The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno: A Novel (2 page)

“And here’s a story about a young boy, six years old, who did impossible calculations in his head. You see here?” Matina used her finger like a teacher’s baton, poking at the page. “Zerah Colburn calculated in his head the number of seconds in two thousand years. In less than a heartbeat he answered, Sixty-three billion seventy million.” She looked at me with a touch of irony. “They say he had a very large head.”

“Any good phrenologist would tell you that head size and intelligence are closely correlated,” I observed.

Matina laughed. “What if I were to knock my forehead and develop a big bump right here?” She poked a finger into the front part of her brow. “Would that make me smarter than you?”

I let the comment pass.

Around midnight, Matina complained of heartburn and said she was ready for bed. I thought she would soon leave for her own quarters, but she surprised me by walking toward my bedroom.

“Do you mind if I rest here a minute or two? My stomach is bothering me something terrible. I won’t stay long.” As she passed, I caught a whiff of the sweet smell that always hovered about her. Tonight: a potpourri of pork shanks, braised leeks, and apples mixed with her usual lavender perfume.

Down went Matina’s massive body on my bed, the wood frame groaning in protest, and within minutes she fell into a snoring sleep. Much as I would have preferred her to go to her own rooms, I could hardly have said no. It was my duty as a friend to accommodate Matina’s physical problems. She suffered from a number of ailments, ranging from sleep difficulty to the swelling of her legs and, most recently, a racing of her heart even at rest, but anyone with gifts like ours knows to take a philosophical view of such complaints. I myself often suffered from swollen joints, the pain of bony knees knocking together, the bumps of exposed elbows, a lightheadedness appearing at inopportune moments, or an unpadded chair torturing my hips and spine. Every gift has its price.

I laid my comforter over Matina’s bare arms—her off-the-shoulder gown was charming but not very sensible—and left to tidy up my
parlor. After lowering the gas lamps, I swallowed a nip of tonic for my aching joints and shimmied back out onto my bedroom window ledge to watch the evening pass.

The clatter of a carriage in the street soon caught my attention. Gripping the window’s frame, I tilted out to find the source. At first I saw nothing, only street shadows and lamplight and a gray dog darting between the sycamores across the road. And then there it was, a grand carriage appearing at the far end of Broadway, the clop-clop of its horses drawing it toward the Museum. How curious. One might expect to see a two-seater at such an hour, carrying someone’s mistress home or taking a gentleman from the fancy brothels like Flora’s or the Black Crook down to the scruffier waterfront ballrooms, but this was a landau coach, posh and stylish, its top latched down and its lacquered sides glinting in the moonlight.

Rather than turn west toward the more pleasant Church Street, the coach continued straight, passing the twin gas lamps that stood guard before the Museum’s entrance. I leaned a bit farther out the window, straining to keep the carriage in sight. It came to a stop a few paces later. One of the horses whinnied as the driver jumped from his perch and drew open a cushioned door, ceremoniously rolling out the steps. A glimpse inside the cab attested to its luxuriousness: its walls were plush with padded fabric, its seats were covered with fine leather, and its floor was elegantly tiled. It was much finer than any coach I’d ever had the pleasure of riding in. I considered waking Matina, who took great delight in mysterious happenings, but the next thing I saw kept me riveted to my place.

Out of the coach, a tiny foot emerged, followed by a gloved hand reaching delicately toward the extended arm of the driver. An apparition appeared. She wore a full veil of white attached to a fashionable bonnet, and her traveling coat was of unquestionable excellence. This was a woman of quality if ever I saw one. She faltered on the stair, and the driver took her by the waist to assist her. She brushed aside his hands and gently stepped onto the wooden planks of the walk in front of the Museum.

“How dare you manhandle this woman, sir?”

A booming voice that could only belong to Barnum rang out from inside the carriage. Most intriguing. Had the great Phineas T. returned early from his scouting trip? Barnum often left us to chase down rumors and ferret out new talent, and usually he stayed on the road for months at a time, scouring the traveling circuses, the carnivals, and the other grand cities for the unnatural, the exotic, and the new. According to the Museum manager, Benjamin Fish, Barnum was not due back from his current trip until mid-June. That was still nearly two months away, but here he was, forcing his bearlike body out of the carriage door and stomping across the dirty planks of the walkway, sending the rats below scurrying into the street. I gazed down at the great man. Barnum’s receding hairline hinted at his age, but his eyebrows—as bushy and wild as ever—spoke to how vital he still remained.

