The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno: A Novel (8 page)

“It’s strange,” Matina said. “A week has gone by, and not a word about the woman. Not like Barnum to be hiding something this long. Think what he went through for those damnable white whales of his. He shipped them down from Canada in wagons and then ran ahead so he could stop at every Podunk town on the route to make sure the whole countryside knew they were coming.”

“Or that idiotic Fejee Mermaid he touted twenty years ago,” I answered, remembering the half-monkey, half-fish exhibit. What an atrocity! Barnum had planned everything, even hired an actor who claimed to be a famous British scientist who’d made the discovery. Restricted viewing ginned up interest for months, and in the end
everyone and his brother came to see the dead shriveled thing, with its fins and its claws and its gaping, toothless mouth.

Matina poured tea into tiny porcelain cups, her hand shaking slightly. “Barnum must have something special planned for the new act. We’ll find out soon enough, I suppose.” She shoved a pot of honey my way. “You know, Barthy, it wouldn’t hurt you to use a little showmanship yourself. Tonight at supper, brag a little. Tell the others that he’s singled you out for this special task on Thursday.”

I pulled my cup back. “Absolutely not.”

“And why not? I’m sure Barnum’s not asked any of
them
to do his bidding.”

“I’ve no intention of boasting in front of everyone. And he’s banking on my discretion.”

Peeved, Matina popped an éclair into her mouth and tapped a sticky finger on the top of a stack of newspapers as she chewed.

“And you’ll say nothing to them either,” I added, knowing exactly what she was thinking.

Matina dabbed her napkin at the corner of her mouth. “Fine. But I think others would pay you a lot more respect if they knew Barnum had singled you out. People with remarkable gifts do not always end up rich or happy in this world, you know.”

“I would never assume that they did,” I answered, though in fact I
did
believe our gifts brought remarkable lives with remarkable insights. Otherwise, what would be the point? “And not many of us have been as lucky as you, my dear.”

Matina had worked under Doc Spaulding, sailing the Mississippi aboard the
Floating Palace
, the fanciest boat afloat, so one couldn’t take her complaints too seriously.

“They treated me like an animal on that boat!” Matina sipped at her tea, then reached for another pastry. “Threatened my honor day and night. You’ve no idea the drunken hooligans that hang around riverboats.”

I laughed. “You’ve a perfect pedigree, and you know it. And it hardly sounds like Spaulding treated you poorly.”

“Well, he never put me in the big show, did he? And that ghastly act I did for him!”

Matina had told me dozens of times how Doc Spaulding used two tugboats to haul his riverboat circus up the Mississippi. The first tug carried an African elephant and a steam-run calliope that squeaked out Stephen Foster songs to herald their arrival. The second carried Matina, along with an armless man named Theodore Bunt, a blackface troupe, a menagerie ring made up of monkeys riding Shetland ponies, and a few African cats in big cages. Folks had to walk through one of the tugs to get to the riverboat’s big show, complete with a circus ring, stage curtains, horses, and clowns. Try as she might, Matina could never convince Spaulding to move her to the main theater. Instead, he made her serve as a warm-up act, playing the part of a British explorer—jungle gear, netted cap, oversized game rifle, the works—and had her tramp about the little tug shooting off firecrackers from a gun. After she bagged a fake bird or two, a pack of irate men in blackface came running out to “capture” her and drag her through an ingeniously constructed rain forest, all paper and paint, vines and stuffed parrots, with a twenty-foot paper snake let down from above. Then they stripped her to her bloomers and bustier and, with great effort, hoisted her up and plunked her into a huge black pot, displacing water over the sides. Lighting a fake fire beneath the pot, the natives threw carrots and cabbages in beside her and danced around her in a most frightful manner. Barnum encouraged Matina to perform her riverboat routine when she first came to the Museum, but he canceled her act at the beginning of the war, saying he did not want to engender any unnecessary fear among the white folks with so many Negroes becoming freed men.

“At least you were spared the wagon circuses,” I reminded her.

