The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno: A Novel (27 page)

I peeled off my mustache and wig, stuffing them in my hat, and ran a hand though my hair. I didn’t belong in such a fancy place. Now I wished I hadn’t come, but I forced myself to open the gate. A woman whom I could only assume was the matron of the house stood in the front door, light from inside leaking out onto the darkened walk. She beckoned me in and left me standing there.

I examined the entryway with its inlaid tiles, windows draped in scarlet, and walls a swirl of hand-painted grapevines with purple leaves. Potted palms blocked off a small sitting room, and I heard the distant murmurings of women. It took an eternity for the matron to return and wave me forward, and I followed her silently, up a stairway, curving my fingers over the carved wood handrail.

The matron opened the door to the second floor and nodded toward the end of the hall. How I wanted to run away! This was even more nerve-racking than facing Mrs. Barnum. Beneath my feet, the rug was so thick that my heels sank an inch into the pile, and by the time I got to the end of the hall, my neck had gone sweaty with the effort of walking.

But there it was: a carved white door, a silver handle, the number seven in gold-plated metal in front of me. I adjusted my gloves and tapped lightly on the wood with the end of my cane.

Iell flung open the door and greeted me as if I’d just arrived for tea.

“Ah. Mr. Fortuno. How nice to see you again.” She smiled deliciously and gestured me into a sitting parlor.

My head went empty of everything but light and air. Had my nose begun to bleed? I dabbed at it with my kerchief: nothing, just nerves. In I went. Trailing behind her, I breathed in the rose perfume that wafted back to me. When Iell stopped, I stopped, and because I didn’t want to stare directly at her, I glanced about the room in front of me: a sitting parlor with a sea-green velvet divan, a visitor’s chair, an ebony chest embellished with carved crests and medallions, and, on the far
wall, a large English cupboard, sturdy as a giant. The room had three closed doors and a single window, outside of which silver willow trees sparkled in the moonlight. Matina would have gone green with envy.

Iell took my gloves and walking stick and placed them on a table in the hall, but I set my hat on the table myself so as not to expose the hairpieces inside it. I debated whether or not to remove my padded coat.

“It was so kind of you to make this trip for me,” Iell said, as she led me across the blood red rug into the parlor. Silently, I squeezed between the divan and the tea table in front of it. Iell cut a dramatic figure as she stood against the brocade drapery, her beard curled slightly at the ends, her dress some kind of oriental sarong. No hoopskirts for her, at least, not in private.

“Brandy, Mr. Fortuno?” Iell turned to a sideboard carved with gargoyles and demons.

“Thank you, but don’t feel obliged. I’m happy enough to deliver your package and bid you good night.”

It took every ounce of my strength not to stare at Iell as she poured brandy into a pair of small Prussian glasses and moved toward me, the two glasses chinking together on a copper tray. What was it about the woman that intrigued me so? It wasn’t just the beard, it was so much else. She made me feel as if I were empty and full at the same time. Hungry and satiated. When she bent forward to place the drink in front of me, I could just make out the curve of her breasts beneath her silk bodice. The only other time I had been this close to her was the morning in Brady’s studio. Thank God I hadn’t eaten some of the root this time. I couldn’t risk a strong response in such close proximity.

Flustered, I fumbled in my pocket and pulled out the package from the Chinaman, placing it on the table in front of us. I crossed my arms over my chest and waited. Iell said nothing. She simply gazed at me, amused, her eyes slightly hooded, then took a seat.

“You must think me improper for entertaining at this hour,” she said.

“Not at all,” I said, wishing she would acknowledge the package.

“Then let’s enjoy our drinks. I don’t see why we can’t mix our business with a little bit of pleasure, do you?”

She coiled one ankle around the other, balancing her weight on the tip of one toe on the floor, and we chatted. We spoke of the weather, and of the problems with the New York streets. She confessed to reading the
New York Enquirer
twice a week, and when I told her about how I’d spent years under the tutelage of my mother conjugating Latin verbs or reading Wordsworth and Coleridge, her face lit up.

“Ah, a literary man! I remember that about you.”

“May I tell you a secret?”

