Night, the All-Brightening Night and the Dim,
The Long Night, the Floating
Night, the Empty Night and with the first light
A surging called the War Canoe of Night—
Which carries Sky Father and Earth Mother,
Their six sons borne
Inside the airless black
The two make, clasped only to each other.
Turning onto his back,
The eldest son struggles with all his force,
Shoulder to sky, straining until it’s torn
Violently away from the bleeding earth.
He sets four beams,
Named for the winds, to keep
His parents apart. They’re weeping, the curve
Of loneliness complete
Between them now. The old father’s tears gleam
Like stars, then fall as aimlessly as dreams
To earth, which waits for them all to return.
Hers is the care
Of the dead, and his tears
Seep into her folds like a dye that burns.
One last huge drop appears
Hanging over the boy’s head. Wincing, scared,
He’s put his hand up into the cold air.
from Typee
HERMAN MELVILLE
In one of my strolls with Kory-Kory, in passing along the border of a thick growth of bushes, my attention was arrested by a singular noise. On entering the thicket I witnessed for the first time the operation of tattooing as performed by these islanders.
I beheld a man extended flat upon his back on the ground, and, despite the forced composure of his countenance, it was evident that he was suffering agony. His tormentor bent over him, working away for all the world like a stone-cutter with mallet and chisel. In one hand he held a short slender stick, pointed with a shark’s tooth, on the upright end of which he tapped with a small hammer-like piece of wood, thus puncturing the skin, and charging it with the coloring matter in which the instrument was dipped A cocoa-nut shell containing this fluid was placed upon the ground. It is prepared by mixing with a vegetable juice the ashes of the ‘armor,’ or candle-nut, always preserved for the purpose. Beside the savage, and spread out upon a piece of soiled tappa, were a great number of curious black-looking little implements of bone and wood, used in the various divisions of his art. A few terminated in a single fine point, and, like very delicate pencils, were employed in giving the finishing touches, or in operating upon the more sensitive portions of the body, as was the case in the present instance. Others presented several points distributed in a line, somewhat resembling the teeth of a saw. These were employed in the coarser parts of the work, and particularly in pricking in straight marks. Some presented their points disposed in small figures, and being placed upon the body, were, by a single blow of the hammer, made to leave their indelible impression. I observed a few the handles of which were mysteriously curved, as if intended to be introduced into the orifice of the ear, with a view perhaps of beating the tattoo upon the tympanum. Altogether, the sight of these strange instruments recalled to mind that display of cruel-looking mother-of-pearl-handled things which one sees in their velvet-lined cases at the elbow of a dentist.
The artist was not at this time engaged on an original sketch, his subject being a venerable savage, whose tattooing had become somewhat faded with age and needed a few repairs, and accordingly he was merely employed in touching up the works of some of the old masters of the Typee school, as delineated upon the human canvas before him. The parts operated upon were the eyelids, where a longitudinal streak, like the one which adorned Kory-Kory, crossed the countenance of the victim.
In spite of all the efforts of the poor old man, sundry twitchings and screwings of the muscles of the face denoted the exquisite sensibility of these shutters to the windows of his soul, which he was now having repainted. But the artist, with a heart as callous as that of an army surgeon, continued his performance, enlivening his labors with a wild chant, tapping away the while as merrily as a woodpecker.
So deeply engaged was he in his work, that he had not observed our approach, until, after having enjoyed an unmolested view of the operation, I chose to attract his attention. As soon as he perceived me, supposing that I sought him in his professional capacity, he seized hold of me in a paroxysm of delight, and was all eagerness to begin the work. When, however, I gave him to understand that he had altogether mistaken my views, nothing could exceed his grief and disappointment. But recovering from this, he seemed determined not to credit my assertion, and grasping his implements, he flourished them about in fearful vicinity to my face, going through an imaginary performance of his art, and every moment bursting into some admiring exclamation at the beauty of his designs.
