The Story of X: An Erotic Tale (28 page)

The phone rings in distant California. It picks up.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Sweetheart!” There is a forced cheeriness in her voice. “Alexandra, darling, how
lovely! How are you? The boys have been here asking all about you, and your father
was just saying, just this morning, the—”

I stop her in midsentence.

“Mom, I’m coming home.”

She pauses. Politely, and lovingly. She knows there is more to this than I am saying,
but she is too kind to pry if I don’t want to tell.

“Okay, sweetheart, Okay. Have you . . . finished your thesis?”

“Yes, I’ve finished it. I want to come home now.”

I am forcing back the sobs.

“Okay, darling. Just let me know the flight number. We’ll pick you up at the airport!
Your father will be so happy; we’ve missed you so, so much.”

She chatters on for a while, then I say I have to book my flight and so I have to
go, which I do. The phone call finished, I go online and book my ticket. For tomorrow
afternoon. In less than twenty-four hours I am flying home and not coming back.

The next morning, I pack up all my stuff. This doesn’t take long because I am leaving
behind all the lovely clothes
he
bought me. When Jessica comes to my apartment to help me pack, I offer the clothes
to her, but she shakes her head and I totally understand why, and then I feel guilty
and somehow squalid and I say
sorry
.

“Don’t be an idiot, X,” she says. “Let me come with you to the airport, let me help.
Gonna miss you.”

Her face is etched with sadness. Everything is inscribed with sadness. We get in the
taxi and we duck and curve through the fuming Naples traffic. We pull up at the terminal
and I check in for my flight. Jess hugs me so tight at the check-in desk, it is like
she thinks she will never see me again, and then we wave good-bye. I walk through
passport control and show my boarding card.
This is it,
I think. Good-bye, Naples. Not
arrivederci,
Naples. Good-bye. Farewell.
Adieu
. It is a cheap, cheap song that evokes the most powerful emotion.

My flight leaves in two hours. I sit on an uncomfortable steel bench, sipping my macchiato
from a plastic cup, and stare into the nothingness of the future, reading a desultory
advertisement for Taurasi wine on a wall. I think about all the wines I have drunk.
All the food I have eaten. I think bitterly about this sometimes violent, sometimes
ugly place, with its beauty and wine and its history and its glory, its
dolce vita
. Amazing food and terrible cruelty.

And then I think about the little snails they sell. The babalucci. I never ate
them
. It was a little too much.

The babalucci.
The babalucci!

I stand up. Electrified.

What am I doing? Why am I sitting here? Why am I staring at the wall?

There is something I can do.

I run back through passport control, almost screaming with impatience, and the security
guards shrug and sigh, letting me back into the bustle of the airport proper; then
I dash to the check-in desk and demand that they unload my bags. I am not going to
America, I am
not
flying to California.

I am staying. Because if Marc is still alive, somewhere out there, maybe there
is
some way I can save him.

My fingers are trembling as I dial my cell phone. Gabbling the words, I ask for the
number of a restaurant in Plati, Calabria.

The languid woman at the end of the line gives me the number.

“Due, due, sei, cinque . . .”

I scribble this down on my boarding pass, then hang up and call the number. It is
lunchtime. He will be there, he
must
be there.

A wary voice answers. A young man’s voice.

“Sì?”

I stammer my words, as fast as I can. I tell him my name is X. Alexandra Beckmann.
The girlfriend of Marc Roscarrick.

Then I ask him if I can speak to Enzo Paselli.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-THREE

T
HE OTHER END
of the line goes much quieter. I can just about hear the noises of a restaurant: some
waiters talking, the clatter of plates, someone gathering cutlery.

Then a quavery, old man’s voice speaks to me from three hundred miles away.

“Hello, Alexandra.”

It is Enzo Paselli. I stutter a question, but he does not wait for me to get halfway
there. He silences me with a terse little laugh, and then he says, “I know why you
are calling me.”

“You
do
?”

“Yes.”

I pause, for several seconds. Because now I have to ask the terrible question.

