by Sarah Hall
Here Cy would walk through the market, a few blocks from his building, when it was winding down, with stray cabbage leaves blowing on the ground, the clink of glass going back into a crate and it was as a working studio, where artists and their renditions were juxtaposed. A last attempt being made from a persistent huckster at a sale, a discounted rate for the last of his fruit with its waxy, polished appearance.
– Ten cents for a dozen, nickel for five, sir? Sweet as honey, crisp as ice.
He liked the raucous and rarefied arena of Brooklyn, the glossy look of old women hanging their washing out in long jowls between buildings, and the quartz faces of children playing marbles and hopscotch in the mud roads, swapping baseball cards on the sidewalk. Brown paper bags in the gutter could seem purposeful as they drifted along and the fishing boats cast tussled shadows on the water like a breath of wind through wheat fields. More than the baseball and the cooking, more even than the religion that blessed the Judaist congregations, the light was the binding ingredient of the place, like water in bread dough. It was the spirit of Brooklyn.
He was procuring his first batch of ink from a pigeon-filled, paint-peeling warehouse in Gravesend when he met Arturas and Claudia Overas, husband and wife who made up one of the most famous partnerships in all of Coney Island. With his usual caution and subterfuge Cy was selecting his products when he noticed a large Teutonic looking man with hairy blond cheeks following his progress around the suppliers. The man was considerably larger than Cy and apparently quite comfortable with staring down the gaze of others for he made no bones about his optical inquisition. Uncomfortable, and unfamiliar with his surroundings, Cy finally went to pay for his goods and was reaching into his pocket for money when the fellow strode up to him and punched one fist into his other palm. He addressed the cashier in English, which seemed not to be his most comfortable language though it was still used emphatically and with speed, like a swing in a park too small for the backside of a grown child.
– This man must not pay these prices. Give this man my good prices.
Suddenly nervous, Cyril Parks attempted to extinguish the interference.
– No. I’ll pay what’s marked up, thank you for your concern. I’m sure that’s fair. Just ring me up as is, please, and I’ll be on my way.
He had no wish to draw attention to himself and the blond man was not assisting with his attempt to be discreet about who he was and what he needed the supplies for. He turned to the man accosting him with an economy of aggression, hoping not to further provoke a conflict with him but knowing that a vacuum of defence could potentially extend the exchange, may give the loud, uninhibited stranger licence to toy with him. Cy was tall and always had been thus, it was advantageous in his profession, but the man in question was another foot clear above him. There were more lashes around the eyes regarding him than he had ever seen on a person, man or woman, and the coiled mustard growth on his cheeks almost reached his nostrils. The open neck of his shirt revealed a great crop of chest hair. In complete contrast to the knots and whorls elsewhere on his body, the flax on the man’s head lay perfectly straight, without so much as a hint of a kink to it, giving the distinct impression that there had been a civil war of some variety on his anatomy and the hair had divorced into two opposing autarkies a long time ago.
– Hören Sie! You must not pay these prices. They are for other trades. We take smaller quantity, better quality. We are the same, we are similar breed, I can tell that by your …
Here the man pulled an expression of mock surreptitiousness and hunched his shoulders. He looked affected, exaggerated, like a silent-movie villain.
– … your old habits. Never mind what is kept under your shirt. But here, it’s OK, just buy your ink. You ask for what you want, exactly, and you get, my friend! Yes, in America!
– Look. I’ll have to ask you not to interfere, I’m not sure what you’re talking about. I’m an artist. Freelance. This is for lettering work on …
– Oh, ass-shit! They don’t care what you do! Do you care what this man does with his ink?
The cashier shrugged, assessing Cy over a bottle of Coca-Cola with mild attention and one lazy, fizzing eye.
– No, of course not He has four Abbildungen by me no doubt if I tell him to remove shirt – Arturas Overas, best tattoo artist in all of New York! My friend, you must get big balls if you are going to work here, understand! Otherwise they put you on a boat back to wherever you have come from, or into a bag of bricks in East river! I try to help you in this regard.
