Enter the Ink

By Elaine Lies

He comes to me after nightfall. 

I’ve lit the candles and incense, rung the bells at the small shrine in my studio, bowed my head, all as if I’m about to start work. The sticks and the needles stand ready, lined up in their boxes; the ink in its jars, rows of blue and black, yellow, green, aqua, red. I used red a lot, for the sweeping arms of demons, the brilliant skin of the Goddess of Mercy, the sun rising from the sea, the leaping carp the surfers all wanted put on. But the ink is crusted inside the jars and dust lies over my worktable, so thick it’s almost furry. The table, with its black cover, is furry; the cats sleep there for hours, undisturbed. Bea is there now, curled in a tight cat knot. As I stare down, she unwinds, blinks her amber eyes up at me, yawns, curls up again. Soon, she is snoring. 

I am that insignificant. Now. 

Rain runs down the night window as I walk over in the one-bulb dimness, the straw matting of the floor smooth and cool. My left arm, the bad one, fat with trapped lymph fluid like a blown-up balloon, aches except for the fingers, which are numb and puffed; on days like today I can hardly move them, each a sausage ready to pop. I rub my arm absently with my other hand, press with my thumb to see how deep a dent it leaves. As big as the strawberries I used to buy by the carton, the expensive ones, when I had money for things like that, and an appetite. Months ago. 

I used to have two skinny wrists, my palms stained a rainbow of tattoo ink. I was busy every night until past midnight. Japan’s most famous female tattoo artist, my own entire body a canvas of the art. 

Before the cancer. Before my pride, my demon, lost her head, and I my breast. 

I wish there was thunder outside, and lightning, the sky filling with white and pink forks and torn sheets of light. But it’s a straight, calm rain, an ordinary night as the world goes on around me, without me. The dry cleaner across the street pulls down her shutters. Cars hiss along the street. A pair of young women whose heels tap staccato as they laugh in passing below. 

My doorbell buzzes. Harshly. 

I jump so hard I hit my head on the window, then hold my breath, willing the person below to go away. 

The doorbell buzzes again. Did it always sound that angry? And again. 

I stumble down the steep stairs I used to run up and down. The bell keeps ringing. My head is splitting. 

Finally I’m there. I wrench open the door, throw on the outside light. Clear my throat to yell go away. 

The man on my doorstep blinks in the sudden light, nearly drops the cigarette he’s sucking at. It’s not his first; there’s two butts down on the ground, and the damp, acrid smell of their dying. The hooded sweatshirt that shrouds him is gray, the color I’d used for dragon scales. His trousers are dark and forgettable. Soaked sneakers on his feet. He raises his head. 

“Sensei,” he says.

I snort, enjoy watching him startle. 

“Sensei,” he says again, faster. “I want a tattoo. And you’re the best.” 

His eyes catch mine. Smart eyes, canny eyes. Perhaps even sly as he raises the cigarette yet again. 

I stare at his hands. They’re long and very thin, the fingers slender, so elegant they belong on a concert pianist. The sleeves of his sweatshirt fall back and I see arms corded with wiry muscle but smooth skin, pale skin. A perfect canvas. 

I clench my teeth, tear my eyes away. “Go to hell,” I say, and slam the door. 

************************

Enter the ink. That’s the traditional phrase for old-style tattooing, everything by hand, the needles set in bamboo handles that prick-prick-prick the skin, spreading the rainbow. The ink enters you. And you enter the ink. 

It’s the only relationship that’s with you forever. Your parents will die, your friends move away. Your love will leave you. Your kids grow and go. But a tattoo is with you as you fly into ashes, lying there with you in your grave. It’s not just decoration – at least, not the way I do it. Those Western tattoo places, the flash markets? There it’s just buzz-buzz, bye-bye, you’re done. 

Not here. Not when you lie down on my bed and I start with the design we’ve figured out together, my right hand with the needle, my left hand on your skin, holding it smooth, holding it steady, feeling you quiver, grunt, disguise a whimper with a cough. I wipe away your chilly sweat and ply my needle. 

A midwife came to me, infertile, cradling new babies each day at her job but never one of her own.

She wanted safety, a prayer for each birth, everyone alive at the end. I gave her the Goddess of Mercy, hand raised in blessing, smiling, the light shining from her face. All across her back; it took us months. I made her a living amulet she takes to each birth, carrying beneath her scrubs the goddess. 

