The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno: A Novel (13 page)

By the time I pushed out the door into the main hallway, a queue already stretched halfway down the corridor to the front of the Yellow Room, where Mr. Fish himself roosted atop the lecturer’s platform. Drat. Slipping in was going to be harder than I’d thought.

“The rarest of gems in a setting of gold,” Fish harked down the hallway. “A woman as nature never intended a woman to be.”

At the front of the line, a young couple put their dimes into the basket at the door and slipped past the black velvet curtain into the room. The fellow’s beard was almost the same color red as Iell’s. I considered my tactics. All sorts of people were jumbled together in line: ladies in their spring corals attended by young girls aflutter over the prospect of spending the morning at the Museum. Half-grown boys pounding one another on the shoulders. A surprising number of tradesmen—
printers, gilders, clerks, and the like—some unhappily accompanied by their wives while others were alone and nattily dressed. Even a group of veterans waited to give over their dimes, their gruff guffaws unable to cover their haunted eyes.

I figured my best bet was to slip into line, keeping my eyes to the ground, and so I ducked in behind an old man who gave me a nod. As we moved forward, I lowered my chin and managed to advance a few feet, then a few more after that. No one said a word to me, though I could hear murmurs and snickering from behind me. As Fish continued his chant, I lingered for a moment in front of Iell’s poster. God, she was beautiful! My mouth went dry at even the painted image of her.

“Move on,” Fish ordered, not realizing it was me slowing up his line. By the time I shuffled forward and dropped my dime into the basket by the door, I felt invincible. I made it halfway through the curtain before I felt the yank of Fish’s cane at the back of my neck, wrenching me out by my collar.

“What the hell are you doing, Fortuno? You know you’re not allowed to take up space in here. Out with you.”

“My dime, Mr. Fish. I’ve paid my dime.”

But I’d already drawn too much attention to myself, and I knew I’d best retreat.

Later on, I went downstairs to try to determine the impact of Iell’s show by canvassing people as they left the room. I approached a middle-aged man.

“Did you enjoy the exhibit?”

“Marvelous, marvelous.”

“Well worth your money, then?”

“Would have paid a quarter more, but if you want to know the truth, the whole thing made me feel a bit squeamish.”

Idiot, I thought, but I nodded my head politely and made my way back to my quarters. I’d have to find some other way into the show.

L
ITTLE DID
I
KNOW THAT FATE WOULD SOON
intervene and give me my first real conversation with Iell. Two days later, Matina dropped into my rooms after the Museum closed for the night to borrow a book.

“Most of the botany books belonged to my mother,” I explained, surprised to see Matina run her fingers over Kant, Plato, and Linnaeus, and then linger on
The Botanist’s Repository
.

“Did they now?” Bypassing
The Botanist’s Repository
, she pulled out another oversized tome and carried it to the table near my settee. It was one of my favorites:
A New Treatise on Flower Painting
, its spine loose from countless thumbing and knee balances. Inside was page after page of hand-colored engravings—bitter cress, nightshade, sundew, clover—along with lessons on how to render each image in watercolor or Conté crayon.

“Looky here, Barthy. The magnolia!” Matina glanced up from the open book with bright eyes. “My favorite flower. Isn’t it gorgeous?”

I bent over her shoulder and looked at the sketch. “I learned to draw with that book, you know.”

“Really?” Matina said, her head buried again in the pages. But I could tell she was listening. No matter how often Matina asked me about my childhood, I rarely talked about it. The past is the past, I always said. One should not waste his life looking back. But that night I was in the mood to talk.

“My mother,” I said, rewarding Matina’s restraint by offering a bit
of information, “insisted I find exactly the right stroke of the brush.” I demonstrated with a perfect flick of the wrist. “And if I got it wrong, or strayed outside the lines, she’d make me do it again and again.”

“That sounds so unpleasant.”

“Unpleasant?” Her response surprised me. “No, not at all. She just wanted me to fulfill my potential. She taught me everything I know.”

