The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno: A Novel (10 page)

When I waved down a trolley, it shrieked to a stop on six metal wheels, the horses shaking froth from their mouths and panting. I climbed the three stairs and slipped a nickel in the box. The driver eyed me suspiciously but said nothing, and I pushed my way down the aisle, taking a seat in the center near a redheaded woman with a child. I placed my hat respectably in my lap and pulled my coat sleeves down to cover my spindly wrists.

The woman and child got off the trolley at the corner of Leonard Street, a half block past the closed-for-repairs Steward’s Department Store. Perhaps they were on their way to the Allen Dodworth’s Dancing Academy, which I’d read about in the
Times
with, I admit, a small degree of longing. I hopped off a block or so later at Pell Street. Checking the instructions on my map, I found what I was looking for, a small storefront marked with a number nine and two sixes. The building, unpainted pine and shingle, had settled poorly on its foundation. It didn’t look particularly old, but it had already begun to tilt southward toward the piers. In its window, several pink featherless ducks swung haphazardly on display.

Heat engulfed me when I pushed open the door. Behind a rickety counter, a shrunken Chinaman with hooded eyes and skeletal fingers smacked at vegetables with a cleaver; each dull
whack
thudded through
my bones. A dirty mirror hung on the wall. Baskets of corn and beets, misshapen rutabagas, and a few unhealthy cabbages littered the floor. What a disgusting odor. Too ripe, but not quite rotten. I drew out my kerchief and covered my nose.

“Pardon me, sir.” After removing my gloves, I pulled the leather bag full of Barnum’s coins from my breast pocket and set it carefully down in front of him. “I’ve come to retrieve a package for my employer, Phineas Taylor Barnum.”

The shopkeeper squinted at me, moving his face forward like a turtle’s head. I pushed the note and the coin purse closer. The Chinaman sunk one hand into the purse and jingled its contents rather than dump it for a count. Then he took the note and ran his hand over the three Chinese figures at the bottom.

“Wait,” he said at last. He took the bag of coins and held up a finger for me to stay where I was, then slid through a curtained door in the back, the top of his black silk cap bobbing as he moved. I glanced down and saw that my good brown pants had rings of dirt around the bottoms of both legs. I’d have to wash them when I got back to the Museum. And what in the world was taking the Chinaman so long? After a few more minutes had passed, I’d all but made up my mind to leave empty-handed when he reappeared, holding a small parcel out in front of him.

When I reached out for the package, the Chinaman’s other hand shot out and grabbed my wrist with his fingers, bone on bone.

“You have pulse?”

I pulled away, revolted by his touch.

Still holding Barnum’s parcel in one hand and my wrist in the other, he let his eyes roll languidly along my torso, and when I grabbed again for the package, he moved it out of reach.

“You look like corpse.”

“I most certainly do not! I am a performer and personal friend of Mr. Phineas T. Barnum, who will not be happy if you detain me any longer.” As the Chinaman considered this, I sneaked a glance in the
mirror on the wall. My cheeks were flushed from the heat. I looked nothing like a corpse. I snatched away my hand and stepped back from the counter, smoothing down my lapels and straightening my sleeves. Calmer now, I stood my ground. “Come, sir. Give me what I paid for so I may go.”

The Chinaman held out Barnum’s parcel in the middle of his palm, making me pluck it from his hand like a bird after food.

“Herbalist.” The Chinaman glared at me, pointing at his own chest as I tucked Barnum’s package into my coat pocket.

“Yes, yes, I am sure that you are, but no one here needs an herbalist.” I pulled my gloves on and made my way to the door.

“I help!” he yelled after me.

But I was already gone.

The hustle down Pell Street brought me back to myself. What an odd and uncomfortable encounter. I stopped for a moment and sat on an empty stoop, realizing how distasteful the whole thing had been. At least I had gotten what I’d come for. I’d done Barnum’s bidding and trusted that he’d compensate me for my trouble. Pulling the package out of my pocket, I held it up to the sky, squinting at it in the weakening light. What did it contain? And why had Barnum chosen me to fetch it? Out of nowhere, a hag of a woman rushed down the stoop behind me, flailing a broom and spitting out of the side of her mouth. “Monster! Ghoul! Whatever you are, go away! Get your festering body off my porch before I send you back to the hell you came from.”