Divorced fathers get the names of their kids; construction workers get prayers for safety. I inked the God of Thunder across the stump of a trucker who’d lost a leg in an accident; he said the tattoo pain helped him deal with the loss, and got a prothesis to match. He’s proud of it now. 

I have a dragon on my back so I can fly, Buddhist scriptures on my scalp because I knew something bad was coming ahead of the tsunami, and wanted to try save the world. But it was the demon on my torso, from my belly to my breasts, that was everything: my self, my love, my strength, my art. The way my fingers could draw, could hold the needles, could smooth the skittish skin – it’s like poking a needle in a waterbed, you know – and get always the best results. I never make mistakes. 

I never made mistakes. 

I spent nights swimming in color, lapped in blues and reds and yellow as I dreamed, tattoos telling stories through my skin. But they betrayed me. For weeks before I found the lump, the demon bit me. There was a knotted feeling in my chest. 

The mastectomy that took my breast beheaded her. She’s blind now. Powerless. 

And so am I. It’s her revenge. 

************************

He’s back the next day, ringing and ringing. 

“No,” I say. 

Again. Staring through the door as I stumble to it, half asleep from a nap. 

“Fuck off.” 

I slam the door in his face. I wrench the wires from the doorbell. 

Knock-knock-knock, he taps now. Who the hell is this guy? Doesn’t he have a job? 

Two, three weeks it goes on. I pretend to be out. I pretend to be dead. I look down on him from the upstairs window and again, see those wrists. That pale flesh. My fingers start to itch despite me. I rub my bad arm and turn away. 

A night comes with the sky on fire. Thunder shakes the house, rain falling so hard the air is white. Good, I think, I’ll have quiet tonight. But I make the mistake of looking outside, and there he is. Drenched through. Hunched by the door. 

The hell with it; it’s a cliche, but I’ll bite. I don’t want his corpse on my doorstep, after all. The police would ask awkward questions. 

He jumps as I bang open the door and snarl “Come in already, you idiot,” scrambles in as if afraid I’ll change my mind, stands in the entranceway dripping. I fling a towel at him, which he catches nimbly, hands incredibly quick. Follows me as I lead him to the kitchen, wham the kettle down on the stove. I make us each a cup of tea, sit down across from him. 

“Well?” 

“I want a tattoo.” He stares at me, almost taunting. 

“I get that.” I stare right back. “I’m expensive. Very, very expensive.” 

His eyelids flicker. He sets down his cup, reaches into his pocket, flings a wallet onto the table. It’s Gucci. And it’s bulging. 

“More where that came from,” he says. 

“You work? Where?”

“Around.” He shrugs. “Ameyoko, Tsukiji. Sometimes Nakamise.” 

Mostly markets, all of them crowded. Touristy. My eyes narrow. “You don’t look like a guide.” 

“No. I’m in….finance.” His eyes flick to the table. 

I take a slow sip of my tea, I eye the wallet. He’s almost certainly lying, but it wouldn’t be the first lie I’ve heard. Far from it. 

“Why a tattoo? Why now?” I shouldn’t ask, but can’t help it. His sweatshirt falls back from his arms as he rubs his hands together, and there’s all that beautiful, beautiful skin. 

“Dunno.” He shrugs. “It just seems … time.” 

I’ve heard this before. The bad son, in jail; parents died; felt guilty. Got their memorial tablets on his back so he bears them every day, a steady worker now. The prostitute dreaming of a new life; I gave her a warrior princess. The cancer patient praying for strength, fighting on. 

And what have I done? I suddenly think, am just as suddenly ashamed. Defensively, I slam my bad arm down on the table. We both gaze at the puffy fingers, the fat, inflated hand. 

“Lymphedema.” I name my destroyer. “From surgery. They took lymph nodes with the breast. I had cancer.” 

I’ve said it aloud, I realize. Perhaps for the first time. 

He looks at me, blinking, then does a very strange thing. He takes my hand in one of his, begins stroking it with the other. From the tips of my fingers up across the back of my hand, up towards the rest of my arm. I’d snatch it away from him but it actually feels good. Warmth follows his slender fingers. I close my eyes. Rain spatters the windows. Five minutes pass, ten. Perhaps more.

I open my eyes, pull back my hand, move my fingers. Maybe I’m imagining it, but their movement seems better than before. 

