A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago

by Ben Hecht

THE TATTOOER

Here the city kind of runs over at the heel and flaunts a seven-year-old straw hat. Babylon mooches wearily along with a red nose dreaming in the sun, and Gomorrah leans against an ash can. It is South State Street below Van Buren. The ancient palaces of mirth and wonder blink with dusty lithographs.

"Long ago," says Dutch, "yeh, long ago it was different. Then people was people. Then life was something. Then the tattooing business was a business. When the old London Musee was next door and everybody knew how to have a good time."

The automatic piano in the penny arcade whangs dolorously into a forgotten tango. The two errand boys stand with their eyes glued on the interiors of the picture slot machines—"An Artist's Model" and "On the Beach at Atlantic City." A gun pops foolishly in the rear and the 3-inch bullseye clangs. In a corner behind the Postal Card Photo Taken in a Minute gallery sits Dutch, the world's leading tattooer. Sample tattoo designs cover the two walls. Dragons, scorpions, bulbous nymphs, crossed flags, wreathed anchors, cupids, butterflies, daggers and quaint decorations that seem the grotesque survivals of the mid-Victorian schools of fantasy. Photographs of famous men also cover the walls—Capt. Constantinus tattooed from head to foot, every inch of him; Barnum's favorites, ancient and forgotten kooch dancers, fire eaters, sword swallowers, magicians and museum freaks. And a two column article from the Chicago Chronicle of 1897, yellowed and framed and recounting in sonorous phrases ("pulchritudinous epidermis" is featured frequently) that the society folk of Chicago have taken up tattooing as a fad, following the lead of New York's Four Hundred, who followed the lead of London's most aristocratic circles; and that Prof. Al Herman, known from Madagascar to Sandy Hook as "Dutch," was the leading artist of the tattoo needle in the world.

Here in his corner, surrounded by the molding symbols and slogans of a dead world, Dutch is rounding out his career—a Silenus in exile, his eyes still bright with the memory of hurdy-gurdy midnights.

"Long ago," says Dutch, and his sigh evokes a procession of marvelous ghosts tattooed from head to toe and capering like a company of debonair totem poles over the cobblestones of another South State Street. But the macabre days are gone. The Barnum bacchanal of the nineties lies in its grave with a fading lithograph for a tombstone. Along with the fall of the Russian empire, the collapse of the fourteen points and the general dethronement of reason since the World's Fair, the honorable art of tattooing has come in for its share of vicissitudes.

"Oh, we still do business," says Dutch. "Human nature is slow to decline and there are people who still realize that if you got a handsome watch what do you want to do to it? Engrave it, ain't it? And if you got a handsome skin, what then? Tattoo, naturally. And we tattoo in seven colors now where it used to be three, and use electricity. Do you think it's crazy? Well, you should see who I used to tattoo in the old days. Read the article on the wall. As for being crazy, what do you say about the man who spends his last 50 cents to get into a baseball game, and gets excited and throws his only hat in the air and loses it, and the man who sits all day and all night with a fishpole on the pier and don't catch any fish? Yes, like I tell the judge who picked us up one day in Iowa, you know how they do sometimes when you follow the carnival. And he asks me why I shouldn't go to jail, and if tattooing ain't crazy, and I says give me three minutes and I prove my case. And I begin with the Romans, and how they was the brightest people we knew, and how they went in for tattooing, and how Columbus was tattooed, and all the sailors that was bright enough to discover America was tattooed, also. Then I say, what if Charlie Ross was tattooed? Would he be lost to-day? And what if he had under his name the word Philadelphia? And in addition to that the date where he was born and his address and so on. Would he be lost then? 'You see,' I says, 'a man can't be tattooed enough for his own good,' and the judge says I win my case."

* * * * *

The automatic piano plays "Over There" and the shooting gallery rifles pop too insistently for a moment. Dutch contemplates a plug of fresh tobacco. Then he resumes. This time a more intimate tale—the story of his romance—a weird, grotesque amour with a gaudy can-can obbligato.

"Long ago," Dutch whispers; "yeh, I knew all the girls. I tattoned them all. And I live in this street for thirty years now. But nobody is interested any more in what used to be. How this street has become different! Ach, it is gone, all gone. Everything. Tattooing hangs on a little. Human nature demand it. But human nature is dying likewise. Yeh, I ask you what would old Barnum say if he should come back and see me sitting here? Me, who was as good any day as Capt. Constantinus? I hate to think what. In those days talent counted. If you could sing or dance or tattoo it meant something. Now what does it mean? Look at the dancers and singers they have, and who is there that tattooes any more? It's all gone to smash, the whole world."

* * * * *

Now amid the popping of the rifles and the tinny whanging of the piano Dutch draws forth a final package. He unwraps a yellowed newspaper. Photographs. One by one he shuffles them out and arranges them on the broken desk as if in some pensive game of solitaire. There is Dutch when he was a boy, when he was a sailor, when he grew up and became a world famous tattooer. There is Dutch surrounded by queens of the Midway, Dutch with his arms debonairly thrown round the shoulders of snake charmers and other bizarre and vanished contemporaries. The photographs are yellowed. They make a curious collection. They make the soulless piano sound a bit softer. A "where are the snows of yesteryear" motif played on a can-can fife.

Finally a modern photo in a folder, unyellowed. A smiling, wholesome faced girl. Here Dutch pauses in his game of solitaire and looks in silence.

"My daughter," he says finally. "I sent her through college. Yeh, she's graduated now and has a fine job. I help her all I can. What? Is she tattooed?"

The world's greatest tattoo artist bristles and glowers at the designs on the walls, frowns at the cupids, nymphs, anchors, dragons and butterflies.

"I should say not," he mutters. "She don't belong in this street, not here. She's got a different life, and I help her all I can and she likes me. No, sir, in this street belongs only those who have a long memory. The new ones should start somewhere else. Not, mind you, that tattooing ain't good enough for anybody. But times have changed."

The piano obliges with "The Blue Danube." A customer saunters in. Dutch is all business. The electricity is switched on. A blue spark crackles. Dutch clears his throat and slaps the customer proudly on the back.

"Only a little more to go," he explains, "all over. Two more ships at sea and three dragons will do the job, Heinie. And then, h'm, you will get a job any day in any side show, I can guarantee you that."

Heinie grins hopefully.