The Strangely Wonderful: Tale of Count Balásházy

by Karen Mercury

Tomaj drew himself up, and looked down placidly at the king. “Why, I’m searching for her right now. It seems that she’s taken herself off—”

  When he next dared to duck around the king’s shoulder, he cracked heads with someone who came around the aft side of the sovereign.

  “Ach, will you watch where you’re—”

  “I see you’re in a bit of a hurry,” said the fellow, in the hoitytoity accent the Frog planters loved to employ at soirees.

  Angrily rubbing his forehead, Tomaj regarded that idiotic dolt Paul Boneaux.

  Tomaj loathed Boneaux due to his monotonous efforts to place diverse trade embargoes upon Tomaj’s activities. He seemed to think that without ruling the entire island, his motherland would fall sadly in the graces of nobody in particular who was allegedly keeping an eye on things—because nobody was. Secondly, Boneaux’s arrogant manner was completely unjustified. He was a pastry-faced bloated bilgey who had only stumbled upon this island when he wrecked his ship off Fort Dauphin. Were it not for that act of providence, Boneaux would have sailed to the East Indies where he would have been, no doubt, salivating and waving his sword around in some kind of colonialist fervor in Surat or Pondicherry, lopping the heads off of coolies and mahout drivers. It was just unfortunate that the Queen Consort had not, as was her wont, made a personal slave out of this particular shipwrecked European. Well, in a way … perhaps she had …

  Boneaux didn’t need to rub his head. His head was made of marble.

  Tomaj was glad Boneaux was so short of stature, he could glare down at him. “And where is Ramavo?” He asked this of Boneaux, not Radama, who knew that normally Ramavo was back in Antananarivo, painting her feet pink.

  Boneaux put his all into his nasal cavities when he sneered, “Perhaps you’re in a hurry to plunder more Far East hinterlands, and lighten the financial weight of the East India Company.”

  Tomaj smiled a lethal half smile. “Yes, isn’t it generous of me to relieve the Nabobs of Madras of their burden?”

  The king remained oblivious to this verbal subterfuge. “Boneaux has made blueprints for a new palace for Ramavo—”

  “Good, good!” Having finally spied Dagny, entering the ballroom from a garden door with her odious brother Ezekiel, Tomaj clapped the king on the shoulder in a brotherly manner. “It’s good that you chop down some more trees, just as we were speaking of, Radama! More room for the wild pigs!”

  In his efforts to extricate himself from between the king and a Merina governor all done up in roast beef dress, Tomaj became hopelessly wedged beside Boneaux. It seemed they both wished to go the same direction, and their champagne glasses crunched together, both men growling epithets.

  “Imbécile pathétique …”

  “You despicable cur …”

  Boneaux’s burly face reddened, his eyes veritably shooting daggers of hateful yellow vileness and—why was he wearing those ridiculous epaulets? He’d never been in Napoleon’s navy, to anyone’s knowledge—at last they broke free, assisted from behind by some pushy governors. Stumbling forward, every drop of champagne now soaking the fronts of their waistcoats, Boneaux snarled one last “viol de l’idiot!” as he stomped on Tomaj’s foot and ran like a rigger across the ballroom.

  What in the name of Ben Franklin? It had always been bluntly acknowledged that Tomaj and Boneaux shared nothing but an enmity for each other, but at least they’d always grudgingly given each other a semblance of respect when in public! Boneaux might be an infamous empire-builder, but he was the most innovative engineer the island had ever seen, employing thousands of Malagasy artisans in his manufacturing complex near Mantasoa. Now here he was, practically flattening Radama’s toddler nephews in his zeal to be the first to reach Miss Ravenhurst, probably just because he saw Tomaj about to head over there, and he had to be superior in all endeavors.

  “Count Balásházy!” cried the governor he’d been squashed against. “Tell me, have you seen any more of the black Chinese tea, infused with that oil of Bergamot?”

  “We had a lot, but we threw it overboard. Excuse me.”

  Townshend himself bellowed out the toast that signaled the start of the ball, as Tomaj made his way across the floor. “Long live King Radama!”

  “Long live King Radama!” cheered the guests, all too eager for an excuse for another glass of champagne.

  Ah, Dagny was lovelier than she’d been in any of his opiumaddled visions, in a dress of salmon tulle over pink satin. The revealing bodice, ornamented with pearls, barely covered her sun-browned shoulders, and Tomaj focused on the uplifted spheres of her succulent breasts, how they heaved and almost seemed to jiggle as she raised her hand, encased in a seductively long white glove, to Boneaux’s hammy lips. Her abundant chestnut hair, evidently coiffed with tongs into a mass of bulbous curls, was elevated on the summit into an appealing Apollo knot upon which two red birds of paradise perched, their dainty little beaks pecking at a coronet ornament, their sweeping tail feathers tickling her shoulders. Even in this age of reverberating headgear, this one beat all.

  Ezekiel glared at Tomaj, angrily wringing his bony hands, which stuck out from his short coat-sleeves, so Tomaj approached Salvatore. The two men bowed deeply to one another.

  “I’m so very glad to see you again, Count Balásházy.” The ravishing geologist stood erect and smiled alluringly, as though he knew he was the most proudly dressed peacock at the ball, outshining even the colorful governors and the dandified Tomaj in his splendor. His crimson frock-coat had a velvet collar and claw-hammer tails; like Tomaj, his waistcoat was pure white, as were the chitterlings and stock. Tonight he’d replaced his simple pirate’s hoop earring with an emerald stud, and he had slipped on a few more gaudily jeweled rings. “I had a most enjoyable conversation with you last time we met.”

