The lamp cast a flickering pool of light on the table. Everybody’s fingers were resting lightly on the top, like we were instructed. Signora Damiano and her assistant sat there with their eyes shut, simpleton smiles on their expectant faces, their bony, hands clutching Rossi’s. Across the table from me, the lamplight danced on Lombardi’s glasses. His eyes were wide open, his watchful attention alternating between the bell on the table and Alessandra, who fidgeted uneasily in her seat. You could see the concentration on her face, her eyes scrunched shut, whispering to herself, straining to summon up the dead.
The minutes passed.
You never know what will happen at a séance. Sometimes you sit there in the dark, holding hands for an hour and nothing happens. The room was stifling, everyone was sweating, and the smell of Lombardi’s cologne hovered in the fetid air.
I was delighted to hold Alessandra’s hand. She had delicate long fingers, like a pianist, soft and warm to the touch. Occasionally she would squeeze my hand, but it didn’t mean anything. She was in constant motion, shifting her position, giving out soft sighs. My other hand rested on her knee. I was supposed to make sure she didn’t use her knee to lift the table. I could feel her leg through the silk of her dress. I wondered what Lombardi felt as he held her other knee in the dark. I imagined Pigotti, kneeling outside the door, eye glued to the keyhole, going crazy.
After fifteen, twenty minutes of nothing happening, Damiano and her assistant spontaneously launched into a hymn, hoping to increase the “psychic energy” in the room, but Alessandra angrily shushed them. She closed her eyes and resumed her whispered pleading. ”Spirits come. Spirits come!”
Across the table from me, Lombardi wore a smug look on his face – even making a show of pulling out his pocket watch to check the time.
In the apartment next door, a couple started arguing. The voices on the other side of the wall got louder and angrier, then we heard a dish shattering, screaming and cursing, a slap, then a woman bawling. Then kids joined in the wailing.
Alessandra finally opened her eyes, and locked her frowning gaze on the bell. As she did, she swept her hands towards the bell, then slowly drew them back towards herself, commanding the bell to come to her.
“Vieni! Vieni!”
I shot a glance at Lombardi who observed impassively from his seat. The bell was a good half-meter beyond her extended fingertips, making it impossible to reach, and no tablecloth to pull on to tug the bell towards her. Lombardi let her drag his hand along with hers, an amused look on his face.
Suddenly the bell jerked forward, almost toppling over.
Everyone saw it, even Lombardi. Alessandra gave a sharp cry of excitement and frantically redoubled her efforts, dragging our hands along with hers towards the bell. She was shouting now.
“VIENI! VIENI!” Come! Come!
We all crowded around the bell, faces flushed with excitement, even Lombardi. But as quickly as it happened, the show was over. The bell refused to move any further.
Alessandra let out a howl of frustration.
We had been sitting there for almost an hour. At the end of the table, Rossi slumped despondently in his chair. I felt terrible for Alessandra.
“Shall we call it a night?” Lombardi announced.
Everyone looked to Alessandra.
“No!” she replied.
“Alessandra, maybe it’s time…” Rossi started.
“NO!” she shouted. “Not yet.”
Everyone sat back down, unsure of what else to do, and the séance continued.
I took control of her hand and knee again. Tired of the whole night, I shut my eyes and let my mind wander. She was sweating from her exertions, and I could feel the heat from her body. I imagined myself slipping my hand under her dress, running it up between her thighs, and playing with her fica. After a while, I could feel a bulge in my trousers which I couldn’t touch but which continued to grow and stiffen. Now we were in bed, and I was on top of her, and she was moaning and I could hear her calling out my name – “Tommaso…maso.” Then Alessandra’s leg shifted again, snapping me out of my fantasy, and I realized she was whispering to herself.
“Babbo…. Babbo….” Father. Father.
She was calling Savonarola.
Down at the end of the table, Rossi’s eyes were fixed on Alessandra, and he looked scared.
Chapter 15
It all happened so quickly.
