The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno: A Novel (44 page)

At the bottom of the stairs was another door, this one already open. Next to it sat an empty chair, a lit cigar smoldering in a tin ashtray on the floor beneath the seat. The guardian, whoever he was, seemed to have disappeared for a moment, so in I went, unimpeded, and followed the candlelit path along the wall to my left until it stopped in front of a third and final door, this one squat and tired.

“Tomorrow,” I whispered to myself. “Find her tomorrow.” But I’d come too far to walk away now. I stood at the final door, held my breath, and pushed.

The first thing I noticed was the music. Strange music. It wafted out from somewhere far away, the melodies of Eastern savages, weeping, low, provocative. I shut my eyes and listened for a moment, then opened my eyes again and tried to make sense of what was in front of me. Not that I could see much at first. The room was dark except for a small fire floating unsupported in the center of the room, giving off soft light. Waiting for my eyes to adjust, I leaned into the wall and, using it as a guide, inched deeper into the room. In front of me was a row of chairs, and in front of them another, and then another. I was in a makeshift theater. Nearly all the chairs were full. As my eyes adjusted, I could see from the looks of their well-made jackets that the audience members were highborn men. And the flame? It was not floating at all, but rather burning in an iron bowl balanced on top of a tall metal stem somewhere near the front of the room.

I edged my way farther along the wall, the men’s backs obscuring
Whatever it was they were gawking at. Then I saw the edge of a low stage, the pale light washing over it, and smelled something sweetly familiar.

Someone coughed.

It is still not too late, I told myself.

And then it was.

Iell. Nearly naked on a deep purple divan.

The divan sat diagonally on a low riser surrounded by drapery of russet-colored silk. Patterned rugs from the Orient were layered about the floor. Iell lay draped along the divan, one arm stretched languidly behind her head, her upper body propped up on tasseled pillows. To the side sat an inlaid table, a crystal lamp, and baskets of lilies and camellias. Behind where Iell lay stood a large mirror like the one in my room. It reflected her unclad body, which was hidden beneath her loose beard and a few diaphanous scarves that trembled with the rise of her breath. In her free hand, she held her long bone pipe, the opium smoke curling above her head in patterns that begged the most lurid interpretations. My mouth grew dry as dust.

Try as I might to remember her as I’d seen her before—in her elegant show, in her apartment, in my arms—this new creature mesmerized me. Mesmerized us all. I half closed my eyes in a fight between decency and desire as I watched her release a torrent of smoke from her beautiful mouth. She moved her free hand into the air, playfully arching and rolling it through the smoke. Her aristocratic fingers cast a sorceress’s spell. I had touched those hands less than an hour before, when she sat next to me in the Lecture Room.

The music shifted, its minor notes sinking into inscrutability. I tripped over a chair in the back and sank down on it, weak-kneed. I tried to will myself to look away but could not. Whatever sense I’d had of being a separate man disappeared, and I merged with the audience. We breathed in and out like a single animal, fixated on our prey.

Iell began to sing. In a slow and guttural voice, she crooned a nonsensical tune about heroes and brave lonely men, and the room went hot with fusty air. I swallowed hard. Praying for strength, I told myself
to leave. To wait outside until this travesty was over, and then to whisk my love away and never mention this night. But then those visions came again—my mother’s gaze through a little jar, falling stars, a river of mud—and despite the visions, or perhaps because of them, I decided to face the truth. I was not a little boy hiding behind his mama’s petticoats. No manner of wishing would ever change what was in front of me.

And so I stayed.

In horror and fascination, I watched Iell curve her hand down toward a foreign-looking basket next to the divan, and I felt something coming loose in me. The basket was old, woven from black and brown fronds, the top of it pointed and held firmly in place by a worn leather binding. The small fire burned hotter and the flame flickered crimson across the basket’s fronds as Iell’s delicate fingers undid the straps. As she reached into its bowels, I smelled smoke.

