The Story of X: An Erotic Tale Read online

  I take a seat at one of the plastic tables, ignoring the expressions of everyone else: the guy tapping on the side of the nose to signify the odor of something suspicious, the guy pulling down his eyelid, telling everyone, keep your eyes wide open.

  A sad-looking waiter comes over to my table. His reluctance is obvious, his body language is overt. He doesn’t want to speak to me; he wants me to go away. But I have stopped blushing; I am already too far in.

  “Signorina . . . ?”

  “Espresso, per favore.”

  His eyes brighten, he looks intensely relieved at this—the lady just wants a quick coffee, then she will be gone.

  But I add, in Italian: “I am looking for Enzo Paselli.”

  Sto cercando Enzo Paselli.

  The waiter’s face goes rigid. I have surely violated some terrible code merely by mentioning the name.

  He does not reply. Wordless and pale, he turns and disappears into the cafe. Everyone stares at me from the other tables. Two youngish mothers, with babes in arms, are openly grimacing. A trio of middle-aged men, in neat blazers and well-pressed pants, sharing a nice-looking bottle of Nero d’Avola, stare in amazement at this stupid blond American woman.

  The waiter returns.

  “Espresso,” is all he says, as rudely as possible, dropping the tiny white cup and saucer on the unwiped table. He so obviously yearns for me to drink. Just go, signorina, just quit.

  I look up at him and repeat. “Sto cercando Enzo Paselli.”

  The waiter stands back and looks around the tables, seeking moral support, some assistance with this crazy American woman who wants to get herself shot.

  My heartbeat is accelerated and constant; I have my fears, but I am still determined. The rigmarole is repeated three times in an hour. Each time the waiter comes out, I order coffee, or water, and I ask to see Enzo Paselli; each time he looks at me with his pale, sad face and says nothing, then he brings me the coffee. I can hear the other cafe-goers whispering. One of the middle-aged men rises and leaves his friends. Gone to get a gun? To get some thugs?

  A car backfires somewhere and I think for a moment, almost with relief, that this is it. Someone is shooting someone. I want to cry. I want to get away from horrible Plati. But I need the truth about Marc. So I stand and I go right up to the waiter, who is virtually shrinking from me, and I say: “Sto cercando Enzo Paselli!”

  This time he responds with another classic Italian gesture: hands pressed prayerfully together, then shaken up and down—the gesture that says, please, please, please, do not be unreasonable.

  “Signorina, per favore, non si capisce—”

  “Sto cercando Enzo Paselli!”

  I am practically shouting. I am quite crazy. They are entirely justified in having me taken to the police, but of course no police ever come to Plati.

  And then I feel a hand on my arm. A short young man is touching my elbow. He says, in thick Calabrian, “Venga con me.”

  Come with me.

  He could be taking me to my car, he could be taking me to be killed. He has a large tattoo on his neck. His motorcycle boot heels are stacked. He leads me around a littered corner and I immediately see another cafe, more refined, with proper awnings, and tablecloths on proper tables.

  And there is Enzo Paselli. Eating his late Sunday lunch, alone. And looking at me. He has half a bottle of wine. He is eating snails. Babalucci, attached to green fronds.

  He actually stands as I approach the table. He is in pale blue slacks and a wide-collared shirt, which shows his withered old neck. His chest hair is quite silver. His face is very lined; he is totally bald. Yet still he exudes menace, even a kind of lethal virility. A killer with false teeth.

  He extends a liver-spotted hand. I shake it. His shake is weak. Insubstantial, barely there. He must get someone else to do the killing.

  Then he sits down and eats a tiny snail. The snail drool runs down his chin and it shines in the sun as he speaks. He talks in perfect American-accented English.

  “I understand you are looking for me.”

  “Yes.”

  He smiles. The snail drool still glistens.

  “You know this is a very stupid thing to do.”

  “Yes.”

  “So why?” He eats a second snail: squidging it between his false teeth. “Why come to Plati?”

  A silence. What do I say? Enzo interrupts my thoughts.

  “You are aware, young lady, that they kidnap people here. There are tunnels under every house. Bodies are interred in the forests all around. Many, many bodies.”

