The Witch of Napoli

by Michael Schmicker

  “First, you will live in the staff dormitory at my asylum during those six months, under the supervision of my chief female warden. You will not leave the premises, nor receive visitors, without my prior approval. Is that understood?”

  Alessandra nodded.

  “Second, you will make yourself available for testing by me or anyone I invite to test you, under whatever test conditions I propose, whenever and wherever I choose. After I conduct my own tests, we will spend the summer touring the Continent. This will allow professional colleagues of mine, in Vienna, Munich and other cities, to conduct their own tests. I will, of course, cover all your travel expenses.

  “Third, you will act like a woman of good breeding. I expect you to control your temper, and speak politely at all times. If you’re caught drunk, in a compromising situation, or involved in a scandal of any kind, your employment will be immediately terminated. You will also forfeit the fee – all 3,000 lire. This way we both have something to lose. Do you accept?”

  Alessandra eyed him calmly. “Four thousand,” she replied.

  “Three is more than generous. I will also be paying your room and board.”

  Alessandra waved the agreement at him. “You’ll find an excuse to dismiss me when the time comes to pay my fee.”

  “I’m a gentleman. My word is my bond.”

  “And I’m from Naples. Four.”

  A thin smile appeared on Lombardi’s face. “You’re an unusual woman, Signora. You would do well at the card table. Agreed – but one slip-up and you will find yourself back in Naples without a centesimo.”

  Alessandra flashed me a triumphant smile, grabbed Lombardi’s pen, and laboriously scratched out her name on the contract. Lombardi passed it to Rossi who affixed his signature as witness, then turned to Alessandra.

  “I expect you in Torino within the month. I will arrange a train ticket for you.”

  “I’ll return with you.”

  Lombardi raised an eyebrow. “That’s not possible. I leave for Torino tomorrow. You will need to secure your husband’s permission for your employment in Torino. I am sure that will take some time, though I trust you will be successful.”

  “I’ll have it by tomorrow.”

  Lombardi stared at Alessandra, then waved his hand. “As you wish. A ticket in your name will be left at the station master’s office. Ask for the capostazione.” Rossi passed him the signed contract and the professor slipped it into his portfolio.

  “Please understand, Signora Poverelli. My offer of employment is for you alone. Your husband is not to follow you to Torino, to visit you while you are in my employ, nor attempt to attend any of the sittings I will arrange. If he shows up, you may consider your employment terminated.”

  We all crowded around Alessandra to congratulate her, including Lombardi. He was smiling now. The negotiations were finished and he had his precious scientific experiment in hand.

  “Will you be making a statement to the newspapers?” Rossi asked.

  “Yes,” Lombardi replied. “I meet Signor Venzano at the Mattino at noon to deliver this statement.” He pulled a paper out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Rossi. “In it, I describe the levitation of the bell and the phantom blow to my face, but at this point I am not prepared to reveal the hallucination I had of my mother.”

  Outside the window, the protestors had started singing Inno dei Lavoratori, the workers anthem, then the singing abruptly stopped, and I suddenly heard shouting and then the clatter of horses’ hooves on pavement, followed by loud screams and curses.

  I raced over to the window and stuck my head out. The police were stampeding the crowd, bashing protestors with their clubs and sending them running for their lives. Several students already lay bleeding on the ground. I watched a policeman draw his saber and urge his steed up the steps in pursuit of Rossi’s student, Niccolo. He ducked into the building just as Rossi joined me at the window. In the hall outside Rossi’s office, you could hear the sound of running feet. Rossi turned to Lombardi.

  “Signore, for our safety, we must all leave this building now, quickly.”

  We followed Rossi down the back stairs and ran out into the courtyard where we found students grabbing rocks and sticks and hurrying back into the building. Lombardi paused to catch his breath, panting from the exertion. Rossi urged us forward. I looked over at Alessandra and there was fire in her eyes.

  “We should stand with them, Tommaso!”

  She reached down, grabbed a stone from a pile, whirled around, and stood there defiantly, then let out a yell and flung it towards the gate which the police were battering down.

