The Story of X: An Erotic Tale Read online

  A pause. And then, there it is. That wince of pain. A glimpse of that concealed anguish, a passing symptom of Marc’s inner sadness. But I have diagnosed these symptoms, now I need to know the cause.

  “X . . .”

  “I want to know, Marc. You keep alluding to her. I know she died. Tell me the truth.”

  He drinks, quite deeply, from his Bellini. He sighs, but also nods. And then he tells me the story.

  “Her name was Serena. She was very young and very smart and very damaged and very beautiful.” He gazes into my eyes. “She was the second loveliest woman I have ever met.”

  The pigeons rise and applaud next to our table, frightened by some child chasing them into the air. The campanile glitters in the descending sun.

  “I should perhaps have been wary,” Marc adds, toying with his Bellini, rather than drinking it.

  “Why?”

  “I knew she was from a Camorra family. Serious, serious Camorristi, from the Forcella. They’d made a lot of money, but they still had all the necessary connections. Her father claimed to be a marble exporter.” Marc laughs, mirthlessly and bitterly. “You don’t make hundreds of millions from exporting marble.”

  “He was a real gangster?”

  “Clearly.”

  “So . . .”

  “But it wasn’t just the father. Serena’s mother was also from a Camorra family. She had died young, perhaps in some vendetta, and when she died she’d left Serena lots of money, a legacy of her own.” He looks at me again, then looks down at his drink. “So that was Serena’s inheritance: crime, death, and money, too much money, and too much guilt. Taken together, her background—the death of her mother, the villainy of her father—all of it, some combination of it—I don’t know—that is what made her so messed up, I imagine.”

  “But how, Marc? How exactly was she screwed up? What did she do?”

  His shrug is contemptuous and melancholy at the same time. “Oh, the usual, carissima, the usual. Sex and drugs. She did quite a lot of heroin, cocaine, crack cocaine, she liked dangerous sex. She had been inducted into the Mysteries before me, at the age of seventeen.”

  “Too young.”

  “Far too young.” A truth dawns. I gaze at Marc.

  “She introduced you to the Mysteries, didn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old were you?”

  He shrugs.

  “Twenty at most. Barely more than a boy. She was eighteen, just a girl. I met her at a party in Posillipo, and immediately we fell in love; she was so sweet and fragile and cultured and broken. I wanted to protect her and save her. She was lovely, so lovely. And yes, I did the Mysteries for her, and they were as amazing as she said. Life-changing.”

  He turns from me, staring at the domes and ogees of the Doge’s Palace, the pinkening sky above, the beauty of doomed and suicidal Venice. “And so we decided to get married—but almost everyone disapproved, everyone loathed the idea of our match. Serena’s family were wildly antagonistic. They wanted her to marry into another Camorra clan, not an Anglo-Italian dynasty from the Chiaia. They also thought that, because the Roscarricks had no money, we were after their money.” Again his blue eyes meet my eyes. Unblinking. “We weren’t. I didn’t want her money, any of it, I just wanted her. But the drugs and the drink . . .”

  “And your family?”

  “My mother was dead against it, too, because Serena was—well, because Serena was from Forcella. Very much the wrong side of the tracks. She wanted her only son—the son and heir of the Roscarricks—to marry some blue blood. Preferably someone posh from England or France, or America even, someone with money not derived from assassination and contraband, and the smuggling of China white heroin.”

  “And your father?”

  “Strangely, he was okay with it. He was English, somehow more relaxed, paradoxically. He saw what I saw in Serena, the sweetness inside, the brokenness, the charm. But he was a weak man—my mother was much stronger. But anyway . . .”

  “You married.”

  “Yes, we married, in a furtive and sad little ceremony, and we were still very much in love. But within months, ah . . .” He tails off, and drinks from his Bellini, then sets the glass down.

  “Within months what?”

