Tears were glistening in the corners of Madame Aubertin’s eyes. Alessandra’ s own eyes were still closed
“…She says her name now…Em…Em…Emma, Emme… ?
A tear ran down Aubertin’s cheek.
“Aimee,” she whispered. “Her name was Aimée.”
“Aimée, yes, she is nodding ….she points to her neck…no, her throat…something wrong….she swallows…it hurts…she is shivering…”
Aubertin was sobbing.
“She wants you to know she is all right…. she smiles ….she is standing next to an older man, old man…odd hat…he shows me something…a book… or notebook with writing inside….can’t read the words…he puts the book in a bag…now he takes her hand…”
Aimee was Madame Aubertin’s only child, just eleven years old when she died of diphtheria. The old man was Aimee’s grandfather, who wore a beret and walked Aimée to school every morning.
That night before leaving Madame Aubertin embraced Alessandra for a long time, before pressing some money in her hand, but Alessandra refused to take it.
Chapter 34
Alessandra could raise more than the dead.
During the two weeks we were there, she levitated a solid crystal vase of lilies, a music box, and a heavy, leather-bound dictionary. She also sounded a harmonica placed in a locked box, and stopped Josephine’s mechanical metronome – once halting the pendulum swing for three full seconds.
And then there was the cuckoo clock.
Josephine wanted to get rid of it – “that old piece of junk” didn’t fit in her modern house – but the clock had been in Dr. Fournier’s family for a half-century and he wasn’t about to dump it in the trash. All day long, the clock would chime at the hour, a little mechanical bird would pop out of a door at the top, flap its wings and tail and whistle two notes “Coo-Koo!” Then a music box inside the clock would play a little melody.
Alessandra and Zoe would count down the bongs together, then join the bird in flapping their arms and calling out “Coo-Koo!”
Fournier noticed their antics and, one evening after dinner as we all sat around the table, he pointed to the clock. It was 7: 55 PM. Could Alessandra use her telekinetic powers to stop the cuckoo bird from popping out of the little door when the hour struck?
“Do it, and we’ll skip the sitting tonight,” Fournier promised her. Lombardi smiled his agreement. Zoe jumped from her chair and ran to Alessandra.
“Do it, Tante Alessandra! Then you can play charades with us tonight.”
Alessandra looked unsure.
“Chi non risica non rosica,” I teased. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
A minute before 8:00, Alessandra pulled Zoe into her lap and glared at the clock. “I wanted the cuckoo to feel afraid to come out,” she told me afterwards. Zoe imitated her, frowning, tiny fists clenched tight.
We sat there as the seconds counted down for what seemed an eternity before the minute hand finally landed on 8:00 PM. I held my breath as the hours sounded.
Bong…Bong…Bong …Bong…Bong…Bong…Bong…Bong then…
…nothing.
The door remained shut.
I stared at the clock. Alessandra had a big grin on her face.
Zoe grabbed Alessandra’s hand. “Come Tante Alessandra! Let’s go play charades.”
“Go ahead,” Lombardi laughed, shaking his head.
Fournier and Lombardi walked over and peered at the clock. The minute hand now showed 8:01. The rest of the clock was obviously working fine. Fournier tapped on the door, his amazement already turned to analysis. How exactly had Alessandra stopped the bird from coming out? Exerted a mental force on the door to keep it closed? Damaged the mechanism?
I left to join the charades. We could hear the two of them in the kitchen, parsing the possibilities. Josephina shouted to her husband to dismantle the clock and look inside.
“Maybe he won’t be able to put it back together,” she laughed, “and I can get rid of it.”
An hour later, we all gathered in the kitchen and watched the clock. Nine bells chimed, the door popped open, the bird popped out, and the two tiny pipes inside sounded their duet.
“Coo-Koo.”
Chapter 35
Lombardi didn’t want to invite D’Argent.