“Enzo, please tell me. Is Marc Roscarrick alive?”

Enzo does not answer. He just breathes. So I stare helplessly through the plate glass
window of the airport at the gaggles of cab drivers. Two of them are arguing, arms
folded, heads tilted back, chins jerked upwards and away—like Mussolini in a newsreel.

Finally Enzo answers, “Yes, I believe he is alive.”

The relief floods me like adrenaline.

“How do you
know
?”

He gives no answer. I persist.

“Enzo, how do you know he is alive?”

“Miss Beckmann,
please
. It is, as I have told you, my job to know
everything
.” His voice dwindles, I hear him speaking Calabrian to someone in the background.
Ordering someone killed, or ordering more
ricotta calabrese
. Then he says, “What do you want me to do, Alexandra? You want me to save your boyfriend?”

“Yes! Yes I do. Please, Signor Paselli. I know you
run
the Mysteries. I worked it out—you, the Camorra, the ’Ndrangheta, you control everything:
the initiations, the kykeon, the rituals. That’s why you were at Rhoguda; it wasn’t
just the truce with Marc.”

I expect this speech to unsettle Enzo Paselli, to give me some purchase, but his reply
is as lucid and calm as ever.

“But you are aware, Alexandra, what Roscarrick did in the Fifth—he has broken the
code. The Camorra are going to kill him soon; he knows this, we know this. Because
this is the way of all things—it is written, and it is inevitable. I am sorry.”

“I will do the Fifth again! Let me do it! They can do whatever they want to me, Enzo,
they can—” I am trying to control my words, my emotions are riotous. “I will do whatever
the Camorra want. You can do this, you are the
capo di tutti capi
of the ’Ndrangheta—the Camorra are scared of you, as they are scared of no one else.”

That’s it. That is my last bid. My terminal hope. My final gambit. Another silence.
The taxi drivers are still arguing outside in the endless early September sun, the
summer that never ends. Enzo Paselli clears his throat, and calmly says, “It is too
late.”

“Please!”

“The sin is not really yours, Alexandra. You were, I am told, prepared to submit to
the Fifth Mystery. Roscarrick broke the code. It is too late.”

“But—”

He interrupts me.

“But what, Alexandra?”

“I will do anything! Anything anything anything.
Please
. . . help me . . . help me.”

He breathes in and out. I hear him speak in Italian to some minion, his tone is commanding.
Then he sighs and coughs and speaks to me.

“You would really do
anything
?”

“Yes!
Yes
.
Anything
.”

“But . . .” He hesitates. Painfully. And then he goes on.

“Okay, Alexandra.
Va bene, va bene
. . . There is perhaps
one
thing you can do, which
might
alter things. There is one thing that might change the situation, perhaps to your
advantage. But you will have to be very brave.”

“What is it?”

“The Sixth Mystery.
You must do the Sixth
.”

T
WENTY-NINE HOURS LATER
I am sitting in my apartment once again. My mom has been told I have delayed my return
by a few days, because of “things.” She has complained and inquired, with self-evident
anxiety, but I have bluntly ignored her questions. Jessica is equally perplexed—but
I have fobbed her off with fibs. She knows these are fibs but she is a good enough
friend to let me lie openly to her, and to ask nothing.

In return for my lies, she makes me a meal and gives me red wine. I love Jess. I love
my mother.

But how much do I love
Marc
?

This is
the
question, because Enzo Paselli’s words, his warning words about the Sixth, are now
on some repeating loop in my head.
The Sixth is like no other Mystery. The Sixth is not erotic, it is dangerous. The
Sixth can kill you. Very few initiates go on to do the Sixth, once they are informed
of the dangers. But only the Sixth can provide true katabasis. The true release
.

What does this all mean? Am I going to die? Am I prepared to risk death if it means
I can save Marc?

Yes.

I check my watch. It is 7
P.M
. I stand and walk out onto my balcony, the apartment I was meant to have vacated.
My landlord will be here tomorrow, to make sure I am gone, and tomorrow I
will
be gone. Enzo’s people are coming for me tonight.

