Second Skin (New Directions Paperbook) Read online

  “But, Cassandra,” I said in a low voice, flinching, trying to summon the dignity of my suffering smile, all at once aware that beneath my uniform my skin was an even and lively red, unbroken, unmarked by disfiguring scars or blemishes, “look at his teeth, smell his breath! My God, Cassandra!”

  “Skipper,” she said, and again it was the ghostly whisper, the terrifying sadistic calm of the school-trained voice, “don’t be a child. Please.” Then she whispered efficiently, calmly, to the oaf at the table—comatose eyes of the artist, the frustrated procurer, drinking her in—and naturally he was unable to hear even one word of her little succinct command, unable to make out her slow toy train of lovely sounds. He wore a tee-shirt, was covered—arms, neck, shoulders—with the sweaty peacock colors of his self-inflicted art.

  “There’s no need to whisper, lady,” he said. Up and down went his eyes, up and down from where he fell in a mountain on his disreputable table, watching her, not bothering to listen, flexing his nightmare pictures as best he could, shifting and showing us, the two of us, the hair bunched and bristling in his armpits, and even that hair was electrical.

  She continued to whisper—ludicrous pantomime—without stopping, without changing the faint and formal statement of her desires, when suddenly and inexplicably the man and I, allied in helpless and incongruous competition, both heard her at the same time.

  “My boy friend is bashful,” she was saying, “do you understand? Let me have a piece of writing paper and a pencil, please.”

  “You mean he’s afraid? But I got you, lady,” and I saw him move, saw his blue tattooed hand swim like a trained seal in the slime of a drawer which he had yanked all at once into his belly.

  “Father, Cassandra, father!” I exclaimed, though softly, “Pixie’s grandfather, Cassandra!”

  “No need to worry. Skipper,” said the man—his grin, his fiendish familiarity—“I’m a friend of Uncle Sam’s.”

  Yellow and silver-tinted, prim, Cassandra was already sitting on the tattooer’s stool, had placed her purse on the table beside her, had forced the man to withdraw his fat scalloped arms, was writing with the black stub of pencil on the back a greasy envelope which still contained—how little she knew—its old-fashioned familiar cargo of prints the size of postage stamps, each one revealing, beneath a magnifying glass, its aspect of faded pubic area or instant of embarrassed love. Alone and celebrating, we were war orphans together and already I had forgiven her, wanted to put my hand on the curls pinned richly and hastily on the top of her head. I could see that she was writing something in large block letters across the envelope.

  She stood up—anything but lifeless now—and between his thumb and finger the man took the envelope and rubbed it as if he were testing the sensual quality of gold laminated cloth or trying to smear her tiny fingerprints onto his own, and then the man and I, the oaf and I, were watching her together, listening:

  “My boy friend,” she said, and I was measuring her pauses, smelling the bludwurst on the tattooer’s breath, was quivering to each whispered word of my child courtesan, “my boy friend would like to have this name printed indelibly on his chest. Print it over his heart, please.”

  “What color, lady?” And grinning, motioning me to the stool, “You got the colors of the rainbow to choose from, lady.” So even the oaf, the brute artist was a sentimentalist and I sat down stiffly, heavily, seeing against my will his display of wet dripping rainbow, hating him for his infectious colors, and telling myself that I must not give him a single wince, not give him the pleasure of even one weak cry.

  “Green,” she said at once—had I heard her correctly?—and she took a step closer with one of her spun sugar shoes, “a nice bright green.” Then she looked up at me and added, to my confusion, my mystification, “Like the guitar.”

  And the oaf, the marker of men, was grinning, shaking his head: “Green’s a bad color”—more muscle-flexing now and the professional observation—“Green’s going to hurt, lady. Hurt like hell.”