We were all sitting out on the terrace that Sunday when Fournier suggested his crazy idea. Zoe and Alessandra were playing tag on the lawn, and I was working my way through a French phrase book, though my eye kept getting drawn to the spectacular view. In the distance, the breathtaking, snow-capped peak of Mont Blanc rose up in the June sunshine. Dr. Fournier and the family always spent the Christmas holidays there skiing. Fournier looked up from his newspaper.
“A well-known Paris stage magician is in town. He’s playing at the Théâtre de Genève.”
Lombardi looked puzzled. “And…?”
“He’s performed for Emperor Napoleon and the President of France. He says he attended séances in Paris, and investigated French mediums.” He passed the paper to Lombardi. “I wonder if we…”
Lombardi looked at him. “You’re not thinking of inviting him to a sitting, are you?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s absolutely mad. Why?”
“Why not? Alessandra’s doing spectacularly well.”
Fournier refilled Lombardi’s wine glass. “We know Huxley’s going to release his report on Ile Ribaud soon, and he’ll make it sound like you were duped. What better way to counter that than have a famous magician declare Alessandra’s real?”
“But what if she fails?”
“Possible. But look what she produced for Negri in Genoa. And she’s done some amazing things this week, and she’ll be doing the sitting right here, surrounded by people who believe in her.”
Lombardi handed the paper back to Fournier. “No. It’s too risky. I won’t allow it.” Fournier persisted.
“You took a terrible risk at Ile Ribaud, with Huxley breathing down her neck.”
“I had no choice! Renard got me into it.”
“And look what you got out of it! You got Renard to stand with you. What was that worth? I’ll be frank, Camillo – you wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t given his imprimatur. ” He leaned forward. “You already know what Huxley is going to say – she’s just a clever trickster, that’s all, and academics are easy to dupe. But if a professional magician tests her, and comes away convinced – or even comes away puzzled – you’ve got your riposte to Huxley’s report, and a damn good one.”
“We don’t even know him. We would need an introduction…”
Fournier smiled. “I know the theater owner. He banks with our family. I’m sure he booked our Monsieur D’Argent.”
Lombardi stared at his wine glass, silent. Finally Fournier spoke up.
“Why not let Alessandra decide?”
Lombardi sighed, then turned to me. “Tommaso, go get Alessandra.”
Chapter 36
Alessandra teased D’Argent’s assistant shamelessly.
Philippe was broad-shouldered and handsome – in his late twenties, I’d guess – with dark curly hair, cognac brown eyes, and a sense of mischief about him.
Alessandra flirted openly with men she found attractive. She truly enjoyed the company of men, but I think it was more than that. Pigotti was insanely jealous, and it was a way she could hurt him back. Huxley had already begun spreading the rumor that she was having affairs with both Renard and Lombardi.
D’Argent and Philippe flanked Alessandra during the sitting, controlling her hands and knees. Lombardi wanted me behind the camera. Six of them were crowded around a small table – a meter by a meter and a half, weighing maybe ten kilograms. A small oil lamp, lit and positioned on a side table, illuminated Alessandra’s delighted face as she squirmed and fidgeted more than usual at the start, cooing away at Philippe – did he have a good grip on her knee? Would he like to move it closer? Did he want to interlace his fingers with hers for more control? Should she lean her sho
ulder against him? At the other end of the table, Lombardi looked annoyed.
Alessandra called the spirits, and five minutes into the sitting she made an announcement.
“I will do something just for you, Philippe. Bring your head closer to mine.”
She placed her forehead on his and knocked together three times. Three loud, synchronous raps were heard coming from the séance table. D’Argent looked amused. I know what he was thinking – a clever trick, but easily explainable.
Alessandra pulled back, a mischievous smile on her face.
“And now I send you a kiss, caro.”
She pursed her lips and smacked a kiss everyone in the room could clearly hear. Philippe immediately dropped Fournier’s hand and touched it to his lips.
“I felt a mouth kissing me,” he said to D’Argent. The surprise in his voice was unmistakable. Josephine had a grin on her face, but Lombardi glared at Philippe.
