He looked for his wife and saw her, lost in the crowd, like a stranger, come to watch a freakish thing, a look of contemptuous curiosity upon her face. For, after all, he was her husband, this was a thing she didn’t know about him herself.
It gave him a feeling of great height and warmness and light to find himself the center of the jangling universe, the carnival world, for one night. Even the other freaks—the Skeleton, the Seal Boy, the Yoga, the Magician, and the Balloon—were scattered through the crowd.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the great moment!”
A trumpet flourish, a hum of drumsticks on tight cowhide.
Mr. William Philippus Phelps let his cape fall. Dinosaurs, trolls, and half-women-half-snakes writhed on his skin in the stark light.
Ah, murmured the crowd, for surely there had never been a tattooed man like this! The beast eyes seemed to take red fire and blue fire, blinking and twisting. The roses on his fingers seemed to expel a sweet pink bouquet.
The Tyrannosaurus rex reared up along his leg, and the sound of the brass trumpet in the hot tent heavens was a prehistoric cry from the red monster throat. Mr. William Philippus Phelps was a museum jolted to life.
Fish swam in seas of electric-blue ink. Fountains sparkled under yellow suns. Ancient buildings stood in meadows of harvest wheat. Rockets burned across spaces of muscle and flesh. The slightest inhalation of his breath threatened to make chaos of the entire printed universe.
He seemed afire, the creatures flinching from the flame, drawing back from the great heat of his pride, as he expanded under the audience’s rapt contemplation.
The carny boss laid his fingers to the adhesive. The audience rushed forward, silent in the oven vastness of the night tent.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet!” cried the carny boss.
The adhesive ripped free.
There was an instant in which nothing happened. An instant in which the Illustrated Man thought that the Unveiling was a terrible and irrevocable failure.
But then the audience gave a low moan.
The carny boss drew back, his eyes fixed.
Far out at the edge of the crowd, a woman, after a moment, began to cry, began to sob, and did not stop.
Slowly, the Illustrated Man looked down at his naked chest and stomach.
The thing that he saw made the roses on his hands discolor and die. All of his creatures seemed to wither, turn inward, shrivel with the arctic coldness that pumped from his heart outward to freeze and destroy them. He stood trembling. His hands floated up to touch that incredible picture, which lived, moved and shivered with life.
It was like gazing into a small room, seeing a thing of someone else’s life so intimate, so impossible that one could not believe and one could not long stand to watch without turning away.
It was a picture of his wife, Lisabeth, and himself.
And he was killing her.
Before the eyes of a thousand people in a dark tent in the center of a black-forested Wisconsin land, he was killing his wife.
His great flowered hands were upon her throat, and her face was turning dark and he killed her and he killed her and did not ever in the next minute stop killing her. It was real. While the crowd watched, she died, and he turned very sick.
He was about to fall straight down into the crowd. The tent whirled like a monster bat wing, flapping grotesquely. The last thing he heard was a woman, sobbing, far out on the shore of the silent crowd.
And the crying woman was Lisabeth, his wife.
In the night, his bed was moist with perspiration. The carnival sounds had melted away, and his wife, in her own bed, was quiet now, too. He fumbled with his chest. The adhesive was smooth. They had made him put it back.
He had fainted. When he revived, the carny boss had yelled at him, “Why didn’t you say what the picture was like?”
“I didn’t know, I didn’t,” said the Illustrated Man.
“Good God!” said the boss. “Scare hell outa everyone. Scared hell outa Lizzie, scared hell outa me. Christ, where’d you get that damn tattoo?” He shuddered. “Apologize to Lizzie, now.”
His wife stood over him.
“I’m sorry, Lisabeth,” he said, weakly, his eyes closed. “I didn’t know.”
“You did it on purpose,” she said. “To scare me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Either it goes or I go,” she said.
“Lisabeth.”
“You heard me. That picture comes off or I quit this show.”
“Yeah, Phil,” said the boss. “That’s how it is.”
“Did you lose money? Did the crowd demand refunds?”
“It ain’t the money, Phil. For that matter, once the word got around, hundreds of people wanted in. But I’m runnin’ a clean show. That tattoo comes off! Was this your idea of a practical joke, Phil?”
