Until I Find You by John Irving Page A

bit. Not a city with Hell in it!
    Before leaving for Finland, Alice wanted to have a word with Trond Halvorsen, the bad tattooer who’d given William an infection. Halvorsen was what Tattoo Ole would have called a “scratcher.” He worked out of a ground-floor apartment in Gamlebyen, in the eastern part of Oslo; what passed for a tattoo shop was his kitchen.
    Trond Halvorsen was an old sailor. He’d been tattooed “by hand” in Borneo, and—again without the benefit of a tattoo machine—in Japan. He had a Tattoo Jack (Tattoo Ole’s teacher) on his right forearm and one of Ole’s naked ladies on his left. He had some simply awful tattoos, mostly on his thighs and stomach; he’d done them on himself. “When I was learning,” he said, showing Alice and Jack his myriad mistakes.
    “Tell me about The Music Man,” Alice began.
    “I just gave him some notes he asked for,” Halvorsen said. “I don’t know what the music sounds like.”
    “I understand you gave him an infection, too,” Alice said.
    Trond Halvorsen smiled; he was missing both an upper and a lower canine. “Infections happen.”
    “Do you clean your needles?” Alice asked.
    “Who has the time?” Halvorsen replied.
    A pot was bubbling on the stove, something with a fish head in it. The kitchen smelled of fish and tobacco in more or less equal parts.
    Alice couldn’t hide her disgust; even Halvorsen’s flash was dirty, his stencils smudged with cooking grease and smoke. Some pigments had hardened in the open paper cups on the kitchen table; you couldn’t tell what their true colors had been.
    “I’m Aberdeen Bill’s daughter, Alice.” She suddenly seemed uninterested in her own story. “I once worked with Tattoo Ole.” Her voice trailed away.
    “I’ve heard of your dad, and everyone knows Ole,” Halvorsen said; he seemed unembarrassed by her evident disapproval.
    Jack was wondering why they’d come.
    “The Music Man,” Alice said, for the second time. “I don’t suppose he told you where he was going.”
    “He was angry about the infection,” Trond Halvorsen admitted. “When he came back, he wasn’t in a mood to talk about his travels.”
    “He’s gone to Helsinki,” Alice said. Halvorsen just listened. If she already knew where William had gone, why was she bothering Halvorsen? “Do you know any tattoo artists in Helsinki?” Alice asked.
    “There’s nobody good there,” he answered.
    “There’s nobody good here, ” Alice said.
    Trond Halvorsen winked at Jack, as if acknowledging that the boy’s mother must be hard to live with. He stirred the pot on the stove, briefly holding up the fish head for Jack to see. “In Helsinki,” Halvorsen said, as if he were talking to the fish, “you can get a tattoo from an old sailor like me.”
    “A scratcher, you mean?” Alice asked.
    “Someone working at home, like me,” Halvorsen told her; he was sounding a little defensive now, even irritated.
    “And would you know such a person as that in Finland, good or not?” Alice asked.
    “There’s a restaurant in Helsinki where the sailors go,” Trond Halvorsen said. “You get yourself to the harbor, you look for a restaurant called Salve. Someone will know it—it’s very popular.”
    “Then what?” Alice said.
    “Ask one of the waitresses where you can get a tattoo,” Halvorsen told her. “One of the older ones will know.”
    “Thank you very much, Mr. Halvorsen,” Alice said. She held out her hand to him, but he didn’t shake it. Even scratchers have their pride.
    “You got a boyfriend?” Halvorsen asked her; he smiled, showing his missing teeth again.
    Jack’s mother rumpled the boy’s hair and pulled him against her hip. “What do you think Jack here is?” she said to Halvorsen.
    Trond Halvorsen never did shake Alice’s hand. “I think Jack here looks just like him,” the scratcher said.
    Back at the Bristol, they packed in silence. The clerk at the front desk was happy they were checking out. The