The Strangely Wonderful: Tale of Count Balásházy

by Karen Mercury

  Tomaj turned and went to the library table where he’d last left his afyuni pipe. It was his favorite Chinese pipe with a stem of stained bamboo, decorated with finely worked silver. With remote disinterest, he sniffed the silver bowl, musing to himself, I shall have to make sure we offload the next shipment into the Atlantic waters much sooner than April, for I think sitting around the godowns caused it to age disfavorably.

  Antoine shrieked like a woman. Tomaj turned his head from the pipe when he heard the jar thud on the floor.

  Youx stood backed up against a bookcase, as if he wished to climb backward up it like a spider. He gasped, pointed, clutched his throat. “A nose! Sainte merde! C’est un nez! C’est le nez de Yves! Où avez-vous obtenu cela?”

  Tomaj smirked, satisfied with this response. His voice seemed to come from outside of himself, as though he were standing on the other side of the room intoning like a reanimated vampire. “D’un pirate chinois. Ainsi je ne veux pas en entendre davantage concernant la merveille qu’est l’amour.”

  From a Chinese pirate. So I don’t want to hear any more about how wonderful love is.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AFYUNI DAYS

  ACH,” TOMAJ GROANED, THE WORD FORMING COTTON inside his mouth. “They’ve run me out of town like a common pygmy.”

  Someone laughed. “Maybe no common pygmy, sir … more like an uncommonly mad nabob.”

  Bellingham. Tomaj cracked open his throbbing eyes—had someone opened the curtains? Did they have every god-damned lamp on the ship lit? “By my ancestors’ blood. How long did I sleep?” In his soporific dreams, he’d been all the way to Java with Stamford Raffles, cruising in a finely appointed yacht—but not as fine as this great cabin of his! Tomaj squirmed with the sheer decadence of being such a wealthy businessman he could afford twenty-hour naps.

  “Oh, about half an hour, to judge from this hubble-bubble what’s still warm inside the shell,” Bellingham remarked, and Tomaj shot to a sitting position, naked beneath the silk sheets.

  Tossing them off, Tomaj went to inspect the table where, indeed, the rude hookah made from a coconut shell was still warm to the touch, and the musty library smell of opium still clung to its bowl. “Half an hour?” He noticed the heavy damask curtains of the stern windows were closed and not a single lamp burned in the cabin, and one bell was struck: Half past noon! It was impossible!

  “And what’s this bonny-clabber?” Tomaj nearly vomited when he brought a glass of sour milk within reach of his nose.

  “Never mind that, sir.” Bellingham eased the swill from his hand. “Right now, you’ve got a visitor.”

  Tomaj made out the figure of Antoine Youx, leaning like a raked mast against the closed door.

  Bellingham touched Tomaj’s arm. “Not him, sir, the mermaid from the drink, minus her blateroon brother.”

  “Dagny Ravenhurst?” Tomaj addressed Youx. “Aboard Stormalong? How the blazes did she get here?”

  Youx came forward. “She was running down the quay, waving her arms and raising a stink. We could hardly ignore her, so Broadhecker sent the skiff over, and they came alongside. I couldn’t stop them from putting out the ladder, now, could I?”

  “What’s she here for?” Tomaj spun around, looking for anything that might resemble clothing.

  Youx chortled. “She’s come to see you, of course!”

  Tomaj blindly stepped into China silk drawers that Bellingham withdrew from a tallboy. “Me? Whatever in blue blazes for? To scold me for my behavior toward her bilge-rat brother?”

  “More’n likely, sir.” Bellingham giggled.

  Tomaj slapped Bellingham’s hands away from the drawer buttons. “Release me, you squeaker! What’s this blackstrap doing here?”

  Youx removed the glass of terrible port from Tomaj’s hand as Bellingham sheathed his arm in a shirtsleeve. “You were drinking it, Cap’n, but not to worry. I’ll have Slushy bring in some Chambertin—”

  “Yes, yes, have Slushy bring a chafing dish of whatever he’s got, a sea pie if he’s got it. Did we drink all the Montrachet at that last dinner party?”

  “I’ll send someone to get some from the wine cellars at Barataria,” Youx replied as he drew the stern curtains.

