The Story of X: An Erotic Tale (8 page)

C
HAPTER
N
INE

I
T IS STILL
dark when I wake. Marc is asleep in my bed and his dark, masculine beauty appears
careless, even more unself-conscious. His sweet and kissable mouth is very slightly
open, the white teeth shine in the moonlight, the almost-black hair is curled and
mussed. But it is his hands that capture me; male but soft, lying still in the semidark.
Somehow perfect and innocent. But how innocent can he be? After last night?

My mouth is parched.

I grab a gown and slip to the kitchen and drink a cold glass of mineral water. I have
no idea what is happening to me; probably, surely, Jessica is right, and I am falling
in love with him.

For a few minutes I stand alone in the shadowy kitchen, staring through the window
at the moon, which stares at its reflection in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Then I slip back into bed, next to his breathing and silent warmth.

W
HEN
I
WAKE
again it is bright morning, and the Campanian sun already burns through the slats
of my rickety shutters, making barcodes of light on the bare walls. He is gone? My
soul panics. My heart stutters. No. Not like that, not like this, no—not a one-night
stand—not after that. Please.

Be still, X, be still.

He has left a crisp white note on the pillow. An elegant piece of notepaper, carefully
folded in two, with
X
written on the front in fountain pen. Where did he get the notepaper? And the pen?
How does he do this stuff? Hungrily, I grab the note and read.
You looked so happy to be asleep. I have gone to get breakfast. We will have sfogliata
at seven. R. x

My happiness rebounds. I grab my cell and check the time: six forty. He’ll be back
in twenty minutes. I shower quickly, then slip into a cool gray cotton dress—and just
as I am drying my hair, the doorbell buzzes in my apartment.

“
Buongiorno
,” he says over the frazzly intercom. “
La colazione è servita
.”

A moment later he is standing at the apartment door with a handsome smile and a handful
of pastries in a bag—and
due cappuccini
in a cardboard tray.

He is in a new dark-blue shirt, along with the jeans, and those beautiful bespoke
shoes. How? He keeps new shirts in the Mercedes? The slightly troubling questions
are soothed away by the excellent coffee. And then we eat the pastries; they look
a little like croissants—but they aren’t.

“Wow, delicious.”

“
Sfogliata frolla
. From Scaturchio in Spaccanapoli. They’ve been making them for a century.”

“Fantastic! What the hell is inside?”

“Soft ricotta, with candied fruit and spices. The only problem is not eating ten.”

He smiles. I smile. The sun smiles down. There is, remarkably, no awkwardness, no
very-first-breakfast-together shyness. We are sitting on plastic chairs on the balcony.
Soft white streamers of cloud gently scarf the peak of Vesuvius across the bay; Capri
is dreaming in the sea mist.

“So,” he says, setting his empty plate to his side. “
About last night
.”

My smile is now a little broken. I’m not sure I want to have this conversation. Last
night was
amazing
. But let it be what it was; let us not talk about it, not examine it, not analyze
it, ever. Just one perfect night. One perfect night of torrid, primal, and gloriously
heedless sex. Never examined, never questioned. Just itself.

“Last night was
perfetto
,” he says. “But it was, perhaps, too perfect.”

“Sorry?”

He tilts his handsome head, and asks, “You know the phrase . . .
coup de foudre
?”

My feelings flutter inside.

“Yes.
Coup de foudre
. A bolt of lightning—literally.”

He nods. I stare at him.

Is that what he thinks this is? Just a flash of madness, and sexual passion? Is that
what is happening to us? Something very fleeting? Which will be gone by next week?

He seems to sense my discomfort.

“X, I just want to know something before we go any further.”

“Know what?”

“Whether you are . . .” He looks away. “
Prepared
. Because, if you do want to take it further, there are certain things . . .” He lends
me his blue gaze once again. “There are certain things you should know.”

Things I should know? Enough.

I set down my plate.

“Tell me, Marc, what is this great
mystery
? Just tell me. I can cope. I’ve got a driver’s license. I’m all grown-up now.”

He smiles.

“I noticed.”

I make like I am going to throw the pastry bag in his face. He smiles apologetically
and raises a hand.

