The Strangely Wonderful: Tale of Count Balásházy

by Karen Mercury

  What was that? His fingers still squeezing his cock, Tomaj spun and squinted to make out fluctuating forms that came across the lawn in the dimming twilight, trilling a bizarre susurration like a gaggle of Norwegian gnomes.

  “You son of a bitch!” It was a sign of how accustomed the men were to each other that Tomaj only relinquished his prick to bash a backhand across Zaleski’s Kwangtung vest, bowling him into little Slushy, who was smoking a pipe.

  “It’s Perennial Pete, back from the Mauritius!” Youx cried in a hushed voice.

  “Who cares about Perennial Pete?” Tomaj shouted back in a whisper, but he allowed himself to be scuttled up to the colonnaded gallery where servants lit lanterns, Slushy limping alongside giving a preamble to the upcoming congress.

  “Perennial Pete”—who was called that because he was, well, always there—”was over in Port Louis arranging for a shipment of sugar cane since, as you know, ever since King Radama placed an embargo upon the export of that commodity, the situation has become tight for those who wish to trade in Port Elizabeth, where the conversion factor thanks to the new tariffs has put a crimp in the—”

  “Salama,” said Pete, a highly crusty individual whom Tomaj did not care to stand too close to, for fear the Egyptian disease would rub off on him; it was always a regretful affair to be to his windward. Tomaj would not allow these men into his library, where he only met with fellow planters and merchants, men of business who wore cravats and waistcoats.

  Nor did Tomaj shake his hand. “Pete, what’s the news from Port Louis?”

  “Wall, y’see, Cap’n, it’s like this. I run into some Kwangtungman what was there trying to petition for the release of his equally slant-eye relative who was doing a stretch in Trou Fanfaron. They asked me if I was acquainted with Major-General Hall, and, wall, I said I was highly familiar with the next best thing, which was Cap’n Balásházy of Mavasarona Bay—”

  “You blasted hell-dog!” Youx was upon Pete like a bitch, tearing away the jacket that was already like so many threads hanging from the hapless mariner’s neck. “What the hell have you been howling about?”

  Tomaj ripped his quartermaster off the seaman, sending Youx bashing against a pillar. Youx was a right mad wolf when riled, but Tomaj always had the muscular power of anger behind him. “Youx!” he barked. “Restrain yourself! Mr…. Mr. Perennial is trying to give us some information. Kindly stand back!” Exhaling, he turned to the shredded sailor and begged, “Continue.”

  Pete rearranged his sleeves upon his shoulders and stuck out his lower lip petulantly. “So! I told him I was well acquainted with you, and their slant eyes got all bug-eyed, and they commenced to gibbering amongst themselves, and they give me this!” Pete handed Tomaj something that must have been a turd from the manner in which he stuck his nose in the air and held it at arm’s length. “They said I was to pass it on to only you, sir, and so I have.”

  While Tomaj took the object underneath a lantern, Pete explained to Zaleski and Slushy, “They said they was there to get Panjoo out of the lockup. I knew that name sounded familiar!”

  Zaleski cried, “There’s only one riceman cruising the Indian Ocean with a brother named Panjoo!”

  Stuffing the morbid thing into his waistcoat pocket, Tomaj returned to the group and gestured wearily at Youx. “Give him some mohurs, Antoine.” He saluted Perennial Pete without gusto. “Thank you for the good work. I hope to see you on the next journey.”

  He went to the foyer, where Holy Eleanora Brown and ramatoas awaited him in a subservient manner that had of late begun to annoy him. “Veloma, mandehana!” he told them, and they scattered like rain clouds. Holy Eleanora Brown was a descendant of the famous English pirate captain, James Plantain, for which reason Tomaj had elevated her to status of chief ramatoa.

  Tomaj slammed his library door and flung his Newmarket coat into an easy chair, but the patter of little mice feet clamored at the door nevertheless. “Enter!” he bellowed, yanking a carafe of brandy from one of the bookshelves.

  It wasn’t often the hands dared to enter his library, but for once Tomaj didn’t care. He waved at Zaleski and Slushy to be seated. They remained standing, for once with their traps shut.

