The Witch of Napoli (4 page)

A puppeteer had set up his theater on the church steps, and a group of laughing street urchins were watching beak-nosed Pulcinella deliver a lesson with his cudgel, but Alessandra was nowhere to be found. I wandered around to the side and looked out to a garden, dimly illuminated by the gas lamps from the piazza, and spied a solitary figure sitting on a bench.

“Alessandra?” I called out.

“Tommaso?” came the soft reply.

I hurried over and greeted her. She wore a plain black skirt, a shawl thrown around her shoulders, and the veil of her hat covered her face. I was overjoyed to discover she was alone.

“Come,” I said, handing her the box. “I have a table reserved for us at the Caffè Gambrinus. You can open it there, where the light is better.”

“No, let’s stay here,” she whispered.

I sat down next to her as she opened the package and pulled out the photo. She let out a little cry. “Oh, how beautiful,” she said. Then she lifted her veil to inspect the photo more closely.

My stomach turned over.

“Jesus!” I gasped.

Her right eye was swollen completely shut, her puffy face a mass of black and blue bruises. I moved my fingers towards her battered face and she pulled back.

“Don’t,” she said. “Please.” I felt sick.

“Your husband?” I demanded.

She laughed bitterly. “He said I was flirting with Professor Cappelli, so he taught me one of his lessons.” She stared at the photo in her hand.

Men always slap their wives around, but Pigotti had really laid into her. “You’ll look fine in a few days,” I lied. “Does he do this often?”

“Usually he leaves my face alone. It’s not good for business. But that doesn’t stop him from having his fun.” She hesitated, then unbuttoned the sleeve of her blouse, pulled it back, and shoved her arm forward.

“Oh Christ,” I exclaimed.

Running up her left arm were several ugly, red welts, scabbed over. Cigarette burns. I felt rage rise up inside me.

“Leave him!”

“Don’t you think I tried?” she shot back angrily. “He always finds me and drags me back.”

“You can hide at my place.”

“Do you know what he would do to you?”

“I’m not afraid of him.” I said.

“You should be,” she replied wearily. “You don’t understand – he’s Camorra.”

“Jesus.” I cradled my head in my hands. The night of the séance, I had noticed a tattoo on Pigotti’s forearm – a hand holding a stiletto. So that’s what it meant.

The Camorra ran Naples back then – they still do today. The city is divided into twelve
quartieri
, with a boss for each, and you don’t mess with them. Ever. They don’t just kill you; they torture you before they kill you. They own the police and the politicians. They fix the lottery, and run the whorehouses and the gambling dens, and everyone pays them off to stay in business –porters, cabmen, dockers, butchers, hawkers, storekeepers. Even the
Mattino
had to pay them so they could sell their papers in the city.

“Then get out of Naples.” I said. “Go back to your village.”

“Never! I’m never going back there.”

She turned back to the photo in her hands, studied it carefully, and her face softened. “You’re a sweet boy, Tommaso. Thank you.”

“But you can’t go on like this,” I protested. “You have to get away.”

“I will,” she said fiercely. “I’m going to Rome.”

T
hat’s when she first told me about her crazy scheme.

When Rossi first approached her to do séances, Alessandra negotiated a weekly fee of five
lire
, but lied to Pigotti and said they offered four. She was secretly pocketing one lira from each séance. She had already squirreled away 20
lire
, hidden in a slit inside the straw of her mattress. When she saved up enough, she said, she was going to escape to Rome, rent a small room all her own, with a flowerpot on a sunny windowsill, and live all by herself, and when she got old and fat she’d get a cat like Rossi’s to keep her company.

It was incredibly risky. You don’t do side deals when your partner is Camorra. You end up in a gutter with your throat slit. And even if Pigotti didn’t find out and kill her first, it would take her forever to save up the money, and besides how would she live when she got there – broke and without friends? She’d end up in a rat-infested tenement there too, begging for work just like a thousand other peasants from the South.

It was never going to happen, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her that.
La speranza e’ il pane dei poveri
, as we say in Naples. Hope is the bread of the poor.

“Everybody’s leaving Naples these days,” I said, trying a smile. “I’ve been thinking of going to America myself.”

Just then, we heard loud male voices. Alessandra jerked around.

“Oh God, no!” she cried. “He’s coming! Hide, Tommaso!”

I looked at her bewildered. “Who’s coming?”

She shoved the photo into my hands and pushed me towards the shadows.

“Run!”

I ran to the side of the garden, jumped the hedge, and threw myself flat on the ground. Peering through the bushes I saw two men round the corner of the church wall. One was Pigotti. Next to him was a squat, beefy man who looked out into the garden.

“There she is,” he growled. He pointed towards the bench where Alessandra sat rigid.

“Fucking bitch!”

Pigotti flew down the steps and sprinted across the grass, cursing loudly. When he got there, he yanked Alessandra off the bench.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he screamed. She jerked her arm away.

“I told Vito,” she shot back. “I went to the cathedral to light a candle.”

“Then why the fuck are you out here in the dark?” he snarled. “You come here to see someone? Where is he?”

He shoved her down on the bench and wheeled around, his fists clenched, eyes darting around the garden. ”I’ll kill him!”

I buried my face in the dirt, trying to make my body as flat to the ground as I could.

