The Strangely Wonderful: Tale of Count Balásházy

by Karen Mercury

  She felt her lips moving as though around an invisible oyster, but no sounds came out. He stared her down, and she felt pinned against the canvas. “He could, but … he has no power over coastal operations, and …”

  He hovered over her, so she might as well say it anyway.

  “He’s married.”

  Shutting his jaw with an almost audible snap, Tomaj snorted through his nostrils as though he were about to give her Moses’ Law himself.

  They remained this way for a long time. It seemed someone came to the cabin door—there was some tapping, or scratching, like coons needing food at the door—but they remained with fixed eyes on each other. It almost made Dagny wish she’d never come here, she felt like such a statue at an exhibition.

  “Married,” he whispered at last. “Well, then. Doesn’t he sleep with another woman every night? Yes? Well, then. How can you bear it?”

  It was a relief, the words finally rushing from her. “I can bear it because he’s a rich man, and he gives me what my family needs! We suffered for so long in New York, and now we don’t have to suffer anymore. For so long I wanted my life to rise above sordidness, and now it has. I don’t think anyone should deny me that!”

  It murdered what was left of her spirit when he raised the back of his damaged hand to her face. Now he treated her with pity. “And do you love him?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Does he love you?”

  Why did Tomaj always do this to her? He had a way of always upsetting her. “No, I don’t think he does. I’m just an amusement.” I exist only for sex. “He loves his factory. He might love his wife, but I’m not sure. I know he doesn’t love me.”

  He ran his calloused thumb against her chin. She shivered down to her bones. “Dum sola et cast fuerit.”

  She’d been taught Latin as a child in Pennsylvania. “But I’m neither alone, nor chaste. I’m the mistress of a married man. I’m not ashamed, but it would ruin his mercantile standing if it were to become known on this island.” She dared not say, And just one of your kisses has completely wiped months of his love-making from my heart.

  “Ah, well.” He was somewhat indifferent now, removing his hand from her face. “If you’re satisfied with the arrangement, then I’m not one to step in or protest. Who am I to interfere in the affairs of a man who is sure to be a merchant I do daily business with. As powerful as your beau may be, he obviously shares the same disinclination to assist your brother as I. And about your proposal to me—”

  “I did not come here simply to make a business proposal to you!” Dagny cried, her chest heaving with an unspoken sorrow of mysterious origin. “I came here because I have a profound attraction to you. There is some emanation about you that affects me deeply, on some blood level. When I’m with you, I’m happy, my body fairly sings with joy, and when I’m away from you, I’ve got the blue devils. It’s one of my humors, I’m sure of it—yes, it has to be my blood, because it certainly isn’t phlegm or black choler—without you I’m overcome with melancholy, and to balance out my humors, I need to return to you, to satiate my blood.”

  Unaffected now, Tomaj strolled about the cabin, even picking up the glass from where he’d tossed it before he’d so lustily straddled her and plastered his steaming erection to her pleasured bosom. That now seemed a hundred days ago! “Well, I must agree I certainly have taken enjoyment in your company, Miss Ravenhurst. You’re an intelligent and amusing companion, and some of your medieval notions are downright inspirational. But I give you fair warning. If you return to my glass-house to pose for your portrait, I cannot guarantee the sanctity of your chaste fidelity.” He gestured casually with the empty glass. “Just the sight of, say, your lovely, velvety clavicle, might be enough to send a wolf like me to the bitter end. I must warn you, the last artist’s model I had as heartbreaking and stimulating as you—who was murdered in a brutal manner a few years ago—I eventually got very little painting done at all, as we became consumed in lustily rutting like crack-brained bucks in every corner of my plantation, annoying the servants and small farm animals.”

  Dagny hugged herself and pouted. “Well, then. I think that is a chance I am willing to take. Perhaps it is your passion for this girl that’s behind the reason you have a dog for your figurehead, instead of this girl whom you loved?”

  Tomaj stilled for many long moments, absorbed in the vision of this luscious woman he had just kissed, and had very nearly screwed atop a Duncan Phyfe mahogany chair. All of his men knew his reasons for having Smit carve the brown Newfoundland dog into a figurehead, and naming his flagship after her. But no one ever had the temerity to mention it in pleasant conversation.

