by A. J. Molloy
“Alexandra . . . ?”
Don’t look at him, X, don’t even look at him.
He sits on his own chunk of Roman pillar and leans forward, talking quietly.
“Alex, the Mysteries are maybe three thousand years old. They stretch back to Ancient Greece, to the groves and myrtles of Attica. It’s not a joke; it is not a trivial cult of fools in silly costumes.” His voice carries into me, his fine English accent reaching into me; can you be aroused by a voice? How can that be? What do I have to do? Block my ears?
For now I have to listen.
“The Mysteries embody sexual and emotional and spiritual truths that take you closer to the soul. I was myself initiated as a very young man; what I have learned is now part of me, woven into me. The Mysteries have taken me to places of pleasure and revelation that I cannot describe, but I yearn to share. And I yearn to share the intensity with you, X.”
“Which is why you want to see me stripped and beaten?”
“I want to see you experience the joys and the truths that I have experienced. So we have a chance to be . . . truly together.”
“And being whipped, that’s joyful?”
He shakes his head.
“Okay.” He sighs. “Okay . . . I am sorry.” He runs fingers through his black hair. “Possibly . . . I should have told you this some other time, perhaps I got carried away.”
I stand up.
“Y’know, Lord Roscarrick, I’m not sure there’s ever a right time to be told, Oh, by the way, I’m really into hitting women while pretending to be a Roman senator—”
“X, wait.”
“But I’m glad you told me, now I can get the train back to Santa Lucia.”
“X!”
His voice is stern. I feel, for a second, like a scolded child. This makes me even angrier. But I am duly quiet, as he speaks.
“X, the reason I have shown you this is because, once a man is completely initiated into the Fifth Mystery, he is not allowed to have a serious . . . relationship . . . with anyone who is not initiated. Those are the rules.”
“What? What rules?”
“Ancient rules, serious rules.” He shrugs. “Rules that are quite powerfully enforced.”
“So you’re saying you can’t be with me . . . unless I agree to do this? Do all these rituals?”
“Yes. That is, I fear, exactly what I am saying. I shouldn’t really have spent the night with you, but—as I have said—you unman me, X. I am unable to resist. But now I have to resist, unless you agree to this. For the safety of us both.”
I snort with contempt.
“So it’s a kind of threat?”
“No! Nothing will happen to you if you disagree, of course not. But we can never meet again. Because the desire, at least on my side”—his eyes are glittering and sad—“is simply too much. But the Mysteries are not some horror, Alex; they are divine, they are a gift. You will understand, I promise, if you agree. But it is and must be your choice, and yours alone.”
Something in me wants to give him one last chance. He looks so sad and cool and perfect sitting here in the warming sun, showing not a lick of sweat. Just one lock of stray dark hair has fallen forward over his tragically attractive blue eyes, like the angel of male beauty came down and said, Ahhh, he is too perfect, let this lock fall. Which of course makes him even more perfetto. The firm and faintly unshaven jawline, the glimpse of hard and suntanned chest, the definition of his cheekbones, slanting and aggressive and beautiful.
Enough. To hell with his perfection. He may be handsome but I am not going to be whipped for anyone.
“Ciao!”
I stand up and start walking, very fast—despite the rising heat. I can hear his voice behind me, calling.
“X. Per favore, ricordati di me.”
But I ignore him and stride on. Ahead of me I can see the first tourists at the very end of the Roman road: tourists who are all wearing exactly the same baseball caps and photographing exactly the same chunk of Roman theater.
Pompeii. Ugh. I feel like spitting. I was so excited when I got here. Now it is all wrong. All ruins.
Soon I am deep in the throngs of tourists, then I am exiting through the busy turnstiles as everyone comes pouring in the other way, and I know I have made the right decision.
Yet in my mind I can hear his voice.
“Per favore, ricordati di me.”
Why say that?
Forget it, Alexandra. Forget him, and the frescoes, and the Mysteries; forget it all. The dark-haired men in the little cafes with their overpriced Pepsis smile at me as I run down the hill toward the station for Villa dei Misteri and the Circumvesuviana train for Napoli.