  The light set off a melancholic reaction, nearly hurling Tomaj back into his recent catalepsy, the blue devils that had brought on the newest afyuni binge. “Ah!” he cried, smacking his forehead in chagrin. “She’s come to chastise me for running her brother out of town—”

  “—like a common pygmy,” Bellingham reminded him as he jumped on a stool to button the top mother-of-pearl buttons at Tomaj’s collar.

  “Might I say,” Youx ventured, holding out Tomaj’s favored waistcoat of flowered Marcella, “that she doesn’t strike me in an angry attitude at all, Captain. She is quite, how do you say, happy and gay, and looking like the Queen of May, and hands are amusing her with a game of ducks and drakes.”

  Tomaj shrugged into the waistcoat and reached for his cleaning stick—he preferred the Arab manner of cleaning one’s teeth with a sweet miswak root of the Soudanese tree. “Ah! If I don’t hurry, they’ll be crowning her with a wreath of flowers! Oh, lay aft me, Bellingham—where are my boots?”

  That frightful man with carious teeth led her down the companionway of the sleek Baltimore clipper. She had never been aboard such an impressive vessel, with its ornately carved and painted gingerbread, the brightwork polished to a high spit. She had made the mistake of telling Zaleski how much she admired the Stormalong.

  He now rattled off, “We were fortunate to pick her up in Montego Bay. She reminded the master of a schooner he once commanded, so we rerigged her with three masts instead of the usual two—we had to reduce the mainsail and the diameter of the masts and add a driver mast. She’s a lucky ship, I daresay, the speediest in the Indian Ocean with her long easy lines. The cutaway forefoot is very marked, and the stern post’s rake is greater than other—”

  “Why is it,” Dagny cut off the boring monologue that she didn’t understand, “that the figurehead appears to be of a dog and not a woman? Isn’t it usual to depict a woman, either real or mythological? Instead, he has a dog, which … well, I suppose he named his ship after his dog Stormalong.”

  Zaleski paused meaningfully before the sentry who stood guard at the great cabin door. It was then she noticed Zaleski had one green eye and one blue, and the pupil of the blue eye was fixed in a permanent dilation. “Emir-el-Bahr didn’t want no beamy doxy over his cutwater. As for why, I reckon he’ll just have to tell you himself, for if I do, he’ll give me Moses’ Law.”

  “Yes, but why—”

  Someone inside the great cabin had heard them talking, for the door was now pulled open, and the adorable moppet in naval livery stood there.

  “Come in,” he chirped at Dagny, but threw his senior shipmate a surly glance and raised a palm against him. “Not you,” he said, and shut the door once Dagny was inside.

  This cabin was evidently a day-room divided from others by a canvas screen. The towheaded urchin was the same who had laughed at her brother in Tomaj’s reception room a fortnight ago, and now, although he made an admirable attempt to stand rigid with hands crossed before him, looking straight ahead like a proper cabin boy, Dagny detected the smile at the corners of his mouth.

  “Little boy, tell me. What is Moses’ Law?”

  “Moses’ Law? Why, that’s thirty-nine lashes with a cat. The most you can give a fellow without properly killing him.”

  “I see. And who is Emir-el-Bahr?”

  He sputtered to keep from laughing. “It’s Arabic, miss. Means ‘Lord of the Seas.’”

  A new voice was mellifluous with Transylvanian tones. “Wherefrom we get the English word ‘admiral.’”

  Dagny beheld him, and stopped breathing. Yes. He was the most exotically statuesque man she’d ever seen. She hadn’t slept more than an hour at a time in the past fortnight from being tortured by specters of him, as though his romantic nimbus hovered by her bedsid
e, breathing words of sensuality down the back of her neck, infiltrating her dreaming spirit with tantalizing visions of being caressed by damaged hands, licked by an alluring talented tongue, snuffled by a superb Roman nose.

  She tried to stall those waves of sensuality, but the beauty of the man was so much larger than life she fairly felt bowled over merely because he stood ten feet away, long tapering fingers stuck dashingly into the pockets of his ridiculously tight trousers that left nothing of his large relaxed lobcock to the imagination.

  He smiled remotely in that saurian manner that let her know he had much more to teach her.

  “Right. That’s Cap’n Balásházy, the Admiral, until all’s blue,” the poppet chortled.

