The Story of X: An Erotic Tale (26 page)

Françoise is lying on a beautifully patterned Ottoman rug. She closes her eyes and
I can see the confusion and tension in her expression, but she obediently lifts up
her dress, exposing her thighs and her sex, and the girls—the black-dressed handmaidens—step
forward. They kneel before Françoise and begin to stimulate her with those warm crystal
dildos. I can see that Françoise is responding, even as she resists. Her eyes are
tightly closed. Standing on the stone terrace above her is Daniel. I cannot decipher
his expression.

The music attains a somber intensity. This is the most religious of the Mysteries
so far. I can hear the Latin and the Greek swirling in the smoky, incensed air.

Dionysian, Bakkheia, Skiereia, Apaturia.

I hold Marc’s hand, just for support. I feel like I am about to faint. To fall from
this stone terrace. This is too much.

Astydromia, Theoinia, Lênaia, Dionysian.

The drumming is intense. Some kind of lyre or stringed instrument is rousing itself
to a climax. The voices join together. The air in the vaulted chamber is thick with
incense and smoke from the burning torches. Now a man steps forward. He is maybe thirty.
Tall. Stubbled. And his eyes are masked.
Camorrista
?

The man unzips himself. He is erect. One of the handmaidens slips a condom on his
erection and he approaches Françoise, and then he kneels and enters her. He couples
with her. That is the only word.
Couples
. If the Mysteries have been sexual in the past, even sublime in their eroticism—and
they have—then this is utterly different. Serious, frightening, brutal, but bloodily
symbolic. The woman is being shared with the god. The partner must submit. All must
submit. I am quite terrified.

The masked man is finished. He extracts himself, and the handmaidens dart forward
to lift Françoise to her feet. But I can see the bewilderment in her expression, she
is turning her head away, her hands are clenched into fists, she is unnerved. And
this is just the first ritual of katabasis?

Françoise is flushed and trembling. Daniel steps down from the stone terracing and
puts a comforting arm around her, leading her away into the shadows.

“You.”

The man with the silver bell is pointing at me.

I am not going to do this. Yet I
have
to do this to be with Marc. I cannot do this. I gaze Marc’s way and he looks down
and shakes his head, staring at his shoes, and then he gazes briefly into my eyes
and says, “You can still stop. This is the last moment when you can stop.”

Then he looks away again.

“I cannot stop,” I reply. “I cannot lose you. I love you.”

Dazed, bewildered, and determined, I obey the master of the Mysteries. I step down
the stone stairs, and walk the length of the vaulted chamber. The bell rings. I am
asked if I agree to submit. I say, “Yes, I agree.”

“Kneel,” the man says, and I kneel before the wall painting. I stare at the ancient
soldier slaughtering the ancient bull. The ejaculation of ancient red blood is now
faded to a sad and dusty magenta. The bell rings.

“Turn around, and lie down.”

I clench my fists. Every shred of my soul is screaming:
No, no. No. Don’t obey. Don’t do this. Run away. This is WRONG
.

But the Mysteries have their grip on me so I turn and lie back. The bell rings.

“Lift up your dress.”

I am lying down. I lift up my dress. I am wearing no panties, of course. The handmaidens
are gathered at my knees, arousing me. As best they can. I look up into the smoke
and the darkness seeking Marc, but he is turned away.
His face is turned away
.

A different, younger man approaches from the flame-shadowed darkness. He is about
twenty. He has a small, disfiguring scar on his chin, but that is all I can see of
him. He is also masked.

This young man is erect. He is going to enter me. I close my eyes and wait to be taken.
That is the only word: taken, enslaved, abused. This is against my will, even as I
submit.

“Cornuti!”

I open my eyes.

Marc.

It’s Marc
.

What?

Marc is standing on the floor of the vault and he is flourishing a knife—from where?—a
small, sparkling, nasty steel knife. He grabs the scarred man by the neck—and presses
the blade to the man’s pulsing throat.

“
Estopa!
” The leader of the ritual, with the silver bell, is protesting in garrulous Italian.
No! You cannot stop the Mysteries. You have to share the woman now. You know the code
and you know the price of disobeying.

“Fuck you,” says Marc, in plain English. Then he yells at me, “X, get up! Come here.”

