The Witch of Napoli (10 page)

Alessandra turned to me with a nervous look. “Tommaso, promise you’ll visit me often.”

“I’ll be here so often you’ll be sick of me,” I promised, squeezing her hand. “We Neapolitans have to stick together.”

When our carriage pulled up at Lombardi’s house, I found a small room prepared for me in the servant’s quarters. It wasn’t much, but it was more cheerful than Alessandra’s situation. Lombardi’s mansion was impressive – a large, two-story home with a porte-cochere and a well-tended, formal garden filled with rosebushes just beginning to bud. He employed three domestics in the house, and they all spoke French. Lombardi’s wife was a cold, peevish shrew from Geneva who ran the house with an iron fist. I stayed out of her way and so did Lombardi. As we Italians say, the husband is like the government at Rome, all pomp; the wife is like the
mafia
, all power.

Three days later, a maid handed me a letter from Cappelli for Alessandra, and one for me from Rossi, back in Naples. Pigotti had come around, looking for Alessandra, and seemed surprised that she had gone to Torino. He told Rossi he urgently needed to contact her. Could I send Rossi her address in Torino? He’d pass it on.

I figured the chances of Pigotti showing up in Torino were slim. It was a seven-hundred kilometer train trip, and guys like him didn’t even know how to buy a ticket. But she
did
take his money, and added insult to injury by running off with Lombardi. He would seek revenge. Just to be safe, I made up a fake address and posted it back to Rossi.

The first month at the asylum was rough on Alessandra. I can’t count the number of times she threatened to quit and I talked her out of it. Cappelli was also sending her long letters every week, which I delivered to the asylum.

Lombardi suspected mediums were evolutionary defectives, preserving genetic traits found in our primitive ancestors, including the caveman’s magical thinking and a susceptibility to trances. He ran Alessandra through a series of bizarre tests, assisted by
Frau
Junker, whom we nicknamed the “Kaiser.” He clamped a metal device on her head and spent a day measuring her skull, penciling in the centimeters, logging the slope of her forehead, the angle of her jaw, the width of her eyes. He drew blood, made her pee in a bottle to examine her urine, repeatedly pricked her with needles to test her sensitivity to pain, and shone lights in her eyes because some mediums were epileptics. He filed everything away in his notebook.

Did Alessandra feel anything different or special just before a levitation? Lombardi dissected the mystery.

Alessandra the laboratory rat.

One day, she casually mentioned that after every sitting her hands felt like they were burning – like they had been dipped in lye. Lombardi pounced on it. Rontgen has just discovered the X-ray and Lombardi wondered if her hands radiated some form of undiscovered energy. Alessandra was forced to spend a boring afternoon pressing her hands to unexposed photographic plates.

Weeks passed before he finally sent out invitations to the scientific and academic elite of Torino to attend a presentation on Alessandra.

The day of the talk, we set out early in Lombardi’s carriage for the city. The June sun was up and shining, and the morning fog had burned off, but the air was chilly and my teeth were chattering. I was brought along to answer any questions raised about my famous photo, which
La Stampa
had run, but Alessandra stayed at the asylum. Her stomach had been acting up all week, and she begged off.

I pulled my jacket tight, and jammed my hands in my pockets, marveling at the snow-covered Alps in the distance. I regretted not having a camera – I could have sold the shots to Uncle Mario. As we trotted along, the scenery slowly changed from wheat and rice fields to an industrial area with lots of factories, and finally the city itself. Everything was new and exciting. Unlike Naples, the city was clean, with wide boulevards, broad and straight and lined with elegant shops. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the women walking in and out of the stores. They were beautiful – tall and slender, with blue eyes and pale complexions, elegantly dressed, with an air of sophistication about them. You don’t see women like that in Naples.

We crossed the Po at the Vittorio Emanuele Bridge and, just as we entered the piazza, a loud horn suddenly sounded behind us, spooking Lombardi’s horses which reared up, nearly tipping over our carriage. I spun around and saw the first automobile in my life. It was a Fiat 3.5 CV – one of the first machines Agnelli ever built. I never dreamed that one day I would own an automobile myself.

