50 idea. I would like to have a picture, a lovely picture. -
... 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 will be there always.” “You have crazy ideas,” the boy said. “I will teach you how to
use the tattoo. It is easy. A child could do it.” “You are quite mad. What is it you want?” “I will teach you in
two minutes.” "Impossible!” “Are you saying I do not know what I am talking about?” “All I am saying,” the
55 boy told him, “is that you are drunk and this is a drunken idea.” “We could have my wife for a model. A
study of Josie upon my back.” “It is no good idea,” the boy said. “And I could not possibly manage the
tattoo.”
“It is simple. I will undertake to teach you in two minutes. You will see. I shall go now and bring the instruments.”
60 In half an hour Drioli was back. “I have brought everything,” he cried, waving a brown suitcase. “All the
necessities of the tattooist are here in this bag.”
He placed the bag on the table, opened it, and laid out the electric needles and the small bottles of coloured
inks. He plugged in the electric needle, then he took the instrument in his hand and pressed a
switch. He threw off his jacket and rolled up his left sleeve. “Now look. Watch me and I will show you how
65 easy it is. I will make a design on my arm, here. ... See how easy it is ... see how I draw a picture of a dog
here upon my arm ...” The boy was intrigued7. “Now let me practise a little - on your arm.” With the buzzing
needle he began to draw blue lines upon Drioli's arm. “It is simple,” he said. “It is like drawing with pen
and ink. There is no difference except that it is slower.”
“There is nothing to it. Are you ready? Shall we begin?” “At once.”
“The model!” cried Drioli. “Come on, Josie!” He was in a bustle8 70 of enthusiasm "- now arranging everything,
like a child preparing for some exciting game. “Where will you have her? Where shall she stand?"
“Let her be standing there, by my dressing table. Let her be brushing her hair. I will paint her with her hair
down over her shoulders and her brushing it.” “Tremendous. You are a genius.”
“First,” the boy said, “I shall make an ordinary painting. Then if it pleases me, I shall tattoo over it.” With a
75 wide brush he began to paint upon the naked skin of the man's back.
“Be still now! Be still” His concentration, as soon as he began to paint, was so great that it appeared
somehow to neutralize his drunkenness. “All right. That's all,” he said at last to the girl.
Far into the small hours of the morning the boy worked. Drioli could remember that when the artist finally
stepped back and said, “It is finished,” there was daylight outside and the sound of people walking in the
80 street.
“I want to see it,” Drioli said. The boy held up a mirror, and Drioli craned his neck to look.
“Good God!” he cried. It was a startling sight. The whole of his back was a blaze of colour - gold and
green and blue and black and red. The tattoo was applied so heavily it looked almost like an impasto9.
The portrait was quite alive; it contained so much characteristic of Soutine’s other works. “It's tremen-
85 dous!” “I rather like it myself.” The boy stood back, examining it critically. “You know,” he added, “I think
it’s good enough for me to sign.” And taking up the machine again, he inscribed his name in red ink on the
right-hand side, over the place where Drioli’s kidney10 was.
---
The old man who was called Drioli was standing in a sort of trance, staring at the painting in the window of
90 the picture-dealer's shop. It had been so long ago, all that - almost as though it had happened in another
life.
And the boy? What had become of him? He could remember now that after returning from the war - the
first war - he had missed him and had questioned Josie. “Where is my little painter?” “He is gone,” she
had answered. “I do not know where.” “Perhaps he will return.” “Perhaps he will. Who knows?”
95 That was the last time they had mentioned him. Shortly afterwards they had moved to Le Havre where
there were more sailors and business was better. Those were the pleasant years, the years between the
wars, with the small shop near the docks and the comfortable rooms and always enough work.
Then had come the second war, and Josie being killed, and the Germans arriving, and that was the finish
of his business. No one had wanted pictures on their arms any more after that. And by that time he was