by Daniel Addercouth
I was in Tadros Ink in the Old Town getting my obligatory pilgrim’s tattoo when Nietzsche called to tell me God was dead. “This is not a good time for such news,” I said, fumbling to operate the phone with my left hand while the tattoo artist worked on my right forearm. I tried to keep my voice down, conscious of the other customers staring at me as they waited their turn on the wooden benches along the walls.
It was the last day of my pilgrimage to the Holy Place. I’d come because my Uncle Kevin had made the same journey in his youth. Back then, the roof of the Chapel of the Holy Cross had peeled away like a sardine can, revealing the Creator sitting on a golden throne flanked by seraphim. The vision changed his life, Kevin always said. Amidst my own mid-life crisis, I was toying with reembracing the Monotheistic Belief System of my youth; maybe all those long hours serving as an altar boy wouldn’t have been a waste after all. But the Chapel of the Holy Cross felt like an empty shell, and everywhere I turned, hustlers tried to flog me pilgrimage-
related trinkets and services. I was a tourist, not a pilgrim.
But I still wanted to get a pilgrim’s tattoo, just like Uncle Kevin’s. I couldn’t go home
without one. He’d told me to go to Tadros Ink. They’d been tattooing pilgrims for hundreds of years, and the business had always been in the same family. With its calm, white-washed interior, the shop was a respite from the chaos of the Old Town, and the prices were reasonable. Here was something authentic, where no one was trying to rip me off. I’d chosen the image from their catalogue of traditional designs: the Creator surrounded by clouds as He designed the universe. But now Nietzsche was telling me God didn’t exist. The late German philosopher’s words only confirmed what I already suspected.
“God remains dead.” Nietzsche’s voice was tinny coming out of the phone speaker, but the force of his words was unmistakable. “And we have killed him.”
The scion of the Tadros family was pricking my skin with increasing force. He pointed at a sign on the wall with a crossed-out mobile. “No calls. This is holy work.”
“Sorry, Friedrich,” I said. “I need to go.” A dull weight settled in my stomach at the
thought that I was alone in an unfriendly universe. I studied the tattoo taking shape on my forearm. It would be hypocritical to have an image I didn’t believe in. The artist was still working on the clouds; it wasn’t too late to change my mind. “Do you think you could leave God out of the image?” I asked.
Young Tadros stared at me. “This design is over 500 years old. You can’t just change it on a whim.”
As he gesticulated with the tattoo machine, I noticed something about his hand. The artist’s unusual dexterity suddenly made sense. “Pardon me for asking, but do you have a supernumerary digit?”
He held up his hand in its old-fashioned leather glove. I counted: he did indeed have six fingers. “It’s hereditary in our family,” he said. “Our polydactyl ancestors were forced to flee their homeland because they were thought cursed, but we consider it a gift from the Lord. It allows us to earn our livelihood while giving pilgrims like yourself a memento of the Holy Place.”
The rest of the room faded away as I focussed on his six-fingered hand. This couldn’t be an accident of nature. It had to be a sign.
“There is a God,” I whispered to myself. “I need to tell Nietzsche.” I tapped redial on my screen, but all I got was a series of rapid beeps.
The tattoo artist gestured impatiently at the design on my arm. “Well? What’s it to be, God or no God?”
“Keep God in,” I said quietly, as a robotic voice repeated the message: The number you have called does not exist.
My blood pressure dropped as the artist continued with the needling. Grey blotches marred my vision, the way they did when I was an altar boy kneeling in front of the mensa while Father Ignatius droned his announcements. For the first time since I came on the pilgrimage, I prayed.
Daniel Addercouth (@ruralunease) grew up on a remote farm in the north of Scotland but now lives in Berlin, Germany. His story “We’ve Seen a Lot of People Come and Go” was published in Issue 4 of Thin Skin.
