The Witch of Napoli

by Michael Schmicker

  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.

  “She has the hyperaesthesic zone, especially in the ovary. She has the hole in the esophagus that women with hysteria have, and general weakness in the limbs of the left side. She exhibits a persistent cough from tuberculosis, a disease endemic in Naples. It is easier for her to be magnetized than hypnotized. Methodical passes of the hand over her head can free her from headache, and quiet her agitation of mind, and upward magnetic passes can provoke her in a state of semi-catalepsy, just as passes in the reverse direction can remove distortions of her muscles and paresis.”

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

  She experiences a desire to produce the phenomena; then she has a feeling of numbness and the gooseflesh sensation in her fingers; these sensations keep increasing; at the same time she feels in the lower portion of the vertebral column the flowing of a current which rapidly extends into her arms as far as her elbow, where it is eventually arrested. It is at this point that the phenomenon takes place."

  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 L
ombardi.

  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.

  Chapter 21

  Everyone 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.”

  Everyone turned to Lombardi. I could see he was annoyed at the request, but he nodded and Huxley took command of the evening.

  “A dried up old mummy would be a more accurate description, Professor,” Huxley smiled, “but I found Madame Dubrovsky to be an ingenious – one might even say gifted – impostor.

  “Her great grandfather served as a General in the army of Catherine the Great, but she inherited a mystical streak, wasting her childhood in his library reading fairy tales, French grimoires, and the mystic Dostoyevsky. After a brief, failed marriage to the vice-governor of Armenia, she escaped to Constantinople where she met up with a Russian countess and the two traveled arm in arm through Egypt and the Middle East.”

  Parenti gave Huxley a wink. “Devotees of Sappho, eh?”

  Huxley smiled. “Respectable women are not attracted to mediumship, Professor. I find them invariably odd in terms of their sexual appetites. But they eventually separated, and Madame made her way to the caves and jungles of Hindustan, where she found a little, brown-skinned guru and started receiving messages from spirits who called themselves…” Huxley paused to light his cigar, cleverly holding us in suspense before deadpanning “… the Ascended Masters dwelling in the sixth dimension.” He waited for the laughter to subside. “Curiously, these exalted spiritual beings preach a rather disappointing stew of communism, free love, and suffragette nonsense, which our priestess of Isis turned into a queer religion and a profitable book business.”

  “I object, sir!” Baranov interjected angrily. “Jesus preached the same message of sharing our wealth with the poor in the Gospels.”

  Huxley knocked the ash off his cigar. “Forgive me, Doctor. I’m a lawyer, not a theologian. But I believe you’re mixing up Saint Mark with Karl Marx.”

  “Touché!” roared Gemelli. Even I had to laugh at that one.

  According to Huxley, Dubrovsky bewitched a wealthy American industrialist in London into bankrolling a salon and she set up court, smoking her opium cigarettes and entertaining London’s upper crust at séances where messages of spiritual instruction from the Enlightened Ones mysteriously materialized in the darkness. After the lamps were turned up, Dubrovsky passed around these letters to her astounded sitters. Everyone in London was clamoring for an invitation. The Earl of Sussex attended a séance and suggested the London Times do a story on her, and the Times asked the Society to check her out first.

  “So you somehow managed an invite?” Gemelli asked.

  Huxley chuckled. “You don’t turn down a request from the Society. The president’s wife is a cousin of the Prime Minister.”

  The Society had been founded by a group of prominent Cambridge academics interested in metaphysics, and the society’s board was loaded with influential, upper crust people, including the editor of the London Times. But shortly before the scheduled sitting, Dubrovsky decamped to India with her American millionaire.

  It was too late. Huxley was after her.

  The Viceroy of India had boarded at Eton with Huxley’s uncle, and hosted Huxley in Bombay where he spent three months investigating her. He discovered one of Dubrovsky’s Hindoo acolytes named Gandhi had studied law in London, and made hi
s acquaintance. Through him, he befriended her personal staff and secretly put two of them on his payroll. They passed on to him copies of Dubrovsky’s personal correspondence and Huxley matched her handwriting to the letters supposedly written by the Enlightened Ones from the astral plane. They also tipped him off to a secret trap door in the ceiling of the séance room in London which allowed Dubrovsky’s confederates to drop the epistles down onto the séance table when the lamps were extinguished.

  “Bravo, sir!” Gemelli exclaimed when Huxley finished. “Is every Englishman a Sherlock Holmes? Your race seems to have a passion for police work. Take a bow.”

  Huxley smiled. “They were a gang of vulgar tricksters in league with one another.” He turned to Baranov. “It will all end up in my report.”

  Baranov reached into his coat, pulled out a telegram, and shook it in Huxley’s face. “And so will my rebuttal, sir! Shame on you! Endorsing the scurrilous lies promoted by two discharged employees – for theft, mind you! – who were only too happy to slander Madame Dubrovsky. She has sent me her side of the story and I intend to make sure it is heard.”

  “I look forward to reading it,” Huxley replied coolly. “Meanwhile, Professor Lombardi has been exceptionally patient, so I suggest we cede the floor to him.”

  Chapter 22

  Huxley could command an audience, but Lombardi matched him that evening.

  He described his invitation from Rossi to come to Naples, and his dramatic sitting with Alessandra. Lombardi deliberately left out his mother’s ghost, but his excitement was infectious as he described Alessandra’s bizarre personality transformation, the bell suddenly jerking forward on the table, how it rose slowly in the air and hung there for at least three seconds, even sounding a note before being flung across the room by an unseen hand, and finally the stinging slap to his face from some invisible force.