If Helena really had been ‘disappeared,’ finding her would not be easy. The danger of being unmasked and disgraced compelled anyone on the S and M scene to use rules and codes hard for any outsider to decipher. I couldn’t help wondering if we were really up to the job. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Giraldi standing in the middle of the room, watching me with a worried look on his face. I got up and left without saying goodbye.
That night La Cuccia was crowded; Maurizio Camardi and his band were playing, and he greeted me with a nod of his saxophone. Max and Beniamino were sitting at my table eating chocolates and drinking Sicilian Ala Amarascato wine. Rudy brought me an Alligator iced to just the right temperature, while I talked about the visit I had paid Giraldi, told them what I had been thinking and how I was worried we might never understand such an inaccessible scene, let alone manage to investigate it.
‘They have to figure out how they communicate among themselves somehow,’ Max pointed out. ‘If we can just penetrate their information systems, we’ll be able to read them like a book.’
‘Assuming your Sardinian friends can break the passwords.’
‘I don’t have any doubts on that score. The problem is, we don’t yet know what we’re looking for.’
‘One beautiful German blonde,’ I said.
‘What did this Antonina Gattuso look like?’
‘Not much.’
‘Do you reckon she told you the truth?’
I let my cocktail slip down slowly. ‘I don’t know. They’re so used to lying that I kind of assume she didn’t tell me the whole story. The same goes for Giraldi.’ I reached for a chocolate.
Max’s face puckered with disgust. ‘It’s wasted with that brew you’re drinking. Have it with some wine; it brings out the taste of almonds.’
‘Wine’s not my drink. I prefer my “brew.”’
‘You’re a hopeless barbarian,’ Rossini chuckled. ‘Any attempt to educate your palate is doomed.’
‘Look who’s talking. As I recall, we used to wolf down precisely the same prison swill, yet now it seems all that time you were really some kind of gourmet.’
‘By the way,’ Max said, ‘I don’t know about you two, but this whole S and M thing has got me thinking about prison.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Beniamino snapped.
‘Nor do I,’ I said.
‘But you have been thinking about it,’ Max continued, undeterred. ‘It’s reminded me of a couple of prison officers who were sadistic, in the true sense of the term.’
‘Stop it,’ I hissed. ‘Why do you want to ruin our evening? We all know there are some pretty sick people in prison, among both prisoners and screws.’
‘Except that if it’s a prisoner it’s a problem you can solve, whereas if it’s a screw you just have to put up with unending gratuitous harassment.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ I retorted. ‘Jails are the ideal place for every kind of frustrated nut, people who only feel they’re somebody if they’ve got a uniform on their back.’
‘I wasn’t talking about that. I was referring to the fact that some of the screws I got to know had a genuinely sadistic side to their character.’
‘If you carry on with this crap, I’m going to get up and leave,’ Rossini warned. ‘You know damn well there are certain prison experiences you just don’t talk about. It’s shit that everyone has to deal with on his own.’
‘Beniamino’s right.’
‘But the thing is, this shit, as you call it, never goes away. You know that. It gets stuck in your brain.’
‘Precisely. And as there’s no way you can forget it, there’s absolutely no point keeping on dredging it up.’
‘I don’t agree.’
‘Then go see a shrink.’
‘I can only talk about prison with people who’ve been inside.’
‘Then I really don’t know how to help you.’
Maurizio came over and sat down at our table, which put an end to the argument. We got to talking about music and musicians and the mood relaxed. Later, however, when I returned to the solitude of my apartment, the memories Max had stirred resurfaced in my mind as from a brimming sewer. Max was right when he said there was something about the S and M scene that was reminiscent of prison, but I couldn’t work out what it was; maybe the use of chains, coercion, and physical violence. Or maybe it was the clear-cut division between roles, with the torturer on one side and the victim on the other, like screws and prisoners. It certainly put me on edge. I recalled a young Calabrian transvestite hooker I had got to know in the isolation wing of the San Giovanni in Monte prison in Bologna. He was there because his appearance was too feminine for him to be held in the main block. I was there because I was in transit, awaiting transferral to the main prison in Padova, and the governor in Bologna didn’t want too many ‘politicals’ on the loose in his prison. The transvestite had been arrested for robbing a client. Every night a bunch of prison officers and prisoners went to his cell, made him dress up like a woman and put on makeup, then gagged him, tied him to the bars of his cell, and took it in turns. I could hear everything but just sat smoking in the dark, wishing they’d hurry up and leave. In the mornings, during the exercise hour, I hadn’t the guts to look him in the eye, and did everything I could to avoid him. Now, I could no longer remember his face, just his smothered screaming.
I got out of bed and went to the kitchen for a drink. If I’d gone on recalling stuff, other ghosts would have emerged, and I couldn’t let that happen, couldn’t run the risk of plunging into my own personal abyss of pain and shame for the humiliations I’d suffered. I had never been the object of sexual abuse, but I knew full well that prison spawns every conceivable aberration.