  “Serena went even more off the rails; she thought I was having affairs, she went on drinking binges, doing heroin and other drugs. She would come home at six in the morning disheveled, drunk, stoned, in a terrible state, raving about her father the gangster, the absolutely terrible man, telling everyone, telling the world what her father did and how murderous he was, all the people he had killed. She got a very bad reputation, was in the papers, she would not shut up, and then one day I got the call . . .”

  “A car accident.”

  He looks my way. His eyes are narrowed. Blue and narrowed—fierce and skeptical.

  “A car crash, in the hills above Capua. She had been off to score from some dealer. God knows why.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There is enough heroin in Scampia for all the world—there is more than enough smack in Naples—but anyway she went all the way to Capua, I don’t know why, and she scored. And on one of those hills, above Capua, at midnight, the brakes failed. They just stopped working, for some reason no one has fathomed. Serena was coming down a hill and then she—she went over the edge . . .”

  A small orchestra has started up outside the cafe across St. Mark’s Square. The music is jaunty and jubilant, light opera, precisely the wrong music for this somber moment.

  I can see where this is going. I drink from my own Bellini, and think, and then I ask the question.

  “You don’t think it was an accident?”

  He does not react, not visibly. But in the depths of his blue eyes I can see the glitter of pain.

  “I am pretty sure it was murder. I got the wreck of the car analyzed again and again, by the best people in Turin, and they all said the same: they couldn’t find any reason why the brakes had suddenly failed. The brakes were fine. The car was new, an Alfa, her family had bought it for her. She wasn’t even going that fast, thirty kilometers an hour. She wasn’t stoned, either; her drugs were untouched. She was sober, for once. The postmortem showed it.”

  “So who killed her?”

  “Probably her father, which is why the Naples police wouldn’t investigate properly. He was too powerful. Untouchable.”

  The music stops, horribly.

  My words are faltering.

  “But why? Why would her own father do that?”

  “Because she was shooting her mouth off. Denouncing him in public. Stoned and drunk and telling the world what he did.”

  “But . . . his own daughter!”

  “He had six kids. He could afford to lose a daughter.” Marc sighs and runs his fingers through his dark, dark hair. He downs the last of his drink. “X, look, I don’t know for sure. Maybe I am totally wrong, maybe it was another Camorrista, maybe it really was an accident, but this is what I strongly suspect. Someone from her family did it. Certainly her father was a malevolent influence. And a serious killer. He is the Camorra.”

  “That’s why you hate them?”

  “It’s one of the reasons. So when I inherited Serena’s money, I decided to put it to good use, start a business in Campania and Calabria, something that would be honest and yet profitable, show it could be done, something to defeat the mafias, something to beat the Camorra and the ’Ndrangheta.”

  I begin to see. I begin to understand. I put my hand on Marc’s.

  “Marc . . .”

  “The death of Serena killed my father, too,” Marc adds, almost casually. “He loved Serena; she was funny and lovable, even if she was flawed. A few months after she died, he had a heart attack.” Marc withdraws his hand from mine abrupt
ly. “And there we are; now you know it all.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “It’s not a story I wish to dwell on, X. And also, crucially, I have no proof. No proof that the Camorra killed her, let alone her own Camorrista father. It is all supposition, it is all games and masks, games and masks. And here we are, in the city of masks.”

  He sits back, his expression grave. And I want to kiss him. And the horses rear on their podium above St. Mark’s Cathedral, forever trampling over some unseen foe.

  I am at peace. I know it all now, however troubling. The final wound is healed.

  THE NEXT DAY we fly to Naples, because Marc has business at home. All the regular flights are booked, so he has chartered a private jet. Jessica and I walk across the concrete to the waiting plane. I am childishly excited: I have never been on a private jet before. Jess is, however, strangely subdued. All our time in Venice she has been giggly and happy, obviously smitten by Giuseppe. Now she is mute.

  Why?

