The Witch of Napoli

by Michael Schmicker

  Chapter 28

  On the train back to Torino, they argued fiercely.

  Huxley was the odd man out. Renard and Sapienti had seen enough to join Lombardi’s camp. Alessandra needed to be investigated by Science. Huxley would only agree to attend the press conference.

  The day of the announcement, we picked up Alessandra at the asylum before heading to the Minerva Club. Lombardi wanted to keep her away from the press, but Renard convinced him he couldn’t hide her forever. On the way over, Lombardi sternly warned Alessandra not to say anything.

  “Dr. Renard or I will handle any questions from reporters,” he said. He pointed his cane at her. “And stay away from Huxley. I don’t want any incidents.”

  The library was jam-packed when we entered. A buzz of excitement filled the air. Renard had arrived early and was surrounded by a crowd. Sapienti and Gemelli were huddled in animated conversation in the back of the room, where a photographer from La Stampa was busily polishing his camera lens. I recognized a dozen other gentlemen in the audience who had attended Lombardi’s first talk. Baranov had returned to St. Petersburg, but Dr. Parenti was there, and he hurried over when he spied Alessandra.

  “And this attractive lady is undoubtedly Signora Poverelli,” he declared, kissing her hand. “I understand you bested our English friend at Ile Ribaud. Score one for Italy!”

  He reached into his coat pocket and drew out a tiny stone cat, carved in alabaster.

  “For you, Signora. From a 3,000 year old tomb in ancient Egypt I excavated myself. The cat goddess Bastet – an amulet to protect you from your enemies, and bring you luck.” He placed it in her hand and smiled. “You will need her. Signor Huxley hates to lose, and I suspect he will continue to pursue you.”

  “Signore, mille grazie,” Alessandra exclaimed. “I…don’t know what to say…” She stared at the pretty figurine in wonder. The only present Pigotti had ever given her was a black eye.

  Parenti laughed.

  “Just tell your boy Tommaso here to send me a photograph of you to put on my desk at the museum, so I can make my colleagues jealous.”

  In the front of the room, Gemelli was clapping his hands to shush the crowd and we grabbed two vacant seats as Renard and Lombardi stepped to the podium.

  Huxley stood off to the side, stone-faced, as Lombardi recapped his earlier Naples sitting, and the two of them described what had happened on Ile Ribaud. They agreed that Alessandra’s mysterious powers deserved further investigation. As soon as they finished, reporters started waving their hands. A newsman from the Gazzetta del Popolo jumped in first.

  “Professor Renard, are you saying you believe in spirits?”

  Renard grimaced.

  “I’m saying I believe in the spirit of scientific inquiry. No more, no less. I’ve seen enough to conclude that something more than legerdemain might be at work here.” Renard nodded towards the back of the room, and a sea of faces turned to look at us. “Signora Poverelli has volunteered to be tested and, believe me, she will be. Science has the tools and methods necessary to separate truth from fiction.”

  The reporter from La Stampa raised his hand.

  “Does Mister Huxley share your view?”

  “You will have to ask him,” Renard replied, staring disdainfully at Huxley.

  It was an awkward moment. Everyone had agreed before going to Ile Ribaud that they would issue a joint statement afterwards, but Huxley had reneged. For Renard, it was a betrayal he never forgave or forgot.

  Huxley stepped forward. “The Society will issue an official report once I’ve had a chance to return to England and discuss my observations with our Board.”

  “Was there something you observed which raises a concern?”

  Huxley had a trump card to play, and he played it.

  “Frankly, yes. Unlike my colleagues Dr. Lombardi and Dr. Renard, I find it exceedingly suspicious that Signora Poverelli adamantly refused to be tied to her chair during the sitting. I submit there’s only one logical conclusion to be drawn from her refusal.”

  You could see heads around the room nodding in agreement. Hell, even I had found her refusal troubling.

  That’s when Alessandra stood up. I tried to pull her back down, but she shook off my grasp.

  “May I say a word?”

  Up front, Lombardi frantically motioned for her to sit down, but she remained there. Huxley had an amused look on his face.