“Okay, okay. I am sorry. It is just . . . very difficult. I don’t want to frighten
you away, the very same moment I have met you. X, you are my
great good news
, like the poet said.” He pauses, then: “But there are aspects of my life that are
crucial to me, aspects that, if you want to continue seeing me, you deserve to know.
And if you cannot accept this part of my life—then it’s best we go no further. Indeed,
we cannot go any further. For your sake and for my sake.”

This sounds unnerving. This sounds pretty bad. I wait, silently, for him to elaborate.
But my heart is noisy inside: beating, anxious, perturbed.

He takes a last sip of coffee, then says, “Have you ever heard of the Mystery Religions?”

“No, not really.” I rummage through the memories of high school history. “Something
pre-Christian, maybe? Uh, I did
modern
history at school, mainly.”

“The Mystery Religions are ancient cultic faiths, with enigmatic initiation rituals.
They were woven into classical Mediterranean society, Greece and Rome. Some became
very popular, like the mystery of Mithras; some remained controversial and orgiastic,
like the mysteries of Dionysus.”

I stare at Marc. Dionysus. Orgies.
Where is this going?

“I don’t understand.”

Marc glances down at the quiet early-morning road. Then he says, “Do you have a couple
of hours to spare, right now?”

“Yes. I make my own timetable.”

“Do you want to go to Pompeii?” He checks his watch. “We can be there before they
open to the tourists; I know the site manager. And there is something in Pompeii that
can explain this—explain it better than any words of mine.”

It is impetuous and abrupt, but I am getting used to this—because this is how Marc
behaves. He is decisive and spontaneous. And I like this; no, I
love
this. The Deck-Shoe Mathematician never whisked me off to Ancient Pompeii. Then again,
the Deck-Shoe Mathematician never had anything to do with cults and orgies, either.

Twenty minutes later we are racing through the dreary outer suburbs of Naples. Gray
concrete apartment blocks blur past, scarred with graffiti—yet set amid rustling olive
groves and scented lemon orchards, stepping down to the glittering sea. They are still
lovely despite the squalor. Maybe the squalor is part of it. Love and violence, roses
and blight.

Marc talks quickly on his cell phone as we accelerate around little three-wheeled
trucks driven by wizened old men ferrying melons.

“Fabio!
Buongiorno
. . .”

I glean that he is talking to the “site manager” at Pompeii.

Soon after, we pull up at some big iron gates. A short, well-dressed man in white
jeans and very expensive Armani sunglasses is waiting there. He greets Marc with obsequiousness,
and maybe even a hint of fear; and then the man turns and theatrically kisses my hand.

After this little display, the site manager opens the gates and we step into Pompeii.

Pompeii!

Ever since I was a schoolgirl I’ve yearned to come here—to see the famously preserved
Roman city buried under the ashes of the Vesuvian explosion. And I am now seeing it
in a position of immense privilege: when it is free of
all other tourists
.

The scholar in me wants to take my time, to drink it all in; but Marc strides ahead,
leading the way past the ruins, past the Roman brothels and bathhouses, the shops
and
tabernas
.

We stop, at last. It is hot, and I am perspiring.

Marc gestures.

“The Villa of the Mysteries.”

We enter, leaving the site manager behind. I glimpse a courtyard, side rooms, and
bright floors with mosaics. Turning a corner, we step inside a darker room, elaborately
decorated with two-thousand-year-old frescoes, all of them bordered in a dusty and
archaic crimson.

A rope blocks a closer view of the frescoes—for keeping back the tourists, I suppose.
Marc simply steps over it, then takes my damp hand and helps me over, too.

I am now in the middle of the room. And I can see the poetic and wistful beauty of
these images: dancing girls, poignant satyrs, sad, sweet women; here is a delicate
aesthetic, bright and alive, rescued from oblivion.

“These frescoes show an initiation rite,” Marc explains. “The girl is being inducted
into the Mysteries.”

With rising curiosity I scan the large and ancient pictures.

On the left, an elegant young woman is being prepared for some elaborate ceremony.
Pipes are played. She is sensuously bathed. Something is drunk—is it wine, or a drug,
or what? Whatever it is, when she takes it, the woman dances. Dances herself into
a frenzy.

