The Story of X: An Erotic Tale Read online

  “Ci siamo quasi . . .”

  It seems we don’t have far to go. Another narrow tunnel zigzags into a huge echoing cistern, built, Marc tells me, by the ancient Greeks. Marc is carrying his own flashlight in his phone—he flicks it this way and that and I stare. The cistern, now empty of water, is enormous. I gaze, in nervous wonder, at the mighty arches, the high, rocky ceiling, the grandiose and beautifully carved walls, a hundred meters tall or more. It is like the achievement of a long dead race from a more advanced planet.

  “Avanti.”

  We walk on. The air is hot and somehow thin. I am feeling light-headed and have yet to drink the kykeon. Will there be kykeon? I hope yes, I hope no.

  The journey continues down an even narrower corridor of Greek bricks and bare rocks. Damp, fusty, dismal, and dubious.

  “Just a few more minutes, carissima.”

  Marc’s arm is comforting around my shoulder; I am not feeling especially solaced. I am truly scared now. We are so deep underground, so deep in the forgotten tunnels of Napoli Sotterraneo, undertaking the way beneath the Earth.

  “Here,” says the guide ahead of us, in English. I can see lights, albeit subdued. The tunnel opens out into a series of large vaults, lit by bare torches and blue lanterns. There are many people here, already assembled, drinking wine and talking. But the mood is entirely different from anything in the other Mysteries. The music is very simple and churchy: plainsong or Gregorian chants, or something even more archaic and Greek. And sad. And insistent.

  Marc looks troubled. He is frowning very profoundly. I squeeze his hand to comfort him. He forces a smile.

  We are guided into one of the low vaults. It has a curved, arched ceiling, like the inside of a large airliner, but made of damp stone. Narrow shelves of rock line the side, where people are standing and looking down.

  Flaming torches illuminate the half cylinder of vaulting. They flicker and gutter, showing macabre reliefs on the inwardly curved walls, presumably dating back to the time of the earliest Mysteries in southern Italy, maybe the third or fourth century B.C. The stone friezes are delicate yet primitive, and they show men being tortured. A man having his throat slit. Another man being sodomized. A third man is being crudely stabbed in the back with a knife. The man grimaces and blood spurts from his wound.

  I remember the strange scar on Marc’s shoulder. So that is, probably, one mystery solved. The curved scar—a knife wound—must be his symbol of initiation into the Mysteries, like the tattoo on my inner thigh.

  Reaching down I squeeze Marc’s hand again. It is moist with perspiration. He is obviously worried: I have not seen him like this before. My own anxieties are tightening. What is going to happen to me?

  The music rises to a singular intensity, a chorus of plain and unadorned voices, lamenting and maudlin, even discordant. But it is very distinct: I wonder if there is a choir somewhere in the neighboring vault—there are so many cellars and dungeons, and vaults, so many Dionysian temples interred by time.

  “Drink,” says a girl, thrusting a cup into my hands. She is not wearing a white tunic; this time it is plain and unredeemed black. But she seems to play the same role as the girls in all the other rites: the handmaidens of the Mysteries.

  I look at Marc for support, or advice, but he has already grabbed his metal cup and drained the liquid to nothing. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and disdainfully gives it back. There is something odd again in his demeanor—this is not the gracious, smart, aristocratic Marc I know and love. It is a different man. The inner anger is more obvious.

  “Marc, are you all right?”

  He waves my question away with a gesture.

  “Just watch, cara mia. I think you just have to watch. For now.”

  I turn and watch. A woman is being selected from the crowds. It is Françoise. There are three or four other girls that I recognize: my sisters of the Fifth, my fellow initiates. But Françoise has been chosen first.

  We are all standing on the raised stone terraces at either side of the large barrel-vaulted chamber. Françoise nods and walks, slowly and dutifully, in her black dress, down some stone steps and then along the sunken, central, navelike space, to the end of the chamber—where I now see, on the terminating wall, that there is a large, primitive mural of a Greek or Roman soldier slaughtering a bull. But the soldier isn’t just killing the bull; he is brutally raking a knife across its throat, so the blood spurts from the terrified animal’s neck. The triumph of man over beast? Or the triumph of cruelty over kindness?