Someone sighed as Iell pulled a long black snake from the basket and held it up high. The reptile corkscrewed around her fist, then slunk down and down along her arm. It slid its terrible way toward her thin white neck, and for a moment I worried that it might hurt her, but it stopped and nested for a time in the warmth and lusciousness of her beard. My breath left me. The snake stirred again. I marked the outline of its movement beneath the beard as it traveled in nearly perfect circles, round and round, a slow swell below the surface, a circular wave. It broke free just below her heavy bosom, and as it slithered down, traveling the road of her body beneath the silk scarves, moving in search of a place to hide, all I could hear was the low growl of men’s breath as it rose and fell amid the occasional creak of a chair or a heavy boot pressed unthinkingly against the earthen floor. When Iell parted her perfect thighs, creating a furrowed escape route, the snake pushed out its blind, rounded head. The entire room inhaled, with no outward release at all. The snake slid from Iell’s body onto the divan. It dropped with a thud onto the floor and curved its nasty way into the shadows. Each of us waited in a no-man’s-land of tightening skin and unbelievable thirst.

Iell parted her knees, slowly, the silk scarves splitting, draping on either side of her long white thighs, the fire above her flaring, the smell of smoke more distinct now, cloying. And with all of the scarves parted, we saw the second beard, tied in ribbons. A devil’s gift.

The sound of muffed feet from the floor above barely broke through my trance, and when the music began again—although I hadn’t noticed that it had stopped—sights and sounds muddled in my head. A bewitching tune. Almost a chant. The smoke growing thicker, the clatter of boots outside on the stairs as Iell’s fingers drew across the ribbons, unwinding, untying, her knees parting.

And then in that heartbreaking moment, the mirror behind her positioned perfectly to reflect it all, I came to understand the truth of Iell.

Her other sex, as real and as large as my own, eased out languidly from between her legs as she slipped a long slender finger into her orifice in proof that the he was also a she. I reeled with the fact of it. A gift like none I have ever seen. Magnificent. Utterly horrible. Not only woman, but man as well. My belly went hollow, lungs on fire, legs like broken weeds. My world cracked in half.

I slipped back in time. I fought the feeling. The experience of innocence melting away into some hideous truth. But then I was in my mother’s lap. It was the middle of the night, and we were looking out the window at the sky as one star and then another fell toward the earth. I was afraid and trembling.

“Can the sky fall, Mummy?”

My mother’s lips moved. This time, after all these years, I could finally hear her words.

“Everything must fall eventually, sweet boy, even your father.” My mother gripped my hand and stared at me with eyes as dark as midnight. “But he brought himself down. I did not push him. You must remember that.” Specks of sweat glinted across her brow, and her breathing was too low and too deep. “No matter what anyone says, you and I know it was his own doing. All that drinking and carrying on. A man with no control, Bartholomew, is no man at all.”

She set me on the floor and handed me a lantern, its light flickering dimly. . . .

“Fire, fire!”

I startled awake. All around me in that cellar room, men had begun to rise and frantically look about, as if waking from a dream. Better the Museum burn to the ground and me along with it than face what was happening, I thought. But I’d no choice. Frantically, I pushed against the crowd and moved toward the stage. Smoke poured under the door. From above, gongs were clanging.

Iell looked up. Our eyes connected. She took in a sharp breath, as if from shock, and I reached down and touched the stark thinness of my own thighs and all but laughed aloud. The ultimate
Lusus naturae
. And then I could not move.

“Hold the lantern still.” My mother reached for the glass bottle on the windowsill and carried it to where a kettle of mushroom soup had been set to boil. Without looking at me, my mother tipped the contents of that bottle into the soup. I heard my father stumble onto the porch outside. My mother blew the lantern out and took it from my hands. Cautioning me with a finger to her lips to stay silent, she set me down behind a potted tree, the smell of dirt comforting despite the pang of fear I felt at her leaving me alone like that.

