The Witch of Napoli (18 page)

“You’re going to…”

“I can’t keep her.”

Her words have haunted me for twenty years. God, the inexpressible anguish in her voice – how much she wanted that child! And she could have. The truth is, we could have pulled it off – six weeks – but I was too fucking selfish. I didn’t want her “little Zoe” to screw up the tour. I wanted to see Paris.

“What do you want me to do?” I said.

“Just stay here with me.”

I nodded my head.

Alessandra reached across the bed and squeezed my hand. Her eyes were wet with tears. “Thank you, Tommaso.”

I squeezed back. “You and me, remember?”

I couldn’t watch. I retreated to the bathroom. I waited, gripping the sink, my back to the half-closed door. I could hear her shifting around on the bed, making small groans, then I heard a short, sharp inhale, followed by rapid panting, then an ominous silence.

“Alessandra?” I called out, scared. “Alessandra!”

In the mirror, I could only see her lower legs. As I watched, she pulled up her knees, rose up on the balls of her feet, and dug her heels into the mattress.

“Aagh! God!” she screamed.

I spun around, yanked the door open, and ran to her bed.

She lay on her back, blood trickling down her thigh, the hook clutched in her hand. Her eyes were shut and she was panting hard. I snatched the hook from her hand, pulled her dress over her, and hurried back to the bathroom. I threw the hook in the sink, grabbed a towel and rushed back. She lay there gasping, her pale face covered with sweat. Suddenly she let out a groan and her stomach tightened and her legs jerked up again and her body shuddered, and stuff came out. I nearly vomited.

She turned to me. “The towel,” she rasped.

I gave it to her. She groaned and began swabbing between her legs. When she finished she let it drop and fell back on the pillow.

“Hide it, Tommaso,” she whispered.

I balled up the two blood-soaked towels and stood there, looking around. I couldn’t leave them in the room. The maid would find them. I stuffed them under my coat, slipped out of the room, locking the door behind me, the key shaking in my hand, and hurried down the back stairs and into the alley behind the hotel. A waiter was smoking a cigarette against the wall. He looked at me, surprised. I hesitated, then turned and walked out to the street. The river was only a few blocks away.

When I got back to the room, Alessandra was sitting up in bed, her head in her hands, crying. I sat down beside her.

“Everything’s going to be alright,” I said.

T
he clerk at the front desk greeted Lombardi with a stack of mail when we checked in at the Hotel Kaiserin. The bell boy took our bags to our rooms and Lombardi, eager to make amends to Alessandra for the extra tour stops, took us to Café Frauenhuber, where Mozart and Beethoven drank coffee while composing music. He knew the city, and had promised us a taste of Vienna’s celebrated pastries.

Lombardi studied the menu, and turned to Alessandra.

“Can that bad stomach of yours handle an
eiskaffee
? The coffee is strong, but it’s poured over ice cream.”

“My stomach is fine,” she said. “I told you.”

Alessandra was a survivor. You come from Naples, you have to be. You get knocked down, you get up. You go on with your life. We have a saying: Life is like a henhouse ladder – short and full of shit. The morning after she used the boot hook on herself, she showed up for breakfast. She was still bleeding, but she was scared Lombardi would be suspicious and demand to examine her “stomach ache.” What was left inside her came out a few days later, on the train ride to Vienna. She drank this stuff I bought for her at a chemist, locked herself in the bathroom, and it ended up on the tracks. But after that her insides were all screwed up.

The waiter brought our drinks, Sachertorte for them and a Kaiserschmarrn for me. Mine was delicious.

As he sipped his coffee
,
Lombardi worked his way through the letters, including one from Gemelli back in Torino.

He frowned and put down his cup.

“Professor Gemelli says there’s a petition circulating at the university to censure me.”

“Censure you? Why?” I asked.

“They say I’m embarrassing the university by studying Spiritualist nonsense.” Lombardi unfolded a newspaper clipping Gemelli had included in his letter.

“What’s this?”

He started reading it to us.

Huxley hadn’t wasted any time launching his counter-attack.

Lombardi tossed the clipping on the table and smiled at Alessandra. “At least Huxley got one thing right. You can be charming at times.”

Lombardi signaled the waiter for another coffee, and turned to the last unopened letter. It was a
Mattino
envelope, sporting a crowing rooster.

“This one’s for you, Tommaso.”

I
t was from Doffo.

I opened it nervously. Doffo had promised to let me know if he heard anything about Pigotti coming after Alessandra. My first thought was Pigotti was on a train headed for Vienna to kill Alessandra.

But the threat wasn’t from Pigotti. It was something more frightening.

Pietro was Doffo’s boyfriend back in Rome. He would show up in Naples for a few days and they would disappear together. He was a few years older than Doffo, tall and thin, with a neatly trimmed beard. His father cleaned the bathrooms at St. Peter’s. He wrote terrible poetry, but told the funniest stories – he was always making jokes about the Pope. He worked as a secretary in the Church’s Office of the Holy Inquisition. In the old days, they kept a watchful eye on everybody, eager to pounce on heresy. Every village had a priest, and every priest reported to Rome.
I principi hanno le braccia lunghe.
Princes have long arms, as we say in Italy. The rack and strappado had disappeared long before Garibaldi defeated the papal army and took Rome, but the Office still monitored and harassed enemies of the Church – and they had friends in every major newspaper in the country, eager and willing to publish any scandals they uncovered.

