The Witch of Napoli
Page 1
The Witch of Napoli
A NOVEL
Michael Schmicker
THE WITCH OF NAPOLI. Copyright © 2014 by Michael Schmicker. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Apart from well-known historical personages, events and locales mentioned in the novel, all names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
www.MichaelSchmicker.com
ISBN-10: 0990949001
ISBN-13: 978-0-9909490-0-8
Cover: Andy Carpenter/ACD Book Cover Design
Interior design: Mark Bernheim/52novels
First Palladino Fiction Edition published 2015
Palladino Fiction
An imprint of Palladino Books
To Patricia above all
“I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.”
– Dr. Carl Jung
Speech to the Society for Psychical Research (1919)
Contents
1. A Death in Rome
2. Tommaso’s Photograph
3. Of the Blood
4. A Dead Rat
5. Pigotti
6. Alessandra’s Dream
7. Professor Camillo Lombardi
8. The Show at Teatro Valle
9. The Heretic Burned at the Stake
10. Rejection
11. Doffo’s Cartoon
12. A Séance at Corso Vanucci
13. Suspicions
14. Calling the Dead
15. The Demon Savonarola
16. The Meeting
17. Lombardi’s Offer
18. Tommaso’s Chance
19. Surprised at the Train Station
20. The Minerva Club
21. Nigel Huxley
22. The Beast Inside
23. Renard’s Challenge
24. Quarrel on the Train
25. Ile du Grand Ribaud
26. The Negotiations
27. A Séance in France
28. The Insult
29. Lombardi’s Warning
30. The Genoa Séances
31. The Materialized Hand
32. Little Zoe
33. Séance for Madame Aubertin
34. The Cuckoo Clock
35. Argument Over an Invitation
36. The Table Levitation
37. D’Argent Concedes
38. Alessandra Stumbles
39. The Secret
40. The Surprise
41. The Decision
42. Huxley Strikes Back
43. Letter from Doffo
44. A Séance in Vienna
45. Munich
46. The Empty Bottle
47. Alessandra Quits
48. The Offer
49. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
50. The Weasel’s Discovery
51. Cinderella in Warsaw
52. Collapse
53. Lombardi Springs the Trap
54. London
55. The Garden Party Disaster
56. Dinner in Cambridge
57. The 100-Pound Wager
58. The First Séance
59. Scared
60. The Tarot Cards
61. The Second Séance
62. Midnight in the Rose Garden
63. The Argument
64. The Third Séance
65. The Apport
66. Triumph
67. Despair
68. Confrontation in Paris
69. Break-Up
70. Return to Naples
71. An Offer from Venzano
72. A Beating from Pigotti
73. Begging for a Job
74. Lombardi’s Challenge
75. Rescuing Alessandra
76. Huxley Arrives in Naples
77. The Final Offer
78. A Mystery Note
79. Revelation in the Cathedral
80. The Final Séance
81. Alessandra’s Horror
82. The Wrath of Savonarola
83. Pigotti’s Revenge
84. The Official Report
85. Monsieur Pathé
Author’s Note
Suggested Reading
About The Author
An excerpt from: The Gift: ESP: The Extraordinary Experiences of Ordinary People.
One Last Thing
Chapter 1
Alessandra is dead.
Sunday’s edition should fly off the news-stands, with the photos Giorgio shot, the stuff we discovered in Lombardi’s diaries, the interviews we did with the Vatican and the police, the comments we’ve gathered from the rich and famous throughout Europe.
When I got back from the burial last night, the editorial offices at the Messaggero were dark, but the lights were burning bright in the print shop and the presses were thundering away. I climbed up the stairs to my office and found a copy boy waiting outside the door with the front page, the ink still wet. I hung my hat and coat on the hook, then sat down at my desk to study it. Antonio did a good job on the lead.
Dateline: Rome, Italy, April 20, 1918 – Alessandra Poverelli, the fiery, vulgar, Neapolitan peasant who levitated tables and conjured up spirits of the dead in dimly-lit séance rooms all across Europe, whose psychic powers baffled Science, captivated aristocracy, and enraged the Catholic Church, has joined the Spirit World herself at age 60. Requiescat in pace.
A bit melodramatic? Perhaps. But after four years of this damn, endless war, and the Kaiser’s troops threatening Paris once again, our readers are desperate for a little scandal and amusement, and as the editor of the Messaggero I pride myself on giving the customer what he wants.
Alessandra got what she wanted too.
When the consumption finally claimed her, I made sure she was buried as she wished – here in Rome, not Naples, and quietly and privately, without any religious mumbo jumbo. I rode in the hearse with her corpse out to the city cemetery, accompanied by Maria, the nurse who took care of her the last month of her life. A light rain was falling, and the team of horses plodded up the muddy hill, her pine casket covered by a sheet of canvas in the back of the wagon. When we got there, two gravediggers were standing under a dripping oak tree smoking cigarettes. They quickly tossed their butts and doffed their hats and asked when the priest would be showing up. The hole was ready and they obviously wanted to get it over with quickly so they could return home.
