Free The Tattoo Artist by Jill Ciment Page A

Manhattan,” Philip said, turning to face the young woman.
    She lowered her hands slightly, revealing a canny, infectious, nervy gaze, and emitted another sequence of muffled breaths.
    “My daughter’s daughter very much curious: ‘What dances belong on the island of Manhattan?’ ”
    For a moment, Philip looked as puzzled as he was charmed. He rose to his feet, rehitched his sarong, and bowed rakishly to the young lady. “Would you care to dance?”
    The girl shyly looked down.
    He offered her his hand. “Men and women always dance together on the island of Manhattan,” he explained.
    The girl’s eyes lifted in marvel, but she shook her head no.
    I got to my feet and snatched the hand.
    “Philip,” I said.
    “Sara,” he said.
    He jerked me to his chest, clasped the small of my back in one hand, my wrist in the other, and wielded me across the sand in a tango.
    The old man watched in drop-jawed surprise, then exploded into giggles, which he politely tried to stifle by slapping his hand over his mouth.
    Quickening our pace, Philip and I segued into the Lindy, the Charleston, then something vaguely resembling Isadora Duncan’s gazelle leaps, before collapsing on the sand, parched and panting.
    The old man, having given up trying to suppress his shrieks of laughter, began whistling and clapping in what is evidently the universal display of jubilation.
    His granddaughter stood silently behind him, watching Philip with brazen inquisitiveness, though her hands continued to veil her face. She leaned over and whispered to her grandfather in their breathy language, letting out a slow exhalation of steady puffs, the sounds I make, to my own ears at least, when blowing smoke rings.
    “My daughter’s daughter say she must hear ‘what songs belong on the island of Manhattan.’ ”
    Philip smiled at the girl and said, “Give me a second to catch my breath.” He wiped away the sweat stinging his eyes, then rose to his feet and faced his audience. He took on the inflated, heroic stance of an Irish tenor.
    The pose alone was enough to make the old man applaud.
    Philip cleared his throat and sang:
    Arise, you prisoners of starvation!
Arise, you criminals of want.
For justice thunders condemnation.
A better world’s in birth.
No more tradition’s chains shall bind us.
Arise, you slaves, no more in thrall!
The earth shall rise on new foundations.
We have been naught, we shall be all.
’Tis the final conflict:
Let each stand in his place.
The international working class
Shall be the human race.
    Philip took a full bow.
    The old man brought his hands together in a single, ear-splitting clap. His black eyes, two wet stones, gleamed at Philip through the thicket of his facial tattoos. “Was your song a prayer?” he asked at last.
    “In a manner of speaking,” Philip said. “It’s a prayer for some of us.”
    “On the island of Manhattan?”
    “Yes. And other places. Many, many other places.”
    The girl blew into her grandfather’s ear.
    “My daughter’s daughter say she very much want to sing for you now.”
    The girl let her hands slide down her face. A tiny, unfinished tattoo, her only one, flowered on the pink ledge of her bottom lip. She threw back her head, Al Jolson–style, and let loose a deep, rattling, unbroken wail. The song was plainly reverent, that much I could tell, though it hardly resembled an ethereal Christian hymn or an earthy cantor’s cry. Her song sounded subterranean, cavernous, as if the island were hollow, and all its gases, the very air that allowed it to stay afloat, were escaping through her lips.
    The old man stood and walked over to the shady spot where Philip had sung. Spreading out his thin arms, eagle-fashion, then drawing up one bony leg, flamingo-style, he struck a pose. He remained balanced on one leg, without so much as swaying, for as long as it took his granddaughter to empty her lungs.
    Then he began to dance, though dance doesn’t exactly define it: he choreographed his