Horrified at the bare thought of being rendered hideous for life if the wretch were to execute his purpose upon me, I struggled to get away from him, while Kory-Kory, turning traitor, stood by, and besought me to comply with the outrageous request. On my reiterated refusals the excited artist got half beside himself, and was overwhelmed with sorrow at losing so noble an opportunity of distinguishing himself in his profession.
The idea of engrafting his tattooing upon my white skin filled him with all a painter’s enthusiasm: again and again he gazed into my countenance, and every fresh glimpse seemed to add to the vehemence of his ambition. Not knowing to what extremities he might proceed, and shuddering at the ruin he might inflict upon my figure-head, I now endeavored to draw off his attention from it, and holding out my arm in a fit of desperation, signed to him to commence operations. But he rejected the compromise indignantly, and still continued his attack on my face, as though nothing short of that would satisry him. When his fore-finger swept across my features, in laying out the borders of those parallel bands which were to encircle my countenance, the flesh fairly crawled upon my bones. At last, half wild with terror and indignation, I succeeded in breaking away from the three savages, and fled towards old Marheyo’s house, pursued by the indomitable artist, who ran after me, implements in hand. Kory-Kory, however, at last interfered, and drew him off from the chace.
This incident opened my eyes to a new danger: and I now felt convinced that in some luckless hour I should be disfigured in such a manner as never more to have the face to return to my countrymen, even should an opportunity offer.
These apprehensions were greatly increased by the desire which King Mehevi and several of the inferior chiefs now manifested that I should be tattooed. The pleasure of the king was first signified to me some three days after my casual encounter with Karky the artist. Heavens! what imprecations I showered upon that Karky! Doubtless he had plotted a conspiracy against me and my countenance, and would never rest until his diabolical purpose was accomplished. Several times I met him in various parts of the valley, and, invariably, whenever he descried me, he came running after me with his mallet and chisel, flourishing them about my face as if he longed to begin. What an object he would have made of me!
When the king first expressed his wish to me, I made known to him my utter abhorrence of the measure, and worked myself into such a state of excitement, that he absolutely stared at me in amazement. It evidently surpassed his majesty’s comprehension how any sober-minded and sensible individual could entertain the least possible objection to so beautifying an operation.
Soon afterwards he repeated his suggestion, and meeting with a like repulse, showed some symptoms of displeasure at my obduracy. On his third time renewing his request, I plainly perceived that something must be done, or my visage was ruined for ever; I therefore screwed up my courage to the sticking point, and declared my willingness to have both arms tattooed from just above the wrist to the shoulder. His majesty was greatly pleased at the proposition, and I was congratulating myself with having thus compromised the matter, when he intimated that as a thing of course my face was first to undergo the operation. I was fairly driven to despair; nothing but the utter ruin of my lsquo;face divine,’ as the
poets call it, would, I perceived, satisfy the inexorable Mehevi and his chiefs, or rather, that infernal Karky, for he was at the bottom of it all.
The only consolation afforded me was a choice of patterns: I was at perfect liberty to have my face spanned by three horizontal bars, after the fashion of my serving-man’s; or to have as many oblique stripes slanting across it; or if, like a true courtier, I chose to model my style on that of royalty, I might wear a sort of freemason badge upon my countenance in the shape of a mystic triangle. However, I would have none of these, though the king most earnestly impressed upon my mind that my choice was wholly unrestricted. At last, seeing my unconquerable repugnance, he ceased to importune me.
But not so some other of the savages. Hardly a day passed but I was subjected to their annoying requests, until at last my existence became a burden to me; the pleasures I had previously enjoyed no longer afforded me delight, and all my former desire to escape from the valley now revived with additional force.
