The Witch of Napoli

by Michael Schmicker

  Resting his palm on the first skull, Dr. Lombardi declared, “Here is the ape, from which we are all descended.” Then he moved in succession down the line of craniums. “And here is the Hottentot, representing the black race; and here the Chinaman, representing the yellow race.” He paused before lifting up the fourth and last skull, gazing at it with a brooding pose before concluding with the words. “And this is the pinnacle of evolution, the Caucasian, representing the white race.”

  The audience goes crazy, whistling and cheering. Lombardi pauses, takes a sip of seltzer water, then pulls off the tour de force of the whole evening.

  Assuring his audience that the superiority of the white race is scientifically measurable, Dr. Lombardi clapped his hands twice, a horn sounded behind the curtain, and a man dressed in a hunting jacket with a fowling piece resting on his shoulder marched out on stage and handed the professor a bag of birdshot.

  Dr. Lombardi removed the top of the monkey skull, filled it with shot, poured the pellets from the skull into a measuring glass, and announced an amount of 350 cubic centimeters, which represents the capacity of a monkey’s brain. He then measured the Hottentot’s brain cavity which held 1100 cubic centimeters, then the Chinaman’s brain at 1200 cubic centimeters.

  Silence fell over the audience as Dr. Lombardi finally turned to the last skull on the table, that of the European race. In the balcony seats high above the stage, one could observe well-dressed ladies and gentlemen raising their lorgnettes to their noses and leaning forward in their plush seats in eager anticipation of the results. The shot rattled into the cranium with a tic-tic-tic noise, Professor Lombardi transferred the birdshot into the waiting measuring cup, then announced the results.

  ”Ladies and gentlemen – 1350 cubic centimeters.”

  “Quod erat demonstrandum,” he announces, and bows to the audience. The white race rules the world because we have the biggest brain. Again, people go absolutely crazy. Finally, the applause dies down, and a lady raises her hand, demanding to know if Lombardi believes women are inferior to men.

  Professor Lombardi patiently explained that the average male brain is 14 percent larger than that of the female of our species. “Whether one likes this or not, it is a scientific fact, which leads us to the inescapable conclusion that men are indeed superior to women in terms of their intellect and reasoning power.” Here he deftly paused a second, then added “though our wives may disagree.” After the laughter subsided, Dr. Lombardi explained that evolution has adapted women for life in the home, as wives and mothers, where love is more important than logic. The young lady, a devotee of Signora Mozzoni’s suffragette movement, persisted in her pestering questions until she was escorted from the hall by two burly ushers.

  But Rossi wasn’t there for a lecture on evolution. He wanted to hear Lombardi talk about mediums and Spiritualism. Unfortunately, when Lombardi finally got to it, his comments were disappointing – brief and dismissive.

  After a thirty minute intermission, Lombardi returned to the stage to address the topic of the Spiritualist movement now sweeping Europe. Darwin’s theory of evolution has exposed Christianity’s claim that humans are special, he explained. We are simply evolved apes, and like apes we have no “soul” that survives death. The soul is simply an emanation of the brain, and when the brain dies we return to dust like the brain. As a result, troubled believers are flocking to séances, desperately seeking proof of a non-existent afterlife. Yet any clever trickster can manufacture vague “messages” from the dead, and produce furniture levitations in the dark for a gullible audience eager to believe. Dr. Lombardi stepped forward, his powerful voice filling the hall. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a choice. We can remain in the darkness of primitive superstition, or we can embrace the light of Science. I choose Science.” His plea was greeted with a fresh volley of cheers.