Alessandra’s hand suddenly went limp in mine. She slumped against my shoulder, slid off and fell forward, striking the table with her face, and lay there motionless, a thin tickle of blood coming from her forehead. She didn’t appear to be breathing. Panicked, I looked to Rossi but he shook his head – leave her alone. Across the table, Lombardi reached for her wrist.
“We need to check her pulse.”
“No!” Rossi shot back. Lombardi hesitated, then sat back.
A shudder ran the length of Alessandra’s body, then she began to jerk and twitch violently, her head banging against the table. Once again, she lay there lifeless, unmoving. I let go of her hand and, as I released it, the fingers on her hand slowly began to curl up into a claw, and what looked like blisters appeared on her skin. I thought I was hallucinating. I reached forward and touched the hand, and suddenly – I can’t explain how – I found myself there, on the Piazza della Signoria, in the jeering crowd, watching him twist and burn, smelling his fat sizzle, hearing his screams of agony.
I recoiled in horror, fighting the urge to vomit, and as I pushed away from the table Alessandra’s head jerked up.
Her eyes had rolled up into her head.
When they rolled back, they were no longer Alessandra’s.
The dull green eyes staring back at us were heavy-lidded, almost reptilian. From her throat came a deep, menacing growl – a man’s voice.
“Oh ye of little faith!”
Lombardi drew back, surprise and confusion on his face.
“Alessandra?” he said.
“Alessandra’s not here, Jew,” the voice hissed. “You see the world through human eyes. You’re blind to the world of spirit, like all unbelievers. What shall I do to open your eyes?”
As we stared in amazement, the small, silver bell rose slowly into the air and hung there in the gloom, tinkling softly, ting, ting, as if taunting Lombardi.
“It’s a trick!”
Lombardi lunged for the bell. As he fell forward onto the table, the bell shot across the room as if flung by an invisible hand, smashing against the wall.
Lombardi stood up and shook his fist at Alessandra.
“It’s all a trick! I know it is! How do you do it?” he demanded.
“You’re filled with pride, like all academics,” the voice snarled. “Unwilling to trust your own eyes. O unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I suffer you?”
Lombardi jerked backwards as an invisible hand slapped him hard, knocking him clear off his feet, his glasses flying off his face.
My heart was in my throat. Rossi kept his eyes glued on Alessandra as he reached down, retrieved them from the floor, and passed them back to the dazed Lombardi. I sat absolutely motionless, praying that Alessandra – or the demon that possessed her – didn’t turn its eye towards me.
“I allow this only because my beloved daughter Alessandra begs me,” the voice spat out. “Someone from this side wants to talk with you.”
In the gloom directly behind Lombardi’s chair, a gray, formless mist seemed to slowly materialize, gradually taking human shape, like a photograph being developed in the darkroom – blotches of grey, then the first faint edges emerging from the depths, a suggestion of something coming forward, then slowly resolving itself before your straining eyes into a figure – a body, arms, legs, and finally a head.
An old woman.
The vaporous apparition leaned down and started gently stroking Lombard’s hair, and I could hear it whisper something in his ear. Lombardi uttered a cry and whirled around.
“Mama! Oh, mama!�
� he cried.
A luminous hand with exquisite delicacy applied itself to his lips, preventing him from continuing. The figure bent down and gave him a kiss on the head. Lombardi grabbed the spirit’s hand, but it seemed to melt into his own, and the phantasm started to lose its shape, dissolving into a grey smoke.
Lombardi gave a wail, snatched the oil lamp from the table and thrust it into the shadows, but the spirit was gone. He frantically swung the lamp in a circle, and as the light passed Alessandra’s face, she let out a scream, striking the lamp with her burned claw, and knocking it from his hand. The lamp smashed to the floor, snuffing out the light, and we were pitched into total darkness.
In the blackness, I could hear Lombardi sobbing.
Chapter 16
Lombardi called us all to Rossi’s office the following morning.
I had slept fitfully, my dreams haunted by Alessandra’s grotesque transformation, and woke up groggy. Nobody knew what Lombardi would do next.