  Expressing fire through his nostrils, Tomaj exhaled the liquor and demanded quietly, “Give me the story on the mermaid. Get it at all costs.”

  The two shallowbrains shuffled their feet about and wrung their hats, and at last Slushy dared to venture, “Aye aye, sir. Might we bother you to tell us—”

  “No!” Tomaj yelled, pointing a finger at the carpet. “You may not ask!”

  The two hands cringed back, as though the force of Tomaj’s breath blew them against the doorway. Only Slushy had the suicidal proclivity to further dare say, “Only reason we ask is that it might involve us, and—”

  “Find out where the mermaid lives! Find out everything about her, her brother, and her swain!”

  A nose. The object Perennial Pete had handed him was a nose. A nose floating in a vial of brine.

  “Aye aye, sir.” Slushy waved a hand blindly at the doorknob, as though it might magically open and give him his freedom. Then he seemed to think better of it, and reached into his pocket.

  “Don’t give me anything else, damn you!”

  Slushy’s hands trembled when he persevered in holding out the silk-wrapped object. “But it’s only a happy pipe, sir! Taken from the East Indiaman prize in Malacca last month, and I knew you’d want to see—”

  Slamming his brandy glass against an oil painting of Pocock’s, Tomaj lunged across the desk, spewing papers and objets d’art hither and yon, like setting off fireworks across the room.

  “I don’t want any happy pipe! I never want to be happy again, do you understand? Now get out of my house!”

  After they left, Tomaj wasn’t any happier.

  Stormalong came pattering in, and Tomaj caressed her underneath her silky chin. She was his only friend. She sniffed at the fallen papers and porcelain, hoping for a crumb of food. His waistcoat pocket was of particular interest to her, but Tomaj pressed her huge skull away from him. Then he felt badly, and drew her to him once more, lavishing great rubs upon her ruff of a chest, until she panted and smiled with her tongue out.

  “Why is it,” Tomaj sighed aloud, “one always wants that which one cannot have?”

  After a long while, he stood and went to the bookshelf, where he placed the nose, and withdrew an opium pipe.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  HOUSE OF THE DIABOLICAL MONKEYS

  Maison des Singes Diaboliques

  Mantasoa

  AFTER BEING ALLOWED A NIGHT’S REST AT HOME IN Tamatave, Dagny heeded the summons.

  She was escorted as usual directly to the laboratory, an impressive high-ceilinged warehouse that echoed with the clang of machinery and the drips of explosive chemistry. Dagny felt comfortable here, having been a small tot at the knee of her father in such a place, although admittedly her father’s laboratory was a mere shadow of this cavern of technological wonders. She went straight to the area allotted to her for taxidermy.

  Her area comprised a small table pressed between something involving sulphuric acid, and another of smelly gunpowder mixtures, because he did not want anyone questioning why he’d suddenly become interested in natural history, if anyone were to wonder at her stuffed specimens. Salvatore was allowed to make his kaolin and feldspar experiments with ceramics in another building of the complex, so she was never seen arriving or departing with her brother.

  As crude as Dagny’s stuffed animals were, with their innards of shredded silk and raffia stripped from palms, she was especially proud of the way she’d stiffened them into animated postures by sculpting clay molds fitted over their skeletons. They cavorted across her crowded table in groups that were likely to be seen in nature, such as the glorious two-foot tall red-ruffed lemur strolling in perfect balance with its uplifted arced tail past a brilliant emerald Parson’s chameleon Dagny had posed in a somewhat flattened manner, as
they were wont to do when presenting one side of their body to the sun. A superb Otus madagascariensis owl hung drying from a rafter among others of shockingly bright plumage, but she was not to touch any of these with her hands until after her interview with him, and she was only allowed to work in the pre-dawn hours by lantern light.

  For now, she would observe demurely, clad in her lavender silk gown with shoulders of muslin Vandykes. She’d fastened her pelerine with an oval amethyst brooch at the neck and was altogether proud to appear in this costume he’d sent to her from Paris.

  Tilting her head, Dagny observed the lemur’s face. She had been forced to replace his reflective cat’s eyes with round pieces of agate Salvatore had polished for her, which gave him an unsatisfactory glazed look, like a corned seaman.

