The Witch of Napoli
Read The Witch of Napoli Online
Authors: Michael Schmicker
A NOVEL
Michael Schmicker
THE WITCH OF NAPOLI. Copyright © 2014 by Michael Schmicker. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Apart from well-known historical personages, events and locales mentioned in the novel, all names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
www.MichaelSchmicker.com
ISBN-10: 0990949001
ISBN-13: 978-0-9909490-0-8
Cover: Andy Carpenter/ACD Book Cover Design
Interior design: Mark Bernheim/52novels
First Palladino Fiction Edition published 2015
Palladino Fiction
An imprint of Palladino Books
To Patricia above all
“I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.”
– Dr. Carl Jung
Speech to the Society for Psychical Research (1919)
9. The Heretic Burned at the Stake
19. Surprised at the Train Station
33. Séance for Madame Aubertin
35. Argument Over an Invitation
62. Midnight in the Rose Garden
79. Revelation in the Cathedral
An excerpt from:
The Gift: ESP: The Extraordinary Experiences of Ordinary People
.
A
lessandra is dead.
Sunday’s edition should fly off the news-stands, with the photos Giorgio shot, the stuff we discovered in Lombardi’s diaries, the interviews we did with the Vatican and the police, the comments we’ve gathered from the rich and famous throughout Europe.
When I got back from the burial last night, the editorial offices at the
Messaggero
were dark, but the lights were burning bright in the print shop and the presses were thundering away. I climbed up the stairs to my office and found a copy boy waiting outside the door with the front page, the ink still wet. I hung my hat and coat on the hook, then sat down at my desk to study it. Antonio did a good job on the lead.
Dateline: Rome, Italy, April 20, 1918 – Alessandra Poverelli, the fiery, vulgar, Neapolitan peasant who levitated tables and conjured up spirits of the dead in dimly-lit séance rooms all across Europe, whose psychic powers baffled Science, captivated aristocracy, and enraged the Catholic Church, has joined the Spirit World herself at age 60.
Requiescat in pace
.
A bit melodramatic? Perhaps. But after four years of this damn, endless war, and the Kaiser’s troops threatening Paris once again, our readers are desperate for a little scandal and amusement, and as the editor of the
Messaggero
I pride myself on giving the customer what he wants.
Alessandra got what she wanted too.
When the consumption finally claimed her, I made sure she was buried as she wished – here in Rome, not Naples, and quietly and privately, without any religious mumbo jumbo. I rode in the hearse with her corpse out to the city cemetery, accompanied by Maria, the nurse who took care of her the last month of her life. A light rain was falling, and the team of horses plodded up the muddy hill, her pine casket covered by a sheet of canvas in the back of the wagon. When we got there, two gravediggers were standing under a dripping oak tree smoking cigarettes. They quickly tossed their butts and doffed their hats and asked when the priest would be showing up. The hole was ready and they obviously wanted to get it over with quickly so they could return home.
“There won’t be any priest,” I told them.
They looked bewildered. “
Signore
, no prayers either?”
“No prayers.”
They shrugged and clambered up onto the wagon to haul down the casket. Maria huddled under her parasol, sniffling into a handkerchief, as they lowered the box into the ground. Before they grabbed their shovels, I walked over and tossed into the grave the famous photograph I had taken of Alessandra back in Naples so many years before. In minutes, they had filled the hole, leaving a brutal, black scar on the earth which Spring will quickly heal. It’s going to take me a lot longer.
Here’s to Alessandra, the witch of Napoli – wherever she finds herself now.
I
owe her.
Alessandra was my first photograph for the
Mattino
– the assignment that launched my newspaper career. Of course, she owed me as well – my photo made her famous. She could finally escape Pigotti and get out of that shithole Naples. She never forgot that.
Did I ever tell you how we first met?
In the Spring of 1899, my uncle Mario owned a photography shop in Naples, and he hired me to lug his camera up to Vesuvius and take photos for him, which he printed and sold to German and French tourists. He paid me five
centesimi
for each postcard he sold, but everybody was hawking the same scenic views, and I was always hungry. So I convinced him to shoot some dirty pictures, like the ones he smuggled home from Paris. Our best seller was a girl wearing a nun’s cornette, with a rosary dangling between her two
cioccie
– it sold like crazy. We doubled our sales, but
zio
Mario didn’t double my fee. He was a cheap bastard. A month later, a sub-editor from the local paper, the
Mattino,
stopped by the shop, thumbed through the photos, and asked if I wanted to work for the newspaper.
“He works for me,” uncle Mario told him.
“The hell I do,” I said. “I quit.” I was 16 years old.
When the
Mattino
sent me out to do that first story on her, Alessandra was almost 40 years old. She was performing weekly séances at the apartment of Dr. Ercole Rossi, a professor of philosophy at the University of Naples and the head of the Spiritualist Society of Naples. He was her principal admirer at that time. She was a medium. Mediums talk to the dead, passing on messages from spirits on the Other Side to family and friends they’ve left behind in this world. When you’re from Naples, you believe in these things, and the town was starting to talk about her.
Alessandra was special – what Spiritualists call a
physical
medium. She could talk to the dead, but she could also levitate tables, make things fly through the air, and do other spooky things. Professor Rossi attended one of Alessandra’s séances, watched a chair waltz itself across the floor without anyone touching it, and converted to Spiritualism.
Rossi wrote a letter to the
Mattino
about what he witnessed, and Venzano, our editor, sniffed a good story. The séance and table-tilting craze was sweeping Europe. D.D. Home was entertaining royals in England with his psychic tricks, and the Pope was issuing papal bulls warning us about talking to spirits, so why not do a story on our own Alessandra.
“Get a shot of her with Dr. Rossi,” he told me. “Then get back right away. I want it in the morning edition.”
At 7:30 that evening, I knocked on the door of Rossi’s apartment and the maid led me into the parlor where Rossi and a small group of older, well-dressed men and women were gathered in a circle, exchanging introductions and pleasantries. When Rossi spotted me, he excused himself and walked over.
“So you’re the boy from the
Mattino
?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. “Tommaso Labella.”
“I’ll let you decide where you want to take your picture. The séance is scheduled to begin at eight, so you need to set up your camera right away.”
I was unfolding my tripod when we heard a commotion and footsteps hurrying down the hall and Alessandra burst into the parlor.
“Late again!
Buona sera
everyone!” She yanked off her hat and tossed it onto a chair, then bent over and buttoned her boot before popping up again, clapping her hands together. “
Andiamo!
Let’s get going!” Pigotti, her thuggish manager, had followed her through the door, a cigarette in his thin lips.
Alessandra’s bright eyes swept the room, searching for Rossi, her host, and fell on me standing next to my camera. Rossi had warned her the
Mattino
was preparing a story. She opened her arms in welcome and headed over to me.
“You are from the newspaper, no?” she demanded.
Across the room, Pigotti glowered at me.
I felt my face go red and stammered out my name. Taking both my hands in hers, she pulled me close and whispered in my ear.
“Please make me look beautiful.”
Then she winked at me.
I felt dizzy.
We Italians say when you fall in love with someone at first sight, you’re struck by a
colpo di fulmine
– a lightning bolt. I can tell you it’s true. I have no idea what Alessandra looked like when she was young. When I first showed up in her life with my camera, she had already lost her girlish figure. She wore that petite bourgeois, black silk dress she always favored for the séance room, which did her no favors, but she exuded a raw, animal magnetism that left boys like me tongue-tied, and made men ignore their wives and crowd up close.