The Story of X: An Erotic Tale (17 page)

The Italian girl speaks to me: “Please, open legs.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“Please!”

Reluctant, sobering up very fast, I open my legs. I now understand, suddenly and clearly,
what the handmaidens are going to do. I can see it is already happening to Françoise
in the seat alongside mine. The handmaidens are going to tattoo me. My induction into
the Mysteries is going to be marked on me, forever. Even if I stop right after this,
I will always have this branding.

But I have to do it. Don’t I? I reach and hold Marc’s hand. Very tight.

Everyone is watching. I close my eyes. The shame has returned. I feel a sharp stab
of pain in my loins.

Oh God.

The handmaidens are working. It is quite painful—but it is the shame and doubt that
really hurt. I don’t like tattoos—I have never liked them enough to ever remotely
consider one. The permanence unsettles me. And now I am being tattooed, on my thigh,
by some strange girls, in front of three hundred strange, rich people, who have all
been looking at my nakedness for hours. I want to cry. This hurts. This is wrong.
I am not drunk anymore. Marc’s hand is tight around mine but it is not comforting.

“No . . .” I say. “I didn’t . . .”

The handmaidens are wiping away some blood with cotton wool and water. The tattoo
is finished, it seems, but the shame abides.

The champagne is wearing off. I feel mortified and humiliated; I feel embarrassed
and stupid. This is some ghastly, tacky ceremony, and I have been a fool; and now
I am branded forever, like some kind of livestock.

“Morpheus,” I shout. “Morpheus!”

And it works. Everyone stops. But it is all too late; the induction is done, the tattoo
is finished. And I hate myself for my stupidity. Wrenching my hand from Marc’s, I
rise from the chair and run away from the crowds and the music. I run into the olive
groves, my hands covering my face in disgrace. I stop in a cliff-top clearing, illuminated
by the moon and stars.

There is a warm, soft rock, I sit down and weep for a few seconds, or more. Then I
feel a wetness. I look down in horror: a trickle of red blood is running down my inner
thigh.

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

T
HE MOON IS
large and melancholy, reflected in the still blue seas, and laying its path of silver
on the tiny rippled waves. The olive trees whisper in a barely felt breeze, but still
I shiver, here on my smooth rock, ashamed like Eve by my nakedness. I need a fig leaf.
I need a cushion. The concept doesn’t amuse me. Everything is detestable. I can’t
even bear to look down and see my new tattoo.

“Carissima.”

It is Marc.

“X, I have been looking for you.” He lifts a canvas bag. “I brought you some clothes,
and something hot to drink.”

I gaze his way, then the words tumble out.

“But Marc, but Marc—I can’t—”

“What?”

“I can’t wear the dress, the Armani dress . . .” My voice is still pregnant with sobs,
with near-tears. “I’ll ruin it. I am . . .” I take a deep, tearful breath. “Marc,
I am bleeding.”

Marc kneels and opens the bag. He has bandages, swabs, ointment. He speaks into the
bag as he sifts through it.

“I spoke to the handmaidens. They gave me all this, darling. I have a simple black
dress for you as well. I had Giuseppe bring it.”

He looks up, and adds, “Just in case . . .” He hands the dress over. “It’s from Zara.”

His kind and amused blue eyes—gray in the moonlight—look deep into my own. I can’t
help blinking back a few more tears, but these are different: tears of relief, tears
of—though I hate to admit it—tears of gratitude. Yet he put me through this. I don’t
know
what
I truly feel.

Marc turns away as I wipe myself. I apply some ointment, which is antiseptic, and
soothing. The bleeding has almost stopped now; only the pain remains, the pain and
the humiliation—though the latter is also drifting out to sea. Perhaps I just panicked.
I don’t know. I was having a good time—feeling that Mysterious, Dionysian liberation—before
it went wrong. Maybe the fault is with me?

Take a deep breath, X.

It is time to look at my tattoo. Shifting a little, I open my thighs. And gaze at
my white skin in the moonlight.

And now I want to cry again.

Because the little tattoo is utterly pretty; it may even be exquisite. It comprises
a dark and slender arrow, laced with a very sinuous S-shape along its length. The
coloring, black to dark violet, is subtle. It is striking and lovely, despite being
so small.

