The Witch of Napoli (17 page)

D’Argent and Philippe flanked Alessandra during the sitting, controlling her hands and knees. Lombardi wanted me behind the camera. Six of them were crowded around a small table – a meter by a meter and a half, weighing maybe ten kilograms. A small oil lamp, lit and positioned on a side table, illuminated Alessandra’s delighted face as she squirmed and fidgeted more than usual at the start, cooing away at Philippe – did he have a good grip on her knee? Would he like to move it closer? Did he want to interlace his fingers with hers for more control? Should she lean her shoulder against him? At the other end of the table, Lombardi looked annoyed.

Alessandra called the spirits, and five minutes into the sitting she made an announcement.

“I will do something just for you, Philippe. Bring your head closer to mine.”

She placed her forehead on his and knocked together three times. Three loud, synchronous raps were heard coming from the séance table. D’Argent looked amused. I know what he was thinking – a clever trick, but easily explainable.

Alessandra pulled back, a mischievous smile on her face.

“And now I send you a kiss,
caro
.”

She pursed her lips and smacked a kiss everyone in the room could clearly hear. Philippe immediately dropped Fournier’s hand and touched it to his lips.

“I felt a mouth kissing me,” he said to D’Argent. The surprise in his voice was unmistakable. Josephine had a grin on her face, but Lombardi glared at Philippe.

“Spirits, show us more!” Alessandra intoned.

Fournier spoke up. “I feel a vibration from the table.”

Josephine chimed in. “Me too. Anyone else?”

D’Argent spoke up. “I feel it now. Philippe?”

“Yes.” He sounded nervous.

Alessandra sighed dramatically, then leaned forward in her seat.

“For you,
caro
. Now I lift the table.”

All four feet slowly rose off the floor, dragging everyone out of their seats. The table hung there, a meter above the floor, swaying gently.

“
Mon Dieu!”
D’Argent yelled.

He dropped to his knees and stuck his head under the table, as I fired the flash.

D’Argent is on all fours, his wide eyes staring up in astonishment at the table suspended above his head. In the background, Fournier and Josephine are still hanging on to the table, Lombardi is looking at Alessandra. Her head is flung back, one hand on the table, the other latched on to Philippe’s arm.

It was a spectacular shot.

T
he
Tribune de Genève
spread the story across five columns. Lombardi himself couldn’t have crafted a better headline.

D’Argent delivered a verdict we knew would stagger Huxley. He described how he arrived skeptical, carefully inspected the room and the table, and retained tight control of Alessandra throughout the evening, but she had still performed a miracle.

Lombardi was ecstatic. So was Alessandra.

“Huxley can kiss my ass,” she said.

Huxley certainly sucked a sour lemon. The three telegraphic monopolies – Agence France-Presse, Reuters, and Wolff – picked up the story from the
Tribune,
and newspapers across Europe ran the story of Lombardi and his bewitching protégé Alessandra. I earned a photo credit, but I already had my eye on a bigger prize.

I wanted to become an editor, and that meant I had to become a reporter first.

That night I sat down with a pencil and paper and wrote up what I had witnessed, just as if I had been assigned the story. “
A smirk on his mustachioed, Gallic visage, D’Argent took his seat at the séance table, confident he would unmask the Italian trickster
.” Lombardi and Fournier had judiciously avoided mentioning Alessandra’s flirtations with Philippe, but I knew the
Mattino
audience wanted scandal. “
Philippe wiped his lips and leered at Alessandra. ‘Your kiss is sweet’…”

I dropped my dispatch in the mail the day we left Geneva, and within a week Venzano had telegraphed back.
Bravo, Tommaso. More stories. Sending 20 francs via Lombardi.

I was now
Mattino
special correspondent Tommaso Labella.

E
veryone clamored to test Alessandra after that.

Lombardi made her mad by adding three more cities to the tour. We had been on the road for a month by then, and she had been counting down the stops left until we reached Paris, the end of the tour.