I scuttled away like a spider in the sun. It took me a block or so to calm down and slow my pace. By the time I got to Mulberry Street, I could feel a welt spreading down one side of my neck where the woman had hit me, and my tongue had grown thick as a stump from thirst. Nothing good had ever come from subjecting myself to the outside world. Just like the two women earlier that afternoon, this hag of a woman had seen only my thinness, overlooking my gift. But what did it matter if people on the street accepted me as one of their own? Hundreds
of people paid good money to see me every day. How many of them had such a secure position in the world?

I
DIDN’T
reach the Museum until the last of the evening sun streamed through my parlor windows, illuminating the charcoal drawings I’d hung on the walls over the years—portraits of Matina and Alley and Cook, our courtyard garden—and seeing them warmed my heart. My parlor smelled of books and blankets and Matina’s perfume. “Nowhere like home,” I said, and took in a deep breath of appreciation. Disposing of yesterday’s
Herald
, I placed Barnum’s package on my desk and took a good steady look. “Now let’s see what all the fuss was about.”

The package was three inches by four and weighed no more than a deck of playing cards. It had been wrapped in dirty brown butcher’s cloth and sealed all along the top with red wax. Prying at the wax gently with my fingernail would cause evident marks of tampering. Shaking revealed nothing. I sniffed at the package and identified a slight dank smell but couldn’t be certain if it came from the contents or the wrapping. Most likely, the parcel contained some new oddity the Chinaman had unearthed—a bright blue duck egg, perhaps, or a tuber grown into the image of a woman. But why go to all the trouble of having me fetch it? No, it had to be something more. All I could think to do was clean myself up and take the parcel to Barnum, hoping he’d open it in front of me. I was dying to find out what was in it.

After a quick wash, I rooted through my étagère, struggling over what to wear. I abandoned my usual striped scarf in favor of a bow tie, knotted with care. A visit to Barnum warranted wearing my father’s stickpin, the one shaped like a stallion. I slipped it through the silk folds of my scarf as if I were going to a Richmond cotillion, and it gleamed like new even after all those years.

My father would have disapproved of my dressing to please a boss. And he would certainly have disapproved of Barnum. My father was a practical man. He did not believe in impresarios, circuses, or any other
type of entertainment. A pity, actually, for he was a brilliant horseman and could have made quite a name for himself. For years, he trained French trotters at the Haras du Pin in Normandy before a Scotsman named Major Holmes lured him to Virginia to care for a stable full of Arabians and Plantation Walkers. My mother, a Bostonian girl, served as governess to the Major’s daughter, and she lived and taught lessons in a small cottage on the grounds, the same cottage in which I would be born and my father would die.

“You should have seen your father when he first came to the farm,” my mother told me. “The way he strolled out of the barn and into the kitchen to join the staff for dinner. So dashing. His accent. His broad back. Ah, and his smell. All saddle soap and sweat.”

I remember him as a harsh man with rubbery skin and silky black hair. He spoke to me in French mixed with English, when he spoke at all, and spent most of his time in the stables or the corrals.

“There’s no man in your father at all when he rides,” my mother once said. “Just a saddle and a beast.” And even that was an understatement. My father could sit, stand, turn, or throw himself sideways on a horse and pick up a nickel from the ground with his teeth. But he never used his talents to amuse. He hated trick riding almost as much as he hated little boys.

Somewhere I still had a flyer he once brought home. Where was it now? I rummaged through my bookcase, flipping through my history and botany books in search of it, remembering the night he’d come in after spending the day buying horses from the famous Pepin and Breschard circus. I’d found the flyer stuffed in the pocket of his coat. What young boy wouldn’t have begged his mother to keep the thing, despite a father’s mild disgust? Ah-ha! Here it was, tucked neatly into my volume of
Annuals of the Circus
. The faded handbill showed a huge horse, eighteen hands high, rearing up, a man straddling its bare sides with a whip in one hand, the horse’s mane in the other.

