fish!’
‘Why don’t you put it in the microwave oven for a few minutes?’
‘Good idea,’ she replies, unaware of my sarcasm. ‘The vegetables are tough, too, I’m going to put the whole damn plate in the mike.’
I sit slumped at the table, listening to the obscene hum of the machine as it vandalises my work. Then she retrieves the ruins, and I notice, not for the first time, how loud the controls of a microwave can be, and how the door opens and closes with a clang.
We eat. I pretend not to be piqued. She throws amused glances at me between mouthfuls, irritating me even more. I watch her chew that renovated masterpiece. Smoke curls up from the ashtray beside her. She puffs and eats, her cigarette stinks. The woman is crude, she speaks crudely. She eats crudely. Her accent is crude.
Taking everything into account, Ana Cocked is irresistible.
* * *
I return home with the first tattoo. The old man has gone back to work, and I’ve been to see him. My shirt slides over the bandage. It hurts as I move, more or less between the shoulder blades, slightly to the left.
‘What the hell is that?’ asks Ana when she sees the tattoo for the first time, her voice harsh as always, unsurprised.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen it yet. He tried to show me in a mirror, but I couldn’t make myself look at it. Not yet.’
‘Jesus, it looks shit. What the hell did you do that for?’
‘What sort of shit? Is it bad – is the picture bad? Artistically, I mean.’
‘Turn round, let me see again.’
She brushes her fingers against it, lightly. Her fingertips are more gentle, more subtle, than her tongue could ever be.
‘No,’ she says. ‘No, it just looks sore. It’s a weird picture. I think it will be better when the swelling goes down.’
I almost choke with anxiety, not trusting her judgement. Anything she likes is probably crap.
‘What made you choose that picture?’
‘I didn’t. I let him choose –’
My voice fails. I swallow, and continue: ‘I let him choose the picture.’
I cannot see her expression – she is still behind me – yet I sense intangible heat, as the waves of her incredulity mount and beat against my inflamed skin.
‘Jesus,’ she says. ‘Jesus. You haven’t answered me yet: what did you do that for?’
‘I don’t know.’
A short, husky laugh escapes her. Then: ‘Fuck my dog.’
‘At least, I don’t know if I want to discuss it.’
I turn away and sit down gingerly on the edge of the bed, trying not to flex my back.
She climbs onto the bed behind me, on all fours, to study the tattoo. I wince as the movement causes me to change position slightly.
‘It’s not so bad. Actually, it’s quite good, once you work it out.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a boy or a young man looking out through a cage.’
Her hand again, reading the image. This time I flinch.
‘There’s a strange expression in the eyes,’ she says, dreamily. ‘Now that I think of it, he looks like you.’
‘What sort of expression?’
‘Strange, Lucas. Oh, I don’t know. Kind of still. Not peaceful though, more like shocked.’
I hear Díaz’s high-pitched, rusty voice over the pain of the needle: ‘That is how we found the youths in Cholula. We broke open the cages and let them go, but still they looked like this.’
‘Who?’ I asked. ‘Where did you say?’
‘Keep still,’ he said. ‘Nothing will ever change it. Even now, in paradise or hell, they will bear that look.’
I left it there. I was concentrating too hard on the needle to think about anything else.
She brings me a glass of whisky. It helps to ease the discomfort. In that release, briefly, I trust her enough to talk about my motive.
‘I can’t see colour properly,’ I explain to Ana. ‘I’m colour-blind.’
‘Is that true? Are you really colour-blind?’
‘Yes. No. Not really.’
Her ears and scalp twitch, like an animal’s. ‘What do you mean, Luke?’
‘I’m blind to my own colour,’ I reply. ‘I don’t know what it is.’
‘You bloody South Africans,’ she says, shaking her head. Then she gets up and pours us another round of cheap whisky.
* * *
There is nothing crude about Bettina Moore, though her jaw is too big. She wears very large glasses, and her hair is cut straight and even, not far below her ears. I believe the word is ‘bobbed’. It lends her an androgynous aspect, though she is strongly female. She is ash-blonde and naturally pale, about my own age, younger than Ana. She is tall and rangy, and has a Bishopscourt accent. She doesn’t smoke, her breath is sweet.
This is how we meet. I stand behind her in a library queue, slightly to the side. I notice a sculpted quality about her hand. In this diffused light, it is made of fine white marble, bearing a naked quality that shines out beyond the obvious fact of its nakedness, speaking of pathos.
Naked sculpture can be more interesting than the human original. Some emotion of the subject is singled out, made evident. It becomes unbearable that she is both at once, model and carving, united in one shape. I need to touch her hand. I need to trace its length with my fingertips, plumb its meaning, taste its narcissistic sorrow.
The library queue is slow. The air is sleepy, smelling of dust and books, a blank page in its own right, offering time and opportunity to rupture the membrane of public order that isolates us all so terribly. I am about to reach out and touch her, then stop, suddenly aware that the book she holds was written by my grandfather. Everything changes. Given such good reason, my action will seem less outrageous, even legitimate.
I touch her hand. She turns round, and the world changes again; she absorbs my image, and is not indignant. Her face slips out of control, melts into surprise, pleasure, and finally embarrassment. I find this tedious as always, and yet gratifying.
She struggles to suppress that expression before the moment washes out of her control entirely.
‘Arthur Turner,’ I say. ‘My grandfather.’
‘Who?’ she asks. ‘Pardon me? Oh, you say – Arthur Turner is your