I caught an early tram to Piazza Amore and hurried up Corso Umberto to the university. The sun was up and the street sweepers were already hard at work. It promised to be a hot and muggy day, but the air was cool along the tree-lined boulevard. When I reached the university, I found the broad steps fronting Rossi’s philosophy building packed with protesting workers and students. A flag of the Italian Socialist Party fluttered from a second story window, which meant it was Filippo Turati’s boys. On the top step, a thin, bearded man in rolled up shirtsleeves paced back and forth, leading the crowd in a chant.
“Free Passanante!” Free Passanante!”
Giovanni Passanante was one of us, from Naples, a kitchen cook who hated popes and monarchs. In ’78 when King Umberto visited Naples, Passanante attacked him with a knife during the parade, but the assassination failed and he was sentenced to life in prison. I’m not an anarchist, but you have to understand, people were desperate back then. The old order had collapsed and things were worse in the South than before Garibaldi.
I maneuvered my way through the crowd and climbed up to Rossi’s third-floor office where I found him and Alessandra leaning out the window, cheering on the demonstrators down on the street. Rossi pointed down at a bushy-bearded young man who was reading out a list of demands. “Niccolo Raffa – one of my philosophy students,” Rossi said proudly as he closed the window.
Alessandra looked fantastic. Her luxurious black hair that morning was pinned back with a tortoise shell comb, a white linen scarf encircled her neck, and a silver bracelet hung from her left wrist – so different from the night before. Alessandra never wore jewelry when she performed a séance. She believed Savonarola would be angry because he disapproved of female vanities. But the spirits had retired with the dawn, and her eyes were bright with excitement. She knew she had performed spectacularly. After she came out of her trance, Rossi had told her everything.
She paced the room. “Where is he?” she pouted. “He’s late.”
My eyes wandered around Rossi’s office. It was large, pleasant, book-filled room, flooded with morning sunlight from three tall, curtained windows, the air stale with tobacco smoke, black walnut bookshelves climbing to the ceiling, filled with tomes and antiquities. Rossi noticed my gaze linger on a small marble bust on his desk. He smiled.
“Thomas Aquinas. One of the more distinguished alumni in our university’s 600-year history. A Dominican, like Savonarola – but a philosopher who celebrated reason instead of a twisted piety.”
A loud knock interrupted him. Alessandra gave a cry and hurried to the door. Professor Lombardi rushed in.
“I apologize for being late,” he announced. “But I had to make my way through the commotion on your doorstep. We have our own share of these disturbances in Torino these days.”
Rossi steered Lombardi to a high-backed, leather chair before offering him a coffee. Lombardi waved it away. He had dark rings under his eyes and he looked like he had slept in his clothes. He put down the leather portfolio he was carrying, slumped into his chair, then took a deep breath, as if to compose himself.
“I must apologize for my unprofessional behavior last night,” he began. “I assure you I do not normally act that way. I have spent the night trying to reconcile what I observed last evening with my lifetime of scientific training.” He rubbed his forehead as if trying to erase what he had witnessed at Alessandra’s apartment.
“I am quite familiar with the subconscious mind, and the manias and hysterias it easily falls prey to, not to mention the tricks and limitations of human perception. But I freely admit to being baffled – even astonished – at what I observed with my own eyes last night.”
Behind his desk, Rossi broke into a smile. Next to me, Alessandra moved to the edge of her chair, her hands clasped tightly together, nervously biting her lip. Lombardi pressed on.
“Like all of you, I observed the bell rise up off the table, and hover in the air, then fly across the room. The light was dim but adequate, and I could discover nothing attached to it. I also felt a powerful blow to the face, without observing the perpetrator of that phantom blow. These are facts, and I am treating them as such. Perhaps the human mind has unknown powers Science has yet to discover – telekinetic powers which are available to us in exceptional situations, or peculiar states of mind.”
Lombardi gazed across the room, as if recalling something, then turned to Rossi.