Please remember me?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“IT WAS ACTUALLY a pretty clever thing to say.”
“Why?”
Jessica pouts at the sun, lies back, and pushes her Ray-Bans up her elegant nose.
“Think about it, babe.”
We’re lying on the beach at Posillipo, the municipal beach that costs five euros a day and has too many kids screaming and splashing and booting soccer balls, watched over by their big, fat Neapolitan mommas smoking Mild Seven cigarettes, which they stain with vermillion lipstick. Italian women wear more makeup on the beach than I do on the street. I am not sure of my opinion about this.
But it’s the first really hot Sunday of the summer and everyone is happy and smiling and looking forward to a long Neapolitan lunch of Tufo white wine and big tranches of cassata, except for me. I am brooding and pensive.
Remember me?
Why was that a clever thing to say?
“Okay, I give up, why was that a clever thing to say?”
“Because it’s got you wondering, X. And if he wants you to come back to him, which I am sure he does, the best thing is to keep you wondering, unsure, puzzled.”
“Sorry?”
“What he said can be interpreted in so many ways. Does he mean: ‘Remember me because you are never going to see me again’? Or it could be: ‘Remember me because I am the sexiest man you will ever meet so you have to remember me’?”
“Thanks.”
“Or it could be remember him in a wistful, tragic way, like he knows he is gonna be slotted by the ’Ndrangheta next week on the road to La Sanita, so the next time you’ll see Lord R is when he’s a corpse on the front cover of Il Mattino.”
She smiles and lifts her sunglasses and winks at me. Then she adjusts her bikini strap. The sun is hot. Her bikini is new and chic and emerald green, and maybe Ferragamo? Or at least a very clever rip-off of Ferragamo, made in some Camorra-owned factory in Casal di Principe.
My bikini isn’t any of these things, not new, not chic, not a rich emerald green that looks unexpectedly good against a deep Campanian suntan. My bikini is a delicate pink and looked nice in Cali. Not here. God. I have a sincere yearning for new clothes. I have no money. I am bored of budgeting.
And then, of course, the deep, sexy voice floats into my head. Him. In bed. With me. Taking me royally, and saying, I will buy you a hundred fucking dresses.
No! I sit up suddenly from my beach towel as if I am scalded. What is wrong with me? How could I even begin to think this way? If one of my reasons for desiring Marc is partly, even fractionally, because he’s rich, what does that make me? Some mercenary bitch? Virtually a hooker? That is not me!
“Are you okay?”
Jess stretches and puts a hand on my arm.
“Yes. No,” I snap. “It’s nothing.”
“Huh?”
“Okay, I just remembered I dumped a billionaire.”
Jess chuckles.
“Well, yes, I guess that’s gotta hurt.”
She lets go of my arm and reaches for her Marlboro Lights and her lighter with
the picture of Balotelli on it. Some soccer player. Black and handsome and Italian.
“Run it past me again, Beckmann: why did you dump him?”
I sip my cold mineral water and frown and pout, and answer, “Because he’s into that weird cult. The Mystery Religions.”
“And what are they, when they’re at home?”
“Some creepy ancient religious Greco-Roman thing. Where they whip women.”
Jess looks up from her beach towel and nods.
“Yeah? What’s the problem? Still better than wearing deck shoes.”
“Jess.”
I chuck a little of my cold water on her hot, suntan-oiled stomach and she shrieks and laughs.
“Beach Nazi.”
And now we laugh together like old friends, and it is good. And for a moment the clouds disperse and my brooding and moody thoughts are gone and my mind is as clear as the sky over the Bay of Naples this morning, the sea that stretches to the glimmering sawtooths of Capri. One day soon I am going to Capri.
“Seriously,” says Jess. “These Mystery dudes, these blokes in togas, they like to hit women, why and how?”
“Not hit, so much. Flagellate. Ritually whip. It is an erotic ritual of submission.”