“There won’t be any priest,” I told them.
They looked bewildered. “Signore, no prayers either?”
“No prayers.”
They shrugged and clambered up onto the wagon to haul down the casket. Maria huddled under her parasol, sniffling into a handkerchief, as they lowered the box into the ground. Before they grabbed their shovels, I walked over and tossed into the grave the famous photograph I had taken of Alessandra back in Naples so many years before. In minutes, they had filled the hole, leaving a brutal, black scar on the earth which Spring will quickly heal. It’s going to take me a lot longer.
Here’s to Alessandra, the witch of Napoli – wherever she finds herself now.
Chapter 2
I owe her.
Alessandra was my first photograph for the Mattino – the assignment that launched my newspaper career. Of course, she owed me as well – my photo made her famous. She could finally escape Pigotti and get out of that shithole Naples. She never forgot that.
Did I ever tell you how we first met?
In the Spring of 1899, my uncle Mario owned a photography shop in Naples,
and he hired me to lug his camera up to Vesuvius and take photos for him, which he printed and sold to German and French tourists. He paid me five centesimi for each postcard he sold, but everybody was hawking the same scenic views, and I was always hungry. So I convinced him to shoot some dirty pictures, like the ones he smuggled home from Paris. Our best seller was a girl wearing a nun’s cornette, with a rosary dangling between her two cioccie – it sold like crazy. We doubled our sales, but zio Mario didn’t double my fee. He was a cheap bastard. A month later, a sub-editor from the local paper, the Mattino, stopped by the shop, thumbed through the photos, and asked if I wanted to work for the newspaper.
“He works for me,” uncle Mario told him.
“The hell I do,” I said. “I quit.” I was 16 years old.
When the Mattino sent me out to do that first story on her, Alessandra was almost 40 years old. She was performing weekly séances at the apartment of Dr. Ercole Rossi, a professor of philosophy at the University of Naples and the head of the Spiritualist Society of Naples. He was her principal admirer at that time. She was a medium. Mediums talk to the dead, passing on messages from spirits on the Other Side to family and friends they’ve left behind in this world. When you’re from Naples, you believe in these things, and the town was starting to talk about her.
Alessandra was special – what Spiritualists call a physical medium. She could talk to the dead, but she could also levitate tables, make things fly through the air, and do other spooky things. Professor Rossi attended one of Alessandra’s séances, watched a chair waltz itself across the floor without anyone touching it, and converted to Spiritualism.
Rossi wrote a letter to the Mattino about what he witnessed, and Venzano, our editor, sniffed a good story. The séance and table-tilting craze was sweeping Europe. D.D. Home was entertaining royals in England with his psychic tricks, and the Pope was issuing papal bulls warning us about talking to spirits, so why not do a story on our own Alessandra.
“Get a shot of her with Dr. Rossi,” he told me. “Then get back right away. I want it in the morning edition.”
At 7:30 that evening, I knocked on the door of Rossi’s apartment and the maid led me into the parlor where Rossi and a small group of older, well-dressed men and women were gathered in a circle, exchanging introductions and pleasantries. When Rossi spotted me, he excused himself and walked over.
“So you’re the boy from the Mattino?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. “Tommaso Labella.”
“I’ll let you decide where you want to take your picture. The séance is scheduled to begin at eight, so you need to set up your camera right away.”
I was unfolding my tripod when we heard a commotion and footsteps hurrying down the hall and Alessandra burst into the parlor.
“Late again! Buona sera everyone!” She yanked off her hat and tossed it onto a chair, then bent over and buttoned her boot before popping up again, clapping her hands together. “Andiamo! Let’s get going!” Pigotti, her thuggish manager, had followed her through the door, a cigarette in his thin lips.
Alessandra’s bright eyes swept the room, searching for Rossi, her host, and fell on me standing next to my camera. Rossi had warned her the Mattino was preparing a story. She opened her arms in welcome and headed over to me.
“You are from the newspaper, no?” she demanded.
Across the room, Pigotti glowered at me.
I felt my face go red and stammered out my name. Taking both my hands in hers, she pulled me close and whispered in my ear.
“Please make me look beautiful.”
Then she winked at me.
I felt dizzy.
We Italians say when you fall in love with someone at first sight, you’re struck by a colpo di fulmine – a lightning bolt. I can tell you it’s true. I have no idea what Alessandra looked like when she was young. When I first showed up in her life with my camera, she had already lost her girlish figure. She wore that petite bourgeois, black silk dress she always favored for the séance room, which did her no favors, but she exuded a raw, animal magnetism that left boys like me tongue-tied, and made men ignore their wives and crowd up close.
But it was her eyes that really hypnotized men.
Lord Carraig sent French astronomer Alan Bonnay a letter shortly after he met Alessandra for the first time. “Her large eyes, filled with strange fire, sparkled in their orbits, or again seem filled with swift gleams of phosphorescent fire, sometimes bluish, sometimes golden. If I did not fear that the metaphor were too easy when it concerns a Neapolitan woman, I should say that her eyes appear like the glowing lava fires of Vesuvius, seen from a distance in a dark night.”