“Spirits, show us more!” Alessandra intoned.
Fournier spoke up. “I feel a vibration from the table.”
Josephine chimed in. “Me too. Anyone else?”
D’Argent spoke up. “I feel it now. Philippe?”
“Yes.” He sounded nervous.
Alessandra sighed dramatically, then leaned forward in her seat.
“For you, caro. Now I lift the table.”
All four feet slowly rose off the floor, dragging everyone out of their seats. The table hung there, a meter above the floor, swaying gently.
“Mon Dieu!” D’Argent yelled.
He dropped to his knees and stuck his head under the table, as I fired the flash.
D’Argent is on all fours, his wide eyes staring up in astonishment at the table suspended above his head. In the background, Fournier and Josephine are still hanging on to the table, Lombardi is looking at Alessandra. Her head is flung back, one hand on the table, the other latched on to Philippe’s arm.
It was a spectacular shot.
Chapter 37
The Tribune de Genève spread the story across five columns. Lombardi himself couldn’t have crafted a better headline.
Madame Poverelli Mystifies Science
———
Wonderful Spiritistic Manifestations Witnessed
———
Professor and Professional Magician Fail to Detect Any Trickery
D’Argent delivered a verdict we knew would stagger Huxley. He described how he arrived skeptical, carefully inspected the room and the table, and retained tight control of Alessandra throughout the evening, but she had still performed a miracle.
“I do insist that Signora Poverelli showed genuine levitation, not by trickery but by some baffling, intangible, invisible force that radiated through her body and over which she exercised a temporary and thoroughly exhausting control.”
Lombardi was ecstatic. So was Alessandra.
“Huxley can kiss my ass,” she said.
Huxley certainly sucked a sour lemon. The three telegraphic monopolies – Agence France-Presse, Reuters, and Wolff – picked up the story from the Tribune, and newspapers across Europe ran the story of Lombardi and his bewitching protégé Alessandra. I earned a photo credit, but I already had my eye on a bigger prize.
I wanted to become an editor, and that meant I had to become a reporter first.
That night I sat down with a pencil and paper and wrote up what I had witnessed, just as if I had been assigned the story. “A smirk on his mustachioed, Gallic visage, D’Argent took his seat at the séance table, confident he would unmask the Italian trickster.” Lombardi and Fournier had judiciously avoided mentioning Alessandra’s flirtations with Philippe, but I knew the Mattino audience wanted scandal. “Philippe wiped his lips and leered at Alessandra. ‘Your kiss is sweet’…”
I dropped my dispatch in the mail the day we left Geneva, and within a week Venzano had telegraphed back. Bravo, Tommaso. More stories. Sending 20 francs via Lombardi.
I was now Mattino special correspondent Tommaso Labella.
Chapter 38
Everyone clamored to test Alessandra after that.
Lombardi made her mad by adding three more cities to the tour. We had been on the road for a month by then, and she had been counting down the stops left until we reached Paris, the end of the tour.
She was crabby and peevish, and performed poorly. For the first time, she wasn’t dealing with Italians playing accordions and dancing around singing funiculì funiculà, or genial hosts taking her out for a Sunday sail. Her inquisitors were Germans – smug, pedantic, suspicious. Nobody in Italy likes Germans.
Heidelberg was blistering through a heat wave when we arrived, and the sitting room was oppressively hot. Professor Bloch was intrigued by Fournier’s metronome experiment, and had rigged up a telegraph key to a revolving cylinder which recorded an electromagnetic signal on a sheet of blackened paper every time the key was depressed. He wanted to see if Alessandra could use her telekinetic power to depress the key and leave a mark on the paper. The humidity made Alessandra feel faint, and every few minutes Bloch would pull out a handkerchief and blow his nose, breaking her concentration. She finally produced a single click and a tiny squiggle, but it took her all evening, didn’t impress Bloch much, and left her drained.
