The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno: A Novel (18 page)

Alley grunted and looked at me in a way that made me uncomfortable. “What in hell is wrong with you?” he said, cigar ash tumbling down his rough shirt and onto my rug.

“Yes, all right. Maybe something less dramatic.” I started pacing.

Alley stomped to the door and ducked into the hall. “You know what your problem is, Fortuno? You ain’t learned what’s important yet.”

I admit, I’d already asked myself, Why the desperation to be near this woman? She was nothing to me, not really. But try as I might to maintain my normal balance, something inside of me yearned—no, demanded—to see her. From the first moment I watched her arrive in the middle of the night, to the remarkable moments we shared in the Arboretum, my need to know this woman had begun to grow beyond any logic or common sense. It was as if she held a secret part of me in the palm of her hand, and I needed only say or do the right thing and she would open her hand and I would fly free. And now, to learn she’d be here for such a short time? It all but took my breath away.

Normally I would have asked Alley to stay for a few hands of cribbage, but tonight I was glad to see him leave. Hadn’t learned what was important, indeed!

I picked up my
Harper’s
, flipped to the new installment of Dickens’s book, and then shut it and pulled out that morning’s
Times
. Alley was right. A man needed to decide what was important to him and then go after it, come hell or high water. I glanced at the clock. Seven–oh-five. The last show of the night was at eight. That gave me a little less than an hour to come up with a plan. What if I disguised myself and pretended to be one of the crowd? With the right disguise, Fish would have no idea it was me.

Fortunately, by the time I got down to the Green Room, most of the shows were already in progress, and those folks not working were in the courtyard waiting for the dinner bell. That left only a few extras from
Othello
and two of the cancan dancers downed by dancer’s pains. They barely looked my way as I pulled my tights off the hook and moved
down the hall to the costume room, an airless place full of racks and bins and baskets of everything from a king’s crown to polar bear suits.

I lit one of the small wall lamps. It flickered, casting a glow across the cobwebbed corners. In the semidarkness, I took off my day suit and pulled on my tights, then rummaged through mildewed boxes until I found some sturdy cotton batting. It ripped apart quite easily, and I stuffed it into my tights in the hollow spaces beneath my arms, thighs, and belly.

An old cracked mirror rested on one of the walls, and I used it to inspect my reflection, twisting slightly to get the best view of myself. I looked a bit like a stuffed pepper. When I pulled my suit on over my tights, the jacket fit too snugly, and my pants would not fasten at all. So I pulled out the padding and shuffled through a nearby rack of costumes until I found another jacket two sizes too large for me. I slit open the lining, slipped the padding in, and used a needle and thread to quick-stitch it in place. Perfect. Then I found a drawer of mock mustaches in the wardrobe bin, drew out a handsome brown handlebar, and stuck it onto my lip with a bit of stage gum. A wig left behind by the last touring troupe, an abandoned cape, and a bowler hat rounded out my disguise. The wig looked a little suspect, the hair a sickly brown and curled out like a boy’s, but yanking the bowler farther down on my head improved the effect. The mustache was a touch of brilliance.

I stripped off the costume and carried it upstairs, where I distracted myself by rearranging my books while the rest of the hour passed. Then I dressed and examined myself in my own mirror. I’d just gotten the mustache into place when I heard a light knock on my door.

“Barthy, are you in there?” Matina.

Heart pounding, I wrenched off the mustache and the wig, which sent my hat flying across the floor, and I barely made it to the front door before Matina twisted the knob and pushed partially into the room. My shoulder plowed into the door, and thankfully my strength proved enough to close the door nearly all of the way. I peered out through the slim opening. Matina’s massiveness blocked all but a touch of my view.

“Goodness,” she said, pulling back into the hallway, eyes wide, fingers fluttering to her hair. “Apparently, I’ve disturbed you.”

“No, no. I apologize.” I kept a firm hold on the door while trying to keep my voice even and unconcerned. “I’m afraid we can’t visit tonight, my dear. I’m not well, you see. A stomach problem. Nothing serious.”

Matina moved forward again, and rested a hand against the doorframe.