  “Please do,” he said.

  Alessandra waited until all eyes were on her, then with remarkable aplomb she delivered the line that knocked Huxley’s complaint to the second page, and made her famous throughout Italy.

  “You must understand, Signore – being tied up in a dark room with an English man would frighten any Italian woman. You risk not only your virtue but your purse as well.”

  A collective gasp rose up from the room, followed by a roar of laughter. Huxley stood there red-faced, as reporters stampeded for the door, hoping to be the first to get the quote on the street. A flash gun went off, blinding me. The La Stampa photographer had maneuvered his camera closer to Alessandra, catching her unawares. It was a great shot of her and ended up the next day on the front page – together with the saucy, verbal thump Alessandra had landed on John Bull.

  Chapter 29

  I couldn’t wait to tell Alessandra the exciting news.

  Lombardi had made the announcement in La Stampa that morning. We were off to tour the Continent.

  Alessandra’s miserable month at the asylum was over.

  We’d be staying in real hotels, where a doorman would bow to us when we arrived, a maid would plump our pillows each evening, and waiters in suits would inquire whether Signora preferred the apple tart or the pear tart.

  Alessandra could finally tell the “Kaiser” to shove it.

  I hurried down the grimy hall, careful to stay to the middle, beyond the reach of the inmates who lined both sides of the corridor, manacled to their chairs, yelling and spitting at me as I slipped past. Lombardi’s asylum got the criminally insane – the ax murderer who talked to God, the mother who drowned her babies, the prostitute who slept with her client then slashed his face to ribbons with a razor.

  At the end of the hall, a guard halted me and demanded my pass. Behind him I could see into the social room, where the harmless inmates, mostly women, were allowed to spend a half hour every day outside their cells. Heads shaved to combat lice, they slowly circled the room like a school of fish, shuffling along behind one another, making a cacophony of noises – moans and wails, jabbering and maniacal laughter. Someone spotted me, a cry went up, and the whole room rushed towards the door. The guard turned and waved his club and they fell back. He pointed me towards the staff quarters, and I gratefully escaped.

  When I reached the dormitory, I found Alessandra sitting on her bunk, head down, vomiting into a chamber pot. I hurried over.

  “You all right?” I asked. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, rocked back, and threw up again.

  “Jesus, Alessandra!” I pulled out my handkerchief and wiped the sweat from her brow.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

  “You sure don’t look like it. I really think Dr. Lombardi…

  “No!” She nodded at the paper in my hand. “What’s that?”

  I held up the tour itinerary Lombardi had given me that morning.

  “We’re off to Paris.”

  “Paris?”

  She took it from my hand, read it, then handed it back to me.

  “Thank God. We can finally leave this hellhole…” She tried to stand up, but I pushed her back down.

  “Not until tomorrow. And only if you feeling better.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  She bent over, clutched her stomach, and rocked back and forth, groaning.

  “At least let Lombardi look…”

  “No!” She angrily kicked the chamber pot with her foot. She lay back on the bed, her eyes closed. “It’s the food they serve in this shithole, that’s a
ll.”

  A wash cloth sat in a bucket of cold water by her bedside. I squeezed it out, and wiped her forehead. The grimace on her face relaxed, and she opened her eyes and looked up at me.

  “Sorry for the mess, Tommaso. Thank you.” She closed them again. “Paris…”

  I grinned. “…and Genoa, Geneva, Vienna, Munich, and Warsaw as well – if you can manage to stay out of trouble.” Her eyes opened.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Lombardi says you’re on probation.”

  “Probation? Why?”

  “Jesus, Alessandra, you made Huxley the laughingstock of Italy, and made Lombardi’s life a lot tougher. He’s already sent a letter of apology to the Society. He’s praying it reaches London before Huxley does – and you better pray they accept it.”

  She raised herself up on one elbow. “But he insulted me!”

  I dipped the wash cloth in the bucket. “You don’t get it. Huxley works for the Society. The Society is like the Camorra, capisci? You don’t want to piss them off. They run the show when it comes to investigating mediums. If they warn people to stay away from you, the academic community will turn its back on Lombardi. Most of them already have – in case you don’t know. The only thing keeping Lombardi in the game right now is Renard and his Nobel prize.”