“Vito!” I heard Pigotti shout.

“Boss?”

“Find him! He’s around here somewhere.”

I peeked up and saw Vito heading towards the hedge, holding a big stick in his hand. I looked towards the piazza. I could outrun Vito, but then Pigotti would know, and he would kill Alessandra – I was sure of it. I turned around and crawled on my knees as fast as I could down the hedge and deeper into the darkness until I bumped into a wooden cart. I pushed my way under it and lay there motionless with my hand stuffed into my mouth, praying he wouldn’t find me.

I could hear Vito coming down the opposite side of the hedge towards me, whacking the bushes with his stick. When he got near me, he stopped and listened. I could hear his heavy breathing. I curled up tighter, terrified my foot was sticking out. He jabbed into the hedge and his stick struck the cart. I could hear the bushes creak as he leaned over the hedge. I shut my eyes and held my breath.

After an eternity, I heard him grunt, the bushes creaked again, and he moved on. Finally he yelled back to Pigotti.

“Nobody around, boss.”

I slid out from under the cart and peered through the hedge to see Pigotti staring hard at Alessandra, trying to read her face.

“Lucky for you,” he finally grunted. He lit a cigarette, yanked her to her feet and shoved her towards the church. “Get moving.”

I looked down and I had peed in my pants.

C
amillo Lombardi changed everything.

Short, goateed, little Jew. But he was smart, I’ll admit that. When he died, they saved his brain in a jar so scientists could study it.

The week after the séance at Rossi’s home, Lombardi announced he would be giving a big, public lecture in Rome on the topic of “Science, Evolution, and Spiritualism.” Venzano immediately recognized the opportunity.
Mattino
readers were hungry for more stories about Alessandra and her supernatural powers, so he bought Rossi a train ticket and sent him to Rome to attend the lecture. His job was to intercept Lombardi after the talk, show him my photograph of Alessandra levitating the table, and convince him to come to Naples to investigate her. The
Mattino
would pay Lombardi’s expenses, and in return would get exclusive rights to the story.

Lombardi’s position on Spiritualism was well known. He had attended three séances in Florence at the invitation of Dr. Lauro Nobile, head of the Italian Spiritualists Society, and concluded the medium was suffering from what he called female hysteria. As for the mysterious rappings and furniture levitations, they were most likely produced by trickery. His blunt dismissal, published in his book
Studies on Hypnotism, Trance States and Credulity,
made headlines across Europe.

His reputation in the field of psychology rivaled Freud’s at that time. The two trained in Paris under Charcot, who conducted experiments using hypnosis on women suffering from hysteria. His entertaining shows at the Salpêtrière clinic drew the
beau monde
of Paris. Afterwards, Freud returned to Vienna to study the nervous disorders of rich housewives and Lombardi became the youngest full professor ever appointed to the University of Torino. He taught abnormal psychiatry and ran an asylum for the criminally insane.

Lombardi was 45 when he first met Alessandra. He was short and slightly pudgy – a gourmand who enjoyed rich food and had the money to indulge – but he dressed smartly and sported an ebony walking stick with a winking Chinaman decorating its ivory knob. He spoke four languages fluently – not only Italian, but French, German and English as well, and could switch from one to the other without missing a beat.

But he was also insufferably brash and abrasive, and collected enemies as fast as he did admirers. His students loved him, but a clique of older professors despised him. When the archbishop of Turin publicly denounced Lombardi in
La Stampa
for aggressively promoting Darwin in his classes, Lombardi famously countered in a letter to the editor that Darwin’s books weren’t even on the
Index Librorum Prohibitorum
. If the Pope didn’t object, why should His Excellency? His “impertinent and unwarranted” retort earned him a written reprimand from the Rector of the university. He tossed it in the trash.

Before Rossi left for Rome, he called Alessandra and me to his home to share the exciting news. Alessandra was already there, chatting away with Cappelli, when I arrived. I hadn’t tried to contact Alessandra since the night at the Piazza del Plebiscito. Pigotti scared the shit out of me, and I doubted Alessandra saw me as anything more than just a sweet kid. But seeing her again still made my heart race.

Rossi was cautiously optimistic he could lure Lombardi to Naples.

“He’s a scientist, and your photograph is scientific evidence he can’t easily dismiss,” he told me. “In any event, I’m already scheduled to be in Rome that week for a meeting, so it’s worth a try.” He turned to Alessandra. “If I convince Professor Lombardi to come, it’s up to you to convince him spirits exist. Do that, and you can triple your séance fee. The aristocracy of Naples will clamor to sit with you.”

Alessandra was giddy when we left Rossi’s apartment. My God, did I understand what that meant? she demanded. She
would
get out of Naples. She
would
get to Rome.

“Tommaso, it’s going to happen,” she gushed. “I know it will. And all because of your photo.” She grabbed my face and gave me a kiss. I felt my face turn red, but she was already hurrying down the street to catch the tram.

L
ombardi was a real showman.

Rome’s
Messaggero
newspaper published a detailed account of his extraordinary lecture in their morning edition the following day. I saved a copy in my files. Here, let me read it for you.

At that point, Lombardi reached under the table, pulled out two more skulls, and lined up all four in a neat row. He’s got you. You’re thinking – what the hell is all this about?