  But I had known it, somehow, deep in the tail of my spine, deep where I was tingling and trying to hide from myself, had known all along that now I was going to submit to an atrocious pain for Cassandra—only for Cassandra—had known it, that I who had once entertained the thought of a single permanent inscription in memory of my mother—gentle Mildred—but when it came to rolling up my sleeve had been unable to endure the shock of even a very small initial M, would now submit myself and expose the tender flesh of my breast letter by letter to the pain of that long exotic name my daughter had so carefully penciled out on that greasy envelope of endless lunchroom counters, endless lavatories in creaking burlesque theaters. So even before I heard the man’s first order—voice full of German delicacies and broken teeth—I had forced my fingers to the first of my hard brass buttons, tarnished, unyielding—the tiny eagle was sharp to the touch—and even before he had taken the first sizzling stroke with his electric needle I was the wounded officer, collapsing, flinching, biting my lip in terror.

  He worked with his tongue in his cheek while Cassandra stood by watching, waiting, true to her name. I hooked my scuffed regulation white shoes into the rungs of the stool; I allowed my white duck coat to swing open, loose, disheveled; I clung to the greasy edge of the table. My high stiff collar was unhooked, the cap was tilted to the back of my head, and sitting there on that wobbling stool I was a mass of pinched declivities, pockets of fat, strange white unexpected mounds, deep creases, ugly stains, secret little tunnels burrowing into all the quivering fortifications of the joints, and sweating, wrinkling, was either the wounded officer or the unhappy picture of some elderly third mate, sitting stock still in an Eastern den—alone except for the banana leaves, the evil hands—yet lunging, plunging into the center of his vicious fantasy. A few of us, a few good men with soft reproachful eyes, a few honor-bright men of imagination, a few poor devils, are destined to live out our fantasies, to live out even the sadistic fantasies of friends, children and possessive lovers.

  But I heard him then and suddenly, and except for the fleeting thought that perhaps a smile would cause even this oaf, monster, skin-stitcher, to spare me a little, suddenly there was no escape, no time for reverie: “OK, Skipper, here we go.”

  Prolonged thorough casual rubbing with a dirty wet disintegrating cotton swab. Merely to remove some of the skin, inflame the area. Corresponding vibration in the victim’s jowls and holding of breath. Dry ice effect of the alcohol. Prolonged inspection of disintegrating cardboard box of little scabrous dusty bottles, none full, some empty. Bottles of dye. Chicken blood, ground betel nut, baby-blue irises of child’s eye—brief flashing of the cursed rainbow. Tossing one particular bottle up and down and grinning. Thick green. Then fondling the electric needle. Frayed cord, greasy case—like the envelope—point no more than a stiff hair but as hot as a dry frying pan white from the fire. Then he squints at the envelope. Then lights a butt, draws, settles it on the lip of a scummy brown-stained saucer. Then unstoppers the ancient clotted bottle of iodine. Skull and crossbones. Settles the butt between his teeth where it stays. Glances at Cassandra, starts the current, comes around and sits on the corner of the table, holding the needle away from his own face and flesh, pushing a fat leg against victim’s. Scowls. Leans down. Tongue in position. Rainbow full of smoke and blood. Then the needle bites.

  The scream—yes, I confess it, scream—that was clamped between my teeth was a strenuous black bat struggling, wrestling in my bloated mouth and with every puncture of the needle—fast as the stinging of artificial bees, this exquisite torture—I with my eyes squeezed tight, my lips squeezed tight, felt that at any moment it must thrust the slimy black tip of its archaic skeletal wing out into view of Cassandra and the working tattooer. But I was holding on. I longed to disgorge the bat, to sob, to be flung into the relief of freezing water like an old woman submerged and screaming in the wild balm of some dark baptismal rite in a roaring river. But I was holding on. While the punctures were marching a
cross, burning their open pinprick way across my chest, I was bulging in every muscle, slick, strained, and the bat was peering into my mouth of pain, kicking, slick with my saliva, and in the stuffed interior of my brain I was resisting, jerking in outraged helplessness, blind and baffled, sick with the sudden recall of what Tremlow had done to me that night—helpless abomination—while Sonny lay sprawled on the bridge and the captain trembled on his cot behind the pilothouse. There were tiny fat glistening tears in the corners of my eyes. But they never fell. Never from the eyes of this heavy bald-headed once-handsome man. Victim. Courageous victim.

