Siberian Education by Nicolai Lilin Page B

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    Next day I was back at the door of his house. Grandfather Lyosha explained to me first of all what it meant to ‘learn’ to be a tattooist. I would have to help him with the housework – doing the cleaning, going shopping, gathering firewood – so that he would have time to devote to me.
    And that was how it turned out. Little by little Grandfather Lyosha taught me everything. How to prepare a work-station for the tattooing, how to do a drawing, how best to transfer it onto the skin. He gave me homework, too: for example, I would have to invent ways in which images could intertwine, while still remaining faithful to the criminal tradition. He taught me the meanings of the images and their positions on the body, explaining the origin of each one, and how it had evolved in the Siberian tradition.
    After a year and a half he allowed me to retouch a faded tattoo for a client, a criminal who had just been released from prison. All I had to do was go over the lines. The tattoo was a rather poorly executed image of a wolf – I remember that it was out of proportion – so I suggested that I should also alter it slightly from the ‘artistic’ point of view. I drew a new image, which I could easily use to cover the old one, and showed it to my master and his client. They agreed. So I did the tattoo, which came out well: the criminal was happy and thanked me profusely.
    From that moment my master allowed me to fix all the old and faded tattoos, and when I had become more expert, with his permission I began to do new jobs, on virgin skin.
    I started to create images for the tattoos using the symbology of the Siberian criminal tradition with ever greater confidence. Now, whenever Grandfather Lyosha gave me a new assignment, he no longer showed me how to draw the image; he simply told me the meaning that had to be encoded in it. I used the symbols, which I knew by now, to create the image, as a writer uses the letters of the alphabet to build up a story.
    Sometimes I met people with unusual tattoos, which had interesting stories behind them. Many of them came to see my master, and he would show me their tattoos, explaining their meaning to me. These were what the criminals call ‘signatures’: tattoos that have a final meaning which incorporates a symbol, or even the name, of some elderly, powerful Authority. They work like a passport, and often prevent a person being given a hostile reception in some place far from his home. Usually these tattoos are executed in a highly individual style. It is possible to make them unique, without directly linking their meanings with the name or nickname of the person who wears them: you have to exploit the characteristics and peculiarities of the body and connect them with the meanings of the other tattoos. I saw signatures on various people, and each time I discovered different ways of combining the subjects to create unique images.
    Once when I was at home a boy came to call me, saying that Grandfather Lyosha wanted to see me, to show me something. I went with him.
    There were some people in my master’s house – about ten in all. Some were from our district, others I had never seen before. They were criminals who had come all the way from Siberia. They were sitting round a table and talking among themselves. My master introduced me:
    â€˜This young rascal is studying to become a kolshik . 1 I teach him well; hopefully one day, with the help of Our Lord, he really will become one.’
    A sturdy man got up from the table. He had a long beard and a number of tattoos on his face which I read instantly – he was a man who had been condemned to death but pardoned at the last moment.
    â€˜So you’re Yury’s son?’
    â€˜Yes, I’m Nikolay “Kolima”, son of Yury “The Rootless”,’ I replied in a firm voice.
    The criminal smiled, and laid his gigantic hand on my head:
    â€˜I’ll come round to see your