I phoned Virna but her cell phone was switched off, so I pulled on my trousers and went and knocked on Max’s door. He was still awake, and came to the door with a book in his hand.
‘Thanks to you, I can’t sleep,’ I said as I walked in.
‘Nightmares from a recent past?’ he asked sarcastically.
‘Fuck off, Max.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘No. What the hell are you playing at? Do you want to turn us into some kind of prison-survivors’ self-help group?’
‘Might be an idea.’
‘Cut the crap and give me a drink.’
He pointed at the sideboard. ‘Help yourself.’
‘What are you reading?’
‘A Treatise on Sadomasochistic Perversion, by Franco De Masi.’
‘And what does it say?’
‘That sadomasochism is a dangerous perversion, involving the “sexualization of a destructive pleasure.”’
‘No, really?’
‘The author says that sadomasochistic relationships produce a state similar to a drug-induced high, so the dose of violence tends to keep increasing.’
‘What about those on the receiving end? Do they manage to endure it?’
‘Yeah, it seems so. Pain prompts the nervous system to manufacture endorphins, which create a sense of well-being, sometimes even ecstasy.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘I still think that within limits people should be free to fuck whatever way they like.’
‘What limits?’
‘Well, those stipulated on the S and M websites. What they rather pompously refer to as the “ethical and behavioral codes of sadomasochistic orthodoxy.” In short: safe, healthy, and consensual sex. What’s more, there’s a series of rules on how to negotiate play boundaries and some agreed safe words for calling time-out.’
‘If they’re that wary they’ve obviously encountered problems in the past.’
‘Big problems, judging by the straightforward but effective safety regulations they’ve developed to avoid falling into the hands of the wrong people.’
>
‘Like those who kidnapped Helena.’
‘Precisely. These guys are like wolves prowling for their prey in a world of secrets and enforced silence. Giraldi’s behavior provides a striking illustration.’
‘I get the feeling that Helena and Giraldi failed to follow safety procedures.’
‘They totally ignored them and I’d really like to know why. Going on what you discovered at their house, it’s pretty clear that Giraldi and his wife had been actively involved in the S and M scene for years. But they walked into that hotel room with their eyes shut tight. The guidelines stipulate that the initial meeting must be arranged in a public place and in the presence of a friend who can act as a monitor, keeping an eye on the situation from a distance. What’s more, the first time they have sex, it’s forbidden to tie up the submissive partner—precisely in order to prevent anything untoward.’
‘I just can’t believe Giraldi and his wife let themselves be duped like a pair of absolute novices.’
‘Nor can I, which is another reason for rejecting Giraldi’s version of events.’
‘Did you get any other insights from surfing the S and M websites?’
‘Analyzing the data, I noticed that women are a small minority, whether as slaves or as mistresses. The biggest group of S and M practitioners is of men wanting to be subjugated, closely followed by men wanting to be masters. After that, there are fetishists and various other subcategories. In all, there are tens of thousands of people on the circuit.’
‘We can’t check them all out.’
‘Helena advertised as a slave. That’s where we start our search.’
My cell phone woke me just before midday. It was Max the Memory. ‘I’m on my way back with our guests,’ he announced. I surreptitiously made myself a mug of instant coffee and added two fingers of Calvados. Max would be horrified if he found out and would cut me dead: as far as he was concerned, fair-trade coffee was the only option. It was good, true enough; indeed it was the best coffee you could get, but in the morning all I wanted was this instant brand, strong, plentiful, and sugary, in one of those red mugs they give away with four box tops. A proper coffeemaker, bubbling away on the gas ring alongside a solitary cup, would have reminded me of prison. I cursed Max yet again. I had been doing my best to forget the seven years I had spent behind bars and now he demanded we sit round a table to rake over our nightmares.
I lit the first cigarette of the day and thought of Virna. I tried to call her again but she couldn’t be reached. She had clearly decided not to speak to me while she reappraised our relationship. I carefully chose a CD to put me in a good mood—Moondance by Van Morrison—then stepped under the shower. Max had given me an entire range of excellent and healthy natural toiletries and I’d never touched them. I used supermarket shampoo and body wash. I liked them garish, creamy, and fragrant. The one I now smeared all over my chest and thighs smelled of citrus fruit, nice and summery, just like the ads promised.
The Sardinian hackers arrived. They were tall and thin and couldn’t have been a day over twenty-five. Ivaz sported short, dark-brown hair, whereas Arakno’s was red and shoulder-length. Both of them had tattoos on their arms, clearly done by the same talented artist. They certainly hadn’t been done in prison. Tattoos were the height of fashion right now but you didn’t often see such fine ones. Max and I were among the few ex-cons who didn’t have any; neither of us liked the idea of having to look at the same drawing for an entire lifetime.
‘They’re a pair of kids,’ I whispered to Max.