“I will share a story with you, Professor,” he said, “an experience which has perplexed me for many years. It may or may not have a bearing on this matter.” He paused, gathering his thoughts, then launched into his odd story.
“My youngest brother was always sick as a child. Three times a day, he had to swallow a foul-smelling medicine which he detested – a thyroid extract – which the maid served to him in a silver spoon, part of an antique tea set from Austria which my mother inherited and cherished.
“After several months of this, my brother finally refused to take another spoonful. The maid was afraid of disobeying my mother, but couldn’t force him to drink it, so she held it out and waited for him to relent. My brother told me that he stared at the spoon, and felt a burning anger inside him, and the spoon began to turn hot in the maid’s hand, as in sympathy with his feelings, then the spoon handle began to curl up. She dropped it and fled the room, and was dismissed shortly afterwards by my mother who believed she had carelessly bent it.
“My brother showed me the spoon. I didn’t believe him, and accused him of trickery, but he never changed his story. Indeed, after that, he submitted meekly to the medicine – frightened, as he confided to me, of seeing something scary happen again.”
He paused to clean his spectacles with his handkerchief, then returned them to his nose.
“I reluctantly confess to another unusual experience I had last night – an astonishingly vivid hallucination of what appeared to me to be my deceased mother. I attribute this to the fact that the anniversary of her death is fast approaching, and she has understandably been in my thoughts.” Lombardi sighed. “However, this visual hallucination was also accompanied by an auditory hallucination – I distinctly heard my mother’s voice. Such a combination is not unknown in the literature, but exceedingly rare.”
Lombardi nodded towards Alessandra.
“There was of course the possibility of ventriloquism on the part of Signora Poverelli, but that suspicion collapsed when the voice in my ear spoke to me in the native dialect of my race, and addressed me by an affectionate, pet name known only within my family. Though I cannot accept the existence of spirits, I admit to having no explanation for these facts.”
“Professor, we saw the spirit too.” Rossi insisted. “How do you explain that?
I chimed in. “I heard the voice. A woman’s voice – an old woman.”
Lombardi shook his head. “The psychological conditions conducive to a collective hallucination were strong last night. You desperately wished to see a miracle, and therefore you did.” He paused. “What I cannot understand is tha
t I certainly did not, yet fell ill to the same hysteria.”
Rossi pressed him. “And your explanation for Savonarola? Do you honestly believe that was Alessandra speaking to you last night? That she’s capable of counterfeiting such a voice and manner?”
“I don’t believe in voices from a Spirit World,” Lombardi replied. “I believe Savonarola is simply a primitive, secondary personality of Miss Poverelli’s.”
Alessandra leapt to her feet.
“Basta! You and your stupid theories. You know nothing about the spirit world.”
“And you know nothing about Science,” Lombardi shot back. “Sit down!” He reached into his portfolio and took out a piece of paper.
Alessandra remained standing, her eyes blazing.
Chapter 17
Alessandra wasn’t prepared for Lombardi’s stunning offer.
He closed his portfolio and looked at her. “I have a proposition for you.”
“And what is that?” Alessandra returned, eyeing him suspiciously.
He took a deep breath. “I said I believe Savonarola is a creature of your mind. But even if I’m right, I have no explanation for the bell, or my mother’s hallucination. I want you to come to Torino to be studied by me, for six months. For your service, you will receive room and board, and a fee of 3,000 lire upon completion of that service.”
We let out a collective gasp.
Three thousand lire was a lot of money. You could live in Naples on that for several years – or you could escape to Rome and start a new life.
Alessandra was speechless.
“A generous offer,” Lombardi continued, “but it comes with an equally generous number of conditions.” He sat back in his chair and stared at Alessandra. “I’m risking my professional reputation by undertaking this investigation. You frankly risk nothing. To earn your fee, you must earn, and maintain, my trust. My requirements are spelled out in this agreement. They’re not negotiable.”
He handed her the agreement, then sat back in his chair.
The Witch of Napoli Page 6
