The tattoo was worn by a man who had been convicted for the ‘squandering of military property’ during a period of service at the marine military base in Murmansk. His five-year sentence was spent in corrective labour colonies at Monchegorsk and Kandalakshi. He was treated for alcolholism in the Kashchenko Hospital.
“Yet her lines will not deepen fast enough, her mouth not learn hardening past a face she keeps surprising herself with, a daydreaming child’s face, betraying her to anyone who’ll look, exactly the sort of fat-softened, unfocused weakness that causes men to read her as Dependent Little Girl”
-Thomas Pynchon, “Gravity’s Rainbow”