  Tomaj came forward, shoving the boy in the shoulder to encourage him toward the door. “All right, Bellingham, off you go on that errand to the ironmonger.”

  “Ironmonger, aye,” Bellingham agreed happily, giving Dagny an adorable little bow and salute on his way out of the cabin.

  “Now, Miss Ravenhurst.”

  He was so close, looming over her with his intensely glittering tourmaline eyes, that Dagny shivered, and hugged herself. Unfortunately this action reminded her that in her disciplined mission of this forenoon, she’d donned the sultry Parisian corset that Paul had given her, covering it with only a gown that sported the most unfashionably revealing bodice. Avoiding Tomaj’s eyes, she looked down, but saw only the shelf of her enormously voluptuous bosom, so she looked to a bottle of wine on a table instead.

  “I’m surprised to see you here. The last meeting we had ended on a rather hostile note.” He poured some wine, turning his back to her.

  “Well, yes, you did break my brother’s finger.”

  Was he chortling? She had accused him of being a cruel man, which he was, but like a convolvulus that kept turning to the sun, there was an affectionate aspect to him, as well. “If you’re looking for an apology, I’ll not give you one. Any ass-wiper who enters my home and proceeds to accuse me of various dubiously inherited traits deserves that, and worse.”

  “I’m the first to admit, my brother can be rather … bellicose. He’s had a difficult life, there hasn’t been much to soothe him, so he reacts to all strangers like they were out to swindle him.”

  Handing her a wine glass, Tomaj seated himself and gestured her to another chair. “And this is the man you think would make a marvelous merchant? Why, he’d be leaping over the counter to garrote the first customer who told him his calico was the wrong shade of plaid.”

  Now Dagny could not suppress a tiny smile. “But your voice does sound Russian, Count … Tomaj. You said your mother hailed from Pest-Buda. Then you are … Hungarian?”

  Ah, the absolutely irresistible arrogance of his smile! He lowered his head to sip the wine, but kept his intelligent eyes on her. A seductive lizard, unsure whether to bite or caress. “I’m a Hungarian count, as must be obvious by now. We were taught German as children because the Magyar language was considered too boorish. When I came to New York, I did not enjoy a privileged youth … as many of us did not. However, I don’t react to every stranger as though she were out to take something from me. So might I enquire again why I’m blessed with a visit from you?”

  He kept his eyes on her, and it wasn’t in her nature to shy from business confrontations, so she set her wine glass onto a small table. She leaned forward while hugging herself and noted his eyes flickering with male awareness of her charms. “I’ve thought how pleasant it would be for you to continue your portrait of me. You said yourself I was the best model you’ve had in years.” He broke their gaze then, exhaling with frustration of some kind and staring distantly at a design on a rug. “Perhaps if you were to give my belligerent brother in Tamatave some of the trade, he can sell your produce to visiting whalers, sailors, missionaries, and planters from the hinterlands. You seem to employ a great number of Europeans; surely they’re wondering where to purchase tobacco, or linens, or some of the fine silk you seem to have in abundance. Some of the merchants who supply you can also supply him—who will lose? There is not one man in Tamatave who has yet done this. And …” He returned his gaze to her, now a sort of murkiness swimming in those crystalline eyes. “With my brother occupied—in Tamatave—we will be free to pursue artistic endeavors in your glass-house unhampered, and I … will be willing … to pose in the au naturel manner you seem accustomed to.”

  Her hand shaking, she reached for her glass, only to find it empty. It had been years since she’d made a business deal like this.

  His nostrils flared as he breathed laboriously, eyes riveted to her as she’d once seen a hellcat quietly stalk a rabbit in America. His admirable phallus swelled noticeably beneath the thin covering of his satin trousers, elongating against the thigh. It twitched and jumped, and his balls filled the tight crotch of the trousers. At last he spoke. “Miss Ravenhurst. Am I interpreting this correctly? You propose to model nude for me? In all of your feminine splendor, with nothing more than a palm tree to shade you?”

  Dagny nodded tersely. “Yes.”

  He panted like a foaming stallion that had just galloped ten miles. “I don’t think you realize what you’re requesting.”

  “I think I do.”

