The Story of X: An Erotic Tale Read online

  So why is she being so coy?

  “Jessica?”

  She looks directly at the camera. She sighs and says, “I’m seeing Giuseppe.”

  What?

  “You’re seeing Giuseppe? Marc’s Giuseppe?”

  “Yes.”

  I clap my hands. I am genuinely delighted. I knew she had a thing for him. Gorgeousaurus Rex. He is also very likeable and charming. Excellent!

  “But that’s great!” I say.

  She looks at me, then she breaks into a smile.

  “You’re sure? You’re totally sure? You’re sure you’re okay? You don’t think I’m crowding you or anything?”

  “Jessica Rushton, don’t be an idiot. Course not. It means I get to see you more.”

  She nods. “Well, yeah, it does! Giuseppe is flying to Venice tomorrow—Marc’s orders. He actually wants me to come with—but—until I’d spoken to you—I didn’t know what to tell him.”

  “So do it! Fly up! Of course you must fly up! We can drink Bellinis at Harry’s Bar. This is great!”

  “Okay.” She beams back at me. “This is cool! Don’t worry, I’m not doing the weird Mysteries or anything. Not that I’m invited anyway. But I will see you in Venice. Tomorrow.”

  “Okay, bye!”

  I give her a wave; she waves back and says, “Don’t fall in any canals.”

  And then the screen goes black. I sit back. I am happy. I am truly happy. The world is perfect once again.

  Or at least it is almost perfect. There is just that last niggling doubt, the tiniest serpent in this otherwise pristine paradise: the doubt about Marc’s wife. I cannot forget what Enzo Paselli said over that restaurant table in terrible Plati. His words about Lady Roscarrick’s sudden death, which meant her money went to Marc . . .

  That was an evil fortune.

  But I don’t want to think about it. I want to be happy. So I am happy. And tonight I will be Alexandra of the Fourth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  THREE HOURS LATER, I step out onto the damp, mossy pier of our private rented palazzo, the Palazzo Dario. I am alone. Marc is still inside, finishing some business, attending to those digits that drizzle down his laptop screen, blinking scarlet and black.

  I glimpse my reflection in the starlit water of the Grand Canal. And I can’t help smiling.

  The handmaidens have done their costuming: I am in a high-waisted, narrow-sleeved, purest muslin Regency ball gown, colored a very soft cream. It is adorable. I look like a Jane Austen debutante: the long, silk gloves, the satin dancing pumps, the bracelet high on my arm, and a single strand of fine pearls. The muslin is superbly fine; it is also rather see-through; I am wearing cream stockings underneath but, of course, no underwear.

  However, it is dark. So no one can tell. Or so I hope. Stepping forward, I look up and down the canal. The gondola is booked for nine P.M.; I know that I am early—but I wanted to enjoy the view.

  My heart flutters as I look up at the house where I am staying. We only arrived here this morning and I barely know the place.

  But I love it already.

  By day this palazzo—from what I have glimpsed—is very pretty; by night, softly lit by canal lights, Venetian stars, and Gothic lanterns, it is a vision, a mirage of spectral beauty: of deep-violet recesses and doomy black windows and a rich, melancholic stony gray, and all of it made more intangible and alluring by the swaying light reflected from the water all around. The sight of it makes me unsteady; it makes me feel unbalanced, like I am inwardly dancing to the eternal and unheard music of Venice.

  Chattering laughter drifts across the canal. The scents of wine and diesel; of perfume and smoke and the distant sea.

  The Bridge of Sighs. St. Mark’s Square. Santa Maria della Salute! So much of this city is already inside me; I have been here so many times in my imagination, in my yearning daydreams, in my schoolgirl and student fantasies of travel. I don’t know what to think of the reality; it is so intoxicating I am not sure this is reality: Venice looks like a gorgeous copy of itself, like an incredibly well-realized backdrop in a movie, and I am part of the drama. Alexandra of the Mysteries.

  Is that the Gritti Palace Hotel? If I stand on tiptoe, in my satin pumps, I can see chic men and women eating on a lamp-lit terrace across the wide, dark waters of the Grand Canal. Their laughter carries, along with the sultry tinkle of cutlery and glass. Then a louder noise intrudes: Venetian polizia in a moonlit blue boat are speeding down the canal toward the tower of St. Mark’s campanile, red and ghostly on the near horizon.

