‘I have a tremendous idea. Are you listening?’
‘I’m listening to Josie.’
‘Listen to me, please. You are my friend – my ugly little Kalmuck from Minsk – and to me you are such an artist that I would like to have a picture, a lovely picture –’
‘Have them all. Take all you can find, but do not interrupt me when I am talking with your wife.’
‘No, no. Now listen. I mean a picture that I can have with me always… for ever… wherever I go… whatever happens… but always with me… a picture by you.’ He reached forward and shook the boy’s knee, ‘Now listen to me, please.’
‘Listen to him,’ the girl said.
‘It is this. I want you to paint a picture on my skin, on my back. Then I want you to tattoo over what you have painted so that it wil
l be there always.’
‘You have crazy ideas.’
‘I will teach you how to use the tattoo. It is easy. A child could do it.’
‘I am not a child.’
‘Please…’
‘You are quite mad. What is it you want?’ The painter looked up into the slow, dark, wine-bright eyes of the other man, ‘What in heaven’s name is it you want?’
‘You could do it easily! You could! You could!’
‘You mean with the tattoo?’
‘Yes, with the tattoo! I will teach you in two minutes!’
‘Impossible!’
‘Are you saying I do not know what I am talking about?’
No, the boy could not possibly be saying that because if anyone knew about the tattoo it was he – Drioli. Had he not, only last month, covered a man’s whole belly with the most wonderful and delicate design composed entirely of flowers? What about the client who had had so much hair upon his chest that he had done him a picture of a grizzly bear so designed that the hair on the chest became the furry coat of the bear? Could he not draw the likeness of a lady and position it with such subtlety upon a man’s arm that when the muscle of the arm was flexed the lady came to life and performed some astonishing contortions?
‘All I am saying,’ the boy told him, ‘is that you are drunk and this is a drunken idea.’
‘We could have Josie for a model. A study of Josie upon my back. Am I not entitled to a picture of my wife upon my back?’
‘Of Josie?’
‘Yes.’ Drioli knew he only had to mention his wife and the boy’s thick brown lips would loosen and begin to quiver.
‘No,’ the girl said.
‘Darling Josie, please. Take this bottle and finish it, then you will feel more generous. It is an enormous idea. Never in my life have I had such an idea before.’
‘What idea?’
‘That he should make a picture of you upon my back. Am I not entitled to that?’
‘A picture of me?’
‘A nude study,’ the boy said. ‘It is an agreeable idea.’
‘Not nude,’ the girl said.