“It’s an alchemical symbol,” Marc says. He is kneeling and staring between my thighs.
I am naked down there, of course, but I like him looking. We are both looking at my
naked vulva and my new tattoo on my inner thigh.

“A symbol of what?”

“Purification,” he says.

He kisses my stockinged knee. I have to ask him.

“Do you like it?”

“I adore it, X. It is wholly exquisite. The symbols change every year, I believe.
But I know that one. Beautiful.” He kisses my knee, and asks: “But what do
you
think, X?”

“I’m not sure . . .” I contemplate the symbol.
Purification
. “I can’t believe I am saying this, but I think I quite like it. Yet now I am marked
forever? Tattooed and branded?” I lift his jaw so he is looking at me, not at my tattoo,
or my nakedness. “You have tattooed me.”

“I suppose I have.”

The moon shines down, and we stare at each other. Then I feel the cold night air.

“Marc, can you help? I want to get changed.”

“Of course.”

I stand, lean on Marc, and slip the new black panties on; then Marc kneels beside
me and reaches to unfasten my garter. Slowly he rolls down my stockings and pulls
them from my white feet. He pauses, and kisses my bare thigh. I shiver—from the breeze
or from the kiss, I do not know. Now I want to be rid of the corset. I can’t do it
myself. It is impossible.

“Marc?”

Kissing my neck very gently, he stands at my back and gets to work, unlacing the whalebone.
The corset comes loose and my breasts are exposed. I notice my nipples are hardened.
I am aroused, but I don’t want sex, not now, not tonight. Quickly, I swoop on the
dress Marc brought: plain and black and, yes, Zara. I reach for the canvas bag for
something to put on my feet—and I see that Marc even thought of socks and sneakers:
new white socks and sneakers. I put them on. They fit perfectly. Of course.

“Now drink,” says Marc, taking out a thermos as we both sit down.

He pours the drink into a plastic cup.

I sniff the liquid suspiciously.

“What on earth?”

“An old Roscarrick recipe, fine Islay single malt Scotch whisky, whirred with Bajan
cane sugar and just a hint of spice. Scaltheen. It is an absolute panacea,
carissima
. And delicious, too.”

I drink the scaltheen. And he is right, it glows down my throat, not like normal Scotch
at all. It is ambrosial, it is heavenly, it is the liquor of the gods and it is fitting.
The therapeutic warming buzz fills me inside.

Marc lays down a thick tartan blanket for us to lie back on. He makes pillows from
my old clothes. He is attending me.

“We can go back whenever you like,” he says. “Nearly everyone else has gone already.
But it might be nice to lie here for a while? We have Capri almost to ourselves. Quite
a rarity.”

The whisky is working. The scaltheen is a balm. The two of us lie down and I snuggle
close to Marc’s strength and warmth, enclosed in his embracing arms: this isn’t sexual,
this is companionable, this is friendship—deep, deep friendship. I feel safe with
him, protected and cherished. I also feel, very woozily, like I could talk with him
for hours about anything—politics, science, basketball. More than that, I feel like
I could fall asleep this second in his comforting arms. I am tired.

As my mind lulls toward sleep we both stare at the stars.

“Look,” he says. “There’s my favorite constellation.”

He points. I stare.

“Orion the Hunter?”

“No, that group over there,
cara mia
. It looks like you sneezing. The Constellation of Alexandra with Hay Fever.”

I laugh quietly.

“Okay, that one over there, that really weird constellation just under Leo. That’s
the Constellation of Marc in a Bad Mood. It’s famous. They use it to frighten children
in Sicily.”

He chuckles.

“And over there—there—just under the Pleiades—what one’s that? The Constellation of
Alex Giving Back the Car?”

“Oh no, no, it’s not . . .” I smile, and kiss his neck. “That’s the Constellation
of Us. That’s the Constellation of Alex and Marc, together, and alone, on Capri.”

A silence. Marc stares upward, into the turbulent and imperious whirl of stars and
moon.

“The Constellation of Alex and Marc?” He sighs. “I like it.” He turns and faces me.
His eyes are serious and sad, loving and happy. “Sweetheart . . .”

“Yes?”

Our voices are almost whispers. We are both close to sleep.