I jump to my feet and force down my dress to cover myself and run to his side. Marc
still has the man by the throat; he has the scarred young man at his mercy and the
kid looks terrified. As if he genuinely believes Marc will simply kill him in cold
blood, the way he killed the pig butcher in Plati.

The leader of the rite is still protesting in Italian. But he is speaking very slowly
and threateningly—and I can understand every word.

“Roscarrick. The
capos
will come after you. This is what happens in the Fifth Mystery. Just because you
have brought your own woman makes no difference. If you do this, you will be committing
suicide.”

“So be it,” says Marc. Then he lets the man go, and the scarred youth staggers to
the side, clutching his unbleeding throat.

Then Marc grabs me by the hand and says, “Run.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-ONE

W
E RUN.
M
ARC
pulls me out of the Mithraic chambers, out into the narrow corridors, and this time
we go left, taking a different route. For a second I look behind. There is shouting
behind us, figures framed by the blue, sad lights—epitomized by the dwindling, haunting,
chanting music.

“This way!”

The corridor zigzags, then it narrows to a slenderness so constricting I can feel
the rocks pressing on my ribs, stifling and frightening—but we squeeze through and
the brick and rock corridor widens once more. And now we sprint, and the tunnel opens
out into another of those enormous Greek cisterns.

Marc turns and flashes his phone-light at the rocky wall. A steel ladder is screwed
into stone.

“Probably installed during the war—these were used as bomb shelters. That means the
ladder goes somewhere, it
has
to lead to the surface.”

“We go up that ladder?”

“Yes.”

I look up at the rusting metal ladder. I am in a minidress and heels.

“Give me the shoes,” Marc says.

Slipping off the shoes, I hand them to him and he hurls them into the bottom of the
cistern. Then we run to the bottom of the ladder and he goes first, climbing adroitly,
and I follow, grabbing at the rungs—and slowly we ascend. The shards of black rust
from the metal rungs are painful on my bare feet; the metal ladder is decaying and
it creaks in eerie complaint as we climb. I simply daren’t look down—twenty meters,
thirty meters, fifty. If the ladder gives way, we will fall and we will die, smashed
to pieces on the ancient Greek paving stones.

“Here.”

Marc reaches down a hand to help.

I wave him away.

“I’m okay!”

Marc turns and climbs. A few painful minutes later he reaches the top, where there
is a kind of ledge. He sets down the phone with its flashlight and reaches for me
in the dark. This time I accept his help, taking his hand, and he hauls me up onto
the ledge. I am panting, quite exhausted.

Picking up his cell phone Marc urgently redirects the flashlight beam. Another tunnel
extends into the gloom, leading from the cistern into farther tunnels—but there are
prickles of light as well. We are much nearer the surface, nearer the streets of the
city above. The piercing lights must be from drains or manholes.

I hear more noises, echoing below.

“Is that them?”

“Hurry,
carissima
.”

Marc walks a few meters and points up. Light shines through holes in a wooden trapdoor.
Steps cut into the rock lead to the door; Marc climbs and thrusts his shoulder at
it. The trapdoor does not budge. The noises below are louder. Marc tries again.

“Quick.”

There are voices echoing below, angry Italian voices. Marc crouches and breathes deep.
He shunts again and the trapdoor slams open. Bright light dazzles us, as he hoists
himself up.

“Marc!”

His hand reaches down and, with a mighty effort, pulls me up into the light. I gaze
around as Marc briskly closes the trapdoor. He shifts a crate of wine on top of it,
then another, and another.

A crate of wine?

We are in the back of a shop. A
salumeria,
a delicatessen in Old Napoli. Of course. Why not? So many of these tunnels and vaults
surface in the most unlikely places: under washing machines in the
bassi,
in laundries and bakeries. So we are in a store and the store is open and busy with
chattering people doing their evening shop and no one has heard us emerging. We can
see people at the counter; we are hidden by shelves and surrounded by hanging salamis,
hams, and wheels of cheese.

“Let’s just walk out,” Marc says.

We are grimy and dusty; he is in a tux covered with dirt and cobwebs. I am ragged
and barefoot, my minidress is torn and I am obviously bleeding—where my ankle scraped
the cutting rustiness of the ladder—but we have no choice. We just have to walk out,
like ordinary shoppers browsing
salsiccia
.