  For an upstanding Quaker from Upper Bugbury in Pennsylvania, she had a boldness that titillated him. She must have had at least one lover prior to this Frog shoat. For a woman of mature years who had remained a spinster, she was most deliciously skillful with her mouth and her hands. “There are no women I choose to remember in such a manner, that I am to be reminded of it day and night, whenever I look at, or think about my ship.” He hoped that put an end to her questions.

  “Oh …”

  She looked so crestfallen, as though her “black choler” had overtaken her joyful blood, that Tomaj put down the empty glass and went toward her. Rather gently he said, “Just because I’m a—because I’m a merchant doesn’t mean I’m devoid of all heart, of all principles or higher emotions. If your love belongs to this honorable Frog, then I shall bother you no more. You’re free to roam about my lands, Dagny, to mount expeditions for your extinct dodo bird and Jurassic fish, and to cut wild orchids from any tree that you wish.”

  By the blood of his ancestors, she possessed the most sumptuous, finely molded, and uplifted titties he’d ever had the joy to view. That loathsome Frog-eater had no doubt given her the elegant Delacroix corset, and Tomaj’s rancid jealousy made him want to seize her all the more. Almost standing upon the toes of her boots, he scratched her behind the ear affectionately, like a giant cat. He was pleased with the manner in which she inclined her head, rolling it about his maimed hand, tilting her glowing face at him. He drew her by the shoulder close to him, and she came willingly, almost eagerly. The spot where she touched him, the chest that had been laid bare by the careless application of a jauntily tossed cravat, fairly burned like a stigmata.

  “I repeat my warning, Dagny. My passion for you exceeds that of my first au naturel model. You’re a luscious ripe prize there for my plucking, and it’s only my distaste for constant dueling that prevents me from knocking you perforce against that bulkhead and tail-wagging you until you cry from the spending.”

  But he had no distaste for dueling at all.

  He felt her swoon then. He bent at the knees to catch her as her eyeballs rolled up into her skull, and she went spineless. The scratching raccoons at the door chose that moment to start lacerating his door into smithereens.

  “Oh, damn,” Tomaj breathed mildly.

  “Oh!” Dagny awoke at the caterwauling out in the passageway. Jerking from his arms, she put a hand to her breast and backed up against a canvas screen. “What in God’s name is that animal?”

  A plaintive cry came from behind the wooden door. “The sous-chef is here with your sea pie, Captain!”

  Oh, dear God in heaven.

  Tomaj had no choice but to bow politely at the horrified woman. “Excuse me, my dear.”

  He fairly ripped the door from its hinges in his zeal to get this over with, and Slushy stumbled into the cabin, juggling his chafing dish in one uplifted palm and, incongruously enough, an oddly flattened kippered fish in the other fist. Tomaj whisked the chafing dish from the hapless steward’s paw and spun it onto a table.

  Slushy saluted with the hand that held the deceased fish. “Sir! I’m here to inform you a salver has arrived, and all the details are in place for Sergeant Townshend’s ball!” He relaxed then, casting Tomaj a knowing sideways glance, and allowing the stiff fish to dangle nonchalantly at his side. His spe
ech was confidential and low. “There’s talk on the streets that it’s the event of the season. Word has it that there’ll be pomegranates, and women with fifty-six yards of various commodities upon their fashionable persons, and jackanapes and dandies galore, Mister Macaronis such as yourself. The king’s orchestra will play some of your scandalous Viennese waltzes, and Madame Rabelais even plans upon wearing a badge with a likeness of Radama, and gloves emblazoned to match. Why, my sources say there may be canvass-backs, and Newtown pippins—”

  “All right, you sniveling hedge creeper!” Tomaj roared. “I’ve had just about enough of you! Put down that kipper and kindly quit my cabin!”

  Dagny was at his side, placing her hands coolly on his chest. “It’s quite all right, dear … Tomaj. Your man reminds me that I must go to the Port Admiral’s and see if the packet boat will arrive soon, for I expect some fashions from Paris. A fellow is waiting for me who says he’s found a curiously tiny chameleon that can balance on the tip of one’s finger.” Curtsying demurely, she swept into the passageway, Tomaj following.

  “You’ll be at Townshend’s ball? Accompanied by …”

  She seemed to have a particular liking for his clavicle, for she stared at his throat often. “Oh, no. He would never accompany me. I’ll be with my two brothers. I shall save you a spot on my dance card, if you promise to refrain from murdering Ezekiel.”

  “I believe I can manage that,” Tomaj murmured, kissing her hand, “if I know I’m promised a waltz.”

  They froze into position. On a sudden, the sedate hand kissing was a lusty grope of passionate proportions when Tomaj dropped the hand and kissed her on her ripe mouth. Pressing her into the bulkhead, he glued his mouth to hers and feasted on her herbal taste, one hand fondling her skull, the other swept far down her bustle to draw her heat to him. Instantly his erect prick—if it had ever been skinned up at all—pinned her boldly; he was heartened that she responded with equal fervor, snacking on his mouth.

  Just as abruptly, they broke apart, panting at each other, pupils dilated. Touching an imaginary hat, Tomaj bowed slightly. “Mademoiselle.”

  Dipping down, Dagny fixed him with her swimming eyes. “Sir.” She swished to the companionway.

  If that sentry outside his door dared to give him one look … But he’d trained his men well, and the fellow looked distantly at something in the bow.

  “All right, you petty lurcher,” Tomaj started in immediately, joining Slushy in the dining area. “If you’re such an able hedge creeper, why were you thoroughly unable to give me the communication that that woman’s beau is married?”

  “Married?” Slushy smoothed over this moment by ruminating aloud, “Why, that explains it then. I’ve often seen a filanzana chair come for her to her cottage and take her on the road up to Antananarivo. It would stand to reason this married swain lives near there.”

  Tomaj bellowed, “Then why have you not followed her, you nincompoop?”

  Slushy stood at attention. “Sir! Do you not know how difficult it is to follow someone in a filanzana? King Radama has not allowed any proper roads to be built, as he’s declared this the best defense against European invasion. Why, I’d be as obvious back there as if I was a mahout driver crashing through the jungle on an elephant! Every time she stopped, I’d have to stop, and—”

  Looming over the diminutive bootblack fellow, Tomaj dropped his voice to a menacing whisper. “Perhaps it has occurred to you to pay one of the bearers to tell you where he was taking her?”

  Slushy’s nose twitched. “Pay? With what specie? My gun money from Java is long gone, having been spent on wine, women, and song, and—”

  Tomaj rolled his eyes. “Oh, for the love of…” Fingering some gold mohurs from his pocket, he shoved them into Slushy’s hand. “Perhaps this will refresh your memory! Now get on out of here and follow her!”

  Slushy was ecstatic with the gold, worth much more than the usual silver peso dollars that money changers sitting in market doorways struck into smithereens, creating quarters and pieces even smaller, the value of which became increasingly difficult to determine the more the pieces resembled grains of sand.

  Tomaj stormed onto the quarter gallery to the seat of ease. As he sat, he pondered aloud. “Married. Who could it be … it could be Rabelais. For that matter, it could be Verlaine. No, Dagny said he was rich, couldn’t be Verlaine—he just lost all that money on that absurd peacock farm. Monsieur Launois! That’s the bastard! He’s got those forty thousand coffee trees and that wife who has killed a baboon and stolen his face. But wait, he’s been back in Bourbon the past four months, how could it be him? All right, then … Gratton? He’s a regular cushion thumper with his constant Bible quoting, I couldn’t see him getting the nerve to ravish that vivacious woman, and man alive, he’s got a visage that would scare an aye-aye into a coma. She never said it was a Frog, I just assumed that, could it be Alexander Cameron? He acted suspicious last time I saw him at Albrand’s ball, and I just know he was boxing the Jesuit and getting cockroaches in the head …”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE BOSS OF THE WALTZ

  SERGEANT TOWNSHEND’S PLANTATION WAS THE MOST logical place to hold balls. Other Europeans lacked the capacious ballroom, with space opposite the door for the orchestra, and the adjacent supper-room with the capacity to seat the sixty or so couples that consistently attended these soirees. Barataria was host to two or three of these functions annually, but there were some wives who were too fearful to venture up the coast to the ill-famed Mavasarona Bay, though Count Balásházy was arguably the richest and most eligible man on Madagascar. The wives were steadfast that the roads were too poor for horses, and when this argument failed to hold water, that they had heard of some scurvy doings in and near the plantation of the Hungarian Count and his gang in Harmony Row—that things were not as they seemed.