  Professor Lombardi acknowledged that the Spiritualist phenomenon presented some mental mysteries worthy of scientific attention. He proceeded to describe for his audience a most unusual séance he attended, featuring the well-known English spirit medium Madame Guppy. When she fell into her mesmeric trance, a deep, male voice emerged and carried on an intelligent conversation with him for almost an hour. The voice claimed to be that of a 15th century Welsh pirate named John King. Science, however, had a simpler answer, based on the recently discovered phenomenon of the secondary personality. But the hour was getting late, he apologized, and thus he would have to save this topic for a future lecture. “Until then, you might amuse yourself by reading Mr. Stevenson’s new novel, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

  Dr. Lombardi ended his educational lecture, and a most entertaining evening, with a blunt dismissal of Spiritualism. “There is always room in my asylum for people who believe they can talk to the dead or levitate a table, but there’s no room in Science for such nonsense.”

  The moment Lombardi finished his final bow, Rossi was on his feet, heading for the stage.

  Chapter 9

  I was back in the darkroom at the Mattino preparing some new photographic plates when one of the reporters knocked on the door and shouted that I had someone waiting for me in the lobby.

  I threaded my way through the crowded newsroom with its clattering typewriters out to the front desk where Rossi stood clutching his carpet bag. He had come straight from the train station. I broke into a big smile and hurried over to him.

  “So Lombardi’s coming?” I asked eagerly.

  Rossi shook his head. “No.”

  I stood there in disbelief, my mouth open. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I had truly expected Rossi to pull it off.

  “What happened?”

  He grimaced. “He left before I could catch him.”

  “Before you could catch him?”

  “As soon as he finished, I pushed my way through the crowd, but by the time I reached the stage he had left.”

  I found chairs next to a window looking out onto the street and Rossi put down his bag. “Did you pursue him?” I demanded.

  “I did. I ran round the back to the stage door and got there just in time to see his carriage disappear down the street. I rushed back to the hall, seeking someone who might know what hotel he was staying at, but nobody knew.”

  I felt sick to my stomach. All I could think of was Alessandra. She would be devastated.

  We sat there in silence.

  Finally I stood up. “Well, you gave it a try. I said.

  “Maybe it’s not over yet,” Rossi replied. He pulled a sheet of paper out of his bag and thrust it into my hands. “Not if we can get this published in the Mattino. Can you help?”

  He handed me the paper and I sat back down and started reading. It was a clever public challenge to Lombardi, drafted by Rossi on the long train ride home.

  Rossi started by flattering Lombardi – I attended your recent lecture in Rome, professor, and found it exceptionally interesting and educational, etcetera, etcetera, especially your scientific investigations into Spiritualism. Then he introduced Alessandra.

  Here in Naples, we have a woman who belongs to the humblest class of society. She is nearly forty years old and very ignorant. But when she wishes, be it by day or by night, she can divert a curious group for an hour or so with the most surprising phenomena. Firmly held by the hands of the curious, Alessandra levitates furniture, holds it suspended in the air like Mahomet’s coffin, and makes it come down again with undulatory movements, as if they were obeying her will. She produces raps and taps on the walls, the ceiling, the floor far distant from her. She can make musical instruments – bells, tambourines – positioned in a corner of the room far beyond her reach play without touching them…

  I looked up. “You saw her do all that?”

  “I did.”

  I turned back to the letter. Rossi understood that Lombardi would be skeptical of such preposterous claims, of course, so he was enclosing a newspaper story with an amazing photograph – mine – clearly showing a table suspended in the air, a full meter off
the floor, with no wires, strings, or other contraptions visible, and the medium’s hands, knees and feet not touching it in any way. It was the sacred duty and crowning glory of Science to investigate the unknown with an open mind. Failure to do so would erode the public’s faith in Science, etcetera, etcetera.

  The editor of the Mattino, Signor Venzano, assures me that his photographer, Tommaso Labella, is a sober, honest employee not known for playing tricks, and the newspaper will be happy to make available for your personal inspection the original photographic plate.

  That would be the first thing Lombardi would want to do. A lot of photographers were into tricks like double exposures to fake a ghost, which were really popular back then. I had produced a few myself when I worked for uncle Mario.

  I returned to Rossi’s letter. Since Lombardi found Mrs. Guppy’s trance personality quite interesting, he is sure to find Alessandra’s equally fascinating.