An old lady is buying a paper cone of chopped-up bits of ox tripe; she turns and looks
at us, but she doesn’t even blink—the old woman simply tuts and shrugs, like she sees
this sort of thing all the time, and then she goes back to haggling over the price
of her tripe.

We have made it outside. Marc barks into his phone.

“Giuseppe!”

Now we are standing in a narrow street near the Duomo, I think; I am still barefoot.
As Marc makes his call, frantically directing his manservant, we run left and right
until we reach a busier street corner. And then we wait, hearts pounding, wordless
and anxious. One and a half minutes later, Giuseppe roars into view. We jump in the
car and it races away, away from Old Napoli, out into the broader boulevards. We jerk
a vicious right, then another, straight into the Chiaia, and at last we are at the
rear door of The Palazzo Roscarrick.

Marc pulls me from the car. He carries me barefoot indoors, shouting at his servants.

Lock the doors. Lock all the doors. Lock and bar the windows.

Lockdown.

We go up to his bedroom and I run into the bathroom to wash the blood from my bleeding
ankles and the black rust from my feet. I feel like crying, but I don’t. I brace myself,
taking deep breaths. I rinse the dirt from my hands and face. Then I look in the closet
for my clothes, and change into jeans, a cotton shirt, and sneakers. When I step back
into the bedroom, Marc is buttoning the cuff of a blue shirt and speaking into his
cell at the same time, the phone cradled under his neck: “
Sì, sì
, Giuseppe.
Sì!
”

His words are frantic.

I sit on the bed. Half listening to his rapid-fire Neapolitan, half distracted by
the bewildering sequence of the night.

Marc finishes the call. And sits on the bed next to me.

“You need to get out of here.”

“Why?”

“Because the Camorra will be after me now.”

“The Camorra?”

He shakes his head.

“They have been looking for an excuse to kill me. Now they will have everyone on their
side so they can kill me with impunity.”

“Why?”

“Because I did the
worst
possible thing, X, the one thing you must never do. I broke the code of the Mysteries.
I broke my vows as an initiate and interfered with the sacred ritual, the Fifth ritual.
I stopped them completing the initiation.”

“I don’t understand.”

He runs his fingers through his hair. And sighs. And rubs his face. Tired yet wired.
And gazing at me.

“X, once you begin a ritual of the Mystery, a level of the initiation, then you have
to complete it, otherwise you could be . . . a mere voyeur, someone seeking a cheap
thrill, or worse, someone using the Mysteries to spy on others—you know there are
many famous people who attend—commitment and secrecy are essential.”

I nod. “Yes, I’ve seen them: politicians, billionaires. I saw them in Venice . . .”

The words dry in my mouth, and the logic takes over.

Politicians . . . Billionaires.

Enzo Paselli.

Of course.
Of course!
It is all revealing itself to me, all making sense. It is like the trapdoor has been
opened to the tunnels below: and thus the secret labyrinth is exposed.

I have solved the Mystery of the Mysteries.

“Marc,” I say, “the mafias run the Mysteries, don’t they?”

“Yes,” he answers. “I think so.”

“The ’Ndrangheta. And the Camorra. They organize them and pay for the Mysteries. Yes?”

“Very probably.”

He looks a little defeated. But I am not. The logic of it all is dazzling. I stand
up and I pace Marc’s silent and elegant bedroom. Working it through, talking aloud.

“I get it, Marc.
The Mysteries never died out—they became the mafias.
”

“Sorry?” For once Marc seems uncertain. He says again: “Sorry? What?”

“Don’t you see, this is where the Mafia and the Camorra and the ’Ndrangheta
come from
!” I go across to him and hold his handsome face in my hands and kiss him on the mouth,
then I turn back and pace the room—left and right, left and right, walking, thinking,
unraveling and talking.

“Think about it, all that Spanish stuff is nonsense. The secret
criminal societies
of southern Italy descend from the secret
religious cults
of southern Italy. It has to be! They have the same codes of silence, the same oaths
and vows of loyalty, the same emphasis—for the men—on blood and honor and violence.
The same code of honor for men who want to stray once they are inducted.”

“But . . . I don’t see why . . . I don’t get it.”

“It’s obvious. We know the Mysteries survived, the same way Ancient Greek survived
in Calabria, the same way the recipe of the kykeon was handed down in Greece for twenty
centuries, but this is
how
they survived!”