  Right in front of the palazzo, four poles are candy-striped blue and white with golden caps, lit by heavy Gothic glass lanterns hanging from hooks. I turn, and look up again. The Palazzo Dario has strange chimneys: “carpaccio” chimneys they are called, top heavy and archaic, weird shapes framed by the clear and starry night sky. The Gothic tracery of the palazzo’s façade is famous. The balcony is exquisite.

  And the legends that attach to this place are quite romantically tragic. I have done my research. Famous people have expired in various ways in the Palazzo Dario. An Armenian diamond merchant died here “enigmatically” in the early 1800s. Then the house was bought by some British bigwig, Rawdon Brown, who committed suicide after his fortunes were exhausted by his obsessive restorations. An Irish lieutenant marshal owned it next, but he died “mysteriously” in 1860; then came a colorful series of contessas and counts, the last of whom was knifed to death by his lover. Then a rock band manager: murdered. Then a financier: drowned. Then an exorcism: failed.

  And now: me. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  “Ah, Mistress Beckmann. What news on the Rialto?”

  It is Marc. In his Regency dress. He looks magnificent: a darker, taller Darcy. He is dressed in narrow black trousers, or maybe breeches, which end in long leather boots. Above the waist he wears a plain-fronted, high-collared white shirt, a sumptuous purple vest, and a long, sweeping, and very dark frock coat, with tails. The costume is finished by a rather dandyish top hat. I myself am hatless, but my hair is gorgeously coiffed: piled in curls that are meant to look natural and even tousled, but aren’t. Very clever.

  Marc clutches his white silk gloves in one hand as he steps onto our private marble pier and bows.

  “Look at you.” He gestures at my dress, then he steps forward and takes up my white-gloved left hand, and he kisses it, courteously.

  “She walks in beauty like the night,” he murmurs, “Of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that’s best of dark and bright, meet in her aspect and her eyes.”

  Marc takes my muslined waist in his arms and kisses me on the lips.

  “Celenza,” I say, pressing his chest with a flat hand, as if half resisting. But I am not resisting.

  Marc smiles reassuringly.

  “Are you ready for the Fourth?”

  Am I ready? I am not sure. The nerves flutter within. But there is also a determination. I have told Marc I love him, because I love him; I cannot go back now.

  I do a fake curtsey, which somehow turns into a real curtsey.

  “Sì, Celenza. I think so.”

  “You really are very convincing. An American princess in Venice. Inexplicably dressed like Elizabeth Bennet.” He gazes past my shoulder. “And now, the gondola.”

  I turn on a satin heel. Emerging from the flickering semi-darkness is the long, dark shape of a polished black gondola; it silently knocks into our pier. The gondolier is handsome, of course.

  “Signor Roscarrick?”

  “Sì.”

  The narrow black gondola is upholstered with plump silk cushions of scarlet. Marc assists me into the boat and I lie back on the sumptuous pillows, with Marc beside me, and I stare up at the warm, clear skies.

  I can smell his bodywash; he is showered and handsome in his Regenc
y clothes. I want him. I want Venice. I actually want to have sex here and now. Tooling in a gondola.

  The gondolier churns the water and we are slowly sailing up the Grand Canal. The gondolier is singing a song, very quietly. It is a cliché, yet it isn’t. Why shouldn’t you sing when you are a gondolier in Venice? Where else, where else in the entire world, is there a better place to sing as you work?

  The whole city is singing, silently, on this warm, stilled, summer evening of perfection. We pass under the Accademia Bridge, where faces stare down at us, looking at the film of Venice, looking at us, the film stars. The movie of X and Marc.

  I am dreaming. I am not dreaming. I am really here, we really are passing Palazzo Fortuny and Ca Rezzonico, we are passing under the arching whiteness of the Rialto, we are looking at the houses where Wagner died and Marco Polo lived, the houses where Stravinsky wrote and Henry James sighed, the houses of Browning and Titian and Casanova, the palaces of poets and doges and princes and courtesans. I lie back, holding Marc’s hand, enrapt. Still dreaming, never waking. Never wanting to wake. Murmuring the words myself: “She walks in beauty like the night, of cloudless climes and starry skies.”

