I pass by chamber after chamber and as I pass each one I peek inside. Each one looks like a scene from the SODOM website. There is a girl in some kind of stress situation or scenario – tied up, caged, chained, restrained – and surrounding them an audience, like the one in my dream, all wearing carnival masks, galvanized and aroused by the spectacle that has been presented for them.
Like the grotto, the walls of chambers are painted, but this time with an interior scene, like a theater set, complete with windows, doors and adjoining rooms. I pass by each chamber slowly enough that I can make sure Anna is not inside and then move on. I’m walking through these catacombs and after a while it feels like I’m walking around in circles. Either that or the punishments just all start to look the same.
I come across one room that looks empty. Curiosity gets the better of me and I walk inside. Like all the other chambers I saw, all the furnishings are painted on the walls, except a small dais, made up as a bed, and a marble statue standing opposite it.
A man’s voice from behind says, ‘What took you so long?’
He sounds so familiar to me. This voice, I know it.
I turn around to see the man in the harlequin mask, the man from my dream, my sex partner from the Juliette Society party. A sense of relief washes over me at the sight of a familiar figure. He’s wearing a knowing smile and a black hooded cape. He was expecting me, but I can’t work out how.
‘I’m looking for someone,’ I say.
And I scan the room as I say it, even though there’s not a lot to scan.
‘Well, here I am,’ he says, intent on drawing my attention and my eyes back to him.
‘Not you,’ I tell him. ‘My friend. Anna.’
‘Do I know her?’ he says.
‘I don’t know… ’ I reply, looking into his eyes.
‘Should I?’ he says. That smile flickers across his face again. I don’t really know what this is about or where it’s leading, but it feels like he knows more than he’s letting on and he’s teasing me.
‘Come,’ he says, walking towards me and extending his hand. ‘I want to show you something.’
He motions to the marble statue in the corner of the room.
Willingly, I take his hand and it seems so familiar, like when a child reaches for its parent’s hand and slips inside it like a baseball glove and it feels so comforting and warm.
From the back, the statue looks like a man with really hairy legs. He’s kneeling down and bending forward with his arms out in front of him, either kneeling in prayer or masturbating with his back turned so that no one can see. As we get closer, I see that he’s doing neither.
It’s a statue of a man, and there’s no other way to say this other than to be blunt – it’s a statue of a man fucking a goat. Well, not exactly a man, but a half-man/half-goat, with horns, like the devil. The top half is human; the bottom, goat. Technically, I guess, it’s really a goat fucking a goat and no laws of man, nature, or God are actually being violated or transgressed. But still… it is fucking, there’s not really any doubt about that, because the goat-man has his penis inserted into the goat’s lower regions. If a goat has a vagina – this is really embarrassing, I don’t know if a goat has a vagina – then, yes, it’s inserted into the goat’s vagina.
The goat, like most goats, even when they’re female, has a beard. And it’s lying on its back, with its hind legs up in the air and the goat-man is fucking it and tugging on its beard at the same time. And the goat, it’s not looking terribly happy about this state of affairs, it has to be said. In fact, it looks terrified. Or maybe I’m just projecting. But I’ll tell you this, the whole scenario looks pretty creepy, even if the statue itself is beautifully carved and rendered.
‘Do you know what this is?’ he says.
‘Pretty explicit,’ I say. ‘Other than that, no idea.’
‘Take a guess,’ he says.
‘Ancient Etruscan pornography?’ I ask.
‘Close,’ he laughs. ‘A couple of centuries off. It’s Roman. Pan. The God of fucking.’
I’m listening to his voice and it’s really bugging me because he sounds so familiar, but I just can’t place it.
‘Do you know where this comes from?’ he says.
‘The Playboy Mansion?’ I say.
And now I’m just fucking with him, because he’s trying to patronize me. If I could see his face, I’m sure it would be scowling.
‘Herculaneum,’ he says, as if I should know. ‘Italy, near Pompeii. In the private villa of Julius Caesar’s father-in-law, who was himself an extremely powerful and influential figure.