  “I am the girlfriend of Marc Roscarrick and I want to know the truth.”

  A second silence, but much briefer. He nods my way.

  “So you are Alexandra Beckmann. I thought as much.”

  I stare at him, astonished. He does not respond, just picks up a napkin as if he is going to wipe the disgusting slime from his chin, but instead he uses it to flap away a fly. Then he leans forward, and takes a slurp of wine—Greco di Bianco. The fly buzzes. I ask, stuttering, “How do you know who I am?”

  He smiles and swallows the wine.

  “It is my job to know everything. Otherwise . . .” He eats another snail, popping it in his mouth. “Otherwise I would be one of the bodies in the forests above Gioia Tauro.”

  A long pause ensues as he munches and drinks and stares at me with his watery eyes, with the snail track on his chin. I wonder if he leaves this drool there deliberately, to freak me out, to repulse me; a piece of mafia theater. If so, it works—I am at the edge of my ability to keep control, to not run away.

  This is it. I speak.

  “Please. Can you tell me the truth about Marc Roscarrick? I know you know him. I saw you in Rhoguda Castle last night. I want to know the truth about him and what happened in Plati.”

  Enzo Paselli thoughtfully munches his snails, detaching them carefully from slimy green fronds, then skewering them with a tiny fork and slipping them in his wet old mouth. He swallows, and answers.

  “You are a brave woman, Miss Beckmann, coming to Plati on the back road from Rhoguda. Coming to the most dangerous town in Italy. You know this is also the richest town in Italy? But the money is buried, like the rotting bodies.” He sits back. “So you are brave, very brave. And I admire bravery. It is the greatest human virtue, the virtue of Jesus. Therefore”—he smiles—“I will tell you the truth about Marc Roscarrick.”

  He lifts his wineglass and tilts it slightly, admiring the straw-gold color of the liquid. Then he goes on. “Roscarrick is a murderer. It is true. He killed a man, here in Plati, in the middle of the day. Next to that cafe where you had your several espressos.”

  The sun is hot and cold on my neck. I can feel a faintness. It is over. It is done. My love, my lord, my loneliness. All over.

  Enzo Paselli is smiling. His false teeth are stained with snail juice. It is a grotesque comedy, and I am not laughing, not laughing at all.

  “But he had a reason. You should know the context.”

  “What?” I try to keep control. “Tell me the context, please.”

  “Lord Roscarrick went into business here, importing through Reggio—”

  “Yes. I know this.”

  Enzo Paselli nods at me, and eats one of his last little snails. Then he goes on. “He angered many people here in Plati. He annoyed several rather important people. He did not put any sugar in our coffees. You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Certain of these people wanted him gone, they wanted Roscarrick gone. They gave the job to Salvatore Palmi. You will not have heard of him. But everyone in Calabria has heard of him, or at least of his nickname, Norcino.” A pause. “The pig butcher.”

  Enzo drinks a large gulp of wine, breathes out, and goes on. “Norcino couldn’t get to Roscarrick him
self, he was too well guarded, but he could get at Roscarrick’s employees, Roscarrick’s workmen. So Norcino went to work, he butchered several of Roscarrick’s workers. Chopped them up. He slaughtered three in one week. Literally sliced them to pieces, alive. He had special knives.”

  I stare at the old man; the snail drool has dried to a powder on his chin. The afternoon has stopped. We are totally alone, out here in front of the restaurant, though I can see dark, worried faces inside—staring out at us.

  Enzo pushes away his plate and concludes his story.

  “Salvatore Palmi was, in truth, a disgusting psychotic. He was loathed, he was feared; even in Plati he was regarded as . . . beyond the pale. But the police were too scared to do anything. Salvatore was working for the clans, the capos. Untouchable and unstoppable. But Norcino liked his work a little too much; he just loved making his human prosciutto. The next week Salvatore killed Roscarrick’s foreman—he killed him at home, in front of his own children, chopped off his head—and then he killed the wife, immediately after. Simply because he liked killing.”

  A nausea rises in me. Enzo shakes his old hairless head.

  “Everyone was paralyzed with fear. Salvatore was like a family dog, a Rottweiler, that has begun to scare the family. Too big to control. He would sit at that cafe, where you had your espressos, on a Sunday morning, with his acolytes. Salvatore the pig butcher never dreamed that anyone would have the balls to just drive into Plati.”

  I stare at Enzo. He nods.

  “But Marc Roscarrick had the balls. The next Sunday, after the butcher had sliced up that family, your boyfriend just drove into Plati, into that square, and he walked up to Salvatore with a gun in his hand. Salvatore was drinking prosecco. Unprepared, at ease, and totally shocked. Roscarrick lifted Salvatore to his feet, dragged him into the center of the square, made him kneel, and shot the pig butcher in the head. Then Roscarrick got into his car and drove away.”

  A sip of wine, a wise little smile.

  “It was the bravest thing I have ever seen, and, as I say, I admire bravery. It was also very clever: it was so impressive it became legend, it gave Roscarrick a reputation, a reputation he still has. Many people began to believe he had powers, influence—he must be high up in the Camorra, how else would you find the balls to do that?”

  “So he isn’t in the Camorra?”

  Enzo ignores me.

  “Normally the people in Plati would have taken revenge for such an affront, but this time we decided to be more politic. After all, he had got rid of our problem, the dog that grew too big.” Enzo stiffens, as if he is about to rise. “We met with your Lord Roscarrick. We called a truce. We told him to get out of Calabria, and we agreed the ’Ndrangheta would, for once, take no revenge. And there it is. And that is why I met with your boyfriend last night, and again this morning. To ensure the truce remains.” Enzo smiles his stained and withered smile. “I like Roscarrick, but he perplexes me. I still do not know if he is saint or sinner. Where did he get his money from, to start that business? His family were impoverished. Then his rich young wife died, so suddenly. That was an evil fortune.”

  He waves the napkin at the fly once more. “And now, Alexandra Beckmann, we must say good-bye. If you ever come to Plati again you will find me at this restaurant; they do excellent osso bucco in the evening. But for now you must go; I cannot keep the dogs in the kennel all day. Go before you are taken to the forests above Gioia Tauro. Go.”

  Half stumbling, half dreaming, I rise and walk to the corner, and cross the grubby piazza, and climb into my car. This time I am taking the main road, around the coast of Calabria. I want safety, I want to get out. Please get me out of here. Please please please please God.

  The car roars out, and down. My mind whirls: I am escaping. I am leaving Plati. The one good road descends the valley. I race through the olive groves, going too far, racing like my thoughts, and then I turn a corner and I see a car coming toward me. Two men. Two faces. The road is single tracked. We have to stop. I look at the men in the car. One of them gets out. I stop.

  It is Marc. Standing there, his face taut and sad and desperate.

  I climb out of my car, my knees are shaking. He looks at me with those sad, pale, beautiful eyes. Six yards away.

  “X,” he says. “X . . . I thought . . .”

  I am sobbing so hard I am close to fainting. And I am running into his open arms.

  “Marc. Marc. Marc.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  MARC PRESSES ME close to his chest as I weep, gulping sobs. Then he lifts up my face and kisses me, twice, on the forehead, then on the mouth. My crying mouth, salty with tears. He speaks.

  “I went back to Rhoguda, to the castle.”

  “But, Marc—”

  “The girl, Françoise, she said you’d gone to Plati—on that terrible back road—on your own?”

  “I had no choice—”

  “I thought the worst.” He kisses me. “I thought you might have driven off the road, been killed. Then . . .” He kisses me again, twice, quickly, fiercely. “Then I thought you . . . even if you’d made it to Plati, what then? What would you do? What would you say? You could have been . . . anything . . . anything could have happened. I sent someone down the back road to check, and Giuseppe and I raced here to Plati.”

  He lifts my face by the chin. And he asks, “What happened?”

  The sobs are subsiding. I wipe my face with the back of my hand, smearing away the salt and wet. Giuseppe steps forward with a tissue, and hands it to me. I murmur, “Grazie.”

  Then I dry the tears, properly. Giuseppe is holding the car door open. Breathing deeply and slowly, calming myself as best I can, I climb in the front; Marc follows me, taking the wheel. Giuseppe goes to the Land Rover. We are escaping, heading south, aiming for the Ionian Sea.

  I speak. “Marc, I saw Enzo Paselli. He told me, about . . . the butcher. What you did.”

  Marc is silent as he drives. His profile is tensed, pensive. He does not look my way as he says, “And?”

  I touch his arm.

  “Take me away from here, Marc. Anywhere. Just anywhere.” He turns to me. His hand falls onto my thigh, but it is passive, gentle, calming. I am stifling a sudden surge of more tears. The emotions are too much.

  The traffic ebbs and flows on the narrow Calabrian roads; the ugly towns blear past. Eventually I rouse from my strange, dreamlike state.

  “Where are we going?”

  “The airport, then South Tyrol.”

  “Tyrol . . . ?”

  “Giuseppe can go back to Naples. We can get a direct flight to Verona, and drive from there. I want to get out of the south, just for a while.”

  “Okay . . . okay. Tyrol. You have a house there, a schloss.”

  I remember: South Tyrol. Of course. I have never forgotten that dreamy wine. The Moscato Rosa.

  “It is peaceful and it is beautiful,” he says, staring out at one dilapidated building with half its façade torn away. “It is safe and far away. And then,” he turns to me, “then we are going to Venice.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  BY THE TIME we land at Verona airport, my nerves are calmed. Somewhat. Outside the little terminal, Marc is greeted by a friend—or acquaintance—or servant—and given the keys to another car: a small and fast BMW. It occurs to me how every transaction in life is made so much smoother by Marc’s immense wealth; yet he made that money by fighting the mafias. And in the end he had to kill someone.

  I want to run away forever. Yet I also fiercely want to kiss him. Instead, I silently climb in the car and we make the drive to Tyrol.

  At first the landscape is desultory; north Italian suburbia. Carrefour supermarkets and concrete canals; lots of commuters looking hot and irritable as the sun begins to set. It is in the eighties here, even at eight P.M. The dusty sunburned plains of
Veneto. Parched and brown. Like me. I feel parched and brown. I want sex. I want to resolve the tension in my head with sex. It is the only way I can get over this. The only way I can really get back to Marc.

  Sex.

  I wonder if I should just lean across and kiss him. But I can’t. Somehow. I don’t know why. So I shall just sit here, wanting him, but watching the cypress trees whir past. Watching the Alfa Romeo showrooms, and the shallow hills.

  But then I see the mountains ahead. My eyes widen. Some of them are snow-capped; immense and mighty, crystalline and glittering. Signs for Trento and Bolzano tell me we must be getting close; we are certainly roaring up the autostrada, driving straight along an enormous river valley as the mountains encroach on either side.

  “It’s stunning,” I say, gazing out the car window. These are practically the first words I have spoken in two hours. They are almost reflexive: an instinctive reaction to the sudden splendor. I still want Marc.

  “Just wait, cara mia; it gets better,” says Marc. And he pushes the pedal and we overtake a long Czech truck as he races us north. And as we accelerate, I see what he means.

  The landscape is now perfect, like a fairy tale. Vivid green terraces of vines and apple orchards ascend to cliffs where dreaming castles shine in the shadows and the sun; above and beyond the castles, and the ancient hilltop villages, are the mountains.

  “The Dolomites.”

  I have never seen mountains like this; they look unreal, like a gifted child’s idea of mountains: enormous spires of gray and glacial rock loom ten or fifteen thousand feet in the air. Quite vertical. Like stone-and-ice pinnacles. Like cathedrals waiting in the sun. Waiting for what?

  “I stayed here a lot when I was a boy,” Marc says. “My mother and sister still live here.”

  He is taking us off the autostrada; now we are threading down a narrow country road, through more vineyards, where old men stoop and examine grapes; through lush emerald farms where horses canter in meadows, past painted old villages with medieval churches. I am trying not to think about Marc and me naked. Perhaps I have become obsessive. Can you have a sexual psychosis? Have the Mysteries made me oversexual?