  “Free Passanante!”

  I started laughing. I yanked her hand and we started running again.

  “God, I’m going to miss you, Alessandra!” I said.

  Chapter 18

  Lombardi’s conversion sent a shock wave through scientific circles in Europe.

  The Mattino ran his statement in the evening edition, and I kept a copy. Here, I’ll read it to you.

  I am aware that my decision to pursue the investigation of Signora Poverelli will cause a stir of surprise and incredulity in the scientific and academic community. If there ever was an individual in this world opposed to the claims of spiritism by virtue of scientific education and, I may add, by instinct, I was that person. I have made it the indefatigable pursuit of a lifetime to defend the thesis that every force is a property of matter. But I glory in saying that I am a slave to facts. There is no doubt in my mind that genuine psychical phenomena are being produced – levitations and movements of objects most likely produced not by spirits of the dead but by some as yet undiscovered power of the human mind.

  I see nothing inadmissible in the supposition that, in hysterical and hypnotized persons, the stimulation of certain centres of the brain, which become powerful owing to the paralyzing of all the others, may give rise to a transmission of cerebral or cortical forces which can be transformed into a motor force. In this way, we can understand how a medium can, for example, raise a table from the floor, pinch someone by the beard, strike him or caress him – phenomena frequently reported during séances. Do we not see the magnet give rise to an invisible force which can deflect a compass needle without any viable intermediary? What is needed is the development of instruments to establish the reality of this occult force. We were unable to detect the existence of the X-ray until science gave us photography and the vacuum tube. Once we had the necessary instruments, doubt was dispelled.

  As for my scientific colleagues, there surely will be doubt. Let us seek the truth together. I will be making arrangements for Signora Poverelli to be scientifically tested in my laboratory, and I challenge other scientists to do so as well, with the results of these tests – whether favorable or unfavorable – to be shared with the public upon completion.

  Say what you want about Lombardi – the guy had a pair. He knew he would be accused of bringing witchcraft within the domain of science, but when he made up his mind, he didn’t back down. He was ready for a fight.

  Me, I was ready for a drink. Alessandra was heading to Torino, leaving me behind. After we escaped Rossi’s building, Alessandra headed home and I accompanied Rossi and Lombardi to the Mattino, feeling miserable. Doffo stopped me in the hall and begged me to tell him what happened at the séance, but I told him to fuck off and locked myself in the darkroom. Shortly after lunch, he pounded on the door.

  “Venzano wants to see you.”

  “Get lost!” I shouted through the door.

  “Fuck you, then. I’ve given you the message.”

  I opened the door, expecting him there, but he had already disappeared. I walked up to the fourth floor where I found Julieta, Venzano’s secretary, impatiently waiting for me.

  “What took you so long?” she hissed. “Follow me.”

  Lombardi and Venzano were having a cigar when I entered the office and took a chair. Venzano looked at me with an air of amusement, then turned to Professor Lombardi.

&n
bsp; “A rascal, Professor, but intelligent, hard-working and ambitious. I’ll miss him.”

  I looked bewildered at Lombardi who studied me for a moment then floored me with his announcement.

  “I want you to come to Torino to serve as my photographer to document my investigations and experiments with Alessandra.”

  I looked over at Venzano, my heart racing. He had a huge grin on his face. He leaned forward in his chair.

  “The pay is double what I can offer, Tommaso, and I would have lost you anyway in a few years. Besides I’ll still get something out of your worthless hide for a few more months. Professor Lombardi has agreed to give the Mattino first crack at any stories and photographs he shares with the public.”

  “Does Alessandra know about this?” I stammered.

  “Not yet,” Lombardi said. “If you accept, she will be informed. But before you decide, there is one other duty I will expect you to perform for me. I don’t pretend to understand Alessandra. We have nothing in common. You’re from Naples, you understand her, and I’ve observed enough people in my profession to recognize that she trusts you, perhaps even likes you.”

  My face turned red, but I said nothing.