  Now I am here, I realize Byron was writing about Venice, not a woman. The city is the dark, seductive, moody woman, elusive, flashing-eyed, complex, ever sexual—and flooded every month, yet somehow enduring. Venice is a dark, beautiful, and suicidal poetess always trying to drown herself in a lake.

  And Marc has slid his hand discreetly up my dress.

  I say nothing. I point at one palazzo, fairly austere and gray.

  “Isn’t that Byron’s house?”

  “It is. The Palazzo Mocenigo.”

  His hand is still between my thighs. Seeking, seeking.

  “He lived there,” Marc goes on, “with a fox, a wolf, at least two monkeys, and a sickly crow.”

  His fingers stroke me, there, finding the source of my pleasure.

  “A sickly crow?” I say innocently, trying not to gasp.

  “I believe the crow expired. And that’s where his mistress threatened to drown herself in the Grand Canal. She survived.”

  The gondola turns, gently steered by the gondolier. Marc withdraws his hand from under my dress, and I feel a faint pang of regret. I want him. I have a terrible and naughty urge to lean across and unzip those fine black breeches and take him in my mouth.

  What are the Mysteries doing to me?

  Whatever it is, I like it. And I like being in Venice. We are heading north, up a narrower canal, and as we go it is the little sights that intrigue me, the fleeting and tantalizing glimpses of side canals, the couple kissing down a dark tiny calli as if they cannot be seen, a tiny church that stares at itself in the black, oily water. Then someone singing in a yellow-lit room, then another gondola carrying a woman crying, then fleeting lights in black alleys—that end in a wall with blinded Gothic windows.

  “Marc?”

  I hold his hand tighter. The Fourth Mystery is approaching.

  “Kiss me.”

  He leans to his side and kisses me, quite fiercely, on the lips, then he lifts his handsome face away.

  “Can you see us?” he says. And I realize he means the Constellation of Us: up there, near Orion.

  I nod, with an unexplained urge to cry.

  “I can see us, Marc. I can see us.”

  The silence is maybe the most stunning quality. Venice at night. No cars. No engines. Is this the most silent city on earth? Just the quiet slap of canal water on medieval marble, and the gentle caroling of a gondolier. And beyond it silence. Dead and beautiful nothingness, like a city on the edge of dissolving.

  The gondola is steering us to the very edge of Venice. I sit up; now I can see open water, the wider lagoon. Glittering lights from Murano, maybe, then the low, dark, somber shape of the cemetery island: the island of death.

  “We’re nearly there,” says the gondolier in English.

  He needn’t. I know we are approaching because we are now, abruptly, in a crush of other boats, more gondolas, some water taxis, lots of water taxis. A vaporetto is berthed on the waterside that fronts the wider lagoon. People are stepping off all the boats and gondolas in elaborate clothes, exquisite Regency costumes, just like me and Marc. Again. I can see dresses of mull and gauze, and delicious silk satin, and bodices and chemisettes and gowns from the Empire and the Directoire. And men in fitted tail coats and high white collars and stiffened silk cravats.

  These are my people. Hard as it is for me to believe.

  I turn and look above them. And ask, “Is that it? That building?”

  I am staring at a modest, square palazzo, evidently historic, situated forlornly at the very end of the canal. Facing the lagoon, the building is somehow isolated and cruelly exposed, like a child sent into a corner of the classroom.

  “It is the Casino degli Spiriti,” says Marc. “It has a rather baroque history: hauntings and artists, poets and orgies.” He lifts my arm and assists me off the gondola. “Please do not worry, X. The Fourth Mystery is one of the sweetest.”

  Of course I am worrying. But I am stirred and excited too, as I see the now-familiar girls in white coming to greet us and give us glasses of wine, as we wait to step inside.

  The gondolier poles his boat away; the other boats disperse. One of the handmaidens steps forward and squats down in front of me. Then, quite brusquely, she lifts up my translucent muslin dress, revealing my nudity to the world, to all the people around me.

  I have been told to wear no panties. That I have obeyed this firm instruction is now obvious to everyone. The girl squints and she examines my tattoo, above my garter, and then drops the dress with a curtsey.

  All of this is being done on a canal sidewalk in Venice, watched by dozens of people, dozens of rich, sophisticated people—some of whom I recognize: celebrities, politicians—and yet I suppress my shame and embarrassment. I drink wine and talk with Marc as the girl does her job. The people all around me talk and nod and drink. And then we are led by one of the handmaidens inside the Casino degli Spiriti.

  The house is larger than it looks from outside. The bottom floor is shadowy and quite grand. It is also slightly sinister in its darkness. Cryptlike, even. It has a faint odor of damp from the lagoon, lapping outside. Now we are invited upstairs. This floor—the piano nobile, the principle floor—is brighter and much more impressive. White stone gothic arches and white marble pillars support a tall and elaborately plastered ceiling; the room is wide and airy, and akin to a ballroom. Mildly erotic frescoes adorn the walls, blush pink and white, with female nudes and cherubim. Tiepolo, perhaps.

  The handmaidens are dutifully handing out large metal cups.

  “This is kykeon,” says Marc. “Drink an entire cup.”

  Kykeon? I have, of course, heard of this. The drug of the Eleusinian mysteries. The fabulous yet secretive narcotic.

  For the first time tonight I seriously pause. Drugs? I do not take drugs; my only experience of drugs has been the odd hit of marijuana, which made me sick, and made the room spin. Marc senses my hesitance.

  “It is all legal, made from herbs, and wildflowers.”

  “But what herbs?”

  “I’ve not the faintest idea, X. It is a mystery.”

  He smiles. Regretfully.

  The handmaiden is staring at me. I chasten myself for my timidity. I have come this far: I want to know the Fourth Mystery and I cannot lose Marc. Just cannot.

  Leaning across, I take a cup and gulp from it. Deeper and deeply. The taste is dark and a little bitter, and maybe spicy. Like cold mulled wine. It is not unpleasant. I lift up the cup, again, and drink the last drop. Marc does the same with his cup, looking me in the eye as he does so.

  “Everyone takes the kykeon.”

  And now the music starts. It is a beating, pulsing
African chant. I recognize it, but cannot name it.

  “The Missa Luba,” says Marc.

  Of course, that’s it. The Missa Luba: a mass recorded in Belgian Africa decades ago.

  It is the perfect music for the moment, because the kykeon is acting with extraordinary quickness. I am seeing things. I hold on to Marc’s hand. I am actually swaying, really swaying this time. Perspiring. Somewhat frightened.

  “Do not fight the kykeon,” Marc whispers, gently kissing my pale neck. “Think of it as a gondola, piccolina, taking you down a canal in the darkness. The warm and sultry darkness.”

  For a second, I stare at his handsome and distant face, and then a moment later I am turning and looking at a different handsome face that I also know. Who is this: an actor? Am I dreaming? I am not sure, because I can see more famous faces. A very well-known politician. Next to him some Internet billionaire. A celebrity model. Then another politician, from America, with his wife. Global moguls and supermodels.

  I am losing my grip. Marc holds my hand, in its silken glove, very hard. This is like some gilded sex party for the rich and famous, but most of all, the very powerful. Unless I really am dreaming; unless the hallucinations are lucid, and the drug extremely potent. I do not know. I feel faint.

  “Can we get some air?”

  Marc nods. “Of course.”

  Walking to the window, I gulp the fresh warm air off the lagoon. When I turn, I realize Marc is standing next to a beautiful young woman of about eighteen in a bright red Regency ball gown. The girl smiles at me and then she steps around me. What is she doing? I turn to see. The girl is kneeling behind me, slowly slipping her fingers up my dress. She begins to stroke my clitoris.

  “You are wet,” she says.

  I look down at her, then I turn back and stare at Marc.

  “Yes, I am,” I say.

  She strokes my clit some more. We are standing beside a group of people dancing. But we are standing still as she strokes me, flicking, touching, and thumbing my clit. And Marc and I gaze at each other.