The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno: A Novel (4 page)

The next level down were the regular Prodigies like Matina, Alley, Emma, and me. All of us were more or less the right shape and pleasant enough of feature, but with unusual proportions. Our special gifts emphasized different aspects of human beings—their hunger, their strength, their purity. We traditional Prodigies were the type Barnum favored most, though I’d always thought that showed a lack of vision on his part.

After the Prodigies came the Exotics, those whose odd bodies were helped along by a touch of show business. Like Ricardo, for example. He boasted at every opportunity that he was a True Prodigy because of how he could stretch and bend. None of us agreed. As far as we were concerned, he was a talented trickster but little else—as
was our other Exotic, Zippy, whose fame owed as much to Darwin’s
Origin of Species
as to any innate skill. It was sheer luck that his elongated head and simian propensities made it easy for Barnum to bill him as the missing link, the lone survivor of an Amazonian tribe discovered during an exploration of the River Gamba. The truth? He hailed from Liberty Corner, New Jersey, and was the son of former slaves.

Last came the Gaffs, self-made Curiosities who faked what came to the rest of us naturally. They had no inherent worth whatsoever. I felt a surge of pride looking around the table at my colleagues. We had not a Gaff among us.

Matina dabbed at her mouth with a corner of a napkin. “Well, I think one of us should warn this new person, I really do. Accepting favors from Barnum is a dangerous path.”

“Oh, I’ll warn her all right.” Ricardo bounded from his chair and pulled a box of phosphorous matches from his pocket. He struck a match until it flared, then threw it in the middle of the table, yelling, “
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!
” in imitation of a fire truck.

Everyone jumped.

“Stop that this instant!” Matina admonished Ricardo as she slapped at the match flame with her napkin.

“We need something heavier to put out those flames.” Ricardo stretched his arms across the table toward Matina’s breasts, prompting an outbreak of laughter.

I glared at Ricardo.

He just laughed. “What? Would you slap my hands for going where yours go every day?”

I rose. “If you continue to insult Matina, you will have to answer to me!”

Ricardo cackled and rose to my challenge, but Alley held up one of his huge hands and waved him down.

“Give me those matches,” Alley said. “You know better than that.”

Reluctantly, Ricardo tossed the box of matches at Alley, who tucked them into his pocket.

As I settled back into my chair, Matina patted me gently on the knee. “Look at you, defending me,” she whispered. “Such a sweet man.”

I nodded, grateful for Alley’s intervention, but all I could think about for the rest of the day was Barnum’s new discovery. Who was she? I was dying to know.

M
ONDAY WAS THE DAY OF
P
RESIDENT
Lincoln’s funeral procession. Out of respect, Barnum closed the Museum and draped the building in black bunting. Thick rolls of it were battened down onto the roof with ropes and allowed to spill over the façade, creating a play of dark shadows both inside the Museum and out.

A
special notice hung in the Green Room, our collective dressing room. It had been printed on the printing press, like all our notices, despite the ease and rapidity of simply hand rending the thing. Mr. Fish insisted that we had paid good money for the press, however, and he used it at every opportunity. The notice read:

Matina found me in the back hall mid morning. I could see tears behind her thin black veil. She held a large basket in her arms.

“His body will be on display right across the square, Barthy. I
have
to go. Cook has packed me a few sandwiches to take along.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s entirely out of the question.”

Matina scowled. “Out of what question?”

What could I say? The streets of New York were no place for the likes of Matina on a quiet day, let alone a day of national mourning. In fact, as long as I’d known her, Matina had never ventured into the streets in broad daylight. I myself rarely went out, except for the occasional outing to McNealy’s, a tavern frequented by Curiosities, and then only under cover of night.

“You know better than to expose yourself to the masses.” I reached for the basket, but Matina pulled it away from me. “Think of the crowds,” I went on. “And the heat. And the defenseless position you will be in. Why not watch from the roof with the rest of us, my dear? It’s safe, and you’ll see much better at a little distance.”

“But he was
murdered
,” Matina whispered, her voice cracking. “A great man is gone, and he deserves our respect.”

I never expected Matina to go, but not an hour later I watched from my window as she tromped along Broadway to City Hall, blond hair flying, skirts flapping like a tent in a hurricane. I flinched for her when a group of gentlewomen sank against the storefronts as she passed, and again when a cluster of men, in flagrant disregard for the gravity of the occasion, yelled out what was most likely a string of obscenities. But Matina trudged onward. I had to admire her gumption.

I watched my friend until she disappeared into the crowd in front of City Hall, and then I went up to join the rest of the troupe. The day was cool and breezy, and dozens of performers and staff members stood along the edge of the roof, gazing down on the double lines of mourners, which stretched as far as the eye could see—all the way up Broadway and all the way downtown. Lincoln’s procession appeared sometime after one o’clock. Six men dressed in black bore the coffin
high on their shoulders, showing no fatigue even though they had carried it from the docks; the Seventh Regiment followed in formation, bells tolling the entire time. The procession stopped at City Hall, beneath a long banner that read
THE NATION MOURNS
, and the flags flapped at half-mast on the roof of the building.