“Darling, whatever happens, even if you leave the Mysteries, and we can never be together,
will you promise me, whenever you are angry or sad or alone, you will go out in the
night and look up at that constellation? Will you look at the Constellation of Alex
and Marc on Capri, the Constellation of Us? Please.” He is nearly asleep. “Please
do that, for me.”

I yawn, close my eyes, and say: “Yes, but come closer, cuddle me.”

Sleep is inches away.

As he cuddles me, I say in a bare murmur, “Marc, will all the Mysteries be like that?
It was a bit . . . frightening.”

“No,” he says; his eyes are closed, too. “Different, different, they are more poetic
. . . difficult . . .
carissima
.”

He is asleep. I take one last look at the glittering sweep of stars, at the Constellation
of Us, and then I close my eyes, too.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY

F
OR THE FIRST
few days after the Second Mystery, I am in a kind of daze. But it is not traumatic:
more dreamy, and heady, and wistful. With just a hint of regret. Something in me has
changed. I have visibly been altered, within and without. Every time I strip, every
time I shower, I see my new tattoo. It transfixes me. I have started to love it, like
a secret but glorious present. One evening I show it to Jessica: I lift up my dress
and she stares.

She shakes her head and says, “I want one.”

We both laugh. And then I change clothes and Marc calls round and we go to dinner,
like an ordinary couple. We are settling into a rhythm. Like ordinary lovers.

But it is a glorious rhythm. Usually we make love in the late afternoon, as the heat
of the day abates. Then we eat and drink at night. Sometimes I stay in the palazzo
and sometimes he stays over in my tiny apartment, usually with Giuseppe parked outside—possibly
armed? Possibly not.

During these days I am seriously happy, even though nothing spectacular happens. Perhaps
I am happy
because
nothing spectacular happens. One night, as I lie in Marc’s vast bed, with him asleep
beside me, I recall a line I saw in an old movie,
Doctor Zhivago
—where the loving couple live in a shack in the wilds and have to fish and farm and
fend for themselves. Then a visitor calls on them and says, “When you look back you
will see these ordinary days were some of the happiest of your life.”

Staring at the glass sculpture in the shadowy and shuttered light of the bedroom,
I wonder if these are
our
Zhivago
days. The ordinary days of being in love, the days of simple and innocent work and
pleasure, which are, paradoxically, the most precious of all: suffused with an inner
well-being. The sweetness of life. Regular, simple, everyday life, inflected by love.
But also ennobled by work.

Life is sweet, and strange, and compelling. Leaning to my side I kiss the scar on
Marc’s suntanned shoulder. I wonder again where he got that. But I have had enough
of anxieties. Let it go, let it happen. I kiss Marc once more. He murmurs in his sleep.
I kiss his scented and muscled back. I want him to wake up. I cannot resist.

L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.

T
HE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON
I find myself lying on my bed, in my little apartment, chewing my pen. This is not
unusual for me. The bed is where I seem to work best, maybe because it reminds me
of him. And what we do here.

Or maybe that is too distracting. Picking up my notebook, I go over the key facts
I have learned about the Mysteries. Somehow my thesis has gotten sidetracked onto
the Mystery Religions, but I am fine with this, for now. The Mysteries are just so
fascinating
, especially now that I am enacting them.

Firstly, and crucially, I have discovered that this area, around Naples—Napoli, Capua,
Cumae—was always known for its “orgiastic nature.” This was the pleasure zone of the
Roman Empire. Pompeii itself was a place where people retired to lead the good life;
Julius Caesar’s holiday home was a few miles north up the coast—though it has since
been drowned by a rising sea level. People have come here to party since the first
century
B
.
C
.

Therefore is it not surprising the Mystery Religions, with their emphasis on vivid
debauchery, orgiastic sex, and spiritual eroticism, took root here?

Perhaps. Perhaps yes. I underscore this fact.

And here’s another
interesting
thing.

Drink and drugs seem to be key to the Mysteries, in all forms. In the Eleusinian Mysteries,
a special potion was drunk during the ceremony, apparently called the “kykeon.” Historians
know that kykeon got people very inebriated: a certain Greek scholar, “Erasixenus,”
is described in an ancient letter as having died after downing just two cups on the
trot.

What kind of drink is this? In one place, the Homeric
Hymn to Demeter,
the recipe for kykeon is actually listed: barley water, mint, and “glechon.”