She was crabby and peevish, and performed poorly. For the first time, she wasn’t dealing with Italians playing accordions and dancing around singing
funiculì funiculà
, or genial hosts taking her out for a Sunday sail. Her inquisitors were Germans – smug, pedantic, suspicious. Nobody in Italy likes Germans.

Heidelberg was blistering through a heat wave when we arrived, and the sitting room was oppressively hot. Professor Bloch was intrigued by Fournier’s metronome experiment, and had rigged up a telegraph key to a revolving cylinder which recorded an electromagnetic signal on a sheet of blackened paper every time the key was depressed. He wanted to see if Alessandra could use her telekinetic power to depress the key and leave a mark on the paper. The humidity made Alessandra feel faint, and every few minutes Bloch would pull out a handkerchief and blow his nose, breaking her concentration. She finally produced a single click and a tiny squiggle, but it took her all evening, didn’t impress Bloch much, and left her drained.

At the Austrian border, a suspicious inspector rummaged through our luggage, and it didn’t get put back on the train in time, so Alessandra arrived in Salzburg without a change of clothes. Once we got to the university, Professor Glockner insisted Alessandra stand on a coal scale to measure her weight before and after each sitting – why, I don’t know. “I’m not a cow!” she protested. They sparred with each other for three nights, with Lombardi playing the exasperated referee, and she didn’t produce anything. When we left, Glockner handed her a peace offering of a box of chocolates, but she refused to take them.

On the train to Linz, she complained of stomach pains, and while Lombardi was off having a drink in the dining car we had a big fight.

“Alessandra, you got to see a doctor,” I demanded. “There’s something wrong.”

“No!” she shouted. “It’s the food. I hate German food!” She hugged a pillow to her stomach and glared at me. “
Porco Dio!
I’m sorry I even mentioned it to you.”

When we got to the hotel, she headed straight to her room skipping her supper. After coffee, Lombardi sent me up to check on her.

I knocked on her door. No answer. I knocked again.

“Alessandra?”

“Who is it?” came an angry voice from the other side of the door.

“It’s me. Tommaso.”

I heard her cross the room, the lock turn, and the door opened a crack.

Her eyes were red and puffy.

I
slipped inside.

Alessandra locked the door behind me, walked over and sat down on the bed. I came over and sat down beside her.

“I’m pregnant,” she said.

She suddenly burst into tears, and buried her face in my shoulder.

I put my arms around her, my head spinning. Pregnant, Jesus!

Pigotti must have taken her right before she escaped Naples, a parting gift from the bastard. The thought of Pigotti on top of Alessandra made me sick.

The
cazzo
had managed to screw her twice. The tour was over. Finished. When Lombardi found out, he would send Alessandra back to Naples. He was a married man, and people were already whispering about his gallivanting around Europe with his dusky, Latin mistress. Would he even pay Alessandra her fee? That would cause talk. The scandalmongers would say he was paying her to be quiet.

Unless…what?

Unless they
were
having an affair – and
Lombardi
was the father.

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense.

They were simply using each other in the beginning. Lombardi needed her to win a Nobel Prize, and Alessandra was picking Lombardi’s pocket, desperate to escape Naples. But Huxley’s attack had pushed them together. Her success in Genoa brought them even closer, and by Geneva they were actually enjoying each other’s company – drinking wine on the terrace, laughing about cuckoo clocks, cruising Lac Leman together sharing cheese and biscuits on Fournier’s sailboat, him gallantly diving in the water, suit and all, to rescue her. Then there was the jealous glare Lombardi gave Philippe the night Alessandra flirted with him. The bouquet of roses Lombardi gave her after the
Tribune
story was published, the two of them enjoying a private
tete-a-tete
under the moonlight at the edge of the lake the night before we departed Lausanne.

How would Lombardi react when he found out? He wouldn’t want the baby, that was for sure. Thank God he was a doctor. He could arrange something – do it quickly and quietly. I felt my heart rise.

Alessandra stared at the floor.

“It’s all right,” I said, squeezing her hand. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

“The father?” I finally asked.

