eye. A gash had formed along her jaw and there was a wet red bubble in her nostril. He slipped his hand into her open dress, ran a thumb down across her nipple, he felt his blood move, swelling fuller in his veins, and felt himself beginning to harden. She sighed, and brought her own hand up to his and held it, moved with it on the outside of her dress as he touched her, guiding it. He could hear the keel music and the ruptured tambour of shingle washing up against the shore, like the sound of keys on a metal ring or a trowel scraping loose mortar off a wall.

When Cy woke his face was on the sticky, fishy counter, and the room was empty except for two drunks in the corner arguing unskilfully with the sisters about payment. Through the retreating haze of alcohol he could see the glass in his hand was empty. The whisky bottle was gone. He thought he could hear the sea but he was not sure if it was just the sonic residue of his dream.

— Is she here?

— Is who here, honey?

— Reeda. No. Is, I mean, is Grace still here?

The twins approached him at the bar. Mary reached over and squeezed his leg.

— Just you left now, hon. Come upstairs for the night, if you like. It’s a long walk home.

She had her hand an inch from his flaring crotch. The tip of her forefinger was agitating gently, as if smudging charcoal on a drawing. Valerie seemed to be at the other end of the room, gathering empty glasses, though she was only ever at her sister’s hip. So that was how it was done between them, he thought. Just by consideration, just by remuneration. Or in the slick, erroneous moments of distraction when the other was engaged.

— Thank you. But I should go. I’m useless after that amount of scotch. A complete rum-dum, if you know what I’m getting at.

— Oh. OK. Wait then while I find you some cold cuts to take. I’m betting you live off nothing but graveyard stew.

The twins moved into the kitchens together. On the bar next to Cy was a stack of old chessboards and some loose rolling pieces. The gaming was over for the night as was every other use for the bar. He rubbed his face, which felt numb, and blinked hard to restore his vision. Slowly he took the folded piece of parchment from his shirt pocket again and opened it. Even as he looked at the eye it looked back, so that he couldn’t really see it and have it be assessed — not in the way that seen things are taken and consumed by the viewer. That was the source of trouble with the image. The eye outmanoeuvred his gaze, it failed to be inanimate and resisted being used or judged as an object. It was like the swans of Morecambe that could pull out of quicksand the moment they sensed the draw. Truly, he did not know who was primarily looking at whom, Cyril Parks or the eye, because his gaze was mirrored, deflected, equalled. It was as if the image was playing a game with him.

A second later he found he was on his feet and walking fast back towards Sheepshead Bay, without having collected his picnic or saying goodbye to the sisters. Then flagging down a late-travelling car as it passed him heading in the right direction.

Grace did not appear angry to be roused so late. There was little surprise on her face when she saw Cy there, tall in the corridor and bending towards her doorway, as if she was well acquainted with such nocturnal intrusions. He had not needed to bang on the door long for her to come and open it, which meant that he had not the time to reconsider his actions or contemplate the possibility that she may have company in her bed.

— Are we on fire?

— What’s it called when you finish a game the winner? Checkmate? But what about when nobody can win? That happens also, yes? How about when it’s a draw?

Grace yawned, ran her thumb under the strap of her nightgown which had slipped down off her shoulder.

— Perpetual check.

— Look. It’s not up to me of course, and I would never talk anyone into something permanent that they were not convinced of, but you see, I think that you should do it. I think you should have the tattoos. Even if it’s not by me. Even if you go elsewhere. I think it would be … spectacular.

She laughed, raised her eyebrows, and watched him for a moment, with the same look of quizzical contemplation that she had worn when they parted the night they had first met. Then she stepped closer and whispered to him as if divulging an obvious if previously unmentioned secret.

— Well of course it’s going to be you, Electric Michelangelo. Of course you.

From inside the apartment he could hear the radio or gramophone playing, the soft twine of classical music, the urgency of violin strings. He had no idea what that meant, whether she slept well or suffered from insomnia. He had no idea what time it was but he knew that they existed now like actors inside the shared hours of their building’s theatre. And he knew, with her standing there against silk or satin, a person of collected ideas and injuries against the orchestra, even unknown to him as she still was, that she would never again be a body confined to the frail dimension of nitrate shadows and chalk and dreams.

There were instances when Cy’s needle unwittingly delved down into a soul and struck upon meaning, then confidential matter came up, unstemmable as arterial blood or gushing oil, and customers confessed the reason behind the art. He caught their stories in a bucket in the shop or booth and mixed it with ink and used the serum to paint translations of the very stories the tellers were haemorrhaging on to them. He could interrogate people without a single word, just via the incisor in his hand, drawing their lives out of them as he drew symbols on to them. The tales were revelatory and awful and enlightening. These were not house walls he was painting, after all, they were empathetic people, made of flesh and bone and experience and tragedy and joy. They had the hearts of his mother’s understanding, tossed-together, torn-asunder. They were broken and healing and abused, careless and worshipping of each other. To tattoo was to understand that people in all their confusing mystery wanted only to claim their bodies as their own site, on which to build a beacon, or raise a rafter, or nail up a manifesto, warning, celebrating, telling of themselves. It was to understand that in order for a body to be reborn and re-yoked, first it needed to be destroyed and freed. It was emancipation and it was slavery, the ashes and the phoenix. It was beauty and destruction, it was that old trick. That was the contract.