  Finally, when we get on board, when Giuseppe and Marc are at the front of the plane and talking business, Jessica touches me on the arm and nods significantly—without speaking—like she wants to talk in private. We sit in the back as the plane takes off.

  The engines are noisy. No one can hear us. Giuseppe and Marc are conversing up front.

  “What is it?” I say.

  “Giuseppe got drunk last night. And he said something.”

  “What?”

  “He was really out if it, X, totally banjaxed. He doesn’t normally drink much—I think I am a bad influence.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “And then he just let it slip, he was barely conscious. I bet he’s forgotten he said it.”

  Her face is uncharacteristically somber, this is something serious.

  “And . . . ? What is it?”

  She turns my way.

  “You know there is a Sixth Mystery?”

  “What?”

  Jessica nods, and looks at the front of the plane, where Giuseppe and Marc are laughing and joking.

  “There is a Sixth Mystery. It is frightening and scary and very dangerous, and a big, big secret. That’s all I know. At least that is what Giuseppe implied.”

  I am nonplussed. From the moment of revelation and final certainty at Florian’s, I am all at sea again. Why wouldn’t Marc tell me about this? Is he still lying? Why is he lying?

  Why?

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “HE REALLY DENIES there is a Sixth Mystery? Still?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm . . .”

  Jess is standing before me in my Santa Lucia apartment in Napoli, assessing me in my new McQueen minidress. It is short, rose and black, and very pricey. And I am wearing no panties. Under orders.

  I am getting used to couture, and a lack of underwear; I am not getting used to all the Mystery of the Mysteries.

  Tonight is the Fifth. I thought it was the Fifth and Final, but Jessica has sowed that germ of doubt.

  I have twice confronted Marc with this question: I first asked him when we landed back in Naples, two weeks ago. Marc dismissed it at once emphatically: “There is no Sixth Mystery.” I asked him again two days later and he was even more adamant. And yet, ever since, I have noticed a definite frostiness between him and Giuseppe, a stiffness and a distance. Before they had been positively fraternal, joshing and amicable; now I sense a tiny wince of disapproval whenever Giuseppe is mentioned, or simply present.

  Jess and I discuss this now as she makes me take a final turn in my dress.

  “What can we do, X?” she says at last. “You’ll find out soon enough. But be careful, sweetheart, be bloody careful.” She steps back, nodding like the approving mother of a bride in her wedding gown.

  “You look lovely. Knock-out! You’re gonna give that old goat Dionysus a heart attack.”

  I laugh. Uncertainly. Then I stop laughing and I feel a surge of passionate anxiety. The Fifth Mystery. The katabasis. I am properly scared.

  Jessica reaches out to take my hand and holds it and says, “Are you sure you want to do this, X? You can stop. You can stop right now.” Her friendly brown eyes meet mine. And mine are wet with near tears. “We can go to Benito’s and drink Peroni and argue over pizza margherita and pretend none of this ever happened.”

  The idea is momentarily seductive. Just wipe it all away. Pretend the entire summer was a dream, from that moment almost four months ago when I first saw Marc at the Caffè Gambrinus. But if I do that, I extract Marc from my life, and that concept is monstrous. An abomination. He is part of me, woven into my soul: Plati and all. And if I erase the summer I erase the Mysteries, and I adore the way they have changed me. I prefer the person I am becoming: more open and confident, more adventurous, more playful.

  I squeeze Jessica’s hand and shake my head.

  “Thought not,” she says.

  Outside I can hear a car honking. It is Giuseppe with the silver Mercedes that was nearly mine; when I reach the sidewalk he wordlessly opens the door and drives me the short distance to the narrow street at the heart of Old Naples, via dei Tribunali.

  He parks outside a church. The Chiesa de Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio ad Arco. St. Mary of the Souls in Purgatory. I know of this notorious Baroque church: I’ve gazed at it many times as I walked the narrow pavements of Tribunali. But I have never quite had the stomach to go inside before, thanks to its macabre reputation.