  ”She’s a woman,” he resumed, “and like all members of the weaker sex, is governed by her emotions. It will be your job to make sure that she doesn’t get homesick and quit, or get in trouble during the six months I need to investigate her. After that, I don’t care what happens to her.”

  He picked up his cigar. “Do we have a deal?”

  I could hardly believe my ears. “You can count on me, Professor,” I replied.

  I pumped Lombardi’s hand, thanked Venzano, and took off. As I passed Julieta’s desk, she was bent over putting letters into a filing cabinet, her pretty rump in the air begging for a pinch. It was my lucky day, and hers.

  “Arrivederci, cara” I said, as she jumped up to slap me. “I’m off to Torino.”

  Chapter 19

  I didn’t know how Alessandra would escape Pigotti, but I knew she would die before she would miss the train.

  I got to the station as the sun was coming up, determined to surprise her.

  The Piazza Garibaldi fronting the Napoli Centrale was already filled with carriages when I got there, and the station was crowded and noisy, with people hurrying here and there, shouting to each other, dragging boxes and trunks, frantically searching for their train. I wandered around hopelessly lost until an old porter pushing a luggage cart directed me to the office where Lombardi had left my ticket. After the yawning clerk passed me the envelope, I opened it and stared at the ticket for a moment, feeling a bit disoriented and a little scared. I had never been outside Naples. I wondered what Alessandra was feeling.

  I jammed the ticket deep into my trousers in case there were pickpockets around and headed into the main hall to buy a coffee. A sleepy waiter took my order and I sat there, my bag safely wedged between my feet, wondering how I could best surprise Alessandra. Lombardi had bought Alessandra and me second class seats in the same compartment, so I decided I would board the train early, and be sitting there when she showed up. Or maybe I should hide behind a pillar and jump out when she came running up. I nursed my coffee and passed a half hour playing with various ideas before finally deciding to wander around and see the shops. The train didn’t leave until 9:00, and it wasn’t even 7:00 AM.

  I was half way across the main hall when I heard a shout.

  “Tommaso! My God!”

  I turned around and there was Alessandra, sitting on a bench, clutching a battered portmanteau. Her hair was a mess, and her eyes puffy, but she had a huge smile on her face. She jumped up from the bench and spread her arms in welcome.

  “You’ve come to see me off?”

  “When on earth did you get here?” I laughed. “I was planning to surprise you.”

  “I slept here last night.” She steered me to her bench and combed her fingers through her hair. “I look like a mess, I know. But I’ve been busy.”

  She looked around, then reached in her bag, pulled out a tin box, and cracked open the lid just enough for me to peek inside. The box was stuffed with lire. I stared at the money, then back to her for an explanation.

  “I got all my money back, Tommaso,” she said triumphantly. “The money he stole from me.”

  “The money you hid in the mattress?”

  She started laughing. “And his money too.”

  My jaw dropped. “Jesus Christ, Alessandra, he’ll kill you!” Grabbing her own money was bad enough. Grabbing Pigotti’s was insane. He was probably already looking for her.

  I glanced nervously towards the station entrance, half expecting to see Pigotti charging through the door in hot pursuit. I grabbed her bag and hustled her off the main concourse and into a side hallway leading to the public lavatories.

  “Does he know you’re headed for Torino?” I demanded.

  “No,” she shot back. “I’m not stupid, Tommaso.”

  “He didn’t ask you what happened at the meeting in Rossi’s office?”

  “When I got home, he was waiting for me. I told him that Professor Lombardi wanted to conduct some more séances with me – here in Naples. ” Alessandra looked away for a moment, and when she turned back to me, I could see the rage in her eyes.

  “He said he was doubling the fee, then he grabbed me and threw me against the wall, and said I was a whore, and a bitch, and he knew what I was doing in the dark with Lombardi and Cappelli, and when I stopped making money for him he was going to kill me.”

  She shoved the tin box back into her bag.

  “Well he’ll have to find me first,” she said fiercely. “And I’ll have a knife ready, and maybe I’ll kill him instead.”

  “How did you manage to escape?”