  So, Sergeant Townshend’s it was. Tomaj deposited Holy Eleanora Brown in the cloakroom and went to the hat room. He was obliged to dance the first quadrille with Ellie, but he wished to attain the ballroom speedily so that he might be the first to claim the spot of the Viennese Waltz on Miss Ravenhurst’s dance card.

  The valse was the joyful apex of dancing. As a boy in Buda, his mother and father often returned home from balls in a sort of strange rapture, and in their living room would dance the valse, their giddiness ensuring the passionate movements were permanently embedded upon his childish brain. After establishing himself in Madagascar, he’d obtained some compositions of Beethoven ländlers and had taken them to the king’s music master to teach his stertorous orchestra to play.

  The vazaha and upper-drawer Malagasy of the Great Red Island had been enjoying the Viennese Waltz for several years now. All women waited for Tomaj as the well-known Boss of the Waltz, so he was in a particular frenzy to find Miss Ravenhurst before he was impressed into service by some gleeful husband or other. In the casual atmosphere of this sultry African coast, it wasn’t unusual to be importuned by the woman herself for a dance, as no one adhered much to continental fripperies.

  It would be an entirely different sensation to hold Dagny by the waist, to soar with her in graceful revolutions about Townshend’s moldy ballroom. To Tomaj, the valse was the artistic recreation of all that had been blissful of that short part of his life before everything had gone wrong, and he could think of no partner better than Miss Ravenhurst for elevating it to the empyreal realm in which it dwelled. He would dance the remaining waltzes with the others—the refined and stiff Malagasy women who were much too short to float at the proper level, and the stout and hearty vazaha wives who danced the valse like it was some sort of zealous Scottish reel, as though they wore clogs instead of slippers.

  The moment he peeked his head into the ballroom and took a glass of champagne from a passing servant’s salver, the king stood in front of him. Rather short and slightly built, Radama had the pleasing Malayan features of that tribe from which the Malagasy were said to descend, though his skin was much fairer. Brandishi
ng a glass of toddy before Tomaj’s face, Tomaj had to bob and duck in a loutish manner to see beyond it.

  “Count Balásházy,” the majestic man boomed. He was quite the bounder, and normally a fellow of good fun, but just now Tomaj was not of the mind for manly camaraderie. “We missed you at the last hunt. I was told you were on a cruise in China.”

  “Oh, yes?” Tomaj said distantly, trying to step around Radama, whose shining medals hurt one’s eyes in the light from the overhead candelabra. “How many wild cattle did you kill this time?”

  “Only three thousand, six hundred, and sixty-three!” Radama sighed sadly. Since he usually led two to three thousand troops to the chase, this was a small number of game indeed. “It is because I had but two generals, General Hazo and General Tazo, in whose hands I’ve led the invading army as you recall, but an army can make only slow way through jungle such as that.”

  He meant, metaphorically, generals of the forest and of fever. “You’re absolutely right. Perhaps if you cut down some more forests to build more kingly palaces, there will be more open land to hunt upon.”

  Just as Tomaj cleared his vision and thought he saw the red coat-tails of Salvatore Ravenhurst across the ballroom, Radama thrust another item into his face. “See the pretty dance cards the missionaries have made with the printing press you gave them!”

  Tomaj whipped the dance card from Radama’s hand. Eyes quickly scanning the blurry and smudged card, Tomaj saw that the Viennese Waltz was the fourth dance on the program. He smiled. “Yes, yes, the press is a fine piece of machinery, one that King George of England would praise you for having.” Radama was endlessly influenced by the opinions of King George, and one could manipulate him into complacency if one informed him the English king would frown upon an exploit.

  Radama planted his body before him and intoned, “The first dance is a quadrille, about to take place in five minutes. Where is Miss Holy Eleanora Brown?”