Book of Stolen Tales (36 page)

At the sound of my footsteps, a figure bending over a cabinet straightened up. A pleasant-featured older man greeted me. He wore a bow tie, a print shirt, and a suit of eye-scorching purple on his chubby frame. Even in his platform shoes, he couldn't top five foot four. A fringe of gray hair ringed a prominent bald spot in the center of his scalp.

“
Buona Serra
—Signore Madison?”

“Signore Naso. A pleasure.” We shook hands.

The cabinet behind him contained some curious items. Jars of what looked to be herbs, two short lengths of wood hand-cut and stripped of their bark, a set of antique silver pipes. The cabinet also held a Middle Eastern demon bowl. Inside it, concentric lines of Arabic script circled a crude drawing of a horned monster. Items like this would be buried upside down under thresholds or key points in ancient households to trap demons before they caused illness or otherwise wreaked havoc on the family.

It seemed a macabre interest for a man who looked like a cherub. I introduced the subject of my visit. “You'll remember I inquired about a book? The fourth volume in Basile's anthology. You still have it I hope?”

“
Si
. But not here.”

“Good. I have some bad news, I'm afraid.”

“You don't want to purchase?”

“No, it's not that. I hate to be the one to tell you but I've learned it was reported stolen.” His face fell when I showed him the Interpol report. He took a few minutes to recover from the blow and told me the financial loss would be enormous.

“I'm trying to trace the whereabouts of each volume; I'll help you get your money back if there's any way I can.”

Naso thanked me. “I must waive your deposit then. It is too bad I have no sale, but it makes sense now.”

“What does?”

“My store was broken into last night. It's why I've taken the book away. Too valuable to leave here after that.”

“Any idea who tried to rob you?”

Naso threw up his hands in exasperation. “No one saw it.”

“Could we take a look at it now?”

“Of course. We must go to Il Fontanelle for a nice yet long walk—if you wish.”

He locked up. We descended the stair into the alley still bustling with people and he directed me toward the old city gate, Porta San Gennaro, and Borgo dei Vergini, “the Virgin's Quarter.” Naso explained the odd spelling of Vergini. It was masculine, meaning a place of male virgins, but he didn't know the reason for that curious name. Our ultimate destination lay through the Sanità district and into the Valley of the Dead.

“You know of our San Gennaro, the patron saint of Napoli?” he asked as we passed under the gate.

“I do. There's a big festival in his honor in New York.”

“He saved Napoli from the terror of another explosion by Vesuvius but it is an irony. Fate ended his life at a volcano. The pagan emperor Diocletian, seeing Christianity as a threat, condemned San Gennaro to death. First they pushed him alive into a furnace but the flames couldn't harm him. He came out untouched, not a mark on his skin. Next, they tried to feed him to wild bears. The animals lay down peacefully at his feet and wouldn't devour him. Finally, the emperor ordered him beheaded in Solfatara.”

I thought back to the crater, the hot chalky gravel plain Dina and I so recently traversed, with its sulfurous pits and holes once thought to be entrances to hell. “What a grisly story. I trod on that very spot myself not long ago.”

“The saint's followers salvaged his blood. It is kept in vials to this day. And so we celebrate the miracle of the saint's new blood when our priests hold up the relic and show us how his clotted blood turns to liquid. I have witnessed it many times myself. San Gennaro continues to protect us.”

Perhaps because of the macabre topic Naso raised, the warning Ewan gave me struck a chord. “I was advised not to go into Sanità—but you do often and without a problem?”

“Every evening if I have no other pressing matters.”

“I should tell you this as well. Others who bought volumes of Basile's book have been attacked, two of them killed. You should return it to the authorities. Get rid of it right away and protect yourself.”

“My brother is
o parracchian
—how do you say it in English? Our parish priest. No one will touch me.” His shoulders sagged a little as he thought about what losing the book would cost him. “And if it's stolen as you say, then, yes, no matter the consequences I must give it back.”

