Black and grey tattoo of a standing multi-armed figure holding blades and torches, flanked by coiled serpents, on the upper arm.

Multi-armed figure on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A standing, multi-armed figure in a long pleated robe is centred on the upper arm, with several arms raised to hold blade-like and torch-like objects. Two coiled serpents curl up on either side below the figure, and a serpent body runs along the base beneath its feet. The work uses fine hatched linework and soft grey shading in black ink only, with the figure set against bare skin in a symmetrical composition.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Okafor never let anyone touch the plaster lady above the stage at the Palais on Harehills Road, though the caretaker, Dolly, polished her every Friday with a rag and a tin of Brasso she swore was blessed. Nobody knew who had brought her back from Calcutta in a tea chest in 1931. Four arms went up, two of them gripping blades, one a torch, and the fourth hand stayed open, as if waiting for a partner's palm.

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I was seventeen the winter the band missed their train. Dolly sent me up the ladder with a lamp to check the wiring, and I found the torch arm loose in its socket, the wax gone soft. When I pressed it home the room went quiet, the way a room does when the needle lifts off a record. Below me the couples stopped mid-step and looked up, and the coiled serpents at the figure's feet seemed to raise their heads from the painted boards.

Nobody danced again that night. We sat on the sprung floor telling each other stories until the gas ran low, and Dolly swore the blades had turned to face the door.

At first light I climbed up once more. The serpents lay flat again, their tails curled round the figure's feet like rope left on a quay, and the open hand held a single ticket stub, pink and creased, the kind we sold at the door for threepence.

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