  A middle-aged man is standing beneath this horrible wall painting. He is holding a silver bell, which he now rings, and he says, in English, “Do you agree to submit to the Fifth Mystery?”

  Françoise replies hesitantly. “I agree.”

  “Then the first ritual can begin. Kneel.”

  She kneels.

  “Pray to Mithras,” he commands.

  She puts her hands together uncertainly. And bows her head in the direction of the mural, of the man slaughtering the bull. The master of the Mysteries rings the bell again. Françoise turns to face him as he instructs her.

  “Now turn around and lie on your back.”

  The liquor from the metal cups is beginning to affect me. But it is not like the wines of Capri or Rhoguda, or the kykeon of the Fourth, it is a bludgeon of intoxication by comparison. I feel drunk, in a heavy, yet aggressive way; as if I would like to fight someone. It is not good.

  I turn to Marc. I can see, even in the flame-lit shadows of the Mithraic vault, that he is experiencing similar sensations: he is grinding his teeth, like a man suppressing violence.

  “You must be shared with Mithras and Dionysus,” says the man with the silver bell. “Lift up your dress.”

  Françoise is lying on a beautifully patterned Ottoman rug. She closes her eyes and I can see the confusion and tension in her expression, but she obediently lifts up her dress, exposing her thighs and her sex, and the girls—the black-dressed handmaidens—step forward. They kneel before Françoise and begin to stimulate her with those warm crystal dildos. I can see that Françoise is responding, even as she resists. Her eyes are tightly closed. Standing on the stone terrace above her is Daniel. I cannot decipher his expression.

  The music attains a somber intensity. This is the most religious of the Mysteries so far. I can hear the Latin and the Greek swirling in the smoky, incensed air.

  Dionysian, Bakkheia, Skiereia, Apaturia.

  I hold Marc’s hand, just for support. I feel like I am about to faint. To fall from this stone terrace. This is too much.

  Astydromia, Theoinia, Lênaia, Dionysian.

  The drumming is intense. Some kind of lyre or stringed instrument is rousing itself to a climax. The voices join together. The air in the vaulted chamber is thick with incense and smoke from the burning torches. Now a man steps forward. He is maybe thirty. Tall. Stubbled. And his eyes are masked. Camorrista?

  The man unzips himself. He is erect. One of the handmaidens slips a condom on his erection and he approaches Françoise, and then he kneels and enters her. He couples with her. That is the only word. Couples. If the Mysteries have been sexual in the past, even sublime in their eroticism—and they have—then this is utterly different. Serious, frightening, brutal, but bloodily symbolic. The woman is being shared with the god. The partner must submit. All must submit. I am quite terrified.

  The masked man is finished. He extracts himself, and the handmaidens dart forward to lift Françoise to her feet. But I can see the bewilderment in her expression, she is turning her head away, her hands are clenched into fists, she is unnerved. And this is just the first ritual of katabasis?

  Françoise is flushed and trembling. Daniel steps down from the stone terracing and puts a comforting arm around her, leading her away into the shadows.

  “You.”


  The man with the silver bell is pointing at me.

  I am not going to do this. Yet I have to do this to be with Marc. I cannot do this. I gaze Marc’s way and he looks down and shakes his head, staring at his shoes, and then he gazes briefly into my eyes and says, “You can still stop. This is the last moment when you can stop.”

  Then he looks away again.

  “I cannot stop,” I reply. “I cannot lose you. I love you.”

  Dazed, bewildered, and determined, I obey the master of the Mysteries. I step down the stone stairs, and walk the length of the vaulted chamber. The bell rings. I am asked if I agree to submit. I say, “Yes, I agree.”

  “Kneel,” the man says, and I kneel before the wall painting. I stare at the ancient soldier slaughtering the ancient bull. The ejaculation of ancient red blood is now faded to a sad and dusty magenta. The bell rings.