  I passed the cloth to her. “Lombardi’s serious about this. If you embarrass him again, he’ll dump you. He told me.”

  “So what am I supposed to do when someone calls me a cheat?”

  “Shut up and take it. In four months you’ll have your 4,000 lire – then you can head to Rome with enough money in your purse to start a new life.”

  I had delivered the warning Lombardi ordered me to give her, but I knew Alessandra wouldn’t listen. She came from Naples, where honor trumped everything, even good sense.

  She flung the cloth on the bed.

  “I’ll never let Huxley insult me, Tommaso. Never!”

  Chapter 30

  The first elevator I saw in my life was in Genoa.

  We all squeezed into the lift and the uniformed operator pulled the metal door closed. Lombardi offered Alessandra a seat on the red velvet bench but she was too excited to sit down. The operator hit the button and we jerked upwards. She grabbed my arm, and hung on tight. She had never ridden in one either.

  Outside the wire cage, the lobby of the six-story, Grand Hotel Isotta in Genoa was bustling with English and German tourists eager to start their summer holidays on the Italian Riviera. Lombardi had deliberately chosen Genoa as his first stop on the tour. Alessandra would still be in Italy, where the language and the food were familiar, performing before a friendly audience.

  For two paesanotti bumpkins like us, the rooms were like something out of A Thousand and One Nights. Lombardi traveled first class everywhere he went, and we always stayed in the same hotel as him. He wanted to keep an eye on Alessandra.

  She flitted around her room, marveling at everything – the tropical flower prints on the wall, the enormous bed, the snow-white, crisply pressed sheets, and the private toilet.

  “Can you believe this, Tommaso!”

  She picked up the soap and sniffed it, then handed it to me. “It smells like flowers.” She rubbed her face in the luxurious towels, then marched over to her bag, yanked it open and pulled out a dingy, gray rag and a block of hard brown soap. She had expected to stay in a cheap place, and brought her own from the asylum. She balled everything up and tossed it in the wastebasket.

  “Arrivederci!” she laughed, and joined me at the window.

  On the street below, a tram filled with people passed by in the late afternoon sun, the clang of its bell floating up to us as we leaned out, elbows together, and took turns pointing out the sights. We were high up enough to see over the surrounding rooftops and catch a glimpse of the Ligurian sea, a pale blue sheet of water spread across the horizon beyond the docks and wharves.

  A knock sounded at the door and I walked over and opened it.

  My surprise had arrived.

  I gave the bellboy a tip and wheeled the cart into the room.

  “Time to celebrate!”

  “Champagne? – Oh my God, Tommaso!” she laughed. “Close the door! Hurry! Lock it!”

  She sat on the bed as I poured two glasses, then handed her one.

  She took her glass and gave me a mock pout.

  “Tommaso, I’m surprised at you. You’re always lecturing me to behave. Do you want to get me sent back to Naples?”

  “This is simply to help remind you what you will lose if you screw up. Now, a toast…..” I raised my glass. “To Alessandra and Tommaso. Two nobodies from Naples. But when we’re done, the world is going to know our names.”

  We sat on the bed, drinking the champagne. She had had champagne once before, at a reception at Rossi’s house. She loved the bubbles.

  “This tastes delicious,” she said. “Where on earth did you get the money?”

  “A little trick I learned from you. I told Lombardi his darkroom equipment cost 700 lire, but it only cost 600. I pocketed the difference – but I bought this instead of stuffing it in my mattress.”

  Alessandra burst out laughing. “I can’t think of a better place to hide money.”

  I topped up her glass. “Did you know that Lombardi and his wife had a big fight just before we left Torino?”

  “About what?”

  “You.”

  “Me?”

  “She doesn’t like the idea of him traveling alone with you. She was shouting and throwing dishes, and yelling that mediums were whores, and he was embarrassing her and ruining his reputation at the university. The maid told me everything the morning I left.” I refilled my glass. “That’s not all. She told him if he left with you, she was going to Budapest to stay with her sister, and threatened she might not return.”