“So it’s like a BDSM thing, yes?”
“I guess . . .” I drink the last of the San Pellegrino and screw the cap back on. “Marc emphasized that it was all voluntary, and consensual.”
Her face is suddenly serious. She sits up.
“You know, X, there are worse things in the world than a bit of slap and tickle. I had a boyfriend who was into skateboarding. He was thirty-bloody-two years old, and I had to watch him jump over three-inch-high barriers and pretend I was impressed. Now that was harrowing.”
“Flagellation, though? It’s perverse.”
“Yeah, maybe. Which means Marc is a bit kinky, so what? X, they are all kinky, deep down. And if you ask me, all women are a bit kinky, too; it’s just we’ve been repressed by the patriarchy.” She stubs her cigarette out in the sand, a slovenly, and rather Neapolitan, gesture. I resist the urge to wince. She goes on.
“You know what they say: no woman ever got turned on by a man dressed as a liberal.” I chuckle at the line, but she continues, “Aren’t you even a little bit intrigued, X? Why not give it a whirl, vanilla girl? It’s time you explored your libido. You do have one, don’t you?”
“I told you.”
“Ah yes, the best fuck of your life. Yes. You told me all about that, babe. He ripped off your clothes and you liked it, didn’t you?”
“Yes, a bit . . . Okay, a lot.”
“So maybe you’ll like some other things. Threesomes. Foursomes. Lesbian costume play. Driving naked in Ferraris with wildly sexy billionaires, poor you.”
I put the empty water bottle back in my bag like a tidy and sensible girl. Jess is making sense, maybe. But suburban X is still resisting, very strongly. There were just too many things wrong with Marc, quite apart from the Mysteries. The slight but definite menace. The hint of restrained violence. The police interest in his palazzo. The enigma of his departed wife.
Jess is now leaning on an elbow, smoking another cigarette, and openly ogling some Italian guy in his swimwear. I stare beyond her pretty profile at the strange building at the end of the beach. It is an enormous villa, a grand and historic palazzo.
It looks maybe fifteenth century and it is entirely in ruins. The windows are dark and foreboding, the roof is sprouting palm trees. Why? Why is it empty? It has a sublime position, perched above Posillipo beach, gazing out over the Bay of Naples—staring at Vesuvius and the regal sea. If it was done up it might be worth ten million dollars.
Yet it rots?
“It’s called the Villa Donn’Anna,” Jess says vacantly, following my stare. “They say it’s haunted . . . all three hundred rooms. And it was used for orgies.”
I gaze at the building. The city still confuses me so much. I need to know more. To learn. To understand. I am not ever going back to Marc Roscarrick, but I want to know why he is the way he is, and why Naples is so broken. And yet so irresistible.
And this is what I do. As soon as I get back to the apartment, a little drunk from too much cut-price midday rosé, I open my laptop, to research. But before I can google “Mystery Religions,” I see a notification. I have an e-mail. From Mom. And the subject is: Coming to see you!!
What?
Somewhat startled, I open the e-mail.
Hi, Alex . . .
The e-mail is typical Mom, breathless and loving and badly punctuated. But the meaning is clear: Mom’s best friend, Margo—who is much richer—is going to Amalfi for a holiday with friends, and Mom is joining her. My mother is using up some of her precious savings to fly all the way to Italy so she can see her darling daughter and have a nice holiday. She will be here in three days’ time.
I know you don’t want your mom cramping your style so don’t worry, I won’t linger, hon! But we can have a few days together in Naples. I so want to eat the delizioso ice cream!
I close the e-mail. My dear, sheltered, suburban American mother. What will she think of Naples? I have a feeling it won’t match her gilded and romanticized dream of Italy. But I am glad she is coming. I miss her; I miss all my family. She and I used to be very close. She was a great mom when I was a kid; it wasn’t her fault I got bored of San Jose and In-N-Out.
What on earth do I tell her about Marc? Anything?
I decide to file the problem away for another day. Instead, I search “Mystery Religions” and read.
