by A. J. Molloy
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?
&nb
sp; 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.
CHAPTER TEN
“WHAT 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 wit
h 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.