My mouth is dry again. I turn to the right. In the last panel the woman has been initiated,
and now a slave girl clothes her and coifs her hair. The woman stares at me as her
hair is dressed; her expression is pensive, even regretful—but sated.

Sated by what?

I step forward.

In the most important scene, the penultimate scene, paradoxically hidden in the far
and shadowy corner of the room, the woman has, finally, stripped herself almost naked.
She has her back to us. Her curving body is white and beautiful; she looks divine
and highly aroused, responding to some intensely erotic stimulation.

My heart beats. I take in what is happening. The woman is being whipped.

C
HAPTER
T
EN

“W
HAT DOES IT
mean? I don’t understand.”

I am backing away from the frescoes.

Marcus studies me in the half-light of the villa, as if he is looking through me,
or into me,
far into my past
.

“Clearly, X, it is an initiation.” His voice is so calm, almost unnaturally so. My
voice is much edgier.

“And this has something to do with . . .
what
?”

He says nothing.

“Marc, talk to me. Explain the frescoes. . . . Why have you brought me here?”

Near-silence prevails. I can hear birdsong outside, and very distant morning traffic.
The Villa of the Mysteries seems hushed, as if scandalized and desecrated by our conversation.
But how can you desecrate
this
? I stare again at the woman in the farthest, most profound fresco. Then I scan the
other images.

Who is the grinning god lying back as if drunk? What is the laureled woman carrying
on her silver tray?
And why the hell is the young woman being whipped? Why is she accepting this?

The frescoes pose too many questions. I don’t want to linger to work through them.
What’s more: very soon the tourists will be streaming in. And our presence here, alone,
feels trangressive. Just wrong.

“Marc, can we get out of here?”

“Of course.” He gestures at the sunny rectangle of an open doorway. “We can go through
here, then—”

I don’t wait for him to finish. Stepping urgently over this threshold, I emerge into
open air—but it isn’t the exterior, it is some kind of interior courtyard with a delicate,
green copper statue of Mercury on a pedestal, a lithe and beautiful naked boy, with
wings on his ankles. I do not remember the statue.

“But this leads nowhere!”

“X, wait. Just turn left.” Left? I hurry on, stumbling on uneven paving stones. My
thoughts are a tumult. Did young Roman brides walk this very same passage? Nude and
lissome beneath their tunics, in scarlet house sandals laced with gold, did they walk
into a darkened room and wait there to be flayed?

And what has this got to do with Marc, or me, or us?

I am lost. Corridors extend on either side. Behind me, Marcus places a gentle and
calming hand on my shoulder, guiding me, but I shrink away, and march down another
dark passage. I don’t want to feel his touch. The press of his hand reminds me, way
too distractingly, of last night.

Of him stripping me ruthlessly. Pressing my naked face into the pillow with a tender
but dominant strength, faintly tinged with anger.

And yet I loved it. I did. He shucked me, opened me, devoured me. And I loved it.
Yielding to his hunger for me, the way he ate me up like I was a freshly caught
ricci,
the sea urchin they serve in the better restaurants of Posillipo. If I think about
this—about the sublimity of the sex—I will surrender again. But right now my defenses
are up.

“Which way?”

My voice is strained; Marcus soothes, again: “Here, X—just go through here.”

I am actually running. Because I desperately need fresh air on my face, not this antique
dust. So I hurry along the dark corridor, past more frescoes, and more mosaics. And
there, yes—I can see yellow wildflowers dozing in the Campanian sun—the way out of
this maze. At last I run into the daylight and the summer breeze and I breathe a deep
sigh of relief.

I am actually panting. A tiny bit panicked.

The dapper little man with the white jeans has gone. The ancient Roman road stretches
into the distance, lined with Roman graves and Roman houses. It is so very quiet.
I gaze about me, reminded of something. But I don’t know what of.

Then I recall. It is eerily like Los Angeles. No people on the sunlit streets.
No one walking
. Sometimes Californian cities with their zero pedestrians remind me of cities hit
by plague or natural disaster. And here I am again. A city of the dead.

Marcus has followed me into the sun.

“I apologize, X. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t.” My voice is petulant. “Didn’t upset me. I mean, I mean . . . Oh God.”

“Sit?”