  “He went out drinking with his friends, and I grabbed my clothes and the money box and came to the train station, and slept here.” She grimaced and rubbed her shoulder. “God, Tommaso, that was a hard bench.”

  A nanny towing a young girl glanced at us curiously as she headed down the hall to the women’s lavatory. I handed Alessandra her bag.

  “Wait till you see your cell in Lombardi’s asylum,” I teased.

  She finally noticed my bag.

  “What’s that?” she said.

  I thought fast. “A bag Lombardi wants you to take to Torino for him.”

  I walked her to the track and when the conductor finally called ‘all aboard’, she took my hand.

  “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me, Tommaso,” she said. “If only you could come with me.”

  I pulled the ticket from my pocket.

  “Maybe I will.”

  Alessandra looked at the ticket, then at me, then let out a whoop of joy and smothered me in her arms, dancing me around the platform.

  “You and me, Tommaso! We’re in this together!”

  The whistle blew and the train started to pull away from the platform.

  “Get on! Get on!” I laughed. We ran alongside, passengers gawking out the windows as I pushed her up the steps, threw our two suitcases on, and leapt aboard just before the platform disappeared. Alessandra ran to our seat, yanked up the window, and stuck her head out.

  “Arrivederci, Napoli!”

  It was goodbye forever, as far as she was concerned. She was never coming back.

  The train picked up speed, the dirty streets and dingy tenements of Naples slipping backwards, the city falling behind, until we burst free onto a sunlit plain of orchards and vineyards and turned north for Torino.

  For one brief moment in time, we were both on top of the world – we were both getting out of Naples, and setting out together on a grand adventure. For Alessandra, Rome was no longer an impossible dream, and I had a shot at my own dream. I would be spending the summer touring Europe, with Alessandra in the next hotel room and Pigotti stuck in Naples. It was a long shot, but a boy could get lucky.

  Then Huxley showed up.

  Chapter 20

&
nbsp; Nigel Huxley was a stronzo, a turd.

  All Englishmen are – they enjoy humiliating other people. Huxley viewed Italy as a country stinking of stupidity, superstition and criminality. Unfortunately, he was also chief investigator for the prestigious London Society for the Investigation of Mediums so it was inevitable that he would eventually learn about Alessandra.

  As luck would have it, it didn’t take that long.

  Lombardi’s manservant was waiting for us with a carriage when our train pulled into Porta Nuova station in Torino. Lombardi took Alessandra straight to the asylum where his staff warden, Frau Junker, a stocky German woman with short-cropped hair, welcomed her with a scowl. The building reminded me of a prison – which it was for the patients. Three stories, with bars on the windows, a great iron door opening into a dark, empty, grey, stone courtyard where several miserable souls wandered about gesturing and talking to themselves. This was going to be Alessandra’s home for the next six months. Lombardi’s valet handed Alessandra’s valise to the warden. I hopped out to accompany Alessandra to her new living quarters, but Lombardi ordered me back in the carriage. He was impatient to get home.

  Alessandra turned to me with a nervous look. “Tommaso, promise you’ll visit me often.”

  “I’ll be here so often you’ll be sick of me,” I promised, squeezing her hand. “We Neapolitans have to stick together.”

  When our carriage pulled up at Lombardi’s house, I found a small room prepared for me in the servant’s quarters. It wasn’t much, but it was more cheerful than Alessandra’s situation. Lombardi’s mansion was impressive – a large, two-story home with a porte-cochere and a well-tended, formal garden filled with rosebushes just beginning to bud. He employed three domestics in the house, and they all spoke French. Lombardi’s wife was a cold, peevish shrew from Geneva who ran the house with an iron fist. I stayed out of her way and so did Lombardi. As we Italians say, the husband is like the government at Rome, all pomp; the wife is like the mafia, all power.

  Three days later, a maid handed me a letter from Cappelli for Alessandra, and one for me from Rossi, back in Naples. Pigotti had come around, looking for Alessandra, and seemed surprised that she had gone to Torino. He told Rossi he urgently needed to contact her. Could I send Rossi her address in Torino? He’d pass it on.