My mother’s voice materialized in my head. “Classification is everything, my boy.” The morning sun dappled through our cottage windows. I sat atop a high stool watching my mother stab at a wall chart with a pointed stick. “Does it flower, or does it not? Is it a single or double seed leaf? Class, subclass, super order, tribe. Such an elegant system, don’t you think? Most plants are happily classified by family, genus, and species. But there are a few special plants. Unique plants.” She lifted my chin with one cool finger to make sure I was paying close attention. “Plants so special, Bartholomew, that they defy classification.
Those
”—my mother smiled broadly, her eyes cornflower blue—“are the exceptions that prove the rule!”

Matina and I talked briefly after that about other things—the schedule changes, how Alley had refused to speak to anyone about his beating, a bit more about the previous fire—until, around eleven o’clock, she scooped up the
New Treatise on Flower Painting
book and Aristotle’s
Poetics
(the
Poetics
taken, I suspected, for my benefit) and returned to her room.

After Matina left, I got to thinking how lucky I was to have her as my friend. She never objected to my imperfections, never expected me to be anything other than what I was. How, I wondered, could I show my appreciation for her? She’d said that magnolias were her favorite flower, and I’d spotted a magnolia tree in the middle of the Arboretum a few days earlier. Should I pay a visit to the Arboretum and cut a handful of magnolia blossoms as a gift?

Despite the late hour, I trekked downstairs through empty halls, taking along a night lamp and a small penknife to cut the stems. When I pushed open the Arboretum door I was greeted by the squawks of
the parrots and was pleased to find that someone had left the Arboretum lamps lit. I clucked a greeting to the birds, placed my lamp on the floor, and ventured in.

The tea roses at the front entrance caught my eye, so I clipped a few to use as a frame for the magnolias, then pushed deeper into the Arboretum until I reached the magnolia tree. Expertly wielding my penknife, I snipped off the best blossoms and laid them in the crook of my arm.

It was then I heard the voices. Female. Two of them, whispering and laughing together. Curious, I moved down the overgrown path, pushing away a stray vine or two until I came to the moss-covered oak where the path split. Straining to hear, I realized that the voices came from the café table near the aviary. I inched around the tree and stopped.

Iell and Emma Swan sat sipping tea together at the table like long-lost friends. I could not believe my eyes. What were they doing there at such a late hour, what with Iell being boarded uptown? Plus Emma had never said a word to any of us about having made the new act’s acquaintance, and I’d have thought she’d be the first to brag about such an association. Whatever was she up to? In cahoots with Barnum, I suspected, despite her dislike of the man. Though why he would go to her and me as well, I hadn’t a clue.

My wounded pride was relieved to see Iell looking slightly bored as Emma poured tea and chattered away. How utterly exquisite she appeared, in a silver dress that shimmered in the light. Nestled inside the palm-shaped wicker chair, she fluttered a fan beneath her chin, sending up loose strands of that beautiful beard. Perhaps Iell had decided to seek advice on navigating the dangerous waters of Barnum’s business, something we all had experience with.

Taking my courage in hand, I shifted the flowers to my other arm, ran my finger along my eyebrows, and walked into the women’s line of sight, stopping for a moment so as not to shock them with my unannounced appearance. The birds saw me first, and set up a racket, and both women looked over at the same time.

Emma frowned. I advanced and bowed crisply, my hands clammy and shaking.

“Pardon me, ladies. How are you faring this evening?”

Iell gave me a quick smile before dropping her eyes to her lap, and my heart leaped into my throat.

“This lady and I are having a private discussion, Fortuno.” Emma’s double chin folded into her neck, her lips crimson and tight. “You will kindly leave us to it.”

“I have no wish to disturb you, Emma. I only want to say good evening and to give my regards to your new friend.” A burst of steam blew out from the fog machine and covered a patch of lichen growing on the damp shale behind us. I was suddenly aware of how womanly I must appear, cradling a bouquet of flowers, with steam-induced tears running down my cheeks.

“Haven’t we met?” Iell leaned forward to examine me more closely, and I cursed myself for not wearing a better jacket.

“The other evening,” I said. “You came across me in the east cellars, looking at your lovely poster.”

“Ah, yes. The gentleman who showed such a fascination with my image. I remember.” She blessed me with an utterly charming smile. “Mr. . . .”