At the Austrian border, a suspicious inspector rummaged through our luggage, and it didn’t get put back on the train in time, so Alessandra arrived in Salzburg without a change of clothes. Once we got to the university, Professor Glockner insisted Alessandra stand on a coal scale to measure her weight before and after each sitting – why, I don’t know. “I’m not a cow!” she protested. They sparred with each other for three nights, with Lombardi playing the exasperated referee, and she didn’t produce anything. When we left, Glockner handed her a peace offering of a box of chocolates, but she refused to take them.
On the train to Linz, she complained of stomach pains, and while Lombardi was off having a drink in the dining car we had a big fight.
“Alessandra, you got to see a doctor,” I demanded. “There’s something wrong.”
“No!” she shouted. “It’s the food. I hate German food!” She hugged a pillow to her stomach and glared at me. “Porco Dio! I’m sorry I even mentioned it to you.”
When we got to the hotel, she headed straight to her room skipping her supper. After coffee, Lombardi sent me up to check on her.
I knocked on her door. No answer. I knocked again.
“Alessandra?”
“Who is it?” came an angry voice from the other side of the door.
“It’s me. Tommaso.”
I heard her cross the room, the lock turn, and the door opened a crack.
Her eyes were red and puffy.
Chapter 39
I slipped inside.
Alessandra locked the door behind me, walked over and sat down on the bed. I came over and sat down beside her.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
She suddenly burst into tears, and buried her face in my shoulder.
I put my arms around her, my head spinning. Pregnant, Jesus!
Pigotti must have taken her right before she escaped Naples, a parting gift from the bastard. The thought of Pigotti on top of Alessandra made me sick.
The cazzo had managed to screw her twice. The tour was over. Finished. When Lombardi found out, he would send Alessandra back to Naples. He was a married man, and people were already whispering about his gallivanting around Europe with his dusky, Latin mistress. Would he even pay Alessandra her fee? That would cause talk. The scandalmongers would say he was paying her to be quiet.
Unless…what?
Unless they were having an affair – and Lombardi was the father.
The more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
They were simply using each other in the beginning. Lombardi needed her to win a Nobel Prize, and Alessandra was picking Lombardi’s pocket, desperate to escape Naples. But Huxley’s attack had pushed them together. Her success in Genoa brought them even clo
ser, and by Geneva they were actually enjoying each other’s company – drinking wine on the terrace, laughing about cuckoo clocks, cruising Lac Leman together sharing cheese and biscuits on Fournier’s sailboat, him gallantly diving in the water, suit and all, to rescue her. Then there was the jealous glare Lombardi gave Philippe the night Alessandra flirted with him. The bouquet of roses Lombardi gave her after the Tribune story was published, the two of them enjoying a private tete-a-tete under the moonlight at the edge of the lake the night before we departed Lausanne.
How would Lombardi react when he found out? He wouldn’t want the baby, that was for sure. Thank God he was a doctor. He could arrange something – do it quickly and quietly. I felt my heart rise.
Alessandra stared at the floor.
“It’s all right,” I said, squeezing her hand. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
“The father?” I finally asked.
She looked up at me.
“Dr. Cappelli.”
Chapter 40
“Cappelli?” I stammered.
She clutched my hand, her eyes brimming with tears.
“I was desperate, Tommaso. Dr. Lombardi had turned us down and Rossi was going to stop the sittings. I was afraid to tell my husband. So I went to see him.” She let go of my hand, pulled out her handkerchief, and swiped at her eyes.
“Alessandra,” I said, “you don’t have to tell me about it, if you don’t want to.” I pulled her closer, and caught a tear sliding down her cheek. “ It’s over. It happened.”
She stared at her handkerchief. We sat there in silence. The room hot and stuffy. A ceiling fan circled slowly in the gloom above our heads, doing nothing. I thought of going over and opening the window, but didn’t want to let go of Alessandra’s hand. In the lamplight, I could see the pain on her face. When she finally spoke, her voice was dull and flat.
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