Fanatics

by William Bell

  I slammed down the sash, locked it, jerked the curtains closed, then collapsed into the chair. I got up and stumbled to the night table, switched on the lamp, and snatched up my cell, falling to my knees and leaning crookedly back against the bed.

  “Raphaella,” I gasped as soon as she picked up, “it’s a haunting. It’s happening again.”

  Two

  I

  I SAT ALONE at the table in the Corbizzi kitchen, watching grey pre-dawn light flow into the landscape, giving definition to trees and gardens, the dew-pearled furniture on the patio, the glass-flat water beyond the indistinct shoreline. I was still shaking from the disorientation that comes when an experience shatters your version of reality like a rock smashes a window.

  After the spirit’s visitation I had spent the rest of the night in the chair by the guest-room window, startling at every sound, unable to prevent myself from leaping up every few minutes and stealing a glance through the crack between the curtains. Every light in the room was on. I had been caught in the classic dilemma of a haunt’s victim. The bedroom, with door locked, window secured, curtains closed, was a sanctuary, a cave. At the same time it was a trap that cocooned me from sight and sound but made me vulnerable to stealth.

  During the night I had spoken to Raphaella for a long time on the phone, but after a while we began to cover the same ground. There was no doubt now, no denial possible. The Corbizzi mansion was being haunted by the spirit of Girolamo Savonarola. And the apparition had chosen me, approaching at first through my dreams, showing me how he had suffered during his life, tortured in a rat-infested cell by men who went about their job as calmly and unperturbed as a janitor sweeping a hall.

  But what was my connection to a Roman Catholic Dominican friar who had lived half a world away, more than five hundred years in the past? Nothing, probably, beyond my coincidental presence at the Corbizzi estate. Was it fate that had brought us together? Why was he showing me how he had suffered? Why had he slipped away when I repeated the line from the Latin prayer?

  Before Raphaella and I ended the call, we had agreed to keep our minds open about the spirit, while allowing for the possibility that this haunting was evil. It had certainly seemed that way.

  “But,” Raphaella had reminded me, “ghosts are frightening by nature. Their otherworldliness seems threatening even if it’s not.”

  “Okay,” I had conceded. “Point taken. But I still think this apparition caused the prof’s seizure, even if he scared the poor old man to death without intending to. And there’s the fire and smoke. The smell seems to come and go, but it’s associated with the spirit. There was fire when the prof died.”

  We agreed that she’d come over in the morning, and in daylight, we’d think of a plan.

  “Good,” I said as we ended the call. “I like plans.”

  Raphaella had once thought that haunts were “neutral”-the spirit neither harmed nor helped the person receiving the visitation. But our personal experience had proved her wrong when we had been chased through the forest near the African Methodist Church by eight spirits intent on stoning us to death. Only Raphaella’s quick wits had saved us.

  I got up from the kitchen table and put the kettle on to boil. In my jeans pocket, my cell vibrated.

  eta 9 rs.

  I replied, then made a cup of tea. When it was ready I carried it outside and down to the shore.

  II

  RAPHAELLA ARRIVED just as Mrs. Stoppini was removing a tray of homemade croissants from the oven. The sight of the buttery golden brown crescents and the fragrance of freshly ground coffee improved my mood, but not nearly as much as Raphaella did when she burst through the door, dropped her backpack on a chair, and bowled me over with a bear hug and a deep passionate kiss.

  “My hero,” she said, kissing me again, longer this time. “My brave knight.”

  “Ahem.” Mrs. Stoppini stood stiffly by the counter, a jug of steamed milk in her hand.

  “Morning, Mrs. Stoppini,” Raphaella said, smiling. “Sorry. I lose control when I’m near him. He’s magnetic.”

  Mrs. Stoppini scowled at me.

  “It’s a gift,” I said. “I can’t help it.”

  “Indeed.”

  Raphaella was wearing a white silk blouse, jeans, and leather sandals. She had swept her hair up onto her head and secured it with two plastic barrettes shaped like butterflies-her “let’s get down to work” look.