  “Turn around, and lie down.”

  I clench my fists. Every shred of my soul is screaming: No, no. No. Don’t obey. Don’t do this. Run away. This is WRONG.

  But the Mysteries have their grip on me so I turn and lie back. The bell rings.

  “Lift up your dress.”

  I am lying down. I lift up my dress. I am wearing no panties, of course. The handmaidens are gathered at my knees, arousing me. As best they can. I look up into the smoke and the darkness seeking Marc, but he is turned away. His face is turned away.

  A different, younger man approaches from the flame-shadowed darkness. He is about twenty. He has a small, disfiguring scar on his chin, but that is all I can see of him. He is also masked.

  This young man is erect. He is going to enter me. I close my eyes and wait to be taken. That is the only word: taken, enslaved, abused. This is against my will, even as I submit.

  “Cornuti!”

  I open my eyes.

  Marc.

  It’s Marc.

  What?

  Marc is standing on the floor of the vault and he is flourishing a knife—from where?—a small, sparkling, nasty steel knife. He grabs the scarred man by the neck—and presses the blade to the man’s pulsing throat.

  “Estopa!” The leader of the ritual, with the silver bell, is protesting in garrulous Italian. No! You cannot stop the Mysteries. You have to share the woman now. You know the code and you know the price of disobeying.

  “Fuck you,” says Marc, in plain English. Then he yells at me, “X, get up! Come here.”

  I jump to my feet and force down my dress to cover myself and run to his side. Marc still has the man by the throat; he has the scarred young man at his mercy and the kid looks terrified. As if he genuinely believes Marc will simply kill him in cold blood, the way he killed the pig butcher in Plati.

  The leader of the rite is still protesting in Italian. But he is speaking very slowly and threateningly—and I can understand every word.

  “Roscarrick. The capos will come after you. This is what happens in the Fifth Mystery. Just because you have brought your own woman makes no difference. If you do this, you will be committing suicide.”

  “So be it,” says Marc. Then he lets the man go, and the scarred youth staggers to the side, clutching his unbleeding throat.

  Then Marc grabs me by the hand and says, “Run.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  WE RUN. MARC pulls me out of the Mithraic chambers, out into the narrow corridors, and this time we go left, taking a different route. For a second I look behind. There is shouting behind us, figures framed by the blue, sad lights—epitomized by the dwindling, haunting, chanting music.

  “This way!”

  The corridor zigzags, then it narrows to a slenderness so constricting I can feel the rocks pressing on my ribs, stifling and frightening—but we squeeze through and the brick and rock corridor widens once more. And now we sprint, and the tunnel opens out into another of those enormous Greek cisterns.

  Marc turns and flashes his phone-light at the rocky wall. A steel ladder is screwed into stone.

  “Probably installed during the war—these were used as bomb shelters. That means the ladder goes somewhere, it has to lead to the surface.”

  “We go up that ladder?”

  “Yes.”

  I look up at the rusting metal ladder. I am in a minidress and heels.

  “Give me the shoes,” Marc says.

  Slipping off the shoes, I hand them to him and he hurls them into the bottom of the cistern. Then we run to the bottom of the ladder and he goes first, climbing adroitly, and I follow, grabbing at the rungs—and slowly we ascend. The shards of black rust from the metal rungs are painful on my bare feet; the metal ladder is decaying and it creaks in eerie complaint as we climb. I simply daren’t look down—twenty meters, thirty meters, fifty. If the ladder gives way, we will fall and we will die, smashed to pieces on the ancient Greek paving stones.

  “Here.”

  Marc reaches down a hand to help.

  I wave him away.

  “I’m okay!”

  Marc turns and climbs. A few painful minutes later he reaches the top, where there is a kind of ledge. He sets down the phone with its flashlight and reaches for me in the dark. This time I accept his help, taking his hand, and he hauls me up onto the ledge. I am panting, quite exhausted.

  Picking up his cell phone Marc urgently redirects the flashlight beam. Another tunnel extends into the gloom, leading from the cistern into farther tunnels—but there are prickles of light as well. We are much nearer the surface, nearer the streets of the city above. The piercing lights must be from drains or manholes.

