Sarah Hall - The Electric Michelangelo

— 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.

— Yes, yes. I know. More eyes the better. Yadda yadda yadda.

— Oh, dobrze, so he speaks other languages now. Welcome to Brooklyn.

He laughed.

— Hardly. Is that what you’ll call yourself, then? On the circus card, I mean. The Lady of Many Eyes?

— Perhaps. Yeah, why not?

— Sorry, I have to pull a little bit here, harder doing it freehand. I’m not … making a pass, actually.

— All right. I’m not making a pass at you either.

He was again conscious of touching her. He was conscious of the difficulty in not touching her, having to rest the side of his palm along the flesh of her breast to steady his work, otherwise the equipment was too upended and it was like leading a hopeless metal dance partner around a soft, snagging ballroom floor. He was conscious of her nipples, that they hardened and became erect if touched even slightly, and he wished they would not, but at the same time he was glad they did.

— I will make good money, better than the circus. They will pay to see me looking back at them. It will be a good joke. It will be funny, like being the invisible woman.

— I didn’t ask.

— Otherwise my body already belongs to them. I don’t care if it is not thought of as beauty. I don’t need it to be. They can think what they like, but what they cannot do is use me with their damn eyes. Not ever again. Don’t pretend you don’t understand this. Not knocking on my door in the middle of the night with your chess questions for me, all red in the face like a sunburn.

— No. Yes. I mean I think I do appreciate the idea. I’ve said so.

He paused, bit down on his lip a little. He sensed the evaporation of her blithe mood but continued anyway.

— I just don’t know why. I don’t really know much about you, you’re … no Cakewalk. What’s your story, Grace?