Yes. I really need to sit. Casting around, I see a white marble chunk of Roman pillar,
carved into a makeshift seat. I go over and sit. And stare down at my painted toenails.

The nails I painted with Jess. How I would like to be with Jessica now, in my apartment,
laughing and gossiping and drinking cheap Chianti from the
supermercati,
and talking about old times. Now it has all changed. My friendly jaunt to Naples
has gone dark and different. Better and worse. I have had magnificent sex, maybe life-changing
sex, but now it is all deep and mysterious, and troubling. And strange.

Inhaling the scents of sunlit herbs and flowers, flourishing in the wilds of the archaeological
site, I turn on my marble throne and say, “Okay, Marc. Tell me.”

“Ask whatever you want.”

“You’re telling me that people used to do . . . whatever is happening in those frescoes.”

“Yes. They used to do it.” He gazes at me, unblinking. “They still do.”

And now the puzzle unfurls.

And I do not like what it reveals. I do not like it at all.

“The Mysteries . . . still exist?”

He smiles. Soberly.

“Yes.”

“Where? How? When?”

“Across Italy, sometimes in France, and Britain, and so on. But mainly in Italy.”

“Who does it?”

He shakes his head.

“I cannot say.”

“You said ask
anything,
Marc.”

“You can ask anything of
me.
” He opens his arms, accepting and candid. “But I cannot intrude on the privacy of
others.”

Is this a fair point? I don’t know. I don’t know what to think at all. The looming
truth is too upsetting. I struggle for my next question.

“Okay, what kind of people?”

“They tend to be rich and cultured. Intelligent and educated.”

“Why?”

He shrugs, as if this question is beneath him, and maybe beneath
me
. I don’t care. I go on.

“When do the Mysteries happen?”

“The Mysteries are enacted every summer. They start in June and end in August or September.”

“So they start very soon?”

“Yes.”

I have to ask. I don’t want to ask. I cannot ask. But I have no choice. Marc is right:
this cannot go any further unless I know the truth, and if I know the truth I may
not want to see Marc again. My life is maybe changing, again; twice in twelve hours.

I slowly speak the words.

“You are part of it, aren’t you?”

He nods.

“And you want me to be part of it, too?”

A terrible pause.

“Yes.”

I snap my words.

“And what will happen to me, Marcus? Will I be like that Roman girl in the fresco?
Will I get
horsewhipped
?”

He does not reply. I am probably glad he does not reply.

To my left, a bee hovers above a bright scarlet flower, filling the silence with its
busy hum. Marc is walking away from me, staring at an old Roman shop. It has a marble
counter with circles carefully cut into the level stone.

“These places, these shops . . .” he begins. “Of all the sights in Pompeii, it’s
these little shops
that move me the most.” He gazes down at the counter, brushes the weary marble with
a pitying hand. “They would use these holes for bowls, from which they served hot
take-out food. These were cookshops. Fast-food outlets.”

He gestures, widely.

“Can’t you see her, X? Some flustered Roman housewife, serving at this counter, brushing
flies off the mutton, wiping her hands on her apron, wondering about her husband serving
in the legion. . . .” A pause. “It always moves me. The living history. The humanity
retrieved. The noble tragedy of ordinary life.”

Now he turns. And he walks back to me, and for a second there is a menace in his attitude,
and his expression. A man used to getting what he wants. Maybe prepared to use violence
if he doesn’t. Then he pauses, and speaks:

“Flagellation is an element of the Mysteries.”

I almost swear.

“You’re not even
denying
it, Marc? You admit it? They beat the women?”

“
Beat
is the wrong word. Totally the wrong word.”

“Oh. Oh, okay. Silly me. What word? Punch? Smash? What is the
right word
, Marc?”

“Flagellate. It is
consensual
. The whole point is that the initiate agrees to the initiation. He or she must volunteer
and submit; there is no coercion. Without the willingness of the initiates, the Mysteries
are vitiated, and purposeless. The great secret cannot be attained. The ultimate and
transformative mystery, the Fifth Mystery, the
katabasis,
remains unreached.”

“So people want to join. So it’s like a bunch of kinky freemasons.”