I stare at the darkness of the window. Still talking. “The historical evolution is
obvious. The cults of the Mystery Religions, in their homeland of southern Italy,
were driven into the shadows by the Christian faith in the fourth century
A
.
D
.
But they weren’t entirely eradicated
.” My eyes are wide. “They endured, became even more occult, even more secret, a glorious
and heathen free-masonry of wild, violent, and compelling sexual ritual, laced with
hypnotic drugs.” I am staring at the Andreas Gursky photos, I am bursting with mental
energy. “And over time, these secretive sects, meeting in their secret places, became
criminal and rebellious and organized. It would be a natural progression; they were
already antagonistic to the Church, and the authorities, they needed money to finance
the rituals, so they turned to crime, to robbery, extortion, kidnapping.”

“It’s a splendid theory, X,” Marc says, shaking his head. “You’re probably right.”
He stands and walks closer to me. “But it doesn’t matter this minute. What matters
this evening is what the Camorra and the ’Ndrangheta do
now
.”

“I know what they do now!” I am almost shouting. “They get the rich and famous hooked
on their sexy parties, they invite them to join, they initiate the powerful and the
privileged—I’ve seen them, Marc, the ex-presidents, the great industrialists, the
celebrities. And thus the Camorra and the ’Ndrangheta gain influence and leverage
over the elite; that is why the mafias are
ineradicable,
they are protected at the very top by the people addicted to the Mystery rites.”

“But we are
not
protected, X.” Marc is standing close, and he is holding me by the shoulders, very,
very hard. So hard it hurts. “Do you understand what I am saying?
They are going to kill me
. I have broken the code. They needed an excuse. Now they have it, and there is nothing
I can do.”

I gaze at him. Abruptly my intellectual euphoria dispels, it disappears to nothing—and
I am left here in this bedroom with the man I love, who is telling me he is going
to die.

“But we can run away?”

“Where?” He sighs, and sneers at the idea. “The Camorra will chase me down. You must
have heard of Roberto Saviano?”

“The journalist who wrote
Gomorrah
?”

“Which was all about the Camorra.
And he is still in hiding now,
ten years later; the Camorra are chasing him across Europe. I don’t want to be like
that, X, moving from safe house to safe house, little apartments in Milan, in Hamburg,
in Madrid—running away all my life. Running from everything I love.” He looks at me,
fiercely, and says, “I’d rather die. They will kill me. That is the end of it.”

The room is silent. Marc walks a few paces, then stands there, in the middle of the
bedroom, doing up his last cuff button.

I protest. “Marc. Marc. We have to run, or do something, we must!”

“There is nothing to do.”

“You’re just gonna let them kill us?”

“Not you. Me.”

“Marc!”

He sighs. Profoundly.

“I had to stop the ritual. I couldn’t let them do that to you. You didn’t want that—you
didn’t want that, in the vault, did you? What was about to happen?”

“But I was prepared to do it. I agreed. And I don’t want you to die for me!”

He shakes his handsome head again, and gives me that sad, sad, blue-eyed smile. He
tucks his shirt into his jeans, leans, and does up his shoe laces. There is something
awful and deliberate in the casual way he is doing all this. A man distractedly preparing
for his own execution.

Then he comes close to me and takes me in his arms and he kisses me deeply on the
lips and says, for the first time, “X, the truth is, I also couldn’t bear to share
you. I couldn’t watch that happening, watch you with another man. I have gone too
deep. Too deep with
you
.” He kisses me again. “
I love you,
X. I love you more than I have ever loved any woman in my time on this earth. So
if you die, my life is worthless. But if I die and you
survive
, I can die in some peace—knowing that you live. Which is why you have to go.”

“No!”

“Go. You will never see me again.”

“Marc!”

I am screaming. But someone is holding me. It is Giuseppe and another manservant,
and someone else. Three men. They are lifting me. And I am screaming out, screaming
at the man I love, as they pull me—as they carry me, fighting, struggling.

“X, they will help you get away. So you will be safe.” He sighs, and goes on. “X.
Per favore, ricordate di mi
.”

And his eyes are wet even as his expression is deathly calm. This is the last time
I will ever see him. I know it. This is it. The men are carrying me out of the room.

“No, no no no—Marc!”

But the bedroom door is closed, and he is gone. And all I can hear are his final words.
Remember me
.