  Alessandra laughed. “She can save her cups and plates. I’m just a science experiment to him. And all I want from him is my 4,000 lire.”

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Alessandra? This is Professor Lombardi. Are you there? Professor Negri is waiting for us in the lobby.” I panicked and jumped up to hide the cart in the bathroom, but she pushed me back down on the bed.

  “Stay there,” she whispered. “Don’t move.”

  She turned towards the door. “Thank you, Professor. I’ll be down shortly.”

  “I knocked on Tommaso’s door. There was no reply. Maybe he’s downstairs already.”

  She stifled a giggle. “He said he needed to check his equipment bags.”

  When we got to the lobby, Lombardi and Dr. Enrico Negri were enjoying a cigar and chatting away. Negri stood up and kissed Alessandra’s hand. He was a short, jovial man with an aquiline nose and a peaked beard. He worked in the psychiatry department at the university, where he was Director of the Clinic for Nervous and Mental Diseases. He held up a small box and removed the lid. Inside was a silver medallion.

  “Signora Poverelli, our fair city is the birthplace of Christopher Columbus.” He handed her the box and bowed. “You are the leading our exploration to another New World, and we are simply your humble crew.”

  Lombardi smiled. “And when do we start our explorations, Rico?”

  Negri wagged his finger. “No work tonight. Just dinner – and a chance for those of us in Genoa to enjoy the pleasure of this beautiful woman you’ve kept for yourself for too long, Camillo.”

  Negri wasn’t looking for proof; his tests with a local Genovese medium had left him convinced. He was simply trying to understand how it worked. “I accept the phenomena as real,” he had written in his book Psicologia e Spiritismo, “not only because they are reported by persons worthy of credence, even by scientists, but because I also have experimented.”

  That night, the three of us took a carriage over to Negri’s second floor apartment in the Bocadâze, an old mariners' neighborhood just off of Via Aurora. Its large windows looked out to a small bay and a cobblestone beach crowded with small fish
ing boats. The evening was warm and the windows were thrown open, and you could hear laughter and chatter from the fishermen preparing to head out for some night fishing. Alessandra lingered at the window for a long time, staring out, contently sniffing the salt air and letting the breeze caress her face. She and the sea were lovers.

  “What a wonderful place to live.” she whispered to me. “When I’m in Rome, I’m going to spend my summers here, Tommaso.” Typical Alessandra. She only had a few lire to her name, but she had the Midas touch when it came to turning destitution into dreams.

  Negri was a bachelor, but his cook Gemma fed ten of us, crowded shoulder to shoulder in the small dining room. Most were professors or students from Negri’s university, and Gemma outdid herself – pasta tossed with bianchetti, broiled bronzini, and a special surprise for Alessandra. When we finished the fish, Negri slipped into the kitchen, returned to the table with a plate in his hands, and placed it ceremoniously in front of Alessandra.

  Alessandra clapped her hands in surprise. “A pizza?”

  “Genoa’s salute to Naples.” Negri gestured towards the kitchen. “Gemma is hiding in the kitchen until she hears you like it.”

  The Genovese faina does look like a Neapolitan pizza – a thin pancake cut in triangles, but made of chickpea flour instead of wheat flour. Gemma had delicately seasoned it with rosemary and sea salt.

  Alessandra took a bite and a big grin spread across her face. “Deliziosa!” She hopped up from her chair and headed for the kitchen. “Signora, I beg you, tell me how to make it.”

  Alessandra spent the rest of the evening encircled by a harem of admirers who peppered her with questions about her mediumship. Everyone drank a lot and laughed a lot. They teased her about her famous jibe at the Englishman Huxley. One of the guests, Professor Baldinotti, pulled out his little du botte accordion and played “Santa Lucia,” and then a Neapolitan tarantella which got Alessandra up on her feet to dance and soon everybody was up and dancing and bumping into each other and falling down and Alessandra ended the evening by singing Peppino Turco’s famous Neapolitan song about the cable car up Mount Vesuvius: