Black and grey tattoo of a man in a hat holding an umbrella while balancing on a vertical line of umbrellas, placed on the back of the upper arm near the shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Man balancing on umbrellas on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A man in a hat and dark jacket is shown mid-step, holding an open umbrella, on a vertical column of closed umbrellas that run down the upper arm. The figure and the umbrellas are rendered in shaded black ink and grey tones, with the umbrella canopies in solid black for contrast. The design sits on pale skin against a plain light background, with the wearer's black sleeveless top visible at the edge of the frame.

Upper arm Man Umbrella Hat Figure

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody at the Vranov crossing ever asked why I kept a stack of umbrellas in the guard hut. They assumed it was for the rain, which fell nine months of the year. The other three were for the ditch.

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The ditch ran straight through the strip of no-man's land, a hand's width of black mud between two fences that had been painted by two governments who agreed on nothing else. The rule was printed on a board in three languages, and someone with a rifle and a long afternoon had put holes through the second language, so it looked older than it was. Every Thursday a man called Teodor came down the gravel road with his sister's shopping list in one pocket and a closed umbrella under his arm, and asked me to let him through to the far side.

I could not let him through, so I let him try. He would unfurl the umbrella, set its tip in the mud, and then stand each closed one on end beside it, pressing them down until they held like fence posts. Then he climbed. Shoe, umbrella, shoe, umbrella, his open canopy tilting against the grey sky while I counted under my breath and the lorries idled behind him. It was the only thing on that road that looked like it had been planned.

On the last Thursday in October he reached the top of the stack and stepped off onto the far bank without looking back. I walked out with a torch to pull the umbrellas up, and found one still standing upright in the mud, its canopy snapped open and turned to face my hut, as if it had been left there for me to read.