I stare. Twilight falls rapidly over Naples, turning everything hazy and opaque, like
the
sfumato
of a Renaissance painting. Capri looks like the dream of an island on the mild and
milky blue horizon. It is a suitably stirring and wistful sight.

The doorbell buzzes. I go back into my apartment and press the intercom bell, then
three good-looking and anxious young men are in my room. They say almost nothing.
The youngest of them gazes at me with a tiny trace of pity—or something worse—and
he graciously leads me downstairs. I am dressed in simple jeans and T-shirt and a
black denim jacket; I am carrying an overnight bag. It feels totally ridiculous in
my hand. Toiletries. Toothbrush. Lipstick. What am I thinking? I am not going for
a weekend in some lakeside hotel.

I am going to do the Sixth and Final Mystery of Dionysus and Eleusis. I am proceeding
unto the
real
katabasis. Whatever happens in the next twenty-four hours will change me forever;
it may kill me. But it might save Marc.

Parked outside my block, on Via Santa Lucia, is a big dark blue van. I am assisted
into the back of the van, which is furnished with blankets and pillows. One of the
young men invites me to take a pill.

“What is it?”

He knows very little English. He answers, awkwardly.

“For sleep. It make sleep.”

I take the pill and the proffered bottle of mineral water. I swallow the tablet and
liquid together and recap the bottle.

“Now,” the young man says, lifting a black hood, which looks like a hangman’s hood.

They are going to put this hood on me, of course. I yield to the blackness as the
hood is slipped over my head. I am not uncomfortable; I can still breathe easily.
Indeed, the sheathing and enclosing blackness is somehow comforting.

The van pulls away; I can sense it moving. Here in the darkness underneath my hood,
I can also hear lots of traffic, evening Naples traffic, rush-hour horns and big trucks
braking, taxis and radios and rasping scooters, and then I hear faster traffic—seething
and roaring. I guess we are on a freeway? And then the noises fade slowly away as
the pill kicks in and I lean to the side on a big, soft pillow; I sleep and dream
of Marc trapped under ice, knocking at the ice, gesturing desperately to me.

I am on a frozen lake and Marc is in the deadly water, trapped, and I am hysterically
trying to save him. I ask a passing man, a Spanish man, to help me, but the Spanish
man is bleeding from the mouth. He grimaces and shrugs, pointing at his mouth, and
he walks away. I can do nothing. Therefore Marc is dying under the ice—dropping, twirling
into the sapphire deepness—falling away into starlit freezing space.

I wake up. How many hours have we been driving? Three? Five? Six? Ten? We could be
anywhere in Italy: from the Alps to Sicily. We could be in France or Switzerland.
The hood is still over my head. I lift myself into an upright position and I say,
through the cloth of the hood, “I am thirsty. I need the bathroom.”

I don’t know who I am talking to. I sense there are other people in the back of the
van with me, but I don’t know who.

A disembodied voice replies. “Ten minutes, you must wait just ten minutes.”

This is not the young man of before. It is an older voice; the English is more confident.

The man is also right. Ten minutes later the van stops and I hear the rear door being
opened. I am bundled out, still in my hooded darkness, and hurried across some road,
and then I sense that I am in a big, echoey building. But where?

The hands guide me down several flights of stairs; I stumble in my blinded state but
the hands hold me firm, steering me left and right and left again. I sense old corridors.
This is a stone building; it has the aroma of an ancient place—a castle? A monastery?
What is this?

Then I am pushed into a room and a door slams shut, and the hood is removed. Enzo
Paselli is standing in front of me, accompanied by a young woman.

He looks into my eyes and shakes his bald head, making his jowls droop and shiver.
His skin is so deeply lined. He seems incomparably old; like Italy herself. Then he
turns to the woman at his side, and says, in English, “Give her food and drink, then
get her ready.”

Enzo disappears before I can ask any questions.