The talk wasn’t until that evening, and Lombardi spent his day at the university, polishing his address, while I spent mine haggling in shops, selecting a camera and ordering the photographic supplies I needed for the tour. Lombardi spared no expense when it came to his scientific investigations, and I ended up with a new Underwood Tourograph camera – better equipment than I had back at the
Mattino
.

We arrived at the Minerva Club at seven o’clock that night. It’s a distinguished-looking building fronting the Piazza Mafalda, just a door down from the winter residence of the Royal House of Savoy. Professor Carlo Gemelli, our host, was waiting for us in the library with a glass of sherry in his hand, watching the staff busily arranging high-backed leather armchairs in a semi-circle around a polished table in front of the fireplace. Gemelli taught physics at the University, but he came from a noble family and had money. You needed both to get into the Minerva Club. Lombardi was a Jew, so he couldn’t join, but he had successfully treated Gemelli’s wife for melancholy, earning Gemelli’s gratitude and the invitation.

“Expecting a small turnout, Camillo?” Gemelli inquired, signaling to a waiter for another sherry. Lombardi handed his hat and cane to a servant and flopped down into a chair.

“We might get thirty.” He pulled a list out of his vest pocket and studied it, a look of disgust on his face. “Lots of regrets and excuses.”

Most of Lombardi’s university colleagues had begged off. He was already the butt of whispers and jokes – most suspected the whole thing was just a clever ploy by Lombardi to set himself up with a Neapolitan mistress he could enjoy after hours. Lombardi’s wife certainly wasn’t happy about his new scientific interest. Daniela, their pretty upstairs maid, told me she overheard them loudly arguing about Alessandra the evening we arrived.

“Did Dr. Renard respond?” Gemelli asked.

“Yes. He’s coming.”

A waiter appeared at Lombardi’s elbow with a sherry. Gemelli raised his glass.

“Bravo! It’s not often we mortals get to rub elbows with a Nobel Laureate. He’s a physiologist. I’m still astonished he’s interested in this stuff.”

“Renard’s privately funded a small institute in Paris to quietly pursue his investigations. Rossi says he’s enlisted some of his medical students from the University of Paris to help him recruit mediums to test. The French are ahead of us in this game, Carlo, but we can catch up.”

Gemelli laughed. “I’ll leave the mysteries of the human mind to you and Dr. Renard. I’m interested in the workings of nature.” He put down his glass and pulled out a cigar. “I’ve been corresponding with Marconi recently, and it occurs to me that maybe electromagnetic radiation is somehow involved in this queer levitation business – though I’ll be blunt: I suspect trickery.”

I stood in the corner of the room and carefully observed the two of them as they bantered back and forth – how they sat back comfortably and confidently in their chairs, how they held out their empty glasses, knowing a waiter would immediately respond, how they cut the tip off their cigars, and how they lit them evenly around the edge with a match. If you want to be a gentleman, you have to strut like one – one is treated the way one carries oneself. Nowadays, of course, I’m a member of the Circolo Canottieri here in Rome, but back then the only way people like me entered the Minerva was through the delivery door. When I went to take a piss, I discovered even the water closet had a marble floor.

When I returned, the room had begun to fill up and a half-dozen additional guests were crowded around Lombardi. A bell rang, and the doorman announced a new arrival.

“Professor Giovanni Sapienti, and guest.”

Lombardi hurried over to shake the astronomer’s hand. Sapienti was famous for his observations of Mars, and his presence that night was another small triumph for Lombardi.

Sapienti’s eyes twinkled. “Professor, I bring you another sympathetic ear tonight.” He turned to the portly, balding middle-aged gentleman at his side. “May I introduce my close friend, Dr. Ettore Parenti, Director of the Egyptian Museum here in Torino. He is fascinated by occult mysteries.”

Parenti stepped forward and bowed. “Like you, Professor Lombardi, I enjoy digging for the truth among the dead.”