  The three of us sat down and sipped espresso, munched croissants, and chatted. Raphaella told Mrs. Stoppini about the Demeter Natural Food and Medicinal Herbs Shop and described the lessons her mother was giving her on how to mix herbal remedies. Mrs. Stoppini actually looked interested. After breakfast, Raphaella and I excused ourselves and went to the library. I dragged a chair to Raphaella’s table by the window.

  “I think Mrs. S. has a streak of kindness under that severe exterior,” Raphaella commented.

  “She does.”

  “And I believe she’s lonely.”

  “Yup, no question.”

  “And she thinks you’re a fine man.”

  “She’s an excellent judge of character, and very perceptive.”

  “Mind you, she could be wrong.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Do you think she knows?” Raphaella asked, switching tracks.

  “I’ve been wondering since the day I met her just how much she knows. All along she’s been careful about what she tells me. She doesn’t talk about him much. At first I thought she was protecting the prof’s reputation or something, because of the fire-you know, gossip, scandal, questions, his seizure and so on. All I know is he was a prof, wrote some books, left the university because he was dissatisfied with his department and vice versa. Not that I expect her to tell me more. It’s none of my business, after all.”

  Raphaella nodded.

  “But,” I went on, “her paranoia about this room is something else.”

  “So she’s aware of something going on around here.”

  “Exactly. All she’d say was that the prof had been working on some project that he kept from her for some reason. He wouldn’t allow her into the library. What could he have been keeping from her? His new book, the manuscript in the secret cupboard? She didn’t know about the cupboard either, and when I showed it to her she didn’t want to hear anything about the contents.”

  Raphaella played with her pencil, standing it point down on the writing pad, sliding her fingers down the length, reversing it, jabbing the eraser end down, repeating the motion.

  “She’s in denial. Unless…” she said mysteriously, beginning to doodle.

  “Unless what?”

  “Maybe the professor kept her away not to hide a secret but to protect her.”

  “That could be it. If somebody knows you don’t know, you’re safe. If they know you know, you’re a threat.”

  Raphaella gave me a look. “I think I followed that.”

  “Mrs. Stoppini still won’t come in here,” I continued, “even though the prof is dead and everything here belongs to her now-or is under her control, since she’s the executor of his will.”

  “Hmm. So what’s our next step? Confront her with what we know? Ask her if she’s seen or heard anything… out of the ordinary?”

  “Better to let things develop,” I answered. “Until we learn more.”

  I got the keys from the desk and opened the secret cupboard, then laid out the Compendium Revelationem, the file folder, the box containing the medal, and the cross on the square table. For a moment my eyes rested on the Compendium-the ancient book that had been written by the man whose spirit was haunting me-and I shivered. The book was like a weapon with a dark history.

  I picked up the file containing the professor’s manuscript and carried it to Raphaella at the table. “Enjoy,” I said, setting it down.

  She unwound the string, opened the stiff paper file, and slid out the stack of sheets.

  “It’s typewritten,” she observed, leafing throug
h the pile.

  “Yeah, on the Underwood over there on the escritoire.” I looked closer. “He’d been editing with a pencil, just like Mom does.”

  “You realize,” Raphaella said, “this is probably the only copy.”

  “I never thought about it. If he had word-processed the book, why bother to make a copy by banging away on an ancient typewriter? He wrote this here, in this room.”

  I fetched the professor’s magnifying glass from the escritoire and examined the back of a sheet, talking as I peered through the glass. “People used to make carbon copies as they typed, by putting carbon paper between two sheets of stock before typing. But I don’t see any evidence of that.”

  “How do you know all that stuff?”

  “I work in an antiques store. And my father is at least a century behind the times. He’d fit right in around here.”

  Raphaella smiled, then her eyes returned to the manuscript. “I guess we can’t take it away with us and get it photocopied.”

  “Nope. I’m-we’re-not supposed to remove anything from this room.”