Tiny bars and shops occupied the ground floors of buildings lining Sanità's roadways. Sheets and garments flapped on wires strung between the upper balconies. Roofs swarmed with satellite dishes and aerials. One place, fallen into ruin, was being rapidly taken over by vegetation, green bushes and vines spilling out of the chinks where the mortar disintegrated. It was considerably dirtier here than in the southern part of the city. Stray dogs barked at us as we neared the heaps of refuse they pawed through. We made an odd duo, me in my denim and Naso conspicuous in his bright purple outfit, bobbing along amiably beside me. People cast suspicious glances at me but they nodded to Naso and let us pass by.

It surprised me that despite the constant uphill climb and hundreds of stairs Naso managed to match my pace.

As if he'd been reading my thoughts he said, “You're quite fit, keeping up with me like this.”

“I'm like David Lee Roth,” I joked. “I used to jog but I had to stop because the ice cubes kept falling out of my drink.”

Naso bent over with a belly laugh.

Once he recovered, his face grew grave. “My friend, I will tell you about where we're going—Il Fontanelle. It takes its name from the springs and streams of the terrain called the Valley of Death. It's a cemetery, although unlike any you have ever seen. We are already beyond the ancient north wall of the city. At one time, only fields and woods could be seen from here. It was the custom to bury bodies of nobles in churches but the poor deposited their dead at Il Fontanelle. During the great plague that killed more than half the population of Napoli, bodies became too numerous for churches to hold so they, too, were added to Il Fontanelle. When heavy rains and floods came, all the corpses washed into the streets below. A dreadful sight.”

We reached another incline, a narrow street in such bad shape, parts of it had no pavement at all. It was flanked by garages and other commercial outlets along with some homes, all of them in disrepair. Set incongruously into this poor territory was the massive entrance to Il Fontanelle. Two walls of smoothed tawny rock rose dramatically from the ground to form a cavernous triangular-shaped opening almost fifty feet high at its peak.

Naso unlocked an iron gate and motioned for me to follow. “It began as a quarry. Over the centuries, it was fashioned into halls and rooms. The gate must be kept locked because it attracts those who wish to do their business in private. The Mafiosi are known to welcome initiates here.”

Like a cathedral in a cave, a long high corridor resembling a nave ran down the ossuary's center and, in place of pews, low white fences stretched along both sides. Behind these, rows of bones were piled with exacting care on top of each other: the long bones, femur and tibia of legs, radius and ulna of arms, stacked like cut kindling. Skulls sat atop these bones like post caps on a fence. Three rough wooden crosses stood at the end of the main corridor, marking an apse. A faint beam of moonlight leaked through a huge hole broken out of the high ceiling. Whether I shivered from the temperature drop inside or the eerie allure of the place, I wasn't sure.

Naso stopped at a transept midway down and took the branch to the right. More skulls were lodged in little wooden glass-fronted boxes, gray with rock dust. On some, worshipers had draped rosaries, pictures of saints, coins, and other mementos. The only light came from flickering candles. The ceiling was so high it faded overhead into blackness.

He waved toward the boxes. “Being close to the spirits, it prompts many strange practices, no? You may think this grotesque but I have heard odd things about English rituals too. Victorian people encased their stone coffins in wire cages to prevent the spirits of those suspected of being demons from resurrection.”

“Really? I've never heard of that.” I took another look around. “How did all this come about?”

“We are thankful for it. A priest, Father Barbati, encouraged the care of the bones in the nineteenth century, which before that lay scattered and dirty. Then a cult emerged, the Anime Pessentelle, who saw captive spirits in the bones. The arrangements here now were completed by citizens seeking shelter when Napoli was bombed during the Second World War. They brought their children in wartime and felt grateful to the spirits for protecting them.”

He stopped in front of what looked like a small mausoleum carved into the rock: pillars topped by a triangular roof with a rectangular hollow in the middle. Set into that, another wooden box held a skull. Naso reached in his pocket for two short white candles and placed them in the hollow. He made the sign of the cross. After a few moments of silence he said, “I lost my wife last year. I come here to remember her dear soul.”

Inwardly, I recoiled from the shrine, hoping the skull hadn't belonged to his wife. Now I understood why he wore two wedding rings. “You have my sympathy,” I said. “I know how hard that is.”