Barnum puffed out his chest, his belly protruding above his satin waistband, and approached the driver, who looked around the abandoned street as if Barnum were addressing someone else.

“Have you heard me, man?”

“I ain’t done nothin,’ sir,” the driver yelped. “Tried to help her down is all.”

“You’ve acted beyond your position,” Barnum said. “You’ve forgotten your place.”

I realized that I’d lost sight of Barnum’s mysterious companion, but then I spotted her resting against a post. She straightened her veil with a small gloved hand as the driver shifted back on his heels. Barnum advanced. The driver clenched his fists in what looked like an acceptance of Barnum’s challenge, but then he scuttled back and hopped onto his coach, barreling away in a storm of scattered stones and dust.

Barnum and the veiled woman, alone now, lingered in the gaslight below. I could make out only the muffled rise and fall of Barnum’s voice against the soft murmurings of the woman’s responses. Moments later, the great front doors opened and they disappeared into the Atrium. I retreated from the window back into the bedroom, calmed by the sound of Matina’s rhythmic breathing.

In my parlor, I picked up the tray full of Matina’s empty plates and glasses and set it outside in the hall for the chambermaid to fetch. The veiled woman must be a new act. But, if so, why would Barnum slip her in under cover of night? It made no sense at all. Barnum was the consummate showman. No one in the world knew how to create drama and interest the way he did, and every new act was an opportunity for him to step into the spotlight and seize the attention of all of New York. Human Curiosities were Barnum’s greatest pride. He was forever boasting of our gifts. “My Curiosities are the royalty of the underworld,” he would say. “Like everyone else, but more. So much more.” In fact, when I first came to the Museum, Barnum cleared an entire room for my exhibit. He gathered every skeleton in the place—from a six-inch steppe lemming to the reassembled bones of a Romanian water buffalo—and placed them, smallest to largest, around the perimeter of the room. Full-sized portraits of yours truly in all my six-foot, sixty-seven-pound glory touted me as
THE THINNEST MAN IN THE WORLD
.

Barnum gave an equal introduction to Jonathan Alley, labeling the muscled newcomer The Giant Boy of Hungary and dressing him in bright red pantaloons and one of those tidy bow ties commonly worn by boys from the better families. Although Alley was nearly twenty-five years old at the time and bore the shadow of a rugged beard, Barnum worked the monster-child illusion perfectly. Alley came to the Museum with great flourish, caged atop a painted wagon drawn down the center of Broadway during the height of commerce. The “boy monster” rattled the bars of a cage full of bunting and big yellow balls. I laughed until my side stitched when I first saw the man. “I think it’s a perfectly decent presentation,” Matina had said, offended by my laughter. But then hadn’t she started her career dressed as a cherub, wings and all?

When Barnum hired his giant, Emma Swan, The World’s Tallest Woman, he flew flags off the balconies and made up twenty-foot posters of her seated with two midgets on her lap. He claimed that she stood eight feet high—what did it matter if she had to pile up her hair and teeter around on shoes with four-inch heels in order to measure
up? Barnum even had Ricardo the Rubber Man stretched from one balcony to the next for an entire morning during the first week he came to us. Yes, all of us had been given a proper introduction to the public. So why would he sneak this newest act into the Museum in the dead of night?

I pulled the shutters closed and stuck my head into the bedroom. Matina was sprawled across two-thirds of the bed, her hair flaxen in the moonlight. Her generous breasts rose and fell like waves on the ocean beneath the blue silk of her dress. What if the woman I’d seen with Barnum was competition for Matina? She’d be furious. But no. The woman I’d seen outside did not look large. Had Barnum perhaps found a new Hottentot Venus? Again, no. The new woman was slim and elegant, with no protruding buttocks, at least as far as I could tell. Still, the real Hottentot Venus had been dead for years—I’d heard rumors that certain oversized parts of her had been pickled and now floated in a jar on display by special invitation only at Kahn’s Anatomical Museum—and a new Venus would be a true coup.