Not… shy of exhibiting her charms was the Island Queen herself, the beauteous wife of Mowanna, the king of Nukuheva. Between two and three years after the adventures recorded in this volume, I chanced, while aboard of a man-of-war, to touch at these islands. The French had then held possession of the Marquesas some time, and already prided themselves upon the beneficial effects of their jurisdiction, as discernible in the deportment of the natives. To be sure, in one of their efforts at reform they had slaughtered about a hundred and fifty of them at Whitihoo—but let that pass. At the time I mention, the French squadron was rendezvousing in the bay of Nukuheva, and during an interview between one of their captains and our worthy Commodore, it was suggested by the former, that we, as the flag-ship of the American squadron, should receive, in state, a visit from the royal pair. The French officer likewise represented, with evident satisfaction, that under their tuition the king and queen had imbibed proper notions of their elevated station, and on all ceremonious occasions conducted themselves with suitable dignity. Accordingly, preparations were made to give their majesties a reception on board in a style corresponding with their rank.
One bright afternoon, a gig, gaily bedizened with streamers, was observed to shove off from the side of one of the French frigates, and pull directly for our gangway. In the stern sheets reclined Mowanna and his consort. As they approached, we paid them all the honors due to royalty;—manning our yards, firing a salute, and making a prodigious hubbub.
They ascended the accommodation ladder, were greeted by the Commodore, hat in hand, and passing along the quarterdeck, the marine guard presented arms, while the band struck up ‘The king of the Cannibal Islands.’ So far all went well. The French officers grimaced and smiled in exceedingly high spirits, wonderfully pleased with the discreet manner in which these distinguished personages behaved themselves.
Their appearance was certainly calculated to produce an effect. His majesty was arrayed in a magnificent military uniform, stiff with gold lace and embroidery, while his shaven crown was concealed by a hugh chapeau bras, waving with ostrich plumes. There was one slight blemish, however, in his appearance. A broad patch of tattooing stretched completely across his face, in a line with his eyes, making him look as if he wore a huge pair of goggles; and royalty in goggles suggested some ludicrous ideas. But it was in the adornment of the fair person of his dark complexioned spouse that the tailors of the fleet had evinced the gaiety of their national taste. She was habited in a gaudy tissue of scarlet cloth, trimmed with yellow silk, which, descending a little below the knees, exposed to view her bare legs, embellished with spiral tattooing, and somewhat resembling two miniature Trajan’s columns. Upon her head was a fanciful turban of purple velvet, figured with silver sprigs, and surmounted by a tuft of variegated feathers.
The ship’s company crowding into the gangway to view the sight, soon arrested her majesty’s attention. She singled out from their number an old salt, whose bare arms and feet, and exposed breast were covered with as many inscriptions in India ink as the lid of an Egyptian sarcophagus. Notwithstanding all the sly hints and remonstrances of the French officers, she immediately approached the man, and pulling further open the bosom of his duck frock, and rolling up the leg of his wide trowsers, she gazed with admiration at the bright blue and vermilion pricking, thus disclosed to view. She hung over the fellow, caressing him, and expressing her delight in a variety of wild exclamations and gestures. The embarrassment of the polite Gauls at such an unlooked-for occurrence may be easily imagined; but picture their consternation, when all at once the royal lady, eager to display the hieroglyphics on her own sweet form, bent forward for a moment, and turning sharply round, threw up the skirts of her mantle, and revealed a sight from which the aghast Frenchmen retreated precipitately, and tumbling into their boat, fled the scene of so shocking a catastrophe.
from 7 Tattoos
PETER TRACHTENBERG
The living being is only a species of the dead,
and a very rare species.
NIETZSCHE,The Gay Science
In the fall of 1991 I went to Borneo. What happened was I’d saved some money and I decided to go to the wildest place I could think of. I suppose I was going through a nostalgic phase then, and the thing I was feeling nostalgic for was my younger self. At the time I called this “controlled regression,” and one result of regressing in this controlled manner was that I found myself trying to realize the fantasy of wildness, of wilderness, that I’d had as a ten-year-old boy in upper Manhattan. I wanted to be an explorer, a guy with a pith helmet and a good jawline hacking his way through a rank, humid, dripping rain forest with all sorts of fauna making ominous background roars and hoots and that weird cackle I associate with no creature I know of but that you always hear in jungle movies and that I actually did hear, years later, in a village on the Mahakam River. I swear on my father’s grave. Whatever it is that lives out there really makes that sound.