  The buzzing stopped. I waited. But the fierce oaf was whistling and I heard the click, the clasp of Cassandra’s purse—empty as I thought except for a worn ten dollar bill which she was drawing forth, handing across to him—and I found that the bat was dead, that I was able to see through the sad film over my eyes and that the pain was only a florid swelling already motionless, inactive, the mere receding welt of this operation. I could bear it. Marked and naked as I was, I smiled. I managed to stand.

  Cassandra glanced at my chest—at what to me was still a mystery-glanced and nodded her small classical indomitable head. Then the tatooer took a square dirty mirror off the wall, held it in front of me:

  “Have a look. Skipper,” once more sitting on the edge of the table, eager, bulking, swinging a leg.

  So I looked into the mirror, the dirty fairy tale glass he was about to snap in his two great hands, and saw myself. The pink was blistered, wet where he had scrubbed it again with the cooling and dizzying alcohol, but the raised letters of the name—upside down and backwards—were a thick bright green, a string of inflamed emeralds, a row of unnatural dots of jade. Slowly, trying to appear pleased, trying to smile, I read the large unhealed green name framed in the glass above the ashamed blind eye of my own nipple: Fernandez. And I could only try to steady my knees, control my breath, hide feebly this green lizard that lay exposed and crawling on my breast.

  Finally I was able to speak to her, faintly, faintly: “Sonny and Pixie are waiting for us, Cassandra,” as I saw with shame and alarm that her eyes were harder than ever and had turned a bright new triumphant color.

  “Pixie and I been worried about you. You going to miss that bus if you two keep running off this way. But come on. Skipper, we got time for one more round of rum and coke!”

  With fondness, a new white preening of the neck, an altered line at the mouth, a clear light of reserved motherhood in the eye, Cassandra glanced at the little girl on Sonny’s lap and then smoothed her frock—this the most magical, envied, deferential gesture of the back of the tiny white hand that never moved, never came to life except to excite the whole ladylike sense of modesty—and slid with the composure of the young swan into the dark blistered booth opposite the black-skinned petty officer and platinum child. I took my place beside her, squeezing, sighing, worrying, aware of my burning chest and the new color of her eyes and feeling her withdrawing slightly, making unnecessary room for me, curving away from me in all the triumph and gentleness of her disdain. I fished into a tight pocket, wiped my brow. Once more there was the smoke, the noise, the sick heaviness of our water front café, our jumping-off night in Chinatown, once more the smell of whisky and the sticky surface of tin trays painted with pagodas and golden monsters, and now the four of us together—soon to part, three to take their leave of poor black faithful Sonny—and now the terrible mammalian concussion of Kate Smith singing to all the sailors.

  Duty gave still greater clarity, power, persistence to the whisper: “Has she been crying. Sonny?”

  “Pixie? My baby love? You know Pixie never cries when I croon to her. Miss Cassandra. And I been crooning about an hour and a half. But Miss Cassandra,” lulling us with his most intimate voice—it was the voice he adopted in times of trouble, always most melodious at the approach of danger—lulling us and tightening the long black hand—shiny knuckles, long black bones and tendons, little pink hearts for fingertips—that spraddled Pixie’s chest limply, gently, “Miss Cassandra, you look like you been cashing in your Daddy’s Victory bonds. And Skipper,” sitting across from us with the child, glancing first at Cassandra and then myself, “you’ve got a terrible blue look about you, terrible tired and blue.” Then: “No more cemetery business. Skipper? I trust there’s no more of that cemetery stuff in the cards. That stuff’s the devil!”

  Cocked garrison cap and shiny visor; petty officer’s navy blue coat, white shirt, black tie; two neat rows of rainbow ribbons on his breast; elongated bony skull and black velvet face—he called himself the skinny nigger—and sunglasses with enormous lenses coal-black and brightly polished; signet ring, little Windsor knot in the black tie, high plum-colored temples and white teeth of the happy cannibal; tall smart trembling figure of a man whose only arrogance was affection: he was sitting across from us— poor Sonny—and talking through the Chinese babble, the noise of the Arkansas sailors, the loud breasty volume of mother America’s possessive wartime song. Poor Sonny.

  “Skipper,” once more the whisper of fashion, whisper of feminine cleanliness, cold love, “show Sonny, please.”