  I hear more noises, echoing below.

  “Is that them?”

  “Hurry, carissima.”

  Marc walks a few meters and points up. Light shines through holes in a wooden trapdoor. Steps cut into the rock lead to the door; Marc climbs and thrusts his shoulder at it. The trapdoor does not budge. The noises below are louder. Marc tries again.

  “Quick.”

  There are voices echoing below, angry Italian voices. Marc crouches and breathes deep. He shunts again and the trapdoor slams open. Bright light dazzles us, as he hoists himself up.

  “Marc!”

  His hand reaches down and, with a mighty effort, pulls me up into the light. I gaze around as Marc briskly closes the trapdoor. He shifts a crate of wine on top of it, then another, and another.

  A crate of wine?

  We are in the back of a shop. A salumeria, a delicatessen in Old Napoli. Of course. Why not? So many of these tunnels and vaults surface in the most unlikely places: under washing machines in the bassi, in laundries and bakeries. So we are in a store and the store is open and busy with chattering people doing their evening shop and no one has heard us emerging. We can see people at the counter; we are hidden by shelves and surrounded by hanging salamis, hams, and wheels of cheese.

  “Let’s just walk out,” Marc says.

  We are grimy and dusty; he is in a tux covered with dirt and cobwebs. I am ragged and barefoot, my minidress is torn and I am obviously bleeding—where my ankle scraped the cutting rustiness of the ladder—but we have no choice. We just have to walk out, like ordinary shoppers browsing salsiccia.

  An old lady is buying a paper cone of chopped-up bits of ox tripe; she turns and looks at us, but she doesn’t even blink—the old woman simply tuts and shrugs, like she sees this sort of thing all the time, and then she goes back to haggling over the price of her tripe.

  We have made it outside. Marc barks into his phone.

  “Giuseppe!”

  Now we are standing in a narrow street near the Duomo, I think; I am still barefoot. As Marc makes his call, frantically directing his manservant, we run left and right until we reach a busier street corner. And then we wait, hearts pounding, wordless and anxious. One and a half minutes later, Giuseppe roars into vi
ew. We jump in the car and it races away, away from Old Napoli, out into the broader boulevards. We jerk a vicious right, then another, straight into the Chiaia, and at last we are at the rear door of The Palazzo Roscarrick.

  Marc pulls me from the car. He carries me barefoot indoors, shouting at his servants.

  Lock the doors. Lock all the doors. Lock and bar the windows.

  Lockdown.

  We go up to his bedroom and I run into the bathroom to wash the blood from my bleeding ankles and the black rust from my feet. I feel like crying, but I don’t. I brace myself, taking deep breaths. I rinse the dirt from my hands and face. Then I look in the closet for my clothes, and change into jeans, a cotton shirt, and sneakers. When I step back into the bedroom, Marc is buttoning the cuff of a blue shirt and speaking into his cell at the same time, the phone cradled under his neck: “Sì, sì, Giuseppe. Sì!”

  His words are frantic.

  I sit on the bed. Half listening to his rapid-fire Neapolitan, half distracted by the bewildering sequence of the night.

  Marc finishes the call. And sits on the bed next to me.

  “You need to get out of here.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the Camorra will be after me now.”

  “The Camorra?”

  He shakes his head.

  “They have been looking for an excuse to kill me. Now they will have everyone on their side so they can kill me with impunity.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I did the worst possible thing, X, the one thing you must never do. I broke the code of the Mysteries. I broke my vows as an initiate and interfered with the sacred ritual, the Fifth ritual. I stopped them completing the initiation.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He runs his fingers through his hair. And sighs. And rubs his face. Tired yet wired. And gazing at me.

  “X, once you begin a ritual of the Mystery, a level of the initiation, then you have to complete it, otherwise you could be . . . a mere voyeur, someone seeking a cheap thrill, or worse, someone using the Mysteries to spy on others—you know there are many famous people who attend—commitment and secrecy are essential.”