Book of Stolen Tales

by D J Mcintosh

  “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 he
r 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.”

  I was aware of the biblical plague although not the scientific explanation for it. “Like the myth of werewolves explaining outbreaks of rabies?” I offered. He nodded. “What about more recent epidemics?”

  “It’s the same. When illness proved resistant to the cures of the day, people blamed it on witches or warlocks or bad fairies casting spells, so the effects of widespread disease were expressed as a plague tale.”

  “There’s something else related to this,” I said. “I was warned about the book and told not to open it because it was dangerous. I assumed that referred to the treacherous knowledge it contains.

  You know old books much better than I do. What do you make of that?”

  I’d hesitated to mention this to Naso, thinking he’d just make fun of the idea, but his face darkened as he listened to me. “And did you ignore the warning and open the book?”

  “It was too tempting.”

  Worry spread across his features. “How long ago?”

  “A few days—why?”

  “Did you touch it?”

  “Yes, but I wore latex gloves to protect the old papers.” Then I remembered I’d handled the golden covers with my bare hands.

  “I too looked inside the volume I bought, not knowing about this prohibition,” Naso said worriedly. “Did it never occur to you to take the warning literally? Saturating pages with poison was an assassination method during the Renaissance. You lick your finger to turn the page and …” He drew his finger across his throat. “The Arabian Nights includes a story on that very subject. By now, though, I should be dead since I opened the book months ago without any protection. We can conclude that is either not what was meant or the volume I bought was safe.”

  He bent down and reached behind the box set into the hollow of the little mausoleum and then straightened up like a shot, a panicked look in his eyes. “It’s gone!”

  “What?”

  “The book!”

  “I thought no one could get in here.”

  “Only the caretakers who’ve been employed here for many years. They know this is my shrine to Marisa. They would not take from me.” He rubbed his plump hand over his face. “What am I going to do? This has become a disaster.”

  I tried to reassure him. “Don’t worry. I know who did this. The same man you described on the phone to me. He probably took your copy like he took mine. I’ve documented as much of this as possible. You’re not alone.”

  “M. Villeneuve?”

  “Yes, him. That’s just an alias. One way or the other, I’m going to find him.”

  “All the same, I’ll have to tell the police.”

  “Go ahead. That’s the right thing to do.”

  I walked partway back with him to give him some comfort. By the time we bade each other good night, he seemed calmer. I promised to stay in touch and let him know if I made any progress.

  Without Naso by my side, I hurried through the streets searching for a place to get a drink and figure out my next steps. Naso had purchased the fourth volume, day four of Basile’s anthology. With no proof and without knowing what happened to the final volume, I’d run out of leads.

  It hadn’t been pleasant to deliver the bad news to Naso, or to anyone else for that matter. What seemed at first like a righteous hunt for a criminal over a simple book theft had fanned out into deadly consequences for Ewan and Katharina and now probably Dina too. My guilt bubbled up again. Where was she? What happened to her?

  When I drew clo
se to Via Santa Teresa and could see its bright lights I leaned against a store window and got out my phone. I checked to see if Dina had left me a message. Nothing. Then I remembered I’d never received an answer to my inquiry about the round stone weight from Samuel’s colleague. Even though it was late I could try to catch him at home. I was relieved to hear him answer. He’d recognized the weight and told me what it was used for. I thanked him and hung up, thrilled at this unexpected reversal of fortune. Finally, one key piece of the puzzle Renwick set in motion was solved.

  Thanks to his information, I now also knew which fairy tale Renwick sought. That brought me one step closer to the secret he coveted.

  The streets were still lively; all the same, an uneasy feeling stole over me. An alley angled off to my right. I looked down it hoping to spot a sign for a bar or café. Instead, I saw a wavering shadow. One I knew well by now. Alessio, leaning heavily on his cane, shuffled over the cobblestones in my direction. His dark coat clung to him like a shroud.

  Part Three

  THE LAND OF NO RETURN

  To the land of no return, the land of darkness,

  Ishtar, the daughter of Sin directed her thought,

  ………………………...................................

  To the house of shadows, the dwelling of Irkalla,

  To the house without exit for him who enters therein,

  To the road, whence there is no turning,

  To the house without light for him who enters therein,

  The place where dust is their nourishment, clay their food.

  They have no light, in darkness they dwell.

  Clothed like birds, with wings as garments,

  Over door and bolt, dust has gathered.

  —EXCERPT FROM “THE DESCENT OF THE GODDESS ISHTAR INTO THE LOWER WORLD,” A BABYLONIAN MYTH

  Thirty-Seven

  He kept his head down, oblivious to his surroundings, as if off in his own world. As far as I could tell Alessio was alone. I dipped into a doorway and held my breath, waiting for him to pass, afraid the crippling paralysis would once again seize my limbs. I flexed my fingers. No tingling or sense of heaviness.