  The exterior is off-putting enough: as Giuseppe opens the car door, I climb out—my high heels slipping a little on the rough piperno cobbles—and look at the three polished bronze skulls that sit on stone pillars. Repressing an inner shudder, I say, “Grazie, Giuseppe.”

  He nods graciously, but there is a slender trace of contrition in his demeanor. Is this because he is ashamed of having let slip the truth?

  I’m not going to find out yet. Giuseppe turns and climbs back in the car, and the Mercedes rumbles away, watched by the local kids hanging languidly on their Vespas and the man in the newsstand selling Oggi and Gente.

  I have to go inside the Church of the Souls in Purgatory. Guarding my fears, I ascend the shallow steps and press open the door. A small crowd is waiting inside; Marc is there in his usual dinner-jacketed finery. He is frowning. Even he looks a little grim and on edge. This doesn’t help.

  “Buona sera, X.”

  He kisses me on the forehead. I turn, and see that Françoise, accompanied by Daniel, her boyfriend—her amant—is also in the small gathering. So she is doing the Fifth in Naples. This reassures me a little. Françoise and I nod and smile encouragingly at each other. Traces of anxiety are visible in her eyes.

  But there is no time to talk: already we are being led to some stairs at the side of the church. I know from my research where these stairs lead. Now I have to repress even deeper fears.

  Downstairs is the hypogeum, the terrible and frightening crypt of Santa Maria della Anime del Purgatorio—the crypt where the ancient Neapolitan cult of skull worship can still be seen in all its macabre and enduring glory.

  The steps are steep, and I sigh with slight relief when we reach the stones of the basement floor. Then I look around. And shudder.

  The entire chamber is stacked with shrines, glass boxes and open chests containing human skulls and bones. There are skulls with necklaces dangling, and skulls with candles flickering before their hollow eyes.

  The cult of skull worship was abolished in the sixties by the local Catholic hierarchy, but here it continues, as forcefully and heathenly as ever: many local people—young and old women, mainly—come here to pray to their own special and favored skulls, to make offerings to skeletons, to light candles in front of the sightless dead, to plead for luck or fertility or cancer cures or just because this place is so hideously compelli
ng and intense.

  “Are you okay, X?”

  Marc places a gentle hand on my shoulder. I lie and say, “Yes.”

  “We go down from here.”

  I follow his gaze and see that our guide, a short, oldish man in spectacles is lifting up a trapdoor.

  Evidently we are descending from the crypt of Santa Maria of the Souls into deeper Naples, the great and famous labyrinth that is Naples Underground, Napoli Sotterraneo.

  The city is built on tuffaceous and easily excavated rock. So people have been digging holes and wells and tunnels and cellars in these environs for thousands of years; add in the many millennia of dense settlements that have simply been piled on top of each other and it means there is probably as much Naples belowground as there is above it: the city sits on a mirror image of itself, an identical and opposite undercity, like a church poised above its own reflection in a Venetian canal.

  As the guide flaps open the trapdoor, he turns to us and says, “E ’piuttosto un lungo cammino. Potrebbe essere necessario eseguire la scansione . . .”

  It’s a long way. We might have to crawl. I take a deep breath of foul air and let Marc assist me down the steps into the darkness.

  “Grazie.”

  Then we walk, crawling and squeezing, following the torch of the guide, scrambling our way through Napoli Sotterraneo, with its hundreds of miles of damp cisterns and secret chapels and old charnel houses and entombed Roman theaters and musty Bourbon dungeons. We pass shrines of the Mystery Religions—turned into warehouses used by Camorra smugglers, for storing drugs, liquor, tobacco, and guns. Many of the Mystery Religions did their rites in secretive underground places around here, just as the mafias do their business in the same sequestered places now.

  The parallels are apt.

  And as the air gets mustier and damper, older and nastier, I start to think. To connect it all up. I see the lineage, like spotting the resemblance to a distant and famous ancestor in a modern descendant.