Iell interlaced her fingers and leaned forward. “Mr. Fortuno, I adore secrets.”

“I never told my mother this, but my personal taste in novels ran more toward Hugo’s
Hunchback of Notre Dame
and Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein
. She would have disinherited me had she known.”

Iell laughed at this, and I started to relax a bit.

“Tell me, where were you raised?” she asked me. “Who were your people?”

The brandy had warmed my stomach. I sank back against the divan. “My father was French,” I said. “He trained horses for a certain Major Holmes, who ran a stable in Virginia, one of the best in the state. My mother was employed as a governess there. The three of us lived in a cottage on the grounds and got on quite well.”

“You spent your days with your mother?”

“My mother and I were very close.”

“And did your father share your taste for literature?” With every question, Iell moved forward a bit in her seat, like a slowly advancing soldier. “Did he approve of you?” she challenged.

I ran a finger beneath the edge of my collar and shifted on the divan, glad to still be wearing the padded suit. What good could come from admitting to her that I’d been a terrible disappointment to my father? That he wished I’d been someone or something else. One of my first memories of him was when I was three, maybe four years old, and my mother had left me in his care—a rare event. I was giddy with excitement
as she straightened the brass buttons on my black velvet jacket and tugged at the waist of my short pants. She walked me to the barn and shoved my small hand into his calloused palm. “You watch this child,” she said, and he nodded and hoisted me up, the wool of his shirt rough and dank with sweat and horsehair. He cradled me in his arms, and my heart absolutely sang as my mother waved to us and walked off. But the moment she was out of sight, he grunted and tossed me onto a hay bale at the far end of the barn. Leaving me there, he sauntered away to join his roughshod friends for a game of poker, the four of them paying no attention to my screams as they rolled their fat cigarettes.

Once, years later, he’d insisted I help him drag hay into the horses’ stalls. Some groom had made a derogatory comment about my delicacy, and he decided to make sure I ended up a proper man.

“Just watch me,
mon fils
. This is all you have to do. It is nothing!” He hoisted up a hay bale and gave it a good toss into the first stall. “Just do it once. Prove to me you can do something practical in this world. Then you can go and play beneath your mother’s skirts if you want.” Filled with the drive of a young boy wanting to please his father, I watched him intently as he hefted a bale into the back of the next stall, setting the horse to rear up and claw the air. Then, gritting my teeth in determination, I grabbed hold of a bale and strained mightily against its weight, the rope cutting into my fingers and the ends of the hay digging into my palms. I dragged that bale a quarter of the way to the cracked and manure-stained stall before my arms started shaking, but no matter how I tried, I could move it no farther. A wave of anger tore through me. I ripped into the bale, grabbing up handfuls of hay and throwing them wildly about. I can still hear my father laughing.

“Must we talk about such dull things?” I asked Iell. “You haven’t examined the package I brought. Don’t you want to make sure it’s the right thing? Or we could talk about Emma if you like.”

Iell stood abruptly, so I rose to my feet. The comment about Emma must have struck a nerve. But my hostess motioned me to sit back down and then stood behind her chair, resting her elbows on the back-rest, tilting forward like a man.

“Answer my question, Mr. Fortuno. Did your father approve of you?”

Iell was nothing if not direct. Should I refuse to say more? Lord knows, she hadn’t answered
my
questions. I found myself speaking in spite of myself.

“My father was a man of action. I think he would have preferred a son with a stronger constitution.”

Iell nodded, then moved off to the window, brushing aside the curtain with the tips of her fingers. Stars filled the sky.

“Thankfully, my change didn’t come until after my father died,” I said, wanting to keep her attention. “Who can say what he might have made of the man I am now.”

Iell let the curtain fall in place and faced me. “What do you
think
he would have thought?”

I sighed. “I think he would have hated me.”

Iell struck the palms of her hands together in punctuation. “And your mother? Did she understand you when you changed?”

“She was no longer quite herself by then.”

Iell moved again to the back of her chair, and from that safe position she looked me over more carefully, searching my face for information.

“What do you mean?”

“My mother spent her last years in the Eastern State Hospital.”

Iell’s turquoise eyes sharpened. “An asylum?”

“Public Hospital for Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds.” I couldn’t understand why I’d told Iell this, but once I’d said it, it was as if that long-closed door inside of me opened up a crack.

“What had she done?”

I pointed a finger to my temple. “She got lost.” From somewhere in the street, a crash resounded, the collision of a cart or a wagon perhaps. We sat in silence for a moment. “Afterward,” I went on, “the State sent me to live with my Uncle Frederick. Everyone seemed to think, because he was blood, he would be the best caretaker for me, but after a few years, he sold me to a circus.”

“The State,” Iell scoffed, walking around the chair and sitting once more, “is not known for its wisdom.”

She did not press me to continue. Instead, she stretched her legs out in front of her, lost in some memory of her own. Good, I thought. Her attention is on something else. I touched a stem of bluebells in the vase, the peppery smell of the brandy mixing with the flowers’ scent, and tried to rid myself of unpleasant thoughts. I concentrated on the laces of Iell’s black shoes. Her feet were quite small. When she reached over and lifted the brandy canister to ask if I wanted more, I shook my head no.

Pouring herself a snifter full, Iell set the canister down, ran her fingers lightly across the Chinaman’s package, and stared at me again with that same directness.

“Could I ask you one more personal question? Then I promise to stop prying.” She dipped her little finger into the brandy, then put it in her mouth.

“Of course.”

“Please do not take this the wrong way, but what does it feel like to be as thin as you are? Do you feel substantial?”

I recoiled. “Of course I feel substantial.” Even as I said this, all I could see were my skinny thighs against the brocade of the divan. I did not appreciate Iell encouraging me to reveal myself, and then insinuating . . . Well, I wasn’t certain what she was insinuating, but I did not like it.

“Ah, I’ve embarrassed you. I apologize. I’ve been told I can be too frank at times.” Iell reached across the tea table and laid her hand across my wrist, the same way she had that afternoon on the stage. “It’s only that so much about you fascinates me, Mr. Fortuno. For example, your choice of companion. What is your lady friend’s name?”

“Do you mean Matina?”

Iell squeezed my wrist ever so slightly. “You have a relationship with her, yes? Perhaps you crave her company because she makes you feel whole.”

“That’s between Matina and me.”

“There’s also the fact that you came to see my show disguised as a regular man.”

Red-faced, I pulled away my wrist. “An entirely different matter, I assure you.”

“And even now you sit in front of me padded and hidden.”

“Please, madam. Enough!” In an effort to stop her questions, I reached into my pocket and yanked out her scarf, holding it in the air. “Surely you can’t think your veil is any less of a subterfuge than my padding?”

Iell reached out and took the scarf from me, letting it trail across the little table and over the still unacknowledged package. “Where in the world did you find this?” She laid the scarf around her shoulders like a shawl and did not seem the least bit disturbed over my sudden show of temper.

“I found it in the Arboretum a while ago,” I said, already sorry for my outburst.

At this point I was all turned around. Iell had exposed me, flattered me, embarrassed me, and somehow insinuated a failing of character on my part. In my confused state, I barely heard the tapping. First muffed, then louder. Someone was at her door. Iell remained calm, but she grabbed my hand and pulled me around the table into the center of the room.

“This night is full of surprises. Forgive me, Mr. Fortuno, but if you don’t mind, I need you to come with me.” Dragging me by the hand, she led me to the large English cupboard at the far end of the parlor. I understood that she meant me to climb in and hide.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because this visitor won’t be as pleased as I was to see you,” she said, a cheerless smile on her face.

I squeezed myself into the cupboard as she flew across the room to grab my hat, gloves, and walking stick. Returning to the cupboard, she tossed me my things. She did not even look at me as she clicked the doors closed.

Humiliated, I sat girdled between long silvery gowns and wraps made from beaver and mink, their odors mixed with oak bark and hemlock. This visit was not going at all as I’d expected. I listened to
muffled words through the door’s slats and could not imagine who would be at her door, uninvited, at such an hour. By hunching down and twisting slightly, I could see the back of Iell’s head. She stood in the entrance, one hand on the doorknob, the other dangling behind her like a small sleeping animal.