And yet, of course,
no one has any idea what the word
glechon
means
.

I tap the notebook with my pen. It is frustrating and stimulating all at once.

Wherever I look, I come up against this blankness, this big question mark. Something
missing. Something still unknown. What is the exact recipe? How did they keep it a
secret? Moreover, how did they keep it a secret for such a fantastically long time?

According to the history books, two families of Eleusinian priests, who handed the
Mysteries from father to son and from mother to daughter, managed to keep the secret
for nearly two millennia. Literally
two thousand years
. An astonishing feat.

It was either something prepared in a special way or something they
didn’t even understand themselves.

I can hear Jessica coming home from her teaching. Her door slams flamboyantly, and
she is singing as she heads for the shower. I don’t have to check my watch; I know
this means it is near five
P.M
. In an hour or two Marc will be here, waiting to whisk me away. I love the way he
whisks me away
. Whisk me some more, Lord Roscarrick. Tonight he is taking me out to dinner—again—but
he says he wants to show me some of Naples first: some things I have not seen. I look
back at my notes, chewing my pen until I remember that it stains my mouth with ink.

So I stop chewing and write a paragraph instead:

Clearly there was a secret drug or liquor, clearly it was very important, clearly
it gave some kind of intense revelation, which made the pains of the Mystery initiations—and
they were painful as well as pleasurable—perfectly endurable, for men and women. But
what was the final Fifth Mystery? What was the revelation? What was the “katabasis”?

I pause, pen poised, and read my last few scraps of notes. They relate to the punishing
secrecy surrounding the Mysteries.

The laws of Athens and Rome made it a severe crime to speak of what went on in the
Mysteries at Eleusis. In 415
B
.
C
. there was a spate of indiscretion about the Mysteries by the Athenian elite, and
a brutal crackdown followed: those who had revealed the secret were tortured and killed.

Tortured and killed?

It is all so tempting, so tantalizing, And what makes it especially appetizing is
that it seems the Mysteries have survived, in some kind of authentic form; and I—Alexandra
Beckmann—a humble student from Dartmouth—may be
about to discover the secret of the Greco-Roman Mystery Religions
.

I ignore the nagging voices in my head even as I flick through the last pages of my
notebook: the voices saying the Mysteries are
dangerous
.

Oh please. That was then, this is now. I am just researching. Right?

Right. I lift my legs off the bed; I’ve got to get ready pretty soon. Jess has stopped
singing, which means she has finished showering, which means it might be time for
me to have
my
shower. I’ve learned that the water system in our apartment block can’t cope with
two showers simultaneously.

But then my phone rings. The screen says
Marc
.

“Buona sera?”

“X . . . How are you?”

I pause. His soft and deep and gently amused voice makes me several degrees happier.
I still don’t know how this works. Just a voice. But it is his voice.

“I’m done. I’ve learned everything there is to know about the Rites of Eleusis.”

“Impressive.”

“Did you know I am technically a
mystes
? That’s what the Greeks called an initiate who hasn’t completed the rituals. And
they thought the Mysteries were so sacred, they didn’t refer to them by name—they
just called them
Ta Hiera
: the holy.”

Marc praises my endeavors. Courteously. I stare out of the window at the sun over
the Excelsior Hotel, as we talk.

“You really have been working hard, X.”

“I have. It’s what I do.”

He hesitates, then says, “Actually, there’s a rather fine quote you might find useful.”

“Go on.”

“ ‘Blessed is he who, having seen these rites, undertakes the way beneath the Earth.
He knows the end of life, as well as its divinely granted beginning.’ ”

“Ooh,” I say. “That’s
gooooood
. Who is it?”

“Pindar, the Greek poet. Talking of the final Mystery.”

“ ‘The way beneath the Earth.’ Wow.” I am picking up a pen, scribbling the word
Pindar
in my notebook.

“Carissima . . .”

I am distracted.

“Mm?”

“Did you get my present?”

Now I pause, and put down the pen.

“Yes, I did get the present.”

It is sitting on my desk right now: a smallish flat box, wrapped in costly silver
paper. The gift arrived this morning.

“I haven’t opened it yet. What is it? Your presents can be a little unnerving, Marcus.”

His laugh is polite. And firm.

“Open it.”

“Now?”

“Per favore.”