Gemelli laughed. “Always prepared with a
bon mot
, Ettore. I hear you’re off to Cairo to open another tomb this summer?”

Before Parenti could respond, the bell sounded again.

“The Honorable Dr. Alexander Baranov, Imperial Counselor to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.” I was in awe. Russian nobility, Nobel Prize winners, world-famous astronomers – believe me, it was an unforgettable night for a nobody from Naples like me.

Baranov, sporting a long white beard and a chest full of medals, hobbled over to Lombardi to introduce himself. Baranov was in his seventies, and a big name in Spiritualist circles where he was known for his investigations into telekinesis. Baranov’s wife was a spirit medium herself. Baranov hosted D.D. Home when the famous medium visited Russia in happier days, and entertained the Tsar’s family with his table levitations. At one séance in the Tsar’s apartment, Home spoke with some invisible spirit then went over to the fireplace, used his hand to stir the embers into a flame, knelt down and picked up a burning coal, and held it in his bare hand for thirty seconds, before returning it to the fire, leaving everyone astonished.

“I hurried down from St. Petersburg as soon as I received Professor Rossi’s telegram,” he declared, offering a trembling hand to Lombardi. “I understand from Professor Rossi that Dr. Renard will be here tonight – accompanied by Nigel Huxley, unfortunately. I give you fair warning.”

Gemelli raised an eyebrow in mock concern. “Is this Huxley someone we should keep an eye on? Pinch the silver?”

Baranov grimaced. “Far worse than that, I’m afraid – at least for Professor Lombardi here. He’s the grand inquisitor for the London Society for the Investigation of Mediums in England, and he takes no prisoners. We’ve clashed many times. He believes all mediums are charlatans and frauds.” Baranov turned to Lombardi. “You would be wise, Professor, to keep him at arm’s length until your experiments with Alessandra are completed.”

Gemelli looked at Lombardi. “Sounds like an unpleasant fellow. Who invited him?”

“Renard.” Baranov interjected. “Huxley is on his way back to England from India, and is staying as a guest of Dr. Renard in South France for a few days. Renard asked if he could bring him along.”

“India? What on earth was he doing there?”

Baranov grimaced. “Back from the hunt. Pursuing poor Madame Dubrovsky. God help her.” We heard a commotion in the hall outside, and Renard made his entrance.

Followed by Baranov’s nightmare.

E
veryone turned and stared when Huxley entered the library.

Tall, athletic, and impeccably dressed, he moved with the confidence of someone used to competing and winning. When they shook hands, Huxley towered over Lombardi. It was a dogfight between them right from the beginning. Lombardi was smart, but Huxley was his intellectual match. I later learned Huxley graduated summa cum laude in law from Cambridge where he eviscerated opponents in debates. The English rarely bother to learn any other language but their own – why should they, they run the world – but Huxley was an exception. He spoke impeccable French and Italian, and passable German as well.

Huxley was also a street fighter. He relished a bare-knuckle scrap. He rowed for Cambridge, and once broke an opponent’s nose in the boxing ring. Huxley pursued his investigations with the devotion of a monk. Women threw themselves at him, but he never married. He lived alone in a tiny bachelor’s suite at the Athenaeum Club in London – one small bedroom and a sitting room – but it didn’t matter since he only slept there. His days were spent on the hunt, and he channeled all his energy into his investigations. He had a genius for detecting the mechanics of fraud.

“Professor Baranov tells us you’re just back from India where you were hotly pursuing some woman,” Gemelli said to Huxley. “Perhaps you could entertain us with the story before we begin our formal program tonight.” He looked over at Lombardi. ”That is, if Professor Lombardi here would be gracious enough to delay his presentation a bit longer.”

Baranov glared at Huxley. “As entertaining as Mr. Huxley’s tall tales may be, I believe we have all gathered here tonight to hear Professor Lombardi talk about Alessandra.”

Parenti jumped in. “I don’t know about you, sir, but I’m still young enough to handle two women in one night. Come, Mr. Huxley. Let’s hear a bit about this mysterious
femme fatale
who’s captured your attention.”