He shakes his head sadly—and offers me a handsome and forgiving smile. I suddenly
and abruptly want to hit him, and yet I want to kiss him, too. In fact, I maybe want
to kiss him even
more
, now that I ever-so-slightly hate him. I’d like to make him angry; I’d like to annoy
him a lot, so that he comes after me, like he did last night—chasing me up the stairs,
white teeth devouring and carnivorous.

Eating up the sea urchins they sell in Posillipo.

Damn him.
Damn him.

“Alexandra . . . ?”

Don’t look at him, X,
don’t even look at him
.

He sits on his own chunk of Roman pillar and leans forward, talking quietly.

“Alex, the Mysteries are maybe three thousand years old. They stretch back to Ancient
Greece, to the groves and myrtles of Attica. It’s not a joke; it is not a trivial
cult of fools in silly costumes.” His voice carries into me, his fine English accent
reaching into me; can you be aroused by a voice? How can that be? What do I have to
do? Block my ears?

For now I have to listen.

“The
Mysteries
embody sexual and emotional and spiritual truths that take you
closer to the soul
. I was myself initiated as a very young man; what I have learned is now part of me,
woven into me. The Mysteries have taken me to places of pleasure and revelation that
I cannot describe, but I yearn to share. And I yearn to share the intensity with
you,
X.”

“Which is why you want to see me stripped and beaten?”

“I want to see you experience the joys and the truths that I have experienced. So
we have a chance to be . . . truly together.”

“And being whipped, that’s joyful?”

He shakes his head.

“Okay.” He sighs. “Okay . . . I am sorry.” He runs fingers through his black hair.
“Possibly . . . I should have told you this some other time, perhaps I got carried
away.”

I stand up.

“Y’know,
Lord Roscarrick,
I’m not sure there’s ever a right time to be told,
Oh, by the way, I’m really into hitting women while pretending to be a Roman senator
—”

“X, wait.”

“But I’m glad you told me, now I can get the train back to Santa Lucia.”

“X!”

His voice is stern. I feel, for a second, like a scolded child. This makes me even
angrier. But I am duly quiet, as he speaks.

“X, the
reason
I have shown you this is because, once a man is completely initiated into the Fifth
Mystery, he is not allowed to have a serious . . .
relationship
. . . with anyone who is not initiated. Those are the rules.”

“What? What rules?”

“Ancient rules, serious rules.” He shrugs. “Rules that are quite powerfully enforced.”

“So you’re saying you can’t be with me . . . unless I agree to do this? Do all these
rituals
?”

“Yes. That is, I fear,
exactly
what I am saying. I shouldn’t really have spent the night with you, but—as I have
said—you unman me, X. I am unable to resist. But now I have to resist, unless you
agree to this. For the safety of us both.”

I snort with contempt.

“So it’s a kind of threat?”

“No! Nothing will happen to you if you disagree, of course not. But we can never meet
again. Because the desire, at least on my side”—his eyes are glittering and sad—“is
simply too much. But the Mysteries are not some horror, Alex; they are divine, they
are a gift. You will understand, I promise, if you agree. But it is and must be your
choice, and yours alone.”

Something in me wants to give him one last chance. He looks so sad and cool and perfect
sitting here in the warming sun, showing not a lick of sweat. Just one lock of stray
dark hair has fallen forward over his tragically attractive blue eyes, like the angel
of male beauty came down and said,
Ahhh, he is too perfect, let this lock fall
. Which of course makes him even more
perfetto
. The firm and faintly unshaven jawline, the glimpse of hard and suntanned chest,
the definition of his cheekbones, slanting and aggressive and beautiful.

Enough. To
hell
with his perfection. He may be handsome but I am not going to be whipped for anyone.

“Ciao!”

I stand up and start walking, very fast—despite the rising heat. I can hear his voice
behind me, calling.

“X.
Per favore, ricordati di me
.”

But I ignore him and stride on. Ahead of me I can see the first tourists at the very
end of the Roman road: tourists who are all wearing exactly the same baseball caps
and photographing exactly the same chunk of Roman theater.

Pompeii. Ugh. I feel like spitting. I was so excited when I got here. Now it is all
wrong. All ruins.

Soon I am deep in the throngs of tourists, then I am exiting through the busy turnstiles
as everyone comes pouring in the other way, and I know I have made the right decision.