“Fortuno, Madame. Bartholomew Fortuno.” I bowed, this time more deeply, blood rushing into my ears. Stand up tall, I admonished myself. Take up some space.

Emma pitched herself forward, half out of her chair, and set her hammy fists on the little café table. “Very nice, Fortuno. But now I’m sure you have plenty of other things to do.” Emma’s tone carried an edge, and had Iell not leaned over and gently touched Emma’s arm, I might have been forced to leave right then.

“Perhaps,” Iell intervened, in a voice as soft as a bird’s wing, “we could take advantage of our uninvited guest for a minute or two.” She waited for the scowling Emma to crunch herself back into her chair before addressing me directly. “My friend Emma and I have been talking about childhood,” she said, “and I would love another opinion on the topic.”

“Of course, Madam. What would you like to know?” I asked, heady in her presence.

Iell ran her fingers along the outside of her beard, and I looked away, a bit flustered. “We were discussing the Theory of Maternal Impression before you came in. What do you make of that premise, sir? Do you believe that we are all products of our mothers’ traumas?”

“I do believe in fate,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “But modern science has discredited the Theory of Maternal Impression.”

“You see?” Iell smiled at Emma, rapping her fan in light emphasis against the metal top of the café table.

“ ‘Thou didst weave me in my mother’s womb, and I am fearfully and most wonderfully made,’ ” Emma said flatly.

Iell tilted forward in her chair, her eyes flickering with intelligence. I could see why Barnum was having a difficult time managing her—not that I wouldn’t gladly trade places with him and argue with the woman until she tired of the game.

“And yet,” Iell said to me, “even Aristotle and Hippocrates thought pressure to the tender parts of a woman’s body altered a baby’s development. Surely you can’t disagree with minds such as theirs?”

I cleared my throat to give myself a moment to think, shifting Matina’s flowers to my other arm. The Theory of Maternal Impression was well known. It posited that a shock of some kind—an unhealthy obsession, even thinking intently about something during the act of conception—might cause a mother to bear a child with a related problem. For example, a woman’s unfortunate scare by a mongrel might produce a dog-faced boy, or a mother who dreamed of a wild beast might produce fierce progeny. But few people believed such poppycock anymore. Still, one did not speak of conception in mixed company, and I did not wish to offend my new acquaintance.

“I disagree only with the theory. Perhaps you recall the tale of Mary Tofts?”

“The woman who gave birth to the baby rabbits and blamed it on being lost in the woods?” Iell played her fingers across her lips, trying, I suspected, to hide a smile. “Pity she went to jail for it. I’d always found the story refreshing, though some think a woman should be punished for having ambition.”

“I never said such a thing.” Emma took a swift kick at the side of the aviary and set the cockatoos flapping.

“As far as I’m concerned,” I continued, keeping a wary eye on Emma, “Mary Tofts was the worst sort of Gaff. To plant dead rabbits into her own womb, then pretend to give birth to them in front of ill-suspecting doctors? Of course she went to jail.”

“So you object to artifice?” Iell stared at me with a directness quite rare in women. There was nothing flirtatious or coy about her today. Her charms were straightforward, strong and magnetic.

“More than anything in the world.”

“And yet you yourself are the product of self-invention. You were not born thin, were you?”

“Pardon me?” My hands contracted into fists, squeezing the stems of the flowers until I forced my fingers to relax. I laid the flowers on the table.

“Your body. It has been this way from birth?”

“My change came a bit later than some, but, as you can see, I am all natural.” I ran my shaking hand along my upper body to demonstrate that I was a Prodigy, not something constructed. How had she known about my history? Had she been asking questions about me? Or was it simply a lucky guess, an assumption based on the nature of my gift?

Iell’s eyes sparkled, and when Emma snorted a half laugh, Iell waved her quiet. “How fascinating to think you might have elected this world, unlike so many of us who had no choice.”

My temples pounded. “I assure you, Madam, I have never had a choice. I simply
can’t
eat. My body won’t allow it.”

“Really, Mr. Fortuno? I’m certain that a man of your sophistication understands that sometimes choice is a complicated matter.”

As discreetly as possible, I wiped my palms dry on the sides of my trouser legs and then cleared my throat, trying to regain mastery over the situation.