Ishy opens his hands helplessly and makes a guilty face. With sudden eagerness: “D’you want to see them?”

He leads us up the stairs to a narrow corridor with two doors. The first opens onto a bedroom, the walls of which are covered with tattoo designs of the most intimate-and pornographic-variety. He points to a pale skin curing on a single wooden plank.”I figured if I was going to kill people for their hides, I might as well combine it with some form of community service. He was a yakuza thug, basically, very senior though, CEO of that phony corporation that is forcing peasants off their lands in Isaan so they can grow fucking chopsticks. He was the one who ordered the killing of that journalist who was a friend of mine-that butterfly tattoo was one of my best. Actually, this godfather was one of my first customers over here. Of course, he wanted a damned samurai on his back-my people really have a problem with mythology. Samurai were mostly drunken homosexuals with a psychotic streak, but don’t say that out loud in Japan. I had to be subtle. Fortunately, he was too stupid to understand the message in his own skin. Not bad, is it?”

The tattoo on the hide on the board is, as a matter of fact, a triumph of subtle satire. To a cursory glance, the samurai in magnificent armor and helmet on the back of a great black stallion, wielding his voluptuous bow, is the very image of the perfect warrior. Look a little closer, however; with just a few deft strokes, Ishy has made his point: drunk and gay, there’s no doubt about it, a bombastic narcissist all dressed up with nowhere to go.

“May I ask why you had to sever their cocks?”

Ishy frowns and scratches his head, then jerks a thumb at Chanya. “Her karma. I did it to Mitch Turner in a jealous rage, but after that I realized any man could have her. Any jerk in the street. He only had to pay, right?” Chanya winces and looks at the floor. “I would have castrated the whole city for her. That’s love.”

“But the men you castrated were already dead.”

“I said love, not logic. Love is a language of symbols-you should know that.”

“Why did you have to kill people you’d already tattooed? Why not kill anyone on the street, then tattoo them later?”

He shakes his head gravely. “A recipe for mediocrity. For a start, the ink needs to penetrate far below the surface before you get that quality of color and shade. Secondly, you’ve failed to understand the market. I’m not just selling tattoos, I’m selling murder at the same time. People want that frisson, the cachet of owning the decorated skin of a murdered man, the very skin he wore in life, before he was cut down like a tree for the purpose of art. It’s the civilized equivalent of collecting shrunken heads.” A swig from the sake bottle he brought with him: “I’m also selling notoriety, of course. When this gets out, the prices of my work will increase a hundredfold.” Thoughtfully: “What is murder but suicide by an extrovert? We are all part of the human family after all, and only murderers experience the unbearable passion of true love.”

The man in the open-necked shirt nods in agreement.

The room next door contains only two wall hangings, both covered in silk cloth. Ishy uncovers the first. “A sad case, that young CIA spy. It was what he wanted-he was quite pleased with it. I guess it was all he expected from life, but he ended up with a Thai whore instead.” The tattoo is deeply sad for anyone who knew Stephen Bright: a young woman, a Caucasian with long blond hair, cradling an infant in the tradition of Madonna and child. The sheer simplicity of the lines (perhaps Ishy was making a point, for it is a touch too simple) makes it all the more poignant.

“It’s brilliant,” I find myself saying with a gulp.

“But it’s not as good as this,” Ishy declares as he pulls the cover off the second, larger work. Chanya gasps at the sight of a familiar image in an unfamiliar situation. I also gasp, as does the man in the open-necked shirt. Even his thugs are impressed. “Mitch Turner,” Ishy explains. “It was his idea, something he got from a book or an opium dream, or some spell he was under. Of course, I insisted on my own interpretation.”

But for once Ishy has maintained a fierce discipline, which is a big part of the magic. An amazingly dense and virile green vine fills the whole of the tattoo with such vividness, it seems to grow up the wall on which it hangs. The rose blossoms themselves are downplayed, hardly more than crimson afterthoughts, highlighting the leaves, each of which, even the tiniest, bears the legend in blood: There is no god but God, Muhammad is the prophet of God.

Chanya bursts into hysterical sobs as we hear a polite knock on the front door.

46

We have all returned to the great downstairs room. Hours have passed. The man in the open-necked shirt speaks fluent Japanese, and the negotiations have been continuing in that language with the newcomers, a somewhat muscular band of Japanese men in black business suits, all of whom have at least one pinkie missing. They are lined up against one wall, while the Chiu Chow thugs are lined up against another, each warrior perpetually marking his opposite number, while Chanya and I sit on cushions on the floor. Ishy, the chief Japanese negotiator, and the man in the open-necked shirt sit drinking sake at the long table. Quite drunk now, Ishy has undone most of his shirt, perhaps intentionally displaying his hero Admiral Yamamoto, who stares sternly out between the linen folds. The Italian, a slim, gaunt fellow with a mass of curly dark hair, wears a black short-sleeve shirt and a pair of jeans, slippers without socks. He squats in a corner of the room with his back against the wall. Ishy has explained, not without some disdain, that he is an art restorer, flown in from Rome. The Japanese, it seems, are taking no chances. (He can peel a micron of paint off a five-hundred-year-old masterpiece, Ishy reported.) It seems that at least one of the Japanese thugs is also a surgeon. In the circumstances, Ishy’s good humor is inexplicable. He grows more cheerful by the minute. Finally there is a pause in the intense discussions.

“They’ve decided the main point,” Ishy calls out to me. “It’s only details they’re discussing now. Copyright, merchandising, that kind of thing.”

Simultaneously Chanya, who has understood more than I have been able to, from some Japanese she picked up in the course of trade, has collapsed in another great torrent of sobs, taking frequent moments to stare disbelievingly at Ishy, her eyes great saucers of horror and disbelief. When both the Italian and the Japanese surgeon make toward us, she clasps her breasts possessively.

But they pass by us just as Ishy removes his shirt, then the rest of his clothes.

“The yakuza are very humane,” he explains while the surgeon takes a syringe out of his pocket and a small vial out of another. He pulls the hygienic paper off the syringe, pulls the protective cap off the needle, and plunges the needle into the vial. “They said I could die first. I said no, I want to preside over the removal of my masterpiece. One wrong move by that wop, and I’ll curse him for eternity.” Shaking his head at Chanya: “Don’t worry, love-it’ll pay for everything. There’s nothing more to worry about. This way you get to keep your tits.” He pauses while one of his countrymen ties a white scarf with black Japanese characters around his head in the tradition of kamikaze, then watches while the surgeon injects him in the arm: “It’s one of those new brain drugs. I’ll be able to follow everything painlessly, like a great fog of consciousness looking down on my exfoliation. I see this as a personal triumph-like the snake I am, I’m shedding my skin, my ego, and my life in praise of Buddha and for the love of man. After all I’ve been through, I think that’s heroic. You may not want to witness this, though. You’re free to go. I told them you won’t tell anyone.”