Still unsure of the protocol for tattoo artists in this country, Cy was hesitant to give himself up so easily. This man was obviously trying to set him up, ensnare him in some kind of trap that the warehouse management were no doubt privy to. Tattoo artists, if that is what this man indeed was, were notoriously competitive and inventive when it came to bettering a rival, or planning his demise. Cy knew this as well as he knew his own shoe size.
– Look, if it’s all the same, I’d rather not have you shouting about this. I’d rather you minded your own business in fact. I’ll take this now and I’ll pay what the marked price is and if you’d like to finish this conversation outside I’ll be happy to oblige.
– Have it your way. My wife is waiting for me outside also, she does not like the smell of glue and paint, it gives her headache, perhaps she can talk sense to you, crazy englischer Dummkopf. She is a beautiful lady, an angel, my Claudia, probably killing all the men that try to steal her from me while I am gone. Ja. I will see you outside.
With that the man left the warehouse. Cy sighed, paid for his supplies, looked for another exit and upon seeing none followed him through the warehouse doorway. Beyond it not one but two mastodon giants were waiting for him, for the man had been joined by his female equal.
They were a stalwart, striking pair without a doubt. Both were well over six feet tall and possibly weighed an equal tonnage. The great blond interferer was standing flirtatiously close to his wife – a megalithic woman with bright crisp orange hair and heavy, smudged black eyes. She had on an oversized dress that covered most of her body but Cy could make out the undeniable black borders of prolific tattooing on her wrists and through her nylon hose. She had the knuckles of a boxer and the defined muscles of an Olympian. There were veins in her neck that were like the roots of a tree plunging up against soil. Between the two of them they could have reduced him to mash and gravy in a very short amount of time, he was certain of it, for he was Lilliputian in comparison. His thoughts turned to flight, he could drop his wares and out-run them, but they were blocking the road, his only avenue of escape. He suddenly remembered his careless foot on a smashed Pedder Street windowsill held tight by an ink-stained hand securing it at the ankle, and he knew once again that running was the foolhardy choice. The woman turned and spotted Cy.
– Turo. Is this the English man?
– Ja.
Arturas gestured to him. It seemed he had inflated his pectorals further still, perhaps having found a convenient tyre-pump in the vicinity, and he had his knuckles resting on a thick belt holding up his trousers. He looked like a legendary woodcutting champion of yore.
– Come, come. Sit on this wall. We will speak now.
Cy hesitated, then sat. The woman lowered herself down next to him and placed an arm around his shoulder. The weight of it was extraordinary – and it seemed to possess a serpent-like grip of its own that felt not unlike Miss India Rubber’s boa constrictor when she had draped it over Cy’s shoulders and arms as a boy, a squeeze so powerful that it paralysed the body and made it ache until the thing was ready to release its tension and move off. The arm itself smelled incongruously of talcum powder.
– Good. Now, I try to do you a favour as my brother but you refuse to accept. You take the advice of Arturas Overas and piss it into the gutter. No matter. We will see to it that you learn. This is my wife, Claudia. She is my assistant in all things of life, as I am hers also. Now that we are introduced properly, let us begin.
Cyril Parks dosed his eyes. This was ridiculous. He was a grown man who had diffused many a fight in the Pedder Street parlour and the public houses of Morecambe Bay, on behalf of a man highly qualified to provoke them. He was adept at negotiating peace, it came with the job and the association, and he had even put in a good performance for fights that he could not escape. How had he so readily and stupidly walked into this situation? It was useless to think of victory or apology. Instead he thought of Riley’s reedy red hand when he had staggered back from the smithy by the ravine. He thought of brown-red discharge in a basin, fish guts in the Cooperative Society building sliding down conveyors into buckets, and he thought of the weeping scar along Reeda Parks’s chest.