Iell’s face turned white with anger. “Bartholomew, how dare you!” I staggered toward her, the smoke thicker now.

My father stumbled into the room, and my mother seated him in the chair that was still warm from our bodies. I inched along the wall until I could see them. Humming still, my mother filled a bowl and sat by him. She dipped a silver spoon into the dark mushroom soup, then slid it between my father’s lips. Even though he shook his head no, she coaxed him, and eventually he ate.

I watched as she lifted the spoon again and again. Some of the soup dribbled from the side of his mouth onto his chin, and, ever the dutiful wife, she dabbed it clean with the end of her apron. My father drifted into sleep. Night cicadas chirped in the meadow, and I wondered where the fallen stars had landed. My mother tucked a strand of hair
behind her ear, and we waited until, with no warning, my father shot to his feet, his face gone purple, his eyes pushing out of his head. Shocked, I slid farther behind the potted tree as he lurched around the room, bellowing. Blindly, he came at my mother, knocking into the tree, a river of dirt spilling over me, and I turned away and wrapped my arms protectively around my head. Then I heard a thud. My father fell to the ground. Afraid, I ran for my mother. When she lifted her skirts, I dove beneath them without a thought, and, shivering beneath her pale yellow petticoats, I clung to her legs, which were covered in striped stockings traveling up and around like a barbershop pole.

Two men, handlers, I assumed, swooped in, covered Iell in a long robe, and hustled her past me and out the door. Somehow I lurched through the blackened air and up the cellar stairs, coming back to myself in the middle of the Atrium, where a herd of party guests stampeded by. Clouds of smoke billowed down the hallway, flames visibly licking the walls near Barnum’s office and the Yellow Room and the closed door of the Arboretum. Bridgett was making her way down the hall by feel, one hand running along the wall, the other holding a handkerchief to her nose against the smoke. Then she stopped and calmly watched Fish hop about and scream orders to anyone who would listen, workers and partygoers alike running up and down the hallway with buckets of water, bells of the fire brigade banging in the distance. Litter from the departing party guests lay across the floor like refuse left after the retreat of a flood.

I made my way through the room, grabbing Bridgett by the elbow as I passed and dragging her with me. As soon as we hit the clean air of the Atrium, she yanked her arm away from me.

“Did you see Iell coming out?”

“We all saw her, Mr. Fortuno, no doubt about it.”

“And where’s Matina? Is she all right?”

“Why do you care? She’s with Alley now.”

I seized Bridgett by the shoulders and shook her hard.

“Oh, for God’s sake, she’s just outside.”

I rushed out the big front doors and, sure enough, smack in the
middle of Broadway stood Matina, next to Emma and a mass of distraught guests, wringing her hands but clearly fine. Panting with relief, I turned back to survey the Museum, looking up in dread. The upper windows showed no signs of flame or smoke. Thank God.

“Out of the way!” Alley barreled past me, his guard just behind; the two of them held up sloshing barrels of water above their heads and headed inside the Museum. I took off after them. Just before I reached the flames, I stopped. I could see the blaze slowly coming under control, and I doubted that Whatever help I could offer would matter much. At least it was clear now that Alley was not the firebug. He’d been under constant guard for days, and it would have been impossible for him to set such a fire without discovery. I looked around for Matina, but she was gone.

My entire world was gone.

There was only one thing I had been right about: the capacity of true Prodigies to reflect what’s hidden within us. Seeing the secret of the real Iell had shaken every one of my own secrets loose. She had shown me my true self. For years, I’d thought my thinness was a gift, a rare self-mastery set in motion by my mother and honed to perfection after the incident with Mary Louise in the barn. But now I knew the truth. What I’d seen as strength was actually weakness. I’d resisted physical gratification not because I was a purer soul but because I’d seen my mother poison my father, and I was terrified to eat! My body was not a gift at all. It never had been. I was no Prodigy. I was a Gaff, made by a madwoman. I was what I most despised.