  “You’re asking a man like me to sit idly by while you—”

  In one fluid leonine movement he tossed his wineglass to the carpet and stood, his beautiful Hungarian gnarr surrounding her as she reared up against the back of the chair. Planting one foot on either side of her thighs, he bent at the knees, cradled her jawbone in his exquisitely tapered hand, and kissed her.

  She was enveloped in a transporting aroma of vanilla, berries, and musty library books. The tending of the ship, perhaps when another vessel cruised by, had her senses reeling, and she sank into the sheer joy of his voluptuous mouth tenderly ministering to her. Ah, he kissed like a nobleman, or like she’d always imagined a refined aristocratic man would kiss, slow and thirsty, his fingers sinking into the curls at the base of her skull, cradling her like a precious geode of gemstones. Gently licking the inside of her upper lip, he moved his succulent mouth ever so pliantly against hers, snorting hot breaths when he sucked her lower lip between his gently nipping teeth, like a playful cat.

  She could not stop her hands from snuggling upside his narrow hips and pinching the bands of muscle there, causing him to swivel his bursting crotch against her bare breasts. He squashed her pounding breasts with the heat of his full-blown erection, sliding his left imperfect hand between them, and snaking three fingers inside the sweaty cleft of her bosom.

  How long his fingers must be, to slither inside her corset like that, and lift her ripe breast almost entirely from its whalebone structure, so that the nipple half-peeked from under the stiff lace. Panting hotly as he licked the underside of her tongue, Tomaj detached his mouth with a sucking sound and plastered it like a venomous barnacle to the sensitive muscle right under her earlobe, where he chewed and bit. His calloused thumb traced lightly over her stiff nipple, and Dagny spread her thighs, under the influence of an overwhelming surge of lust, the likes of which she’d never known.

  With a strange rush, all the blood from her brain was sucked into her abdomen, and the outer lips of her quim bloomed as though suffused by some unknown heavenly ichor. As the odd overwhelming sensation compelled her hips to drive forward against his thighs, she slid a hand around his rump, and tickled the underside of his weighty balls.

  Detaching his mouth from her neck with a piercing gasp, Tomaj unfurled the full length of his spine, threw his head back, and growled at the deckhead. “I could just eat you up and spit you out for dessert.” He shoved himself off the back of the chair and roared down at her, “You don’t want to fuck me.”

  “Why not?” she cried, a disembodied voice.

  Why did he sound so angry? He retreated to the canvas screen on the other side of the room, and Dagny pushed her body off the chair. By now all her brain functions hovered somewhere around the upper deck of the
ship, and she clutched the edge of the table when she poured herself more wine she certainly didn’t need.

  They stood at opposite sides of the cabin, panting at each other, as she attempted to stuff her breast back into her corset. In her youth, there had not been nearly as much of her to handle. She wasn’t embarrassed that now there was more of her to hold.

  Did he expect her to be shocked? She had been alive too long to be shocked at anything. My, she adored this new aspect of him, as he leaned shuddering against a bulkhead, brushing his satiny black hair from his face, his penis pulsating visibly against his thigh. His elegant hand trembled, trying to stuff the glossy black hair into his queue. She’d only seen the distasteful aspects of men before. This was new, an aristocratic and heartless man almost weeping from lust.

  Oh, this was the best wine she’d ever tasted.

  He shouted, “I won’t treat you like a bitch!”

  Why was he so disheveled? Surely a nautical man, an admiral to boot, had experienced many more jaded scenes in his life.

  “Of course, of course, you won’t,” Dagny panted.

  Hurling himself off the bulkhead, he came forward, pointing a finger at the deck. “I will not lower you to the status of a decayed strumpet or a gobble-prick … because you have a beau!”

  When Dagny remembered her beau, the shiver that went through her thighs felt sickening. “Yes, yes,” she uttered through rubbery lips. “The beau.”

  Tomaj was so fiery! “I cannot be around you and not touch your lushness. I won’t let you sell yourself for your brother’s business.”

  “But it’s not selling myself, Tomaj, to pose for a painting, don’t you see? How on earth is that ‘selling myself’? You can paint me, the beau never needs to know, and you can sell the paint—”

  He roared, “I will know! I will know, and that’s all that matters!” He came closer now, and it was probably her limp state of spirits that made her think that tears glistened in the corners of his eyes. “Can’t this beau of yours assist your brother?”