None of us said much as we watched. What could one say? We simply stood together as the soldiers fired a round of shots into the air as a signal for the bearers to move Mr. Lincoln up the marble steps and onto a velvet dais inside the rotunda. After that, the mourners began their slow file through the square, crushing the grass but entering and leaving the building with uncharacteristic solemnity. It was Emma who spotted Matina in the crowd. “Is that who I think it is?” She pointed and everyone strained over the rail for a better look. Who could miss Matina in the middle of one of the lines, broad as three or four of the people around her?

“I’d no idea she would go out alone,” I said, preempting any negative comments. “I would have attended her, had I known.”

Emma shook her head. “Well, don’t worry, Fortuno, she brings her hardships on herself. All that carrying on.”

Alley grunted, his eyes fixed on Matina as the line inched forward.

“Maybe it’s not too late,” I said. “Surely I could find her in the crowd.”

“For goodness’ sake, why put yourself through that?” Emma said. “You’ll do her no good now. Leave it be, Fortuno. She’ll be back soon enough.”

I shook my head. I’d let Matina down and needed to make amends. “I’ll see you later,” I said, and took off down the stairs. The least I could do was to wait downstairs at the service-entrance door. When Matina got back, she’d be tired and hungry, and I could lend her a hand on the way to her rooms.

How rare to be in the Museum on a workday with no people crowding the halls. My footsteps, light as they were, echoed along passages usually full of chatter and laughter. I walked briskly through the
Waxworks Room, the East Wing portrait gallery, and the large exhibit room where we used to sit in tableau before Barnum moved such exhibits to the ground floor.

Everything seemed normal enough until I passed the Ballroom. What I saw there stopped me cold. Wrapped in cotton batting and resting against the top of the stairs, the tall, flat, rectangular object stood nearly six feet tall. A new poster? I paced in front of it. Beneath its covering, it still smelled of fresh paint, which meant it wasn’t simply a photograph but something more expensive, handcrafted. My first response was anger. Barnum had been promising me my own likeness for three years, and nothing had ever come of it. In fact, two months ago, when I’d again asked for a poster, he gave me an unequivocal no, blaming it on the demands that the war placed on poor Mathew Brady, whose photographic images had served as the basis for all our posters since well before my time. “The maimed and the dead fascinate Brady more than you do now, son.” Barnum waved his hands across his eyes as if to sweep away visions of specters. “And his prices have grown exorbitant. You should see what he’s asking for even the smallest daguerreotype these days.” But curiosity bested my anger.

Twine held the white batting in place around the poster, and someone had scrawled black letters across the front:
Do Not Open or Disturb in Any Way
. How thoughtless to leave the thing in the hall for anyone passing to wonder about. I glanced across the wide Atrium. The doors to the Ballroom and the Moral Lecture Room were closed, and I couldn’t hear so much as a footstep. Everyone was on the roof or outside with the mourning crowd. What harm would a small peek do? Carefully, I undid the twine and tugged at the cotton at the bottom.

Running along the base were the words
NEWEST WONDER OF THE WORLD.
The new act! Making sure again that I was alone, I pulled the batting back as far as I dared to uncover a posh skirt, a background reminiscent of Thomas Cole’s
View from Mount Holyoke
, a lap in which an exquisite hand rested, palm to heaven, and . . . nothing. The top of the poster was blank, unfinished. My efforts thwarted, I rewrapped the damned thing and made my way over to the service
entrance. Wait until Matina heard about this. Newest Wonder of the World, indeed.

W
HEN
M
ATINA
finally returned, she was so distraught that I held my tongue about the poster and, instead, spent the good part of an hour trying to stop her tears. The poor dear had clearly been harassed by the crowd. Later, after she calmed down, I snuck back up to the second floor to see what had become of the poster, and discovered that it had disappeared. I’d have to wait to show it to Matina. Until then, I supposed it could be my little secret. No harm in that. No harm at all.

The next morning, I skipped breakfast and rushed over to the Green Room, sure that something about the new act would be posted on the Notice Board. Backstage was already throbbing with activity. Dancers flexed and actors do-re-mi’d as they wandered in and out, awaiting the call for places. The room stank of greasepaint, smoke, camphor, and sweat, and no one knew a thing about the mysterious woman.

“Out of the way. Out of the way.” Mr. Fish swooshed past in a sea of tooth necklaces and turkey-feathered hair before I had a chance to ask about the new act. He was shepherding a group of Indians between the mirrors and the mildewed costume racks, his flyaway hair looking whiter than usual against his bulging forehead. When the Indians stopped for no apparent reason, he stared at them, his eyes magnified by the spectacles that balanced on his long pointy nose, then waved his arms above his head. “To the theater,” he commanded, though none of the Indians seemed to understand. God help him if the Indians figured out they were here as moneymaking attractions and not as emissaries of peace. I wondered how the chiefs would react when they saw the Moral Lecture Room.

Years ago, Barnum had ripped out the old theater ceiling and expanded the room into a three-tiered cavern. Mauve draperies now flanked its proscenium stage, velvet covered the seats, and hanging in
front of the stage between acts was a canvas drop painted to look like our Capitol Building. Private boxes—protected by open trelliswork—glowed in the light from Viennese sconces. And the stage itself had been made over to reflect the most advanced achievements of the modern theater, with a sprung maple floor to ease the pain of standing, and backdrops of such realism that even the actors had to touch them to make sure they weren’t real.