They were carnival folk, who had come to America fifteen years ago and had since travelled the country extensively with fairs and shows and circuses. They were Germanic people originally, comprised, it seemed, of every powerful myth and mettle available from that heritage. Arturas was a tattoo artist, not a bad one, although not, as he claimed, the best in New York. Cy had met men as big as him before, but his bride was a colossus such as he had never seen. Born with exceptional strength and size, she was not ridiculed for either by her kinfolk, nor by her village in the Erz mountains, so that by the time the rest of the world was ready to set upon her in fear or familism for her lack of classical female form she had been convinced so thoroughly of her magnificence already that she did not doubt it. Criticism and cruelty bounced off her hide like hail from the rump of a prize ox. Her heart was good, her body was capable, her mind was sturdy and possessed of no more frailties than any other well-bolstered human brain. What the world saw as freakish and a spectacle, the incarnation of a creature from a dark fairytale like the Ogre’s daughter, her loved ones saw as fantastic and spectacular, the work of an inventive and benevolent God. If there was hair on her chin by puberty it was because she was blessed with more than her fair share of that chemical which made humans miraculously strong. If she began life able to pick up heavy objects where her brothers could not and box grown men at the village fair, she only went on to refine her muscle, to train her limbs to perform feats industrial machinery heretofore had the exclusive right to undertake. In the mornings and evenings she would squat and thrust and lunge and curl iron in her arms. Occasionally she would bleed herself before taking exercise, letting out the ichor through a puncture or lesion in the crux of her elbow or knee so that the engine of her heart would have to work twice as hard with less of its fuel, but this was a discipline in her mind and it would only serve to make her stronger in the end. So she embraced her lot and strove to perfect it.
And Arturas loved her, loved her deeply and truly, that much was abundantly clear, since they first met at the local market and he watched as she hoisted home a calf on her shoulders. Arturas was a strongman who lifted weights above his head in a circus that had come to town, he wooed Claudia, convinced her family to let her accompany him as his bride – the money was good, his love was noble – and for a while they billed themselves as the only husband and wife strongman and strongwoman team in the whole of Europe. Within a year Arturas had popped the cartilage out of his left knee and torn several ligaments on a poorly executed clean-and-press manoeuvre, so badly in fact that the joint remained herniated and he would never be able to hoist barbells professionally again. With his leg packed in plaster he was doodling with his wife’s lipstick on his cast and wondering what to do next – he did not want to leave the circus – when he struck on the idea of body art Claudia was all for it and said she would become his living canvas. He tattooed her top to toe and together the two of them travelled about, awing the crowds in Europe and America. Carnival life was suited to them both – they were restless people, prideful and expressive. When the circus dissolved they stayed on in America and went to the one place where people of their ilk were more than welcome. That throbbing, pustulous, inflamed amusement-industry boil on the backside of Brooklyn.
They had been at Coney Island for eight years now, the longest either had lived in one place since they left the village in Germany. When she was not lifting her petticoats outside his parlour on Stillwell Avenue to show the self-portrait of her husband on her thigh, or displaying her form in the human picture gallery of Luna Park, Claudia was hoisting pewter balls in her outstretched hands, or turning over vehicles like a tornado, or hurling ingots and faggots and scaffolding over twelve prostrate men to the gasps of the enthralled public.
Cy opened his eyes to see the enormous pair smiling kindly at him. The thing he had to understand about Arturas Overas, he was told by the subject himself, was that he was not one for all the competitive tussling and ruffianry with others in the same profession. It gave him bad indigestion and a spastic colon, a griping of the guts such as bad clams will provide. He worked in a place that was a tattooist’s paradise. There was more work there than an additional ten artists could manage. And if more artists came, more customers would follow. The more cows, the more milk produced and the more milk produced the more people would drink the milk, said Arturas. It was good for business to have more cows in the herd. When one was milking, all were milking. This was Arturas’s interpretation and philosophy regarding the tattoo trade and, after the thorough, huff-duff style of warfare to the industry in Morecambe, it was a bold new concept to Cy. The man placed a big hand on Cy’s knee.