‘So what? So were we once,’ Max said. ‘Anyway, don’t worry, they come highly recommended.’
Ivaz and Arakno said hello, opened their metal cases, and started pulling out laptops and cables of every dimension.
‘You’ve certainly brought enough kit with you,’ I remarked in astonishment.
Arakno snickered. ‘This is just the key that gets us into the serious hardware.’
‘These laptops,’ Ivaz added, ‘will enable us to log on to our university intranet. A guy we work with will then connect them up to the internet so they can go to work for us. We’ll tell them what they need to look for.’
While they were setting up their equipment, I went down to the club and got a case of Ichnusa beer from the fridge. They were really grateful and got straight down to work, cigarettes hanging from the corners of their mouths.
Fat Max connected to one of the two sites where Helena had posted her ads. ‘The first thing I want to do is get into this inbox: helena at . . .’
‘Let’s see what we can do,’ Arakno said. ‘I’m going to use the intranet to randomly generate some passwords, while Ivaz tries to sort through them using the prompts that the systems manager suggests when the user forgets their password.’
‘You’ve lost me,’ Max said.
‘Any time you open an email account, you’re asked to provide a question, the answer to which reminds you of your password. Sometimes it’s really simple, like a husband’s name or a date of birth.’
Max reached for a notebook, jotted down all the data we had on Helena and handed it to Ivaz.
‘Why don’t you put some music on?’ Arakno asked. ‘My ears are still buzzing from the plane engines.’
Max switched on the CD in the computer drive. It was a jazz track, but it reminded me of a well-known tune. ‘I’ve heard another version of this somewhere.’
Max chuckled. ‘It’s Renato Sellani’s trio playing a set of Ricky Gianco numbers. To be precise, this piece is called . . . ’
‘“Pugni Chiusi”’ Ivaz said. He began to hold forth on the various different versions of ‘Pugni Chiusi’ but was soon interrupted by Arakno announcing that he’d managed to access Helena’s inbox. Max and I approached the screen. Every message prior to the day of the kidnapping had been deleted and all subsequent messages were from old or new clients suggesting meetings. There was nothing there that could help us in our investigations.
I lit a cigarette. ‘I don’t reckon it was Helena who deleted those emails,’ I said, thinking aloud.
‘Nor do I,’ Max said. ‘It was either her husband or her kidnappers.’
‘Giraldi said he didn’t know what her password was,’ I remarked. ‘Besides, it’s her kidnappers who had to avoid leaving any trace.’
‘Is there no way of recovering them?’ Max asked
Arakno took a sip of beer. ‘No, there isn’t. Every single message has been deleted, whether received or sent.’
‘So what do we do now?’ I asked, feeling disheartened.
‘We just keep on poking our noses into the slaves’ inboxes, hoping we get lucky.’
Max went off to fix some lunch while Arakno and Ivaz got back to work. It took them about twenty minutes to hack into the email account of a certain Anais72@ ..., a twenty-nine-year-old from Novara, near Milan. She had posted her ad about ten days previously and so far she’d had replies from around seventy masters and mistresses. Several of them had left their cell phone numbers and at least half had attached photos of themselves in dominant poses, kitted out with the usual armory of masks and whips. Sifting through the replies that Anais72 had sent, it became apparent that she had selected three men from the Turin area and had begun, with extreme caution, to exchange emails with them.
By the time Max returned from the kitchen, drying his hands on a dishcloth, I’d read through the inboxes of four different slaves. One of them had already started seeing a master, but was adhering strictly to the safety guidelines recommended on all S and M websites. The same masters’ and mistresses’ nicknames kept recurring and identical replies were frequently sent to different people. Sex slaves were evidently a rare commodity.
‘We’re going to have to come up with some other system,’ Max grunted. ‘This’ll take us ages.’
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ Ivaz said, stretching. ‘But right now I’m hungry.’
‘That’s the slave-name of Antonina Gattuso, Giraldi’s girlfriend.’
‘Are you certain?’ Max asked in astonishment.
‘Absolutely. The poem I saw in Giraldi’s photo album was signed Barbie Slave.’
‘Well, it would appear that Giraldi’s slave is not all that faithful.’
‘Not necessarily. She told me that sometimes Giraldi forces her to submit to other masters as a form of punishment when she’s misbehaved. Look, that’s just what the ad says. “My name’s Barbie. I’m a thirty-five-year-old slave. I’m good-looking and expert, but sometimes a little disobedient. To punish me, my master subjects me to intense and no-holds-barred punishment by other masters, on condition that he is present. My master will select the successful applicants, who must all be expert, sophisticated, and imaginative.”’
Max turned to Ivaz and Arakno. ‘Maybe we’ve found what we’re looking for.’
The two guys returned to work. After about fifteen minutes, they informed us that the password consisted of a sequence of numbers and letters and that it would take a while to crack.
The Master of Knots Page 5