The other reason I picked Borneo was because of tattoos. I thought I’d find tattooed people there, bowl-coiffed Dayaks who still wore those geometric tattoos, the black, looping, barbed lines and spirals that they call “tribal” on St. Mark’s Place. If you go to a tattooist and ask him for a tribal piece, what you’ll get will be an imitation of a Bornean, that is to say a Dayak, tattoo. The piece I have on my collarbone—it looks kind of like a set of antlers—is actually adapted from an Iban Dayak pattern from Sarawak, in North Borneo. It was my first tattoo. I’d gotten it a year or so before I went over, and I wanted to see its original, so to speak.
Getting tattoed is one of the few impulses I’ve ever delayed acting on. Back in the late seventies I was all set to have a forearm piece that was going to be a crucifix made of a pair of syringes wrapped in barbed wire. But the trouble was I didn’t know any tattooists then, and by the time I did I had changed my way of life and I no longer cared to advertise my bad habits. I still wanted a tattoo, but everyone kept telling me not to make any major decisions in the beginning. So I waited one year, and then another and another, like somebody in a fairy tale, until almost five years had passed since the last time I’d thought of decorating myself with a picture of crossed syringes. And I figured, What the heck. Live a little.
I got my first tattoo in Amsterdam, where I used to live, from one of the world’s all-time great tattooists. His name is Henk Schiffmacher, but he works under the name Hanky Panky. He is one of tattooing’s stars—a red giant, I’d call him, a big hot presence at the trade’s conventions and in the pages of its glossy magazines, whose photos of freshly decorated body parts have the lush sheen of pornography. Hanky Panky is also an archivist of tattoos, and he’s traveled all over the world, hanging out with Hell’s Angels in the States and Yakuza in Japan and these big, spooky Samoan guys who do their work with gigantic harpoons that have been known to go right through the skin and puncture spleens and kidneys. His shop was in the Red Light District, overlooking a canal, and it had a little tattoo museum that reminded me of the museums of human odditie
s they used to have around Times Square when I was a kid: It had that same soothing, musty kind of gruesomeness. The first thing I saw when I came in for my appointment was a glass display case. And inside the case was an entire tattooed human skin from Japan that had been cured like a big sheet of beef jerky and stretched so that you could see its images clearly. And I must have been regressing on all cylinders then, because I wasn’t grossed out at all: I thought it was cool.
The next thing I know there’s a guy lumbering toward me. He looks like a biker. He’s thick all over, not fat, but thick, slabby; he could crush me like a Styrofoam packing peanut, and he’s got shoulder-length hair and a beard and his thick, pestle-shaped forearms are covered with very precise, almost dainty patterns that from a distance might almost be knocked off from a Ralph Lauren bedspread. And I’m waiting for him to sneer at me, since what am I but a frail, clean-shaven, unmarked tourist, who in all his thirty-six years has done nothing more remarkable to his body than get his earlobe pierced a couple of times? But Hanky Panky is Dutch, and the Dutch are always polite, even when they despise you, and instead he says, in that clipped Dutch accent that’s almost impossible to place: “Well. What is it you are looking for, exactly?”
I show Hanky Panky the design that I adapted from a photo in a book of Dayak art, and he has me take off my shirt and he sketches the design on my collarbone with a grease pencil. Then he calls over an assistant to shave my chest. Now, under other circumstances, this could be kind of a turn-on. But in Hanky Panky’s tattoo parlor it just reminds me of the shaving I had to undergo before some surgery I once had in the groin region. That one, much to my initial disappointment, had been performed by a male nurse, although I did see the wisdom of having a man for the job at around the time he began to whisk the razor around my balls. “Hey, be careful. Please!” I begged. And my male nurse answered, “Don’t worry, buddy. I’ll handle ’em like they were my own.
Dorothy Parker's Elbow Page 14