Matina grunted. She reached across the table and grabbed a red berry pastry dripping with honey. “Putting a fat woman in a pot! Where’s the artistry in that?”

Quietly, I sipped my tea. “You should consider yourself fortunate. The audiences here are much better than anywhere else in our world.”

Matina frowned and sat back. “They’re all the same, Barthy, you
should know that by now. The circus, the riverboats, the private showings—they all pay us to show ourselves. What difference does it make who’s watching?”

“It makes all the difference in the world.”

“Oh, pshaw.” She dunked her pastry into her tea. “Lowlifes to codfish aristocrats, they’re all alike. People want to feel shock, envy, and delight. They just use us to fill them up. Which, by the way, is an impossible task.”

Matina’s callousness frustrated me. “That’s not true. We teach the world. You know how I feel about this. Nothing in the world comes close to our artistry. To manifest ideals through the body! Your abundance. Alley’s strength. My clarity. Why, it’s as Godlike as one can become.”

“We amuse and frighten, that’s all.” Matina invited me to quibble by placing her elbows on the table and making it jiggle slightly, her blue eyes challenging. “Haven’t you seen that look in their eyes that shows how hungry they are? Just because some of us appear in books with the likes of Galileo and William Penn, dearest, doesn’t mean we’re any more than passing amusements. We are
not
respected.” She smiled over the table at me, a sparkle in her eye. “Except for you, Bartholomew. Except for you.”

Later, when I rose and left the table, I took Matina by the hand. “This Thursday, when I go on Barnum’s errand, why not come with me? We could have an adventure.”

“Go with you? Outside? Oh, Barthy, honestly, the funeral was difficult enough.” Matina flipped open her fan and waved it zealously in front of her face. “I wouldn’t even think of going out again.”

“We could get a carriage, and you could ride—”

“Nonsense, Barthy. My last venture into the city nearly killed me. But it’s kind of you to ask.”

T
HE AFTERNOON
passed pleasantly enough in Matina’s rooms, but supper left something to be desired as Cook was in a most dreadful mood. She thrust her big-bosomed self into the dining room carrying a plate of sweetbreads, her helpmate Bridgett tagging behind.

“I want no complaints about the food tonight,” Cook yelled. “And no third helpings. You people are working me half to death.” Cook flung the plate of sweetbreads onto the serving table, and as soon as her back was turned, Ricardo jumped up and slid over to Bridgett. He held a burning candle in one hand.

“Ah, fresh little chicken. Have you ever seen my act?” Holding the candle an inch beneath his chin, he moved the flame back and forward, casting grotesque shadows across his face.

Bridgett’s young cheeks drained of blood. “S’cuse me, sir, but I don’t . . .” Her eyes darted to Cook’s back, then down to the floor.

Cook whirled around and banged her fist against the serving table. “Stop that, you reptile! You’ll scare the girl half to death. And put down that candle! You know better than to play with fire around here.”

Feigning fear, Ricardo set the candle on the table and waited until Cook left the room, then reached down and grabbed his leg, snaking it into the air. He wrapped it around his neck, glaring over at Bridgett the whole time.

“For you, a special show.” Ricardo’s tongue stretched out and up, and he licked his own forehead, one hand already fussing with the buttons of his trousers.

Not knowing that Ricardo rarely made good on his obscene threats, the poor girl blinked wildly and began to wring her hands, until Alley pushed back in his seat. Ricardo grumbled a bit, but he dropped his leg and slunk back to his chair.

Just as things calmed down and I settled in for a nice cup of hot tea, Matina leaned close to me and said, “Barthy, would you be a sweetheart and go fetch my cape? I left it in the exhibit hall behind the riser.”

Irritated at her forgetfulness, I scraped back my chair, fluffed up the pillow on my seat, and stomped out of the dining room, ignoring the snickers of my fellow Curiosities. I lingered for a minute in the back courtyard and lit a cheroot, complaining mildly to myself about Matina’s assumption that I would do whatever she asked. The courtyard was a walled-in area that held the communal garden, benches and rickety tables for the help to use during nice weather, and some lovely
trees. An ivy-buried storage shed sat at the far end of a weedy path. Ragged and unkempt though it was, the yard proved a godsend to those of us with aversions to the outside world. And it was an excellent place to waste a bit of time. I took a deep drag on my cheroot and blew smoke up into the leaves of a sycamore tree, thinking that while I didn’t mind fetching for Matina, I didn’t want her to take my help for granted.