  “Where can we get hold of a portable photocopy machine or a scanner?”

  “I don’t-”

  “Wait!”

  Raphaella pulled her new phone from her backpack. “I’ve got one right here! The PIE has a camera! I can shoot the pages and email them to myself.”

  She then put down the PIE, placed the manuscript pages back on the stack, and straightened it. She picked up her pencil and slid the writing pad closer.

  “In the meantime,” she said, “let’s do some reading.”

  AS RAPHAELLA DIVED into her work, I crossed over to the alcove and took down Savonarolan Theocracy, holding it as I slowly scanned the shelves for more volumes written by Professor Corbizzi. Mom told me she had found four titles-all of them out of print-on the web, listed with his bio. The books in the alcove were not shelved in order of each author’s surname because many of them had been pulled down and flung on the floor the night the prof had died, and I had replaced them haphazardly. But eventually I located three of the books I was seeking-Lorenzo and the Friar, San Marco’s Hounds of God, and Puritanism, Fundamentalism, and Theocracy.

  “All thrilling reads, I’m sure,” I muttered, stacking the books beside the cross. But I was interested in works about Savonarola, so I searched the shelves some more and came up with two other books devoted to the friar, then settled down at the table, across from Raphaella.

  Under different circumstances it would have been a golden morning, a quiet interlude with Raphaella in a beautiful room, with a perfect summer day as a backdrop. Raphaella had sunk deep into her reading. Her powers of concentration were amazing. Mine were okay, as long as I was interested in the topic. When I was in elementary school my dad used to say I had excellent powers of concentration-but only for five or ten seconds at a time. Take me fishing, though, and I was a different boy.

  I opened a book and began to read more about the life of the man who was tormenting my dreams.

  Three

  I

  THE LIBRARY WAS CALM and quiet, except for the whisper of pages being turned and the hiss of pencil lead crossing paper. Birdsong trickled through the open windows. As the hours passed and the morning slipped by, the heat rose, making me drowsy, and I began to feel the effects of my lost night’s sleep. But Girolamo Savonarola was a fascinating man-not necessarily, I was learning, for good reasons-and his powerful personality and the violent times he lived in drew me through the chapters as if I was reading a mystery novel.

  The ringing of my cell broke the spell. I opened it, listened for a couple of seconds, closed it. Raphaella raised her head from her book.

  “Mrs. Stoppini will be serving a light lunch on the patio in exactly nine minutes,” I announced.

  Raphaella and I cheerfully obeyed the summons, taking our notes with us. Mrs. Stoppini had made panini stuffed with chopped plum tomatoes, fresh basil, and grated Parmesan cheese. A tall bottle of Italian mineral water beaded with condensation stood in the centre of the patio table. Mrs. Stoppini would not be joining us for lunch, she had said. She had to “attend to some overdue correspondence”-which probably meant write some letters.

  Raphaella bit into a roll and pushed a bit of tomato into the corner of her mouth with the tip of her little finger.

  “Want to share discoveries?” she asked after swallowing.

  I nodded as I chewed.

  “You first,” Raphaella suggested.

  I took a few gulps of sparkling water, said, “I’m really glad I wasn’t born in the fifteenth century,” and bit into my panino.

  Raphaella sighed theatrically. “That’s it? A whole morning’s reading and all you can say is that fifteenth-century Florence isn’t your cup of tea?”

  “I haven’t got to Florence yet. I started in Ferrara and now I’m in Bologna.”

  “Whatever.”

  “That was only my intro,” I continued. “There’s more.”

  “Give,” Raphaella commanded, then took a modest bite of her tomato roll.

  I opened my notebook but didn’t consult it. I could usually remember what I had read. “Girolamo-Jerome in English, Hieronymus in Latin, spelled with Vs-”

  “Stop showing off.”