  “What’s this? Games?” And casting quick razor looks from Cassandra to myself, shifting Pixie still further away from us and leaning forward, craning down: “What you two been up to anyway?”

  I unhooked my stiff collar and worked loose the top brass button and then the next, gingerly, with chin to collar bone trying to see it again myself, through puckered lips trying to blow a cold breath on it, and leaned forward, held open the white duck in a V for Sonny, for Sonny who respected me, who was all bone and blackness and was the best mess boy the U.S.S. Starfish ever had.

  He looked. He gave a long low Negro whistle: “So that’s the trouble. Well now. You two both grieving not for the dead but for that halfpint Peruvian fella who run out on us. I understand. Well now. Husbands all ducked out on us, wives all dead and buried. So we got to do something fancy with his name, we got to do something to hurt Skipper. Got to turn a man’s breast into a tombstone full of ache and pain. You better just take your baby girl and your bag of chicken salad sandwiches—I made you a two-days’ supply—and get on the bus. This family of ours is about busted up.”

  But: “Hush,” I said, done with the buttons and still watching Cassandra—chin tilted, lips tight in a crescent, spine straight— and reaching out for the black angle of his hand, “You know how we feel about Fernandez. But Sonny, you’ll find a brown parcel in the back of the jeep. My snapshots of the boys on the Starfish. For you.”

  “That so, Skipper? Well now. Maybe we ain’t so busted up after all.”

  He puffed on his signet ring—the teeth, the wrinkled nose, the fluttering lips, the twisted wide-open mouth of the good-natured mule—and shined it on his trousers and flashed it into sight again—bloodstone, gold-plated setting—and took off his cocked and rakish hat, slowly, carefully, since from the Filipino boys he had learned how to pomade his rich black opalescent hair, and fanned himself and Pixie three or four times with the hat—the inside of the band was lined with bright paper medallions of the Roman Church—and then treated the patent leather visor as he had the ring, puffing, polishing, arm’s length examination of his work, and with his long slow burlesquing fingers tapped the starched hat into place again, saying, “OK, folks, old Sonny’s bright as a dime again, or maybe a half dollar—nigger money of course. But, Skipper,” dropping a bright black kiss as big as a mushmelon in Pixie’s platinum hair and grinning, waving toward Cassandra’s glass and mine—Coca-Cola like dark blood, little drowning buttons of melted ice—then frowning, long-jawed and serious: “whatever did happen to that Fernandez fella?”

  I shifted, hot, desperate, broad rump stuck fast and uncomfortable to the wooden seat, I looked at her, I touched my stinging breast, tried to make a funny grandfather’s face for Pixie: “We don’t know. Sonny. But he was a poor husband for Cassandra anyway.” I used the handkerchief again, took hold of the glass. She w
as composed, unruffled, sat toying with a plastic swizzle stick—little queen—and one boudoir curl hung loose and I was afraid to touch it.

  “Maybe he got hisself a job with a dance band. Maybe he run off with the USO—I never liked him, but he sure was a whizz with the guitar—or maybe,” giving way to his black fancy, his affectionate concern, “maybe he got hisself kidnapped. Those South American fellas don’t fool around, and maybe they decided it was time he did his hitch in the Peruvian Army. No, sir,” taking a long self-satisfied optimistic drink, cupping the ice in his lip like a lump of sugar, “I bet he just couldn’t help hisself!”

  Then she was stirring the swizzle stick, raising it to the invisible tongue, touching the neckline of her wrinkled frock, once more whispering and informing us, tormenting us with the somber clarity of what she had to say: “Fernandez deserted his wife and child”—hairs leaping up on the backs of my hands, scalp tingling, heart struck with a hammer, fit of coughing—“deserted his wife and child for another person. Fernandez left his wife and child”—I clutched again the handkerchief, wishing I could extricate myself and climb out of the booth—“abandoned us, Pixie and me, for the love of another person. A man who was tall, dark-haired, sun-tanned and who wore civilian clothes. A gunner’s mate named Harry. He had a scar. Also, he was tattooed,” the whisper dying, dying, the mouth coming as close as it could to a smile, “like you. Skipper.”