The Story of X: An Erotic Tale Read Online Free PDF Page B

are expected to follow in their fathers’ footsteps . . .
    Gang membership descends by blood. It is hereditary?
    Inevitably I think of Roscarrick and his tales of the crazy ninth lord. Marc fits
     the picture, maybe. But then it is all blood here, the descent of blood, the ties
     of blood. Everything is related to everyone. I am the pure outsider. I want to know
     more.
    By lunchtime my mind is fried so I change my focus. Every afternoon I put on some
     little sports socks and my sneakers, and in my innocent summer dresses from Zara I
     go exploring the intricate and historic suburbs of inner Naples. Whence the Camorra
     derive their strength, where they recruit their killers and hunt their enemies.
    Am I naïve, just wandering around these supposedly dreadful places? I would never
     do this in the States: go wandering in the bad neighborhood of a big city alone. And
     yet I do not feel menaced. Why? Perhaps it is because these slums are so seductive,
     so charming in their dark and chaotic and sun-dashed poverty—it is hard to feel threatened.
    Walking the narrow, vivacious, operetta-singing lanes of Spaccanapoli or the Quartieri
     Spagnoli is like having a bit part in an Italian movie, made just for God, a movie
     called Italy . It is all so authentic : the women sitting outdoors in the narrow alleys washing potatoes over buckets, trimming
     bearded blue mussels, and gossiping loudly about sex; the old ladies in black, changing
     flowers and lightbulbs in glazed roadside shrines to Holy Mother Mary; the pretty
     boys eating drooping triangles of pizza as they sit on their sky blue Lambretta scooters,
     leaning forward so they don’t drip pomodoro on their expensive pants; the over-tall feminelli —the transsexuals—skittering on the black lava-stone cobbles from Vesuvius as they
     walk down to the ferry port in heels, heading for sexual assignations with the rich
     on Ischia and Capri.
    Less pleasing are the inexplicably silent, garbage-filled piazzas of Materdei, where
     tubby, half-shaven men in business suits disappear around the corner as soon as I
     show up—leaving me all alone in the eerie, siesta-quiet sunlight in my Zara dress,
     staring at a peeling old poster of Diego Maradona.
    And then, of course, the unthinkable happens.
    It is day fourteen of my work-hard-and-don’t-brood-about-him regime. It is all going
     well. I have a slight hangover. I am in the Quartieri Spagnoli. I spent the previous
     night drinking cheap Peronis and Raffis with Jessica and a couple of her Italian friends
     in a bar near the university. We had a nice night. It was fun. We didn’t talk about
     him and we have diligently avoided the Caffè Gambrinus—and the other fashionable and
     pricey places where he might be encountered.
    But my head is slightly fuzzy this morning. And I am rather lost. I have wandered
     down an empty and yawning cul-de-sac. I look up at the strip of blue sky, caged between
     the high slum buildings. It is very hot. Laundry flutters in a desperately weak midday
     breeze. I am dehydrated. I stare at the lurid panties and erotic lingerie, red and
     blue and black, swinging in the gasp of breeze, the anarchic and drooping flags of
     sexuality.
    “Hey.”
    I turn.
    “Soldi.”
    “Dacci i soldi!”
    Four kids—no, youths—are standing at the end of the alley. Five meters away. They
     are tall and skinny and walking toward me, and they want money. My Italian is good
     enough to understand that.
    Give us money.
    I swivel, and then I despair. I forgot. I am in a damn cul-de-sac. Desperate now,
     I look up—maybe someone is at a window, taking some air. But all I sense is a shutter
     being closed. People turning away, retreating. Don’t watch, don’t witness, don’t tell. Omerta .
    “Dacci i soldi!”
    “But I don’t have any money!”
    Why am I doing this? Why am I resisting? These kids are surely junkies—four of the
     thousands of smack addicts of Naples, enslaved by the drugs of the Camorra.