“I'd been solo most of my life,” he said, his voice tinged with sadness. “Ladies I liked had no time for me so I never married. One day my shop assistant left. When I advertised for someone new, the woman who showed up captured my heart. Marisa was her name. She taught me to speak English. She was a graduate student, much younger than me, studying rare books in Naples.”

He stooped to light the candles. “To this day I don't know what she saw in me. She said she had a difficult life growing up and I treated her with more kindness than she'd ever experienced. Of course, we both loved books. We spent four blissful months together and then we got married. Three years ago this past June we put our names to the wedding record. She looked so serious, as if she were signing her life away, and I suppose in a way she was. We ran the store together until she fell ill. She had a bad fever and couldn't tolerate bright light. By the time the doctors diagnosed meningitis it was too late. She slipped away within the week.”

He bowed his head in silence, saying a prayer I supposed. His grief touched me, and I understood how coming here, strange place though it was, gave him some solace.

Naso raised his head again. “I felt as though my own life had been stolen from me. For days I refused to believe she was gone.” Then he asked an odd question. “Do you ever feel there comes a point where books become
real
to you?”

“Lately I've been getting that feeling a lot.”

“They did for me after Marisa died. Before, I found stories entertaining but only as well-written narratives someone made up. Fiction in the true sense. In the months following Marisa's death I realized many tales are born of deep emotions—like mine. Eros's pain when he searched for his Psyche, Orpheus longing for his Eurydice. Or Edgar Allan Poe's story about obsession. A man who lost his wife, the dark-haired Ligeia. Her death tormented him so badly he sacrificed his innocent second wife to bring Ligeia back from the dead. A truly pitiless and terrible thing to do, really, and in Poe's dramatic style, it didn't end well.”

“I can understand that. It's an expression of desperation. Feeling you can't continue without your loved one in your life.”

“You've lost someone dear yourself, I think,” Naso said.

“My brother and a friend of mine. Not long ago.”

“Ah. Sorry to hear it. Take heart they reside with the Lord.”

As I listened to him I appreciated how deep his struggle was coming to terms with his wife's fate. His comforting words moved me and I felt grateful to this kindly man for his sensitivity.

“As to Poe's story,” Naso went on, “I read the tale long before I ever met Marisa and thought of it simply as an illustration of an obsession carried too far. But when I reread those pages after she passed on, I found a pain as heart-rending as my own. And now I regard fiction very differently.”

He glanced away then as if he didn't wish me to look him in the eye. “To take another's life to satisfy your own craving for a lost one is heinous. It's a horrible confession to make but if given the chance, I would be tempted to do the same.”

He rubbed his hands together as if ridding himself of the memory. “Marisa died. I'm a rational man but science could not help me. Grief, if it is profound enough, drives us to look for other means. You will find this bizarre, no doubt. I explored the art of necromancy. The cabinet you saw in my store holds the tools I needed.”

“And does that have anything to do with why you sought out Basile's book?”

“Yes. I'd heard one of the tales was associated with calling forth a demon who could raise the dead. Yet when I searched the volume, I could find nothing about that and so put it up for sale. After what you've told me, I'm afraid I will be in a lot of financial jeopardy.” He spoke wearily. Through no fault of his own he'd ended up in dire straits.

“I've been told one of the tales is based on real events in Mesopotamia long ago, and that somehow the story was transformed over the centuries into one of the fairy tales we know today. A plague tale.”

Naso thought about this for a moment. “If the story retains some glimmer of past events, it might be worth considering other examples.”

“I'm not sure what you mean.”

“We look to science for explanations now; in ancient times, however, metaphor was used. Consider the biblical plague that caused the Nile to turn red, followed by the plague of frogs. Scientists tell us the Nile did turn red in the thirteenth century
B.C.
at the city of Pi-Ramses in the Nile delta. A period of extreme drought caused virulent algae to thrive, called Burgu ndy Blood. Mats of it turned the water red. Frogs couldn't tolerate the oxygen-deprived water so they jumped out on land. Plagues attributed to an angry God were a way to explain an ancient environmental catastrophe.”