  “Savonarola, born Ferrara, Italy, an independent duchy, September 21, 1452. Son of a medical doctor well connected with the ruling d’Este family, hence loaded with money and privilege and favour. Girolamo was one of seven children. Extremely bright, academically gifted, went to Ferrara University. Physical characteristics: small, even by the standards of those days, thin, ugly, with thick lips, a big, hooked nose, and green eyes. Don’t let your eyes glaze over. I’m getting to the interesting part.”

  Raphaella dabbed her luscious lips with a napkin.

  “And stop doing that,” I said. “You’re distracting me. From early on it was clear that Girolamo wanted to lead the life of an ascetic. That’s a person who subjects himself to severe self-discipline and abstains from all forms of pleasure, like this delicious panino on my plate or the even more delicious woman sitting across from me. Like fine clothing, paintings, jewellery-”

  “I get the picture.”

  “This guy grew up surrounded by finery, waste, money, luxury, but he saw it all as corrupt and unholy. He ate plain food, insisted on sleeping on a straw mattress, wore a shift of coarse wool next to his skin to make himself uncomfortable and remind himself that the world was a corrupt place full of temptation.”

  Raphaella’s voice hardened. “Something tells me you’re about to say he hated women.”

  “Apparently their charms were lost on him.”

  “Because they were the origin of all sin, and they enticed men to do wrong with their weaknesses and sexual looseness, et cetera, et cetera.”

  “Young Girolamo would hardly speak to women, and when he did he preached at them.”

  “And he probably preferred that they hide themselves under a dozen square metres of cheap cloth and cover their faces and submit totally to the rule of men.”

  “There’s more,” I pointed out, waving my notebook.

  “Go on.”

  “He ranted on against corruption and moral decadence at the court, in society in general, even in the Church establishment. He rejected his family, left home at twenty-three, and went to Bologna to join the Dominicans. He left behind a nasty, bitter essay called…” I checked my notes to get the pronunciation right… “Dispregio del Mondo, ‘Contempt for the World.’ I think the title says it all.”

  “Wow. Give you a morning in with some old books and you’re quoting Latin.”

  “Glad you’re impressed. The Dominicans were a preaching order of monks, defenders of correct Roman Catholic doctrine, and-get this-they were the boys who conducted the Holy Inquisition, torturing and burning people all over Europe. There was a play on words I’d like to tell you about if you don’t mind a bit more Latin.”

  “I think I’m up to it.”

  “Do-
mi-ni-can,” I enunciated. “Do-mi-ne Ca-ne. Latin for ‘the dogs of God.’ Nice fellas if you could catch them in the right mood. Anyway, that’s what I’ve learned so far. Savonarola is in Bologna, studying to be a good Dominican preacher.”

  “It sounds like this Girolamo didn’t get enough attention as a child.”

  “People at the time thought he was holy.”

  Raphaella scoffed.

  “Anyway, the food’s all gone,” I pointed out. “Want to take a walk?”

  “Let’s take the dishes inside first.”

  II

  WE DIDN’T GET FAR-just along the shore a ways, near the spot where I’d found the GPS-before we sprawled on the grass in the shade of a willow at the edge of the water. White butterflies fluttered in the hot air, and the lake lay calm and green under a cloudless sky. Raphaella reclined on her back, and I lounged beside her, propped up on one elbow.

  “How’s the prof’s manuscript?” I asked lazily.

  “Not as academic as I thought it would be.”

  “That’s a surprise.”

  “Yeah. He says in the preface it’s for a general audience. But it’s a little dry.”

  “As in ‘boring’?”

  “Not at all. It’s slow going, though. Very intellectual. And theoretical. His central thesis is-”

  “In just a few hours you’ve read enough to work out his thesis?”

  “It was pretty easy,” Raphaella replied nonchalantly. “I just read the paragraph in his preface that begins, ‘The thesis I hope to demonstrate in this book is…’ ”

  “Oh.”

  “The prof says that two similar trends in the modern world have led to a number of theocratic governments, and that this type of regime is the enemy of democracy and tolerance.”

  “Ah.”

  “Or words to that effect.”