Doffo had blacked out the personal parts of Pietro’s letter, but what remained was alarming.

I looked up and they were both staring at me. I had completely forgotten they were there.

“Well, aren’t you going to read it to us?” Alessandra demanded.

“Just Doffo with the latest gossip from the
Mattino
office,” I replied, trying to sound nonchalant. “I won’t bore you.” Fortunately, just then the waiter appeared with the bill, and I hastily stuffed the letter back in the envelope.

A few centuries earlier, Alessandra would have joined Savonarola at the stake.

In 1856, Pope Pius IX had denounced mediumship as "heretical, scandalous, and contrary to the honesty of customs.” The Church didn’t want you dabbling in divination or talking to the dead. That was their job. They really got nervous when spirits speaking through mediums talked about a life beyond the veil which didn’t include eternal damnation. Take that away and the pews empty fast.

The Italian newspapers had started to follow Alessandra’s tour through Europe. She sold papers. She was Italian, beautiful, outspoken, and readers were clamoring for more stories about the “Witch of Naples.” Everyone in Italy was talking about Alessandra, and the Italian Spiritualist Society was using her to promote new Spiritualist circles in a dozen cities. No wonder the Pope had nightmares.

It wouldn’t take long for the Weasel to find her pile of dirty laundry.

Alessandra was living on the streets when she was fourteen, and you survive by stealing – or by selling yourself. Her husband was a gangster.

The Pope could do a lot with that information.

W
eitzel’s students had it all figured out.

They knew how Alessandra did her table levitation trick.

Professor Weitzel and Lombardi had done their undergraduate work together at the University of Bologna where they were rivals. Weitzel had graduated first in their class, Lombardi second.

“Frankly, Camillo, I think this whole business is nonsense,” Weitzel told Lombardi as we sat in his spacious office at the University of Vienna. “But my students here are champing at the bit to take a crack at your
Signora
Poverelli. We’re ready to start tonight.” Heads nodded around the table. There were six of them, not much older than me, bright-eyed and sitting on the edge of their seats, eager to challenge Alessandra.

“Could we do it tomorrow night?” Lombardi asked. “We just got into town on Friday.”

Weitzel stiffened. He looked sourly at Lombardi. “The department is pretty busy, frankly.”

On the way back to the hotel, a crowd of church-goers were pouring out of St. Stephen’s cathedral reminding us that it was Sunday. As our carriage passed down Singerstrasse, Alessandra turned to Lombardi.

“Do we have to do it tonight, Camillo?”

Lombardi frowned. “Dr. Weitzel is doing me a favor. If he wants to start tonight, we have to do it.”

“That’s ridiculous. Surely he can wait one day.”

“Tonight!” Lombardi snapped. “No arguing, Alessandra. I’m tired too, but we have obligations.”

I saw my opening.

“Why don’t we go to the park?’ I said cheerfully.

I wanted to ride the Big Wheel. The bell boy had told me all about it. The
Riesenrad
had been added to the park three years earlier, for the Golden Jubilee of Emperor Franz Josef. It towers over the park, soaring 65 meters into the sky above the city. I
had
to ride it.

“We’re all tired,” Lombardi said. “Tommaso’s right. Let’s go to the park and have lunch.”

Lombardi rented a carriage and he sat in the back seat with Alessandra as we traveled the length of the flower-lined Hauptallee, the magnificent, main boulevard through the Weiner Prater. Lombardi worked on her, entertaining her with funny comments, and she finally started smiling again as we clip-clopped beneath the magnificent chestnut trees, the shady meadows filled with picnickers and lovers, the small ponds where little boys were launching their toy boats, and the colorful parade of humanity sharing the sunny boulevard with us – young military cadets in their red and gold uniforms strutting with their giggling girlfriends, nannies with their wicker prams, barrel organ players and accordion players, acrobats and beggars.

We rounded a curve and right in front of us was the Big Wheel.

“Can I ride it?” I asked.

“Let’s all go!” Lombardi laughed, and looked at Alessandra.

“Alessandra looked up nervously at the wheel. “You and Dr. Lombardi go.”

“Don’t be afraid,” I said. “Come.”

“I’m
not
afraid!” she shot back. “It’s just that….”

“…you’re afraid.” Lombardi teased. “That’s all right, the men will ride it, won’t we Tommaso.” He winked at me. Alessandra glared at him, then sat back in her seat and crossed her arms.

“I’ve changed my mind.”

I felt a bit queasy myself when the carriage dropped us off next to the metal monster. Lombardi sent me off to buy ice creams while he got the tickets. As the line crept closer, Alessandra edged closer to Lombardi. The attendant took our tickets, Alessandra grabbed Lombardi’s arm, and we crowded into the bright red cabin with ten other people. The cabin jerked forward to load the one behind us and Alessandra clung to Lombardi. Then we rose up into the blue summer sky, higher and higher till you could see the whole magnificent city spread out below us, with its green parks and the Karlskirche and Strauss’s serene, blue Danube off in the distance.