  In addition to levitations, Signora Poverelli often falls into a mesmeric trance and “spirits of the dead” speak through her, most representing themselves as relatives and friends of the sitters, eager to pass on a message of hope, the location of a lost bracelet, or to beg forgiveness for some misdeed they perpetrated in life. On occasion, however, Alessandra is also possessed by a spirit claiming to be the notorious Fra Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican monk and heretic burned at the stake by the Church in 1498.

  “Maronna!” I exclaimed. “You’ve actually seen this spirit?” Up until then, nobody had told me about Savonarola.

  “Yes. Three times, now.” Rossi stared out the window for a moment, lost in thought, then he turned to me. “But I’ll tell you – each time it’s frightened me. I don’t like the idea of being in the same room with him.”

  “With his spirit.”

  “No, I mean with him,” Rossi shot back. His vehemence caught me off guard. “He takes over her body, he possesses her.” He shuddered. “He’s alive again – and when Savonarola was alive, he was nasty.” He shook his head in disgust. “He was a Dominican – his Order ran the Inquisition. When he shows up, you just feel this sense of… of menace.”

  I kept looking to see if he was pulling my leg, but he wasn’t.

  I heard a shout, and a pack of newsboys dashed through the lobby, papers under their arm, racing out to the street to hawk the noon edition. One boy bumped into our table, tripped over Rossi’s travelling bag, and skidded across the marble floor, tossing a scuzza to us before jumping up and pursuing his friends. I looked up at the large clock above the reception desk. 10 AM. I needed to get back to work, but I also badly wanted to learn more about Savonarola.

  “Was he really that evil?”

  Rossi frowned. “Twisted might be a better description. He preached the love of God but burned people alive. I know more about him than I want to.”

  “You’ve read a lot about him?”

  “In my second year at the university, I came across a poem he wrote called De Ruina Mundi – the Destruction of the World – and I decided to research his life for a paper I had to write. He knew how to frighten people. Late at night, when I was sitting in the library all alone, reading his sermons, I would start thinking of my own sins, imagining the punishment that awaited me, and I would actually start to tremble with fear.”

  “But why would the Church burn him at the stake? Scaring people is what priests are supposed to do.”

  “Priests aren’t supposed to get into politics. That’s the Pope’s job.” He looked at me. “What do you know about medieval history?”

  “I read some poems from that period. That’s about it.”

  He settled back in his chair. “The Medici family and their allies ran Florence when Savonarola began preaching there, and he went after them for their lavish, decadent lifestyle. In 1493 he prophesized that Florence would fall to an invader and, as God or luck would have it, the following summer Charles VIII showed up at the city gates with a French army eager to sack it. Savonarola convinced him to spare the city, and the awed Florentines replaced the Medici with Savonarola. He and his followers formed a government that would operate the city under the laws of God, not man.”

  Rossi paused. “Have you ever been to Florence, Tommaso?”

  “No,” I admitted. “But I’ve seen post cards.”

  “Today, everybody visits the Piazza della Signoria in Florence to gawk at Michelangelo’s statue of David. In 1495, everybody flocked to the piazza to gawk at Savonarola. He drew crowds of 10,000 people, haranguing them for hours with his apocalyptic sermons and hellish visions of the End Days.”

  Rossi shook his head.

  “He ordered prostitutes and sodomites burned at the stake. He recruited a children’s army of 5,000 young boys and sent them door to door, frightening citizens into giving up to the flames of his falò delle vanità, his bonfire of the vanities, their playing cards and chess games, and lutes and recorders, their copies of Boccaccio’s salacious tales, and their Renaissance paintings which glorified man’s body instead of his soul. After one of Savonarola’s sermons, Botticelli himself was so scared he tossed some of his artworks into the fire. The Last Judgment was coming any day, and he had been painting naked pagan goddesses.”

  Rossi shook his head. “Madness.” He seemed lost in thought for a moment, then finished his story.