According to my mother, Pepin tried to recruit my father in 1835. Wouldn’t that have been something? I thought. Pretending to be on the back of a galloping horse, I lifted one arm in triumph, listening to
imaginary crowds calling out for me, the son of a great rider, taking up the tradition, surpassing even his remarkable feats. I dropped my arm. Who knew the truth of it all, given my mother’s propensity to imagine? And even if Pepin had approached him, my father would never have considered such a thing. Sighing, I replaced the flyer and shut the book.

I waited until I heard the closing bells, then tucked Barnum’s parcel into the pocket of my vest and climbed down the service stairs. As I approached his office, my stomach churned. Calm down, I told myself. How easily one could slip out of an impresario’s favor and back into a midway tent, dodging peanuts and bored to death. Better to do Barnum’s bidding and be done with it.

Strands of cigar smoke spiraled out the open door of Barnum’s office. Waving my hand through the smoke, I entered. The first thing Barnum did was glance down at his timepiece.

I held up the package. “I came as soon as I could, sir. The trip was much more difficult than I’d imagined. I had to change my clothes.”

Barnum snatched the package from my hands and tucked it under his armpit, then led me to the stuffed chair. He poured me a snifter of brandy from a bottle on his desk and pulled up a slatted-back chair.

I nodded past him to the
NO DRINKING
sign on the front of his desk. “Does this mean that drink is no longer the devil’s lubricant?” I asked, filled with a sudden spark of defiance.

Barnum scraped his chair to the right so that the sign on his desk was no longer visible. He examined the wax seal on the package, making certain I had not tampered with it.

“Perhaps it would be prudent to open it, sir. To be certain of its validity.”

Barnum simply smiled. “No need for that, Fortuno. But I want you to realize how much I appreciate your help.” Nodding toward the untouched brandy in my hand, he waited for me to take a drink before placing his own glass untouched on the desk. “And you’ll be happy to know your new tights are nearly finished. Though a costume is hardly enough to thank you—especially since I might need your services again.”

“Again?” Oh, how horrid! Who knew what ghastly thing he might ask me to do the next time? But I knew it was good for me to be in Barnum’s good graces. To have him a bit indebted to me. It would make Matina proud. And perhaps it would even impress Iell . . . if I could find a way to cross paths with her again. I thought back on the discussion at lunch a few days past when Zippy’s nurse told us how she had seen the new act lingering in the Arboretum after hours. Easier to access than some uptown boardinghouse.

“Assisting you is reward enough, sir; I deserve no more than that,” I said, trying to warm him up. “But if you insist, there is one thing I’d like.”

A flicker of pleasure jumped across Barnum’s face. “Tell me, lad. Whatever you like.”

“Actually, I was hoping to give you a gift of sorts.” I loosened my collar, trying to appear nonchalant. “I’d like to feed the birds in the Arboretum.”

Barnum seemed surprised. “Why in the world?”

“A wish to serve, sir, nothing more.”

“Is that so?” Barnum stood, scraping the chair against the floor, and I could tell he didn’t believe a word I’d said.

“You see, last week, I wandered into the Arboretum by mistake,” I lied. “The poor little creatures. They need a personal touch, sir, they really do. I could make sure they’re fed and that their cages are fresh. With the Arboretum closed, I expect you’ve been paying the charwomen extra to see to the birds. If I took over the job, it might save you money.”

Skepticism narrowed Barnum’s eyes and pulled his bushy eyebrows in toward each other. “Hardly seems like the kind of thing that would appeal to you.” He let me stew while he resettled his body into the polished wooden chair and drummed his fingers against his desk. And then, just like that, he said, “But you know, the more I think about it, yes. Go ahead and feed the birds. Why not?”