My train of thought was broken when the service door leading onto Ann Street opened and two burly roughs skidded inside, lugging a six-foot wrapped canvas between them. One of them nearly dropped his end into a puddle of late spring mud, and the other cursed loudly, hefting his own side higher until his partner regained his balance. They navigated the canvas through the vegetable garden and down the flagstone walk toward the kitchens. I strained to read what was written across the covering.
Do Not Open or Disturb in Any Way
. It was the same poster I’d seen outside the Ballroom only the week before. It had to be.

Throwing my smoking cheroot to the ground, I took off after the roughs, trailing behind them to the far end of the kitchens, where the door to the south cellar stairway stood wide open. When they maneuvered the thing down the stairs into the bowels of the Museum, I followed, cringing when the poster banged against the stone steps and then scraped one corner of the east cellar wall. Mold and the scent of fish sent me scrounging for my handkerchief, and the chill of the cellar floor seeped through my shoes, despite the padding inside them, but I kept up. They stumbled on past discarded animal cages, wooden crates, piles of tomato jars, the hippopotamus tank and, finally, dragged the covered poster through another door at the far end of the cellar.

The two men shut the door after them, and I stopped. After a moment, out they came, holding nothing but the covering.

“Can I help you, mate?” Dressed in the dirty pantaloons and the ripped jerkin of a street thug, the shorter of the two seemed intent on blocking my way.

“I’ve got business inside.” I stood tall, ignoring the thumping of my heart.

He stepped away from me as if I were a leper. “What sort of business?”

“What’s it to you, my man? Tell me your name.”

“He wants my name.” The man turned to his ruddy-faced friend. His boss, I assumed.

“I will file a report saying you’ve hindered my task,” I threatened, emboldened by my recent success with Barnum.

The boss eyed me up and down. Clearly I belonged here at the Museum.

“Let him in,” he said.

“But—”

“Let him in.”

“A wise decision,” I said, pushing past them both.

When I first entered the room, nothing was visible but my own shadow across the dirty floor. The door slammed behind me, and I jumped, my satisfaction replaced by a sudden fear that they’d locked it behind me, burying me in the bowels of the Museum. But when my eyes adjusted, I chided myself for my silliness. I was simply in one of the storage rooms. A forest of paper trees obstructed my path, obliging me to duck and weave to make my way along; I started when I saw a life-sized portrait of the Cherokee chiefs gazing out from a broken gilded frame, but I knew the poster was in here somewhere. A dozen small oil paintings depicting the battles of Napoleon had been stacked along the wall, waiting to be rehung, and on a worktable to the left sat half-assembled chandeliers that, even unlit, reflected light from the wall lamps. I jammed my big toe on a disfigured carving of Marie Antoinette, sitting for some ungodly reason in the middle of the room, cursed loudly, and looked up.

And there it was! Her portrait.

Every ounce of me prickled with excitement as the image of Iell Adams stared down at me from atop a throne set in a background of olive trees and clouded skies, tinted a deep purple so rich it was almost black. She was stunning, simply stunning. Her face, her skin, her bright red hair: all beautiful. But most stunning of all? She sported the most astonishing beard I had ever set eyes upon. Fire-red and passionate, it
erupted from her face like an uncaged animal, roaming over voluminous breasts and reaching out at the ends like the tentacles of some man-eating primordial beast. I’d seen bearded women before, of course, heavy-featured women cursed with thick arms and chins buried beneath an outbreak of unseemly hair—the effect more like a man in a dress. But this! Her sea-colored cape draped across one shoulder and the other was bare, its skin porcelain white. Her eyes were deep green, and they gazed imperiously down an aquiline nose as if in challenge to the entire world of men.