She looked up at me.

“Dr. Cappelli.”

“
C
appelli?” I stammered.

She clutched my hand, her eyes brimming with tears.

“I was desperate, Tommaso. Dr. Lombardi had turned us down and Rossi was going to stop the sittings. I was afraid to tell my husband. So I went to see him.” She let go of my hand, pulled out her handkerchief, and swiped at her eyes.

“Alessandra,” I said, “you don’t have to tell me about it, if you don’t want to.” I pulled her closer, and caught a tear sliding down her cheek. “ It’s over. It happened.”

She stared at her handkerchief. We sat there in silence. The room hot and stuffy. A ceiling fan circled slowly in the gloom above our heads, doing nothing. I thought of going over and opening the window, but didn’t want to let go of Alessandra’s hand. In the lamplight, I could see the pain on her face. When she finally spoke, her voice was dull and flat.

“He told me to come in the afternoon. When I got there, he answered the door himself. The servants were gone. So was his wife. I knew then what he wanted, but I thought maybe I could get his help without doing…everything.”

Her voice was a whisper now.

“He invited me into the drawing room, and I told him what Rossi said, that the sittings cost too much, and he was going to stop them. I asked him if he could help. He went over to a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of liquor, and brought it back, and put it on the table. He poured two glasses, and told me he liked me a lot, and would pay for the sittings … if I would do something for him. ”

She turned to me, her eyes searching mine, begging for understanding, absolution.

Suddenly, everything made sense – the “stomach ache” that kept her from going to the Minerva Club that night. Throwing up in the dormitory before we left for Genoa. The cramps she had in Heidelberg at breakfast. Same thing my mother had when she was pregnant with my brother Paolo.
Nausea mattutina
. Morning sickness.

And the letter Cappelli sent her shortly after we arrived in Torino –how Alessandra’s hand trembled when I gave it to her.

“Dr. Cappelli knows, doesn’t he?” I said.

“Yes.”

“What does he want to do?”

“He doesn’t want it.”

“Maybe he’ll send you some money for the…operation.”

“He’s moved to Palermo.”

I put my arm around her shoulder and she leaned into me, the tears flowing now. Cappelli didn’t give a shit. He got what he wanted. When you have money, you can fuck people and get away with it. It’s always been that way. It isn’t going to change.

I heard heavy footsteps coming down the hall and held my breath, afraid it was Lombardi coming to look for us. But the footsteps passed by the door and on down the hall. We waited until it was quiet again.

“What will you do now?” I finally said.

Her voice was fierce.

“I’m going to keep the baby.”

I stared at her. “That’s crazy.”

Alessandra turned her tear-stained face to me. “It’s a girl, Tommaso. I know it is.” She put her hands on her stomach.

“I’ve always dreamed of having a little girl. We’re going to Rome – just me and her…I’m going to call her Zoe.”

I stood up. “Alessandra, stop it! You don’t know it’s a girl, and even if it is, you can’t keep it. Lombardi’s bound to notice. He’s not blind. He’ll send you back to Naples – with nothing!”

“I can, damn it!” Alessandra shouted. “I can! I can!” She hugged her waist. “I just have to hide it for six weeks.” She reached for my arm. “You’ll help me.”

“Alessandra, you’re so close. You can make it to Rome…”

“Shut up, Tommaso!” She clutched her stomach, rocking back and forth, the tears now running down her cheeks. “Me and Zoe… Me and Zoe.”

I
paced my room, eyes fixed on the clock hanging on the wall next to the armoire. Give her an hour, she said. She needed to think. Then we could talk. The second it struck nine
P.M.
, I hurried up the hall to Alessandra’s room.

When I got there, the sheets had been stripped off the bed and Alessandra was sitting on the bare mattress, her skirt hiked up, a towel between her legs. Her undergarments hung on the back of the chair. Next to her leg, gleaming in the light of the bedside lamp, was a long, thin, steel rod with a hook on the end.

A boot hook.

I stared at it stupidly for a second before it hit me.