  His brusque boots entered the warehouse, but Dagny remained aloof, as she knew it would never do to appear over-happy, or to otherwise place a burden of emotion upon him.

  However, he was cheery today. She could tell from the way he snuck up boyishly behind her and leaned into her, being careful not to touch her, though no one looked on. She shivered at the warmth of his large, beefy body that gave her a feeling of protection.

  “For my favorite naturalist,” he murmured against her ear, and held a fist before her.

  Instantly Dagny recalled the identical way the count had proffered the oyster to her the day prior, how she’d shivered with a different, almost mystical sense of expectation down to her quim at the merest brush of his elegant, damaged hand.

  She gently cradled Paul Boneaux’s calloused hand, and he unfurled his fingers to reveal two curious bright round objects. She enjoyed holding his hot hand to her breast as she looked up at him in bewilderment, but Paul wasn’t a man to linger long in one place, and he snapped his fist shut again and paced about the wooden floor with the usual self-confidence she admired so much.

  “I think these are just what you’re looking for!”

  “But what are they?”

  He had an adolescent devilment to him she hadn’t seen in many weeks, he’d been so occupied with a new brick kiln operation. He was so charming and irresistible when in this buoyant spirit, his thick gold-spun hair tied in a queue, his somewhat pasty and round features so attractive in their lucidity. Dagny laughed aloud to see him dressed almost like a dasher in a plum double-breasted overcoat with a velvet collar, and he spun in his excitement, flipping the tails as though he knew his rump looked fine when he moved.

  “That monkey you’ve been stuffing”—impishly, Paul approached the red-ruffed lemur, bending over so as to gaze directly into its face—”I do believe it’s missing one part of its anatomy?”

  “Oh!” Swooping forward, Dagny unclenched his fist and gazed upon two glass eyes of the most remarkable workmanship, they glimmered up at her like pebbles in a creek bed. “Where did you get these?”

  Pouring them into her hand, Paul declared, “Bah! Had some glass-workers craft them for me, but of course!”

  “Oh, my Paul, you are an angel!” Forgetting the commandment against touching dead animals while in his presence, Dagny moved toward the lemur, her fingers itching to remove the round pieces of agate from its poor eye sockets. “Now he can see again!”

  Like a musket shot, Paul’s fingers were around her wrist, and she looked up hesitantly, but he hadn’t lost any of the impish demeanor. “Do that later, put down the eyes”—he did that for her, with his customary decisiveness—”and come with me, I have something much bigger to show you.”

  “Bigger?” Dagny marveled. A bigger animal? A bigger fish?

  Paul looked down at her with joy. “Yes, I want you to come to my library.”

  Before she could swoon dead away—she’d only been invited to his library twice before, in the hours after midnight, when he’d been drunk and angry about some manufacturing subject—Paul gathered her to his massive chest and smiled down at her with what could only be genuine fondness. Perhaps he’s drunk now, in the forenoon? “Don’t worry, mes petits poissons sensibles. Sodra won’t follow, he’s been sent away for the day to the lime pits, and Rabotobefe is overseeing the copper furnaces.”

  As if she would worry about them! Sodra and Rabotobefe were his aides-de-camp who followed him absolutely everywhere, and Dagny could give a fig who knew she mounted their master and rode him in every possible wicked position not approved by Quakers or the bourgeois of Gascony. They must be aware, anyway, being superior and randy highland Merinas themselves.

  In his oblivious glee Paul reached for her stuffing table, saying, “Here—take this log—pretend that you’re showing me a new species of wood that might help in the lumber mill.” He moved to the double doors.

  “But this is my branch for posing the gecko—”

  “You know where the library is!” Paul walked backward and raised his voice, obviously full of some prank. “Follow me at forty paces, as if in a rush of business!”

  Dagny followed at the proper number of paces, swinging her log with authority. Through the complicated pathways of the industrial city Paul had built, Dagny walked briskly, over the bridge that crossed an aqueduct that channeled water to workshops, flanking a row of furnaces that spit forth copper and steel fumes. He claimed the city was called Maison des Singes Diaboliques, House of the Diabolical Monkeys, after her penchant for stalking the fearsome aye-aye monkey. Usually termed the more rudimentary Mantasoa, it was a miraculous manufacturing fortress built on the jungle ridge between Tamatave and Antananarivo, the cloudy capital of the island. The city had been built by corvée labor, the law of the island, so Dagny cast no blame upon Paul for taking advantage of that.