“Okay, okay.” Reaching for the box, I retreat to the bed and sit back against the
pillows. Quickly I untie the bow and rip the lovely silver paper. The box within is
plain, subtle and gray. I open the lid. And stare at the object nestling inside, cosseted
in shapely foam. My cell phone is cradled under my chin.

“What the . . . ?”

“You like it?”

“Yes,” I say. “It’s great. I’ve always wanted one of these.” I pause. “What is it?”

His laughter is quick.

“Baibure-ta.”

“Hello?”

“It’s a vibrator,
carissima
. The best vibrator in the world, made in Japan.”

Even though I am alone, I am blushing. Quite fiercely.

“But it doesn’t, um, uh, ah, look like a vibrator. It looks like . . .” I take the
shining metal object from its soft box. It is surprisingly heavy, and carefully, even
lovingly, shaped. “It looks like a torture device for elves.”

“Try it.”

“Marc!”

“Try it.”

“I have you for that.”

“Just try it . . . Once.”

Hmm. Shall I try it? I am giggling. But I am still blushing.

With my cell phone tucked under my chin, I turn the sex toy in my hands. The metal
is silvery in places, almost transparent; are there pearls in there, or shining steel
balls? I’ve never used a sex toy before—not properly—I know that Jessica has one and
I’ve admired it, and giggled with her, then forgotten about it. This doesn’t look
the same; it’s much smaller and heavier and very differently shaped. And much, much
pricier, no doubt. But I am beginning to see how it might work. You’d put that in
there . . . ?

“I’ve got my clothes on, Marc, or most of them.”

“Then take them off.”

“
Sì
, Celenza!”

“This isn’t the Mysteries, X.”

“I know. I just like calling you
Celenza
. I like it when you order me around. But only sexually. You ever do it in a restaurant
and I will punch you in the face, Marc Roscarrick.”

He laughs again. I love making him laugh.

“I’m putting the phone down, my lord. Hold on. ”

Quickly I peel down my jeans. I am already barefoot. Then I slip off my panties, get
back on the bed, tuck the phone under my chin. And hold the sex toy in my hands.

“Okay, Celenza. Fire away.”

“Press the button at the bottom, the black one.”

I locate the little button, which is sophisticated and small. A gentle red light glows
inside the vibrator, but much more noticeable is the fairly intense
vibrating
. This isn’t unexpected, but it is very different from the crude buzz of Jessica’s
sex toy.

“Oh my goodness. It’s actually alive.”

“Now use it.”

I hesitate. Am I actually going to do this?

“But, Marc, I’m not sure—”

“Press the silver tip to your
sweet
little clitoris.”

I stare at the toy. Then, quite slowly, I open my bare legs. My darling tattoo glows
dark, scarlet and violet on my white skin. The machine feels like a small animal,
something alive, buzzing deep and wildly. Yearning to do its job.

“Press it against your clitoris.”

I hesitate, then I answer.

“
Sì
, Celenza.”

Now I close my eyes and press the soft, curving metal against my clitoris. My wetness.

The sensation is too much.

“Oh God!”

“Don’t press too hard.”

“It’s good, it’s good, but it’s weird . . .”

“Try once more. Do it slowly, very slowly.”

I use the toy again. Against my clitoris. Much softer this time.

The pleasure surges through me, starting in my groin, but emanating and rippling.

“Now think of me,
carissima
.”

“I am already,” I say. And I am. My eyes are closed and I am thinking of Marc.

“What are you thinking?”

The machine buzzes.

“You,” I say. “You. Deep inside me.”

“What am I doing?”

My body is blushing. But not from shame.

“You are fucking me.”

“Am I fucking you hard?”

“Very hard. Your . . . your cock is inside me. I love your cock. But . . . ah . . .”

The machine is too much. Too good. I want this to last.

“Careful, wait . . . Talk to me. How am I fucking you, Alexandra?”

“From behind. You’re not naked.”

“No?”

“No, but I am. You’ve come to my apartment, Marc, you’ve ripped all the clothes off
me, you throw me on the bed, you open my legs, brutal—I have no choice, oh God—”

The machine buzzes. I see how it works. My eyes are closed very tight; my heart is
beating very fast, but I see how this works. This other part goes there, inside me.
Not far. But just enough.