“Alley told me. I can’t believe you were too sick to work. Poor thing. Look, I brought you a little food.” She indeed had a basket with her, large and full of covered dishes. Patting the doorframe mindlessly, she pushed a hip forward. “Come now, Barthy, let me in. I only want to help.”

“Thank you,” I said, alarmed at her insistence, “but I will have to see you tomorrow.”

Matina peered in at me quizzically, moving her head from side to side to see more of me through the crack.

“What’s that you have on?” She scowled. I knew I hadn’t the strength to keep her out if she insisted, but I also knew she wouldn’t force the door. It wasn’t her way.

“Forgive me,” I muttered and pressed my shoulder firmly to the door. “Tomorrow, then.” The door snapped closed.

Panting slightly, I placed my ear to the wood. Matina knocked softly one more time, undoubtedly confused by my behavior, but I did not answer. Eventually, she gave up. I could hear the rasp of her skirts as she retreated down the hall. Dastardly way to treat a friend, I told myself, but she would never have understood.

By the time I made it to the service door on the main floor, it was half past eight. Overheated, I pushed through the door and found myself flush in the midst of the evening crowd. Men rumbled about, smoking and talking beneath the gaslights, buying tickets and jostling past the turnstiles and up the stairs. Women moved through the halls in groups like colorful ducklings, listing to one side and then the other to look at exhibits.

I blended in completely. No one looked twice at me. I felt a surprising
pleasure at passing. It wasn’t that the idea of padding had never occurred to me. In fact, I sometimes padded myself slightly to go out. But I’d only modified my physique in self-protection—never with an aim toward becoming someone else. For what was I without my gift?

Now, buried within the costume’s layers, I felt something stir within me. I took up more space in the world—and I liked it. But along with this feeling of pride came an undeniable guilt. Wasn’t it dishonest to hide myself?

Pulling myself together, I walked to the rear of the line for the Yellow Room and took my place. People around me talked pleasantly of fruit pies, penny nails, and their children’s problems in the new public school. The line moved slowly forward. Before I knew it, I stood in front of the door to Iell’s showroom; I couldn’t help but smile when I flipped my dime into the basket and Fish barely glanced my way.

Inside at last. The first thing I heard was music. Already impressed—the cost of a band was prohibitive, so most of us at the Museum performed in silence—I followed the man in front of me as we walked single file on a path kept narrow by velvet ropes. My steps felt lightened by the sweetness of a Rossini étude, one I’d often heard at intermissions of Moral Lecture Room ballets or wafting out of the Ballroom during an occasional soirée. Soft and slyly melancholic, its notes floated out of the corner of the room where a flutist, two violinists, and a cellist swayed on their chairs like young saplings. We shuffled forward beneath soft lights. I could smell the roses that had been scattered in clusters throughout the room.

In front of me, a light shone straight down from the ceiling, and I strained my neck to see ahead. There, in the center of an eight-foot platform delineated by head-high curtains, sat Iell, motionless atop a crimson throne. At her side was a table with an etched water pitcher and glass, a silver tea set, a porcelain vase of white peonies, and a mantel clock that ticked away the time. The light shone down from a hidden source and illuminated her while she sat serenely turning the pages of the current
Godey’s Lady’s Book
. She’d swept her hair into intricate curls, and she wore an astonishing dress that reminded me
of an inverted sunflower, the skirts in layers of yellow crepe billowing out and flipping slightly, the bodice a sea-green satin. The entire tableau rotated in opposition to the moving crowd, powered by some unseen contraption. The whole thing was brilliant. She’d cast the scene in the style of a European masterpiece, a Vermeer or a La Tour, and women from the finest New York families could not have made a more elegant impression. Yet that beard marked her as a being like no other in the world. By highlighting the normal, she magnified her uniqueness. I could not help but contrast the subtlety of her show to my own, which struck me now as shabby and impossibly old-fashioned.

On I walked, gawking at Iell right along with the rest of her audience. Her profile was equally charming from either side. I struggled to maintain my composure like a peasant in the company of Queen Victoria herself, and I suspect it was the same with most everyone around me. The men seemed particularly affected, even those clearly discomforted by Iell’s beard. A few loosened their collars in the face of her charms. The rise and fall of her fetching bosom sent an undeniable message of fecundity to even the most dimwitted male.

