Black fine line cursive lettering reading ad infinitum on the side ribs, with a hand holding a red fabric above it.

Ad infinitum script on the side ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of black cursive script reading ad infinitum across the side of a torso. The linework is thin and even, with the capital letters slightly larger than the lowercase. The skin is pale and the background is dark, with a hand gathering red fabric at the top of the frame.

Lettering Fine line Ribs Script Latin phrase Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Your mother's quarrel with the vicar is nothing I can mend, Ned, so I will tell you instead about Mr Haskett's ledger, which I finished copying on Tuesday. He wanted the whole tithe roll written fair in a single hand, and when I asked how long it ran he only tapped the spine and said ad infinitum, as if that were a length.

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I took it as a jest until the third week. The roll had no end. Every leaf turned up another column of names, and the names proved to be the same eleven families under new Christian names, grandsons of grandsons, each owing the same sum in the same ink. I wrote them out in my best copperplate, capitals a little taller than the rest, the way Haskett liked them. My wrist went numb. The lamp guttered twice and I kept going, because stopping felt like admitting the roll had won.

On the Friday I found the last leaf. It was blank except for one line in his hand: the copyist shall be paid when the roll is done. Beneath it the ink was still wet. I understood then that he had been copying it himself for forty years, that the roll was never the thing itself but the act of keeping it, and that I had been hired to take his chair at the desk.

I have written to the parish to ask for my wages. I have not yet asked for release. Come up at Easter and bring the good nib, and a fresh bottle of gall ink. I have a long way still to go, and the light in this room is kind enough to let a man keep working.