– But are you good, my friend? Or are you, what is it they say, are you rinky-dink?
Cy’s heartbeat was still erratic. His shoulders ached from the constrictor arm.
– I work freehand. I have for over ten years. I apprenticed with the greatest artist in the north of England.
– Excellent! Then I was right. I am always right about such matters. We were meant to meet, my friend, do you not agree? And what is your name?
– Cyril Parks. Cy.
– No, your other name.
– Oh. The Electric Michelangelo.
It was the first time he had spoken of his new identity, the first time he had rechristened himself out loud.
– Aah! It is good! It is very good! Not as good as mine. I am the Black Baron. You like it?
How had Arturas known what kind of man he was, Cy asked, back in the warehouse when he had tried his best to conceal himself. Claudia was the one who replied. She had a beautiful soft, basso voice when it came to speaking of her husband.
– Turo is a very sensitive man. He will watch the spider in the bathtub for an hour to know if it is poisonous or harmless rather than squashing it without asking. He has a sense of life, of joy and pain. He is my bear with a thorn in his paw and his tongue in the honey pot.
They told Cy about Coney Island. There were booths that could be rented seasonally and upwards of one million visitors swarmed through the fairgrounds and parks every weekend in summer. One million people, could he imagine such a thing? Sometimes you could not find the boardwalk for all the people on it – you just had to assume that it was there, said Arturas. It was the chosen place for the likes of them, full of the wonders of the world, the ingenuity and curiosity of man, and hotdogs, delicious hotdogs.
– Ah, yes. With the onion and ketchup along the top, just enough for tasting each bite. Geschmackvoll! And, my friend, wait until you see, there is the fourteen-inch frank made for two people to share.
He leaned over and kissed his wife and she patted his cheek. There were good friendships that could start with almighty confrontation or terrible prejudice, Cy would learn.
Coney Island, as it turned out, was Morecambe’s richer, zany American relative. A fat, expensively dressed in-law with a wicked smile and the tendency, once caught up in the mood, to take things too far. The family resemblance was there for displaced Lancashire folk to see upon arrival if they cared to. Both were made up of a multitude of interdependent entertainment cells designed to remove a person from the dimension of ordinary life. Both sat sublimely and noisomely next to water, defining themselves in relation to the sea. Had anyone with lati
tudinal skills measured the direction of their gaze, the two resorts probably faced each other across that vast and busy piece of ocean water – give or take a small land mass positioned in between, Manx and Irish populated – like a pair of gargoyles, one smiling cheerfully, the other laughing maniacally. Both purveyed a bawdy sense of humour when it came to the indelicate human body, with its gases and growths and ganglions, and both acknowledged the desire of its inquisitive mind to be shocked and appalled and entertained and mystified. Cy had never heard of the place until he arrived in the country, until he got into the slipstream of immigrants flushing through the massive borough city of Brooklyn, but when he got there it seemed like fulfilling a prophecy. Within weeks, he had secured a rental tattoo booth on Oceanic Walk, one of the honky-tonk alleys that ran through the catacombs of amusement facilities at the Island, only three hops, skips and jumps from Coney’s boardwalk and beach. It was a good tip from Arturas and Claudia, and a natural progression for Cy. He went where the work was, because he had been born of that peculiar seaside-growing odd-fruit-bearing family tree, because he was sired from that dynasty. Looking back it was as simple as that. Go to America, make up a name, aim for the ringing, singing, screaming, teeming water’s edge. There was a sense of graduation to his life now, as if he had found the doorway to another level of the same happy, haunted hotel, the same colourful house of torture, the same quarantined wonderland, where the insanity of the population was just brighter and more intense and extended, because it had the freedom to be so, because this was America. The Electric Michelangelo belonged, Cy sensed it. Because Coney itself was like the work of his moniker’s original, towards the end of his life, when something went vain and vivid in his brain and the result was a painted world that was past real, surreal, mannered from psychosis and all the more poignant for it.