She certainly used them to her advantage. Unlike most women, she didn’t drop her gaze when she talked with a man. She looked at you, and you could read whatever you wanted into that. She didn’t care.
I fell in love with her that night.
I wasn’t a virgin when Alessandra showed up – I was sixteen, after all – but my sexual experience was limited to Coco, the skinny, pimply-faced girl who helped run uncle Mario’s shop. She was constantly flirting with me, so one day when he left early I invited her into the store room. It was the first time for both of us. It took me forever to get her blouse over her head, she lay there stiff as a board with her eyes scrunched closed, and as soon as I came she pushed me off her and broke into tears. I didn’t know what was going on. She was afraid I had made her pregnant and she begged me to marry her, threatening to tell her brother if I didn’t. Every time uncle Mario left the shop, she would start to cry and throw things at me, accusing me of ruining her, and I was a heartless bastard, and her brother was going to come over to the shop and cut off my balls. A month later, she found out she wasn’t pregnant and wanted me to take her to the cinema so we could fool around.
Alessandra was the first woman in my life.
I felt a sudden surge of jealousy when she turned her attention to Dr. Cappelli, a fellow professor from the university who assisted Rossi with his psychic explorations. He was tall and handsome, with an engaging smile, and an amateur magician to boot. The two of them sat knee-to-knee in a corner as Cappelli demonstrated a coin trick that left her laughing and searching his sleeve. Pigotti marched over, yanked her to her feet, and shoved her over to where I was setting up. He returned to his post at the door, glaring at Cappelli.
I posed Alessandra sitting on an arm chair in the parlor, flanked by two elegant fan palms and holding Rossi’s white cat in the lap of her black silk dress. When I leaned forward to square her shoulders to the camera, I could feel the heat of her body, and her dark hair touched my cheek. She looked up at me.
“I’ve never been photographed before, Tommaso,” she confessed. “Do you think I look ugly?”
At first I thought she was teasing me, and then I realized she wasn’t. I stared at her dumbfounded. I wanted to shout, you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. Instead, all I could say was “I think you look very nice.”
She reached out to touch my hand. “Grazie,” she said softly.
No matter how beautiful women are, they’re always worried that they aren’t attractive enough. They need to be reassured. A few don’t, but even they appreciate the attention.
The minute I fired off the photograph, Rossi began herding everyone towards the séance room. I didn’t know if I would ever see Alessandra again, and it frightened me. As Rossi was closing the door, I stopped it with my foot.
“I could set up my camera in the séance room,” I suggested boldly. “If anything happens, I can capture a photograph of it.” Behind him, I could see Alessandra settling down in her chair and the other sitters taking their places around the table. Rossi shook his head.
“Impossible. These manifestations happen very quickly and rarely last more than a few seconds.”
“That’s all I need, sir.” I replied. “A second.”
Rossi hesitated, hand on the doorknob. He seemed to mull it over in his head. I held my breath.
He retreated inside. Through the door, I could see him huddling with Alessandra and Pigotti. Pigotti didn’t look very happy, but Alessandra threw a smile my way. Finally, Rossi returned to the door. I could come inside, but I had to remain in the corner with my camera, I wasn’t to speak, and I couldn’t take a photograph unless Rossi gave me a signal.
So I hustle in my equipment, jam myself into the corner, and load my flash gun. Pigotti crowds in next to me, the stink of his body strong, his hooded eyes fixed on Alessandra. Six people hold hands around a small, four-legged card table, a turned-down oil lamp providing the only illumination. It’s gloomy, shadowy, and hard to see. I strain my eyes. A clock on the wall quietly ticks away the minutes, tic, toc, tic, toc. Maybe 30 minutes pass, and despite the enthusiastic prayers at the start, absolutely nothing happens. Other than Alessandra’s coughing, the room is dead silent. I’m running out of time to get the photo and get back to the paper. Suddenly the table jerks forward, and the woman in front of me lets out a gasp. Then another sudden jerk. I watch dumbfounded as the table slowly tilts backwards on two legs and balances there, a toy music box skidding off and bouncing across the floor, sounding a note. More gasps and cries. I’m ready to shit in my pants.
Alessandra cries out, “Spirits, we know you are here. Show us more!” The table returns to four legs, remains there for several seconds, then slowly begins to rise into the air. The sitters scramble to their feet, trying to keep their hands on the top of the table. Then it hangs there, motionless.
“E’ fatto!” Alessandra screams. It’s done!
“Now!” cries Rossi.
I fire the flash, and in that split-second burst of illumination I see the table suspended in the air, a meter off the floor. Maronna!
The woman in front of me collapses, the table crashes to the floor, and the gas lamp is quickly turned up. Alessandra is bent over, pale and panting hard, her head in her hands. She finally turns and vomits into a pan. Rossi mops the sweat from her face, and the hostess gives her a glass of water which she drools from her lips, then Rossi goes over to Pigotti and pays him the fee.