It’s not easy for a normal man to find himself so taken by an aberration. In fact, I was surprised that no one lashed out. I looked about at the men nearest me. An elderly gentleman a few steps in front of me stared up openmouthed as Iell twirled by, the image of her in his eyes as bright as a candle in a dark window. And just behind him, a much younger man, a tradesman by the looks of him, stared up at her with a naked look of hunger, no matter how shameful he might feel at being so drawn to such a creature. There was no denying that Iell was a force of nature. Only her show of gentility kept the crowd under her control.

How proud I felt to be one of her kind. And to think she’d scoffed at the idea that we educated our audiences. Here she was, firing up men’s instincts, then teaching them to control themselves. She deserved every bit of the special treatment Barnum gave her.

Time was up. I was supposed to make way forward for those behind me, but just before I reached the exit, I stepped out of line and pressed my padded self onto the rope.

“Your show is perfection,” I whispered up at her.

As Iell rotated past, she glanced down at me, tilting her head like a bird on a wire. And then she bestowed on me a look of warm recognition.

“Mr. Fortuno? I hardly knew you! Apparently you
do
have a choice.”

Her comment stopped me in my tracks. “What?” I asked. But her pedestal continued to rotate, and she turned to face the other way.

From somewhere behind, Fish hollered at the crowd to step along. I peeked one more time at Iell on my way out the door, but all I could see now was the back of her head—a grand lady, set above the rest.

T
HE DINING ROOM LOOKED ESPECIALLY FES
tive at supper on Sunday. Someone had cut handfuls of daffodils and stuck them into pitchers along the middle of the table, and their color spilled over onto the tablecloth like sunlight. But the light mood in the room darkened when Zippy walked in. He had returned early from the road with a sprained wrist and a head gash that was still puffy and sewn with seven black stitches. He dashed about wild-eyed, banging a knife against a china plate, shouting:

“Stepped on my hand.

Walloped my head.

Strike up the band.

Black man ain’t dead.”

I picked up my fork and rapped it on top of the table in time to Zippy’s banging until Matina scowled at me to stop. So I dished out my usual beans and watched Nurse manhandle Zippy into a chair, calming him with a bowl of stew and a couple of pats on the thigh. Unfortunate lad: so subject to the whims of the world. I reached across the table and tried to muss the little patch of Zippy’s hair, but he moved away from me.

“The poor boy was at the Walnut Theater no more than five days before them stupid Philly bohunks ruined everything,” Nurse said. “I guess they took offense at his being a free Negro, despite how sweet
the boy is. Threw all manner of things at him and scared him half to death. But then Barnum brought us home, didn’t he?” She patted Zippy’s shoulder. “And raised your pay, with a little more for me.”

Emma yanked her nose out of her Bible to snap, “It isn’t the whistle that pulls the train, you know.” She gave Nurse a look that drained the blood from the woman’s face. Emma was in a foul mood, her hatred of Barnum renewed. Now that Zippy was back, our usual lineup had been reinstated and she’d be demoted back to tableau.

“Why is that boy worth any money at all?” she groused. “What can Barnum be thinking?”

I hated to admit it, but it had occurred to me that Barnum might have masterminded the attack on Zippy in the first place. The old man always seemed to know which way the wind blew, and I wouldn’t put it past him to use strife as a way of publicizing the lad.

When Emma eyed me with unexpected malice—Whatever for? It wasn’t my fault Barnum treated her so cavalierly—I focused on my beans. Best to sit quietly and chat with Matina, who sat next to me piling new potatoes onto her plate.

It was almost a relief when Fish banged through the dining room door with Bridgett trailing behind. The crispness of new petticoats added to the swish of her fancy skirt. She smiled grandly at Cook, who harrumphed and stomped out.

Fish cleared his throat. “Although I suspect you’ve already seen this little lady in tableau, I am here officially to introduce to you your newest colleague, Madame Zouve.” Sunlight ricocheted off Fish’s stickpin, a gaudy green stone that looked like something Barnum had discarded. “She will be moving into Room Four upstairs and will sit tableau in the main exhibit room through the entire day. So far, she’s shown extremely well, and we are proud to have her with us.”