The Tattoo Artist by Jill Ciment Page B

my back is not the one we sailed on. Pearl of the East was as grand and elegant as Richter had promised, whereas the vessel on my back is anything but elegant. It’s an old rusty freighter, and its hull spans the whole of my shoulders.
    It’s one of my earliest designs. I chose the shoulder blades because I thought the bone there would make the procedure less painful. It’s only beginner’s luck that the cargo ship is tattooed exactly where it should be, that I carry its burden on my back.

PART TWO
     
    GAN EDEN
     

CHAPTER SIX
     
    n the beginning, there was only God’s breath, which became the first song. God then sang into existence the sun, and the stars, which are but musical notes suspended in the night sky; and all the oceans, and the ocean’s currents, which are but melodies moving through liquid.
    In the center of his chorale, the islanders believe, God created Ta’un’uu, the Garden of Eden, and peopled it with Adam, whom he made from ash, and Eve, whom he made from coral. God then breathed into his creations the gift of song and completed their paradise by giving them cargo: tinned meat, steel tools, rice in bags, tobacco in tins, and matches, but not cotton clothing.
    Adam and Eve were content for a while, but eventually they offended God by improving upon his design. They beautified their naked bodies with drawings of the turtle, the cockatoo, the sago palm, the tobacco tins, and the wooden matchsticks. Beguiled by their own splendor, they copulated against God’s commandment that they remain chaste. In his fury, God created rain to erase their drawings and threw them out of Paradise to wander the bush. He took away their cargo and decreed that they should spend the rest of their days living on the barest necessities.
    Later, Adam accidentally tore his tongue on a charred piece of fish bone and discovered the art of indelible tattooing (to penetrate the flesh with ash, to affix it to the soul with pain), a technique he taught to his sons, Cain and Abel. When Cain slew Abel, it was because Abel’s tattoos so diminished his own creations. This act of artistic murderous jealousy set the seal on man’s wickedness, and the fall of man was complete.
    The situation continued until the time of Noah. Noah was a good man who obeyed God and taught his sons to do likewise. All the other human beings on earth were still mired in depravity, arousing their lust with tattoos, and copulating, so God decided to destroy them in a great flood. He gave Noah a cargo ship, which contained tinned meat and rice in bags, and matches, and fitted Noah with a peaked cap, white shirt, shorts, and shoes, and told Noah to save his family and all the animals, which Noah did. Then God sent a typhoon that lasted for forty days and forty nights.
    When the water subsided, God instructed Noah to repopulate the world and to relish the cargo. God explained to Noah that the cargo was His reward for Noah’s devotion. Everything was good for a while until Noah’s son, Ham, disobeyed God’s will. He espied his father’s nakedness, which he found appalling in its starkness, and cut into his own flesh with a burnt fish bone. In his agony, Ham muttered God’s name in vain.
    God was again very angry, and he took away the cargo and banished all of Noah’s sons to different places on the earth. Because Noah was a good man and these were his sons, God offered them a reprise in the form of a choice. They could either go into the bush with a bow and arrow or with a rifle. The bow and arrow was lighter than the metal stick, so the most pragmatic of Noah’s sons chose the bow and arrow. His descendants became the Ta’un’uuans. The other sons chose the rifles and their descendants became the white man.
    The Ta’un’uuans worked very hard, and with the help of missionaries, eventually found their way back to God. They gave up tattooing and nakedness. But God continued to punish them, for no good reason, with diseases and blights and typhoons. He