  Nodding her head at various foremen who raised their hands respectfully to her, Dagny wondered what Paul had to show her. A new gown? Paul was particularly fond of gadgetry, so perhaps it was a “soda fountain,” which she had heard could spew forth refreshing fizzy drink. Or perhaps something infinitely more boring, like a speaking trumpet that involved converting sound waves into electricity. Dagny fairly sighed with tedium trying to imagine these new inventions, and was only saved from complete sang-froid by the occasional glimpse of Paul’s rump as his coattails flapped with his nimble gait.

  Mmm, yes, indeed, he has a fine behind.

  She attained his ornate wooden library, following him boldly to the front doors as if on a mission of the utmost importance. Paul was a much more satisfactory lover than other men. He at least talked to her, seemed to know she had a mind beyond seeing and being seen in Broadway, and his technological bent meant he allowed her to glimpse into the masculine world of manufacturing and business, even though much of the time he seemed merely to be talking aloud to her, perhaps wondering what his next conquest or invention would bring. He had no idea it gave her the metallic digestion of a cow to hear all of this talk—she knew it was an indication of respect to be allowed to hear it at all.

  Knowing the guards kept out all others, Dagny dropped the tedious log in the foyer and walked across the soft Savonnerie carpet to join Paul by the whitewashed fireplace, where he was already pacing back and forth in his eagerness, sipping a glass of brandy.

  “Mon bijou précieux des Amériques!” he cried with open arms, but he did not offer her any brandy. He placed the snifter down upon a table and, bending low at the knees, drew her to him, enveloping her with his aroma of cheroot smoke, fresh sweat, and cloves.

  His kiss was so full of vitality and lust that Dagny was weak in her joints, and would have been amiable to being laid out on the vast desk that was his place of study. She feasted upon his rough mouth—his arms were so potent, like being taken by an unbroken bull!—and he angled his vigorous crotch into her with the full unashamed lust of the shipwrecked adventurer that he’d once been, a man with a frigate of vital instruments prepared to bring a savage kingdom to their knees.

  Spreading her thighs willingly, Dagny felt blindly behind her for the familiar desk, but after a few forceful thrusts of his groin that nearly had her splayed out like a fla
iling worm, he quickly withdrew and flung an arm at an item on a table, covered with a cloth.

  “This is my masterpiece, this is what I want to show you,” he said, suddenly reverential and hushed.

  Dagny panted. “A soda fountain?”

  Paul spread his hands before the object the size of a small portmanteau, as though he were Joseph Banks himself telling the Royal Society of a new discovery. “Prepare yourself for …” He lunged forward, whisking away the cloth, displaying the object with a grand royal hand. “The Queen Consort’s new palace!”

  An oddly pitched high roof surmounted a building, a doll’s house of a ground floor and three stories. Tall galleries supported by little doll’s pillars surrounded all the stories, and Dagny could only wonder where the tiny people were.

  “That’s very nice, Paul, but…”

  He stood, awaiting her awestruck reaction, still not breathing.

  Dagny pointed. “This is Ramavo’s new palace?” She stuttered in consternation. Perhaps he is drunk. “How will the Chief Wife fit inside this tiny house?”

  Paul Boneaux remained stock-still, a frozen smile of ecstasy on his face, the cloth in his hand resembling an absurd Eastern religious hat. “Well, no, my doll.” Regaining his animation, he tossed down the rag and gestured frantically at the little house. “This is the model for the new palace I will build for her upon the highest crag in Antananarivo, and just this morning she has approved of it!”

  Breaking into a relieved wreath of smiles, Dagny, too, gestured at the house. “Oh, I see. Yes, that’s very lovely. I suppose it will be much bigger than this, when it’s done being built?”

  Paul strutted now, one hand tucked inside his frock coat, chin held aloft. “This central pillar alone will be one hundred thirty feet high! And before you say there is no single tree that can make one continuous pillar of this height, let me tell you we have investigated, and have selected the very tree, on a knoll sixty miles from Antananarivo!”