  “Eventually people tired of his piety and sermons and began to rebel. They smeared shit on the altar in his cathedral, planted explosives under his pulpit to try and assassinate him as he preached, and eventually he needed an armed escort of a hundred men to travel around the city. When cardinals in the Curia tried to rein him in, he called the Church the “harlot of Rome,” and denounced the pope as the Devil incarnate. Finally Alexander VI had enough and excommunicated him.”

  Rossi smiled grimly. “Then the citizens of Florence extracted their revenge. They hung Savonarola in chains from a wooden cross and burned him alive over a bonfire built on the exact same spot in the piazza where he had burned their worldly vanities. They jeered and spit and poked him with sticks as he screamed in agony. They kept the fire blazing for three hours, till his flesh was blackened and charred, then they broke the bones into little pieces, burned them to ashes and threw them into the Arno while citizens lined up on the Ponte Vecchio and pissed on them as they floated by.”

  Rossi looked at me. “He died filled with hatred for humanity – our sins, our weaknesses, our disbelief. Now he’s back.”

  “But what can he do to us?” I protested. “He’s just a spirit.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Tommaso!” Rossi glared at me. “Have you forgotten what you saw the other night? If a spirit can lift a table off the floor, it can also hurl a vase across the room at your head. If a spirit can touch or pinch you in a séance, it can also slap or punch you. I don’t like Alessandra calling on him. ”

  “Does she call on him often?”

  Rossi scowled. “Whenever no other spirits respond. I’ve warned her to stop. She’s never seen her twisted face with Savonarola’s fiendish eyes staring out of her own sockets, or heard the venom spewing out of her own mouth. She’s in a trance when he’s possessing her, and when she recovers she remembers nothing. All she knows is that she produces her most spectacular feats when she allows him to take over her body.”

  He pulled his watch out of his vest pocket and shot a quick glance. “I’m late. I have a class to prepare for this afternoon and I need to get going. Can you read the final paragraph?”

  I turned back to the letter. Rossi had wrapped it up nicely before finally baiting the hook with a few shekels.

  The Spiritualist Society of Naples would like to invite you to visit us and investigate Signora Poverelli. We suggest that you attend three séances, as you did with Madame Guppy. We are prepared to pay your travel and hotel expenses, as well as an honorarium. We believe she is genuine, but if she turns out to be a fraud or a hysteric in your opinion, we believe you’ll still find her quite entertaining.

  Rossi held out his hand. “M
y apologies for taking so much of your time. Can I leave this to you to handle?”

  “Sure,” I promised. “Count on me.”

  He reached under the table for his bag. “Even if Lombardi comes, Alessandra may perform poorly. But I’ve spent enough of my time and money on this.” He put on his hat.

  “If she fails, I’m done with her.”

  Chapter 10

  Lombardi’s answer arrived a week later.

  Venzano called Rossi and Alessandra to the newspaper and his secretary, Julieta, who everyone knew was his mistress, ushered us into his elegant, private office on the fourth floor of the Mattino.

  I idolized Venzano. He had style. He always dressed smartly, a white walrus moustache accenting his tailored dark suits and polished black shoes. He collected the macchiaioli long before the Paris art world discovered them, and he cultivated exotic orchids from South America. A long-stemmed, purple cattleya from Costa Rica graced his desk. I learned a lot from him.

  After we were seated, he leaned across the desk and handed Rossi a telegram he had received that morning from the Mattino’s correspondent in Torino. Alessandra and I waited nervously as Rossi silently read it. When he finished, he turned to Alessandra.

  “I’m sorry, Alessandra” he said.

  I watched the color drain from her face as he read the telegram to her.

  Lombardi rejects offer Stop Not coming Quote Naples not exempt from Newton law of gravity Don’t believe in miracles Do believe in mendacity credulity of common man Unquote.

  Alessandra snatched the telegram from Rossi’s hand.

  “No!” she shouted. “He must come. He must!” She crumpled up the telegram and flung it to the floor.