Only the young woman remains; she is dressed in white. Of course. She hands me some
mineral water in a bottle and I drink. Her gentle smile is compassionate and patient
as she watches me quench my thirst. But maybe not
that
compassionate: when I ask her what is going to happen to me, she says nothing.

I gaze around.

Only now do I realize what a remarkable room this is: an enormous vaulted ballroom,
or medieval hall, entirely decorated with frescoes on every surface. Yet there are
no windows.

The frescoes look early Renaissance, or even late medieval: crowded with allegorical
and religious scenes in vivid and tumbling colors, Christ and his angels. Saints and
Madonnas. I am too confused to work it out. The floor is patterned with cold black-and-white
mosaics. There is one item of furniture in the room. Behind me. A big wooden bed with
red quilts of silk and cotton.

“
Sì,
” says the girl. She evidently speaks no English. With a brisk gesture she mutely
hands me some new clothes to wear—a very plain, sleeveless black cotton dress and
no underwear at all—and points at the distant wall, where I notice a small door.

I have no choice. I must obey; I must complete the Sixth. So I cross the enormous
vaulted room and I step into a large, clean, modern bathroom and change my clothes:
removing my jeans and sneakers and showering quickly. Before I put the dress on, I
stare at myself in the mirror of the bathroom: at my twenty-one-year-old face, less
round and innocent than it was. How very much older I feel than that young woman who
came to Italy in the spring. I maybe have a few gray hairs.

Marc Roscarrick, where are you? Are you alive?

Gathering my courage, I don the dress, brush my teeth, and step back into the grandness
of the great hall. The girl is still there, waiting in silence in the middle of this
absurdly huge space. She is dwarfed by the immensity. And she has a metal cup in her
hand.

“Kykeon?” I ask, walking toward her.

She half shrugs, half nods, and thrusts the cold metal cup into my hands.

I take the cup and drain it to the end. The taste is much more bitter than before,
much less pleasant. But I drink it and wonder. Now what? What are they going to do
to me? I know this intoxicant works very quickly. So I sit down on the bed and wait
as the girl departs, crossing to the only other door. Shutting it behind her.

Two or three hours pass, or so I imagine: I have no way of really telling the time.
No clock, no watch. No cell phone. Is it morning yet? How long were we driving? The
thoughts in my head meld with the dreams and the drug and the sadness and the whirling
images of the frescoes on the ceiling. The Holy Ghost descending. A dove and a saint.
The resurrection of Christ. Penitent sinners weeping.

I too shed one or two tears. Then I lie back on the bed and fall asleep. I dream of
a man coming into my room and having sex with me, forcing my legs apart, taking me.

But then I realize: a man really
is
fucking me. He is young and handsome. He is not naked but I am naked, and we are
on the big wooden bed covered with soft, rich quilts. He is on top of me and inside
me. I am being raped, and yet I am not: I agreed to all this. I agreed to the Sixth.
The man spends himself. I am naked and he has finished. He buttons himself. He turns
away and leaves the great room. His footsteps echo in the vastness of the vaulted
hall.

And that is it. The kykeon spirals in my head.

Did that really happen?

It really happened. I might be half delirious, but it happened. In desperation I look
around for the simple black dress but then the handmaiden returns, opening the door
and crossing to the bed. She gives me more kykeon.

Then she puts her fingers inside me. Checking me? For what? Then two girls follow
her, crossing the mosaic floor, and they make me lie down while they put lubricant
inside me. Then another pointlessly handsome young man comes in and fucks me silently.
And I just lie there, staring at the ceiling and weeping. I weep for it all. For the
sex. For the girl I was. But mostly I weep for Marc.

I don’t know what is happening or why. I have lost any sense of myself. The hours
turn into a day, or two days, or three. I am consistently drugged—again and again:
to the point of stupor. The boundaries between me and the world have gone. This is
it. I am dying. I see now why people
die
in the Sixth. Part of me wants to die. I have been kidnapped, and it doesn’t matter.
I eat fruit and bread and then I fall asleep. I am quite exhausted.