Maybe I should wake Matina. Surely, she’d know who was coming up through the circuits. And oh, how she’d love the gossip of a mystery woman! But I decided it best not to disturb her. Instead, I settled into the small space beside her, pulled my mother’s comforter over my ribs, and gave myself over to dreams of great and mysterious women.

T
HE CLANGING BELLS OF
S
T
. P
AUL’S WOKE ME
from a fitful sleep. Matina had slipped out sometime during the night without disturbing me, and, as I lay in bed, my thoughts moved again to the mysterious woman from the night before. If she was a new act, I hoped she’d be extraordinary. Too many of Barnum’s recent discoveries had been less than stellar, and I’d begun to worry that he’d forgotten the difference between
new
and
unique
.

When curiosity finally bested comfort, I forced myself up out of bed and moved into the parlor, thrusting open the shutters onto a clear Sunday morn. Below me, early-rising sinners hustled up Broadway toward St. Paul’s for the morning services. In less than an hour, our own in-house church service would begin, and though I’d planned to take a soothing bath before worship—and had reserved the bathtub days ago for this purpose—I’d now have to settle for a dose of tonic and a quick toilette in my room. The maid had already picked up my chamber pot from the hall and left fresh water by the door, along with the single boiled egg I sometimes ate for breakfast. Ignoring the egg, I hauled the pitcher to the bedroom. Water sloshed over the side onto the already stained marble of my dresser. I made a mental note to speak to the maid about not overfilling it.

Checking my image in the wall mirror, I shaved carefully, wishing Matina hadn’t told me that her
Peterson’s
claimed it was no longer fashionable to let one’s facial hair grow. After applying a touch of pomade to my hair and slipping into my trousers, waistcoat, and
Sunday cravat, I decided I didn’t look half bad. One good thing about being only bones: My clothing never bunched or pulled. Hurrying out into the resident hall, I took a moment to peer around and noted that none of the empty sleeping rooms had been disturbed the night before. Where on earth had the veiled woman slept? How curious. But I was already late for church, so I pushed through the door separating our living space from the fourth-floor exhibits and hurried along. An irritable kangaroo thumped her tail as I passed, her odor strong but not offensive. I tipped my hat to her and then cringed, as I walked by the glass cages where the boa and other unsavory snakes lay curled around the center stovepipe for warmth. Snakes bothered me, always had. And the last day I wished to see them was on the Sabbath.

Because the Museum was closed on Sunday mornings and there’d be no visitors to disturb me, I bypassed the service stairs and cut directly through the public part of the third floor, hustling past the exhibits in the curio salons. These rooms were filled from floor to ceiling with the treasures Barnum brought back from his expeditions. Cases of butterflies and insects, Chinese balls, and whistles made of pigs’ tails were displayed in neat lines beneath glass. For good luck, I tapped the display case where the pear-shaped diamond called the Idol’s Eye was nestled, then hurried by bows and arrows and stone heads, the poisoned shafts from the lost tribe of Kahil El Zabar, the Samoan Sea Worm that could gut a cat in seconds, and a giant hairball that had been rescued from the stomach of a black-bellied sow.

I scanned the second floor for any hint of the new act but found nothing: no packs of undistributed flyers, no announcements, and no word of her on the big Notice Board in the backstage Green Room. Not even an advance broadside on the marquee near the Moral Lecture Room, the Museum’s famous theater. Though I was already late for services, I made one final dash to the first floor, sure I’d stumble across a pamphlet or poster announcing Barnum’s latest discovery. But I discovered nothing new at all.

Strands of the opening hymn, “Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide thee,” wafted downstairs, and I ran up the Grand Staircase
to the temporary “chapel.” Every Sunday, Barnum had the chapel set up in the same minor theater in which I did my daily shows. There were three of these minor theaters flanking the Moral Lecture Room. This particular room boasted a small elevated stage, a plank floor, three portal windows peering out on an airshaft of floating dust, and ten or so rows of straight-backed chairs. The only truly elegant touch—and all three minor rooms had variations of the same—was the doorframe. Each room boasted a carved figurehead taken from an old warship, ram heads around one entrance, ancient Roman saints on horseback framing another. Today’s “chapel” door showed two full-length carvings of the Greek goddess Athena in her half-naked glory.