  “The feeling is mutual, my good man. Please know that you’re welcome to accompany your sister any time to Barataria. I’ve extended to her an invitation to roam the grounds whenever she pleases, to take any animal or plant she fancies.”

  “Oh, have you?” Sal went quite giddy over this news, the joy lighting up his pleasing, cherubic features. Tonight Sal had made a severe queue of his hair the color of Muscat sands; this arrangement showed his sculptural cheekbones and fine, high forehead to their best advantage. “Then I will definitely accompany her on her next outing. As I believe most of your land is either under cultivation, has been made into elegant parklands, or is composed of sedimentary mica schist and metamorphic gneiss—”

  “Perhaps there will not be too many rocks on my lands for you to study,” Tomaj interrupted, “so while Miss Ravenhurst chases her extinct dodo, you might give me the pleasure of strolling with me through the parklands, or allowing me to sketch you.”

  Salvatore put his hand on his breast. “Me? Sketch me? Why, Count Balásházy, I’m hardly—”

  “Tomaj, please, my good boy.”

  “Tomaj, I’m hardly the handsome sort one would wish to sketch. But by all means …”

  Dagny was writing Boneaux’s name on her dance card! That son of a bitch had stomped on his foot in his effort to be the first to claim a dance. “Sal,” Tomaj leaned in confidentially, “how is this chief of industry acquainted with your sister?”

  For a moment, Salvatore acted unfamiliar with the bilgey. He admitted, “Oh, Monsieur Boneaux? I may have introduced them, I can’t rightly recall. We’ve had some dealings before, when I’ve sold him some lye, or was it sulphur from some pits up near Lac Alaotra? He seems an acceptable fellow …”

  “Are you not dancing the first quadrille with Miss Ravenhurst?”

  “Why, no, that would be Ezekiel—”

  Zeke burst forward belligerently, fairly elbowing the smaller Sal aside in his combative zest. “It is I who am dancing the first quadrille, so go ahead and laugh if you want to, you damned hay-making son of a sea cock!”

  Holy Eleanora Brown approached, and as Boneaux arrogantly sauntered away with a pleased grin to his jib, Tomaj took his opening. “Nobod
y is laughing, Mr. Zhukov,” he smirked, executing a quick balletic leap to his right to gain the attention of Dagny.

  She was just dropping her dance card to where it hung from a cord at her waist. She looked up blankly at Tomaj, and erupted in a wreath of genuine smiles. “Why, Tomaj! I haven’t seen you yet tonight—I thought it might be fashionable in these parts to arrive late, as it is in New York society, and—oh!”

  Taking her hand in his, Tomaj bowed low, and merely hovered his lips above her gloved and perfumed hand, not pressing his mouth to it as the filthy Boneaux had. With this respectful Handküss, Tomaj stood erect and clicked his heels together. “Küss die Hand, gnädige Fräulein.”

  This was the proper Viennese manner to address a lady, and it had a colossal effect. Dagny was rendered speechless, her mouth hanging slightly open, her lower lip glistening with such succor Tomaj wanted nothing more than to slurp it up between his teeth. But although Ellie had her sights set on him, she had luckily been waylaid by some native lieutenant or other, and Tomaj said smoothly, “I’m hoping you will consent to dance the first waltz with me. If you decline, I’ll be hoping until all’s blue.”

  A flush came over her then, and she raised a shaky fan to distractedly flutter about her bosom. “Waltz … ? But I heard tell in New York it was a dance of too loose character for maidens to perform, an obscene display only confined to … to lick-spigots. As your man Slushy said, a scandalous fatal contagion.”

  So she had not promised Boneaux the waltz! “But, my dear. You’re in Madagascar now. The waltz comes from Vienna, the sister city to my Pest-Buda, has been accepted in Parisian circles, and as long as ten years ago was introduced at a ball for the Prince Regent in London. We have danced it here for well on seven years. Just because New York doesn’t know of it doesn’t mean it isn’t the most graceful, thrilling, and most sensual dance known to man. I would be honored if you would allow me to teach you … with the utmost respect for your person.”

  As though the phrase “utmost respect” had cued Zeke’s spiritualistic antennae, he was at once at his sister’s side like a layer of oakum. “Excuse us,” he said. “They’re cranking up the orchestra.”

  How could this blateroon dance with such a sophisticated lady, when he could scarcely put two hands in the same place at the same time? Ezekiel grabbed Dagny by the shoulder and yanked her onto the ballroom floor.

  Ellie stood obsequiously behind Tomaj, but Dagny continued to stare at him, so he called out, “The waltz can be learned as quickly as one, two, three.”

  “It’s an indecent foreign dance!” Zeke snapped, just as Ellie touched Tomaj’s shoulder.

  Tomaj wasn’t fortunate enough to be within Dagny’s square, and he saw over his shoulder that she was in a square with Boneaux and his personable wife, Suzanne. Holy Eleanora Brown was accustomed to Tomaj’s traveling eyes, and did not adjust one facial muscle that would betray that she noted him glancing over his shoulder with dizzying speed every time they crossed over to new positions. That god-damned Ezekiel was really a very smooth dancer, arranging his awkward limbs into time with the screeching violins, flapping his uncouth appendages precisely in layers through the stale moldy air, setting a hand perfectly on Suzanne’s hand when he should, not cocking his jackass head in the wrong direction when he shouldn’t. Were Quakers supposed to dance?

  What was that asinine expression on Boneaux’