“You have good fingers,” I finally say. 

“My gran.” He shrugs again. “Had the same thing. I did this for her. It helped.” 

We look at each other. The light emphasizes his cheekbones. He suddenly looks young, as if the toughness is all a pose. 

“All right,” I say. “Let’s go upstairs.” 

************************

His name is Tomo. It takes weeks of erratic night-time visits – he shows up and knocks, usually when nobody else is out, and glances around before slipping inside – until he finally points into one of my art books, says “That.” 

My eyebrows rise. I’d have thought he’d want the God of Wind or Thunder, but he’s chosen the Enlightened Buddha, symbol of salvation, on a lotus leaf for enlightenment. 

Another two weeks; I’ve sketched the design on paper. My strokes are hesitant at first, but gradually the sense returns. My lines grow firm and strong. I savor the colors as I draw. 

I’ve also been massaging my hand and arm as he did, easing the swelling slowly away. I can bend my fingers freely, hold vegetables steady as I slice them one-two-three for training. My strength grows. It’s the left hand that matters most, you see; the skin must be held firm, ready. Willing. 

“Good,” Tomo says, when I unroll the design. We both ink it in informal contract, and he pulls out his wallet for the down payment. Yves St Laurent, I see. Bulging just the same. 

We start the next week with a prayer together before the altar. The sweet scent of incense still flows around us as he takes off his shirt, lies down on his stomach. I take a deep breath, pick up a needle. Begin. 

It’s like riding a bicycle. It comes right back. 

Tomo’s a quiet one. No twitches or wiggles, asking to “use the bathroom” or “have a smoke” as an excuse from the pain. He doesn’t talk, either. Some do; over the months it takes for a full back tattoo, I hear about their life, their kids, their jobs. But he doesn’t say anything. Just comes, lays himself down, and lets me work. 

I learn a lot about him anyway; skin doesn’t lie. Not just wiry but skinny, as if he doesn’t eat much, as if he hasn’t eaten much for years. The scars, jagged white lines and perfectly round ones, that I ink across, changing the design to cover them.

And those hands. Those slim hands that at the end of each session pull out the wallet to pay. A different wallet every week. 

I start to wonder. I think of the design, its message of salvation. I ink and ink, and I say nothing. Tomo’s skin is cool and still beneath my hands. 

Except once. The time he’s forgotten to take out his wallet before lying down, so I have to ask him, and he lays it on the floor beside us as I kneel over him, waiting, needles poised. 

“New wallet,” I say, as I ink. 

He flinches; my needle slips. But I work around it, so no one can see the miss. 

I remember men still thin from prison, reaching for reform as they came. The way he’d said it’s time. 

Okay. 

After all, my tattoo will be with him forever. A reminder of salvation. A goal. 

************************

Nights, I breathe colors, bathe in rainbows. Finally, ride the sky again with my demon. 

And then, one evening, I ink the last area, and I sigh. 

Tomo gets up and stretches, pulls his sweatshirt back on. Pays me. His wallet is Dior today. 

“Thank you.” His bow is awkward. 

I follow him down the stairs, pull my coat and bag from their hooks in the entryway. 

“I’ll come with you to the station,” I say. “Need some things from the store.” 

He jumps but follows me outside, looking around. 

He’s tense, and silent, but smokes companionably. A car veers close on the narrow street, and when I stumble against him to get away, he steadies me. 

At the station, he bows again, scurries up the steps inside, and vanishes. I reach into my bag. 

My wallet is gone. 

It takes a moment to sink in; then pure rage fills me, red. But as I turn to dash into the station, a train rackets out above me. He’s gone. 

I stomp my way home and burn through the evening, re-igniting every time I see the ink on my hands. From Tomo’s salvation tattoo. 

It’s midnight when I finally realize. Yeah, my wallet is gone. 

But my hands are back. The colors are back. 

Mine again, now and forever. 

*********************************

Elaine Lies currently works for Reuters news agency as a correspondent – and writes fiction on the side. She has lived in Kyoto twice – once for a college exchange program and once on her own dime to study Japanese, which she describes as “a marvelous eight months which, despite an extreme lack of funds that had me eating home-made oden every night for over a week more than once, was such a wonderful time I consider it my 青春.” Her current stint in Japan started in 1987 with six years in Morioka, Iwate. Stories of hers run by the The Japan Times can be viewed here.