He turned in the warm bed. No, not a joke. Not a joke at all. He had been as terrified as anyone. Not a joke. That little old dust-witch, what had she done to him and how had she done it?
Had she put the picture there? No; she had said that the picture was unfinished, and that he himself, with his thoughts and perspiration, would finish it. Well, he had done the job all right.
But what, if anything, was the significance? He didn’t want to kill anyone. He didn’t want to kill Lisabeth. Why should such a silly picture burn here on his flesh in the dark?
He crawled his fingers softly, cautiously down to touch the quivering place where the hidden portrait lay.
He pressed tight, and the temperature of that spot was enormous. He could almost feel that little evil picture killing and killing and killing all through the night.
I don’t wish to kill her, he thought, insistently, looking over at her bed. And then, five minutes later, he whispered aloud: “Or do I?”
“What?” she cried, awake.
“Nothing,” he said, after a pause, “Go to sleep.”
The man bent forward, a buzzing instrument in his hand. “This cost five bucks an inch. Costs more to peel tattoos off than put ’em on. Okay, jerk the adhesive.”
The Illustrated Man obeyed.
The skin man sat back. “Christ! No wonder you want that off! That’s ghastly. I don’t even want to look at it.” He flicked his machine. “Ready? This won’t hurt.”
The carny boss stood in the tent flap, watching. After five minutes, the skin man changed the instrument head, cursing. Ten minutes later he scraped his chair back and scratched his head. Half an hour passed and he got up, told Mr. William Philippus Phelps to dress, and packed his kit.
“Wait a minute,” said the carny boss. “You ain’t done the job.”
“And I ain’t going to,” said the skin man.
“I’m paying good money. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, except that damn picture just won’t come off. Damn thing must go right down to the bone.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Mister, I’m in business thirty years and never seen a tattoo like this. An inch deep, if it’s anything.”
“But I’ve got to get it off!” cried the Illustrated Man.
The skin man shook his head. “Only one way to get rid of that.”
“How?”
“Take a knife and cut off your chest. You won’t live long, but the picture’ll be gone.”
“Come back here!”
But the skin man walked away.
They could hear the big Sunday-night crowd, waiting.
“That’s a big crowd,” said the Illustrated Man.
“But they ain’t going to see what they came to see,” said the carny boss. “You ain’t going out there, except with the adhesive. Hold still now, I’m curious about this other picture, on your back. We might be able to give ’em an Unveiling on this one instead.”
“She said it wouldn’t be ready for a week or so. The old woman said it would take time to set, make a pattern.”
There was a soft ripping as the carny boss pulled aside a flap of white tape on the Illustrated Man’s spine.
“What do you see?” gasped Mr. Phelps, bent over.
The carny boss replaced the tape. “Buster, as a Tattooed Man, you’re a washout, ain’t you? Why’d you let that old dame fix you up this way?”
“I didn’t know who she was.”
“She sure cheated you on this one. No design to it. Nothing. No picture at all.”
“It’ll come clear. You wait and see.”
The boss laughed. “Okay. Come on. We’ll show the crowd part of you, anyway.”
They walked out into an explosion of brassy music.
He stood monstrous in the middle of the night, putting out his hands like a blind man to balance himself in a world now tilted, now rushing, now threatening to spin him over and down into the mirror before which he raised his hands.
Upon the flat, dimly lighted tabletop were peroxide, acids, silver razors, and squares of sandpaper. He took each of them in turn. He soaked the vicious tattoo upon his chest, he scraped at it. He worked steadily for an hour.
He was aware, suddenly, that someone stood in the trailer door behind him. It was three in the morning. There was a faint odor of beer. She had come home from town. He heard her slow breathing. He did not turn. “Lisabeth?” he said.
“You’d better get rid of it,” she said, watching his hands move the sandpaper. She stepped into the trailer.
“I didn’t want the picture this way,” he said.
“You did,” she said. “You planned it.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know you,” she said. “Oh, I know you hate me. Well, that’s nothing. I hate you. I’ve hated you a long time now. Good God, when you started putting on the fat, you think anyone could love you then? I could teach you some things about hate. Why don’t you ask me?”
“Leave me alone,” he said.
“In front of that crowd, making a spectacle out of me!”
“I