The Mystery Religions flourished across the Greco-Roman world from the fifth century BC to the end of the Roman Empire, in about AD 400. The principal and overriding characteristic of a Mystery Religion is the secrecy associated with the rituals of initiation, which lead the celebrant to a spiritual revelation. The most celebrated mysteries of Greco-Roman antiquity were the Eleusinian Mysteries, but the Orphic, Dionysian, and Mithraic Mysteries were also famous.
So which Mystery is Marc involved in? Two minutes’ research tells me it is probably the Mysteries of Dionysus, or some variant, or mixture.
Dionysia, or the Dionysiac Mysteries, were established throughout the Greek world. Dionysus (Diæνυsov) was the Greek god of wine, but also the god of fertility, and of vegetation.
Male and female initiates into Dionysia followed different paths. The women followers were known as the Maenads or “frenzied women” or Bacchants (or Bacchae), “women of Bacchus.” The female initiation commonly involved drinking and singing and sometimes frenzied dancing (or even howling like wild animals). It is generally believed that part of the initiation into the cult involved intense sexual activity, from flagellation to orgies, and beyond . . .
Beyond?
For the next three hours I am immersed in the bizarre world of Orpheus and the god of ecstasy. Yet my research concludes with my tired, stupid, and rather wandering mind helplessly typing in the words “Marc Roscarrick.” Why? Why torment myself? I just want to know. Though I’m not entirely sure what I want to know.
A news item tops the page. Yawning from the afternoon alcohol, I click on it. It is a celebrity website. In Italian. Its prose is as breathless as my mother’s.
I read on, laboriously translating the words.
The website tells me the molto bello e scapolo (the “very handsome and eligible”) Lord Roscarrick has been sighted in London, for some festival of Italian films.
There is a small photo accompanying the piece, which I enlarge with a click. It shows him leaving a fashionable restaurant in “il West End di Londra,” smiling that distant, sad, glittering smile at the paparazzo’s camera. I can see there are several young women in his party, caught in the flash of the popping camera; all of them beautiful, of course. Marc stares at the camera; I stare at the women along
side him. Long-legged, like colts, like a millionaire’s polo ponies. Gorgeous, expensive women. Fashionable English and Italian girls. Are they initiates, too?
I only know this: that I could have been there. In that photo. If I’d wanted. But I didn’t.
I close the website with a fierce pang of jealousy and melancholy, and a sense of deep relief that it is over.
Ciao, bello.
THREE DAYS LATER, my mother arrives from San Francisco.
She is happy and excited and jet-lagged and she almost runs out of the airport as Jessica and I struggle along behind, half laughing, half grimacing, with her bags. In the taxi to Santa Lucia she chatters about nothing and everything. Mom is booked into a cheapish hotel near my apartment. We drop her in the dusty lobby, presuming she’ll want a few hours to rest and relax, but ten minutes later, her gray hair still damp from a shower, she is buzzing my bell and in my apartment and grabbing my arm and saying, “Darling! Take me to the Caffè Gambrinus! I hear it’s The Place—it’s in all the guidebooks!”
I might, ordinarily, be wary of this, for fear of running into Marc. But I know he is out of the country. Mom and I can go anywhere.
Letting my mom take my arm, we step out onto Via Santa Lucia in the early evening sun. My mom is still chit-chattering about Dad’s golf and his retirement and my brothers.
We walk. She talks. We walk and she talks and then I stare. My heart is somewhere near my throat as I gaze ahead. We are crossing the wide empty pavements of Piazza del Plebiscito, with the sun setting pinkly over Anacapri.
And Marc Roscarrick is walking directly toward us.
He hasn’t seen me. He is immersed in a phone call and gazing to the left.
“Quick, Mom—this way.”
“What?” She is startled. “But I can see the Gambrinus, darling. It’s over there.”
I tug her.
“Mom, this way!”
“What’s wrong?”
My mother is actually a little distressed. Oh God. Too late.
We are three meters apart. He is walking right into us. He looks up and sees me.
We cannot avoid each other.