The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno: A Novel (3 page)

I patted my hair into place and entered, scanning the dark room for the new act, but saw only Matina, the giant Emma Swan, three housemaids, and a handful of actors currently playing in
Ring of Fate
. Reverend Smalley glowered down at me from his pulpit as I dutifully slid into place next to Matina. I settled onto one of the same chairs our audiences sat in to watch me perform, wishing I had a cushion to protect my thin frame from the hard wooden seat. The stale stink of yesterday’s crowd still filled the room. But Matina looked charming in a white bonnet and day dress of lavender silk with large puffing flounces running around the hemline.

“Why did you leave without waking me?” I whispered, leaning toward her.

“Shush now. You’re late and the Reverend is staring at you.”

“You’ll never guess what I saw last night.”

The little congregation starting singing “Fairest Lord Jesus,” and Matina raised an eyebrow at me.

“I’ll tell you, but you must keep what I say to yourself.”

“Of course, Barthy, of course.”

“Barnum is back.”

Matina let her hymnbook slide to her lap. “He is? Why so early, for goodness’ sake?”

I let her wait a moment, to build the suspense. “I think he’s brought a new act with him.”

“What do you mean, a new act?” Matina whispered. “Who in the world is it?”

“Not sure. Barely saw her, I’m afraid.”

The good Reverend lifted a cautionary finger at us, and Matina lifted her book to her face again, studying it intently. Then she leaned over to me, her lips pursed. “
Her
, you say?”

“And today, no sign of her at all.”

Matina said nothing else. We sat through a lackluster sermon about how we received grace through our own free will—drivel, in my opinion, since no man is the master of his own destiny—but I could tell that Matina was dying to hear more; few things pleased her as much as news that no one else was privy to.

As soon as the service finished and we left the room, Matina demanded, “Tell me everything!” I filled in all the details, but she kept asking questions I couldn’t answer: Where did she come from? Could you tell how old she was? How tall?

“You
must
pay better attention to what you see,” Matina admonished me, as we made our way down the service stairs, her hand wrapped around mine like warm bread. I let her squeeze my fingers as I led her out the staff door and through the back courtyard near the kitchens. When we reached the dining room, she said, more to herself than to me, “How odd that I haven’t heard a
thing
. I usually get wind of what Barnum is planning before anyone else.”

I opened the dining room door for Matina and gestured her forward. Ricardo the Rubber Man, resplendent in green pantaloons, leaned rudely across the table, fingering the fine piece of table linen that had been scavenged from Barnum’s rooftop café after someone had written
Give us a kiss
on it in India ink.

“Now ain’t lunch looking appetizing?” He snaked one of his arms out and wrapped it all the way around Matina’s ample waist, tugging up the back of her hoopskirt so that it showed the bottoms of her petticoats.

I rapped Ricardo on the hand with my walking stick, which made a sharp cracking noise as it smacked against his knuckles.

“Bastard!” Ricardo whipped away his hand, intentionally dislocating his fingers. Normally, I’d admire a Curiosity with skills as unique as Ricardo’s, but I must admit that his long tongue, his sloppy words, and his aversion to baths revolted me.

“Look what you did, you broke my fingers!” he hollered at me, dangling his hand in front of my face.

“Leave them alone!” Alley bellowed from the far side of the table, and Ricardo backed away grudgingly, pulling his ears long like a hound’s and barking.

Alley and Ricardo had been rivals for years. Ricardo liked to claim that his own gift was vastly superior to everyone else’s and took great pleasure in offending the ladies of our company. But Alley kept him in line. For all his slovenly habits and his sad eyes, Alley surged with power. No torn and baggy clothes could hide his massive legs and shoulders. Potency and good health gushed through him, and Ricardo had little choice but to respect his greater strength.

I took Matina by the elbow and steered her along the back side of the table across from the windows. She settled onto one of the reinforced benches, and I pulled up my customary chair, on which I kept a pillow to ease the pain of sitting. I nodded across the table to Zippy the What-Is-It? Next to him sat Nurse, a frantic woman with an overbite and thinning hair who’d been hired a few years ago to protect him from an elf boy who’d tormented him endlessly by lobbing rocks at Zippy’s tapering head.

The giant Emma Swan scowled down the table at all of us. “Might it be possible to have a quiet lunch today? The good Lord favors the gentle and the meek.” Emma was the daughter of a Nova Scotia preacher and wasn’t about to let us forget it. She had a face as long and square as a horse’s, but with a rolling chin instead of a neck. Her dogma was backed by little piousness, as Matina pointed out.

“For all her talk of meekness, that woman is quick to speak her mind,” Matina muttered. “But for once I think she might be right.”

She nodded toward a flyer hanging on the inside of the dining room door.
IN MEMORIAM
ran across the top of the flyer, above an
American flag and a bust of President Lincoln. In the middle, a poem was flanked by two pillars, one that displayed Lincoln’s birth date, the other the date of his death. “Tomorrow is Lincoln’s funeral. None of us should fuss today.”

Emma seemed about to make a snide remark but changed her mind and bowed her head instead. “What a world we live in. What a world.”

We all held our tongues when Cook shoved through the dining room door, pushing a cart loaded with huge platters of mutton and pails of boiled potatoes. Feeding a giant, a muscleman, and Matina took some work. Cook, a hardy Italian woman with broad cheekbones and a penchant for spiced fish and brandy, so hated to hear us gossiping that she sometimes refused to serve our food while we were in what she called “your snotty little moods.” So we stayed quiet as she hauled the meat and potatoes onto the sideboard with the rest of our usual Sunday fare. Behind her, Bridgett, a pretty Irish girl with black curls rolling about her face like tiny serpents, carried in two trays of pie. She wore the blue striped uniform Cook insisted on, but it didn’t hide the dirt ring around her neck or disguise the worn, oversize shoes that flapped around her soiled feet. She blushed a high red when she spotted Alley, who kept his head ducked, staring down at his plate.

After Cook left, we all calmed down and took to our food with different levels of appreciation. As usual, I counted out a dozen green beans, no more, no less, and placed them horizontally on my plate, along with a bit of horseradish to add zing. After cutting each bean into thirds, I dipped a piece into the horseradish and popped it into my mouth, chewed twenty-five times before swallowing it, then started on the next piece.

It wasn’t until Cook returned with the pudding that Matina looked down along the quiet table. “I’ve got some very interesting news,” Matina announced, sitting back until everyone appeared to be listening.

“Matina,” I admonished. “I think it best not to—”

She waved me away with one hand. “Barnum’s back,” she said, measuring her effect. “Barthy saw him from his window last night. And apparently he’s brought a mysterious person with him. A new act!”

Ricardo rolled off the bench and lay on the floor at Matina’s feet, bugging his eyes out at her. “We’ve already heard, my sweet pumpkin. And not only that—”

Alley cut him off. “I’m the one who seen her.”

“You?” Matina frowned, realizing she’d lost her thunder.

“What’s she like up close?” I asked.

Ricardo uncurled. “I saw her, too! She was covered up like a convict so she’s either a real monster or a looker.”

“You did
not
see her. A liar giveth ear to a naughty tongue,” Emma admonished.

Ricardo rushed to explain. “Alley was in the hall when they came in. He saw Barnum slip her into his office. He closed the door and locked it, and the two of them stayed in the office for at least an hour, all alone.”

Matina heaved her body from the table and made her way toward the sideboard, poking Alley in the side of the head as she passed. “If you know so much, tell me her name,” Matina said.

Alley’s broad shoulders slumped forward and his stringy brown hair rested on his shoulders like a boy’s. “The first name, it’s like two letters: I. L.” he said. “Last name Adams. Iell Adams. That’s all I know.” As usual when talking to a woman, he did not look at Matina’s face but gazed somewhere over her shoulder instead.

“Have you ever heard of such nonsense?” Matina made a haughty face, then spooned herself out two bowls of pudding. “I. L. What kind of name is that? And who told you this?”

Alley gave Matina one of his rare smiles. “The carriage driver who brung her. I know ’im. He came ’round this morning to complain about Barnum.”

“But where did she sleep?” Matina demanded. “Barthy told me there’s no one new in any of the resident rooms.”

“My bet,” Ricardo said, “is she’s a chippy . . . a hussy . . . a whore.”

Zippy sang out in a girlish voice:

A hussy ain’t the only gal,

She’s the only gal for me.

“Go ahead, Alley. Tell her the best part,” Emma said, suddenly a co-conspirator.

“He’s housing her outside.”

I dropped my knife. It clattered loudly on the china before falling to the floor. Who in the world could this woman be? All the Curiosities lived together in the fourth-floor resident wing; we had done so for many years. Barnum only made special arrangements for his most lucrative acts, like Charles Stratton or Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale. Boarding those performers at the St. Nicholas Hotel elevated their social standing, as did renaming them Princess This or General That. It wasn’t as if I envied their privilege. I had always liked Charles Stratton, even after Barnum named him Tom Thumb. Charles and I had met for a drink or two over the years, and sometimes Alley and I would join him at the pony races to share his private box along with a few well-dressed ladies for hire. When Charles got married, he insisted Alley and I attend his wedding, but Barnum would not hear of it. “They don’t need the likes of you two taking away from their time in the sun,” he’d said.

This I resented, though I also felt a surge of pleasure that Barnum thought my presence would attract so much notice. And good Lord, what a fuss that wedding turned out to be.
A GREAT LITTLE WEDDING
—
MARRIAGE OF GEN. TOM THUMB AND MISS LAVINIA WARREN
, the
World
headlines read,
THE SOCIAL EVENT OF THE YEAR
. Over twelve thousand people attended the reception, and President Lincoln and his wife received the newlyweds at the White House later in the week.

“Whoever this Iell is, she must really be something, else why all the mystery? And we’re out of butter, for goodness’ sake.” Matina rang the little bell next to the soup terrine, and Cook’s new assistant, Bridgett, came scurrying into the room, giddy as a girl. Her dark hair was tugged back so tightly from her face that her eyes flattened unnaturally, giving her an almost oriental appearance. Cook had obviously taken a hand in making the poor girl presentable.

“Ma’am?” Bridgett curtsied, an action that brought smiles to more than one of us. We were used to kitchen help coming and going—God
knows we weren’t the easiest group to service—but rarely did one of them demonstrate such admiration. We’d see how the girl felt about us after a few months of slinging piles of food and cleaning dozens of platters and bowls.

“Butter.” Matina pointed to the butter plate, and Bridgett went running, causing Matina to lift an eyebrow in amusement as she maneuvered to her seat, a plate in both hands. I shifted a bit to accommodate.

“If she ain’t no chippy,” Ricardo said, “this act must be something that will make Barnum rich. Why else would he bother?”

I set my cup upright and poured myself some tea. “Money isn’t everything.”

“Barnum’s like a dog on the prowl when he smells something he wants,” Emma said.

“Or on a leash,” Matina added. “At least if his wife is around.” They both snickered, their usual rivalry overshadowed by their mutual love of good gossip. “Remember those acrobats? And that poor chambermaid? What was she called, Barthy?”

“Abigail something or another,” I said, remembering only the poor girl’s first name.

Matina shrugged. “Mrs. Barnum had her declared insane, and they toted her off to the asylum uptown.”

“As well she should have,” Emma said. “I swear, the only one around here with any sense is Barnum’s wife. Lord knows, Mr. Barnum isn’t worth the land he stands on.”

“You think it made sense to have that poor girl carted off when all she did was mention an indiscretion or two?” Matina slathered more butter on her roll.

“An indiscretion?” I asked, surprised by Matina’s stance. “That ‘poor girl’ caused a horrible fuss. Blathering to the
Times
and the
Herald.
Barnum’s reputation was at stake.”

“And what do you care about Barnum’s reputation?”

“His good name reflects on all of us,” I said.

Matina blew out a cheekful of air. “We do not need Barnum
or
his reputation.”

But she knew I was right. Under Barnum’s care we were celebrated as Curiosities and given proper respect for our gifts, but without his showmanship the public would see us simply as freaks. Barnum’s Museum was at the top of the heap. Nowhere else in the world were people like us treated so well. There were other museums, of course, plus the theaters and some private clubs, which could guarantee at least a living wage. But after that came the long slide down—to the circuses, the pit shows, the traveling menageries, and the Bowery dives. The anatomy museums were the lowest rung of the ladder.

Among our kind, there was a clear class system. Although all of us were considered Curiosities, the True Prodigies were the highest among us. These were individuals born with such rare God-given gifts that they could never be confused with ordinary mortals: men with flippers, armless girls, parasitic twins. Barnum shied away from True Prodigies. With the exception of the connected twins, Chang and Eng, whom he had showed with smashing success a few years ago, he never hired them. “I’d sooner take on my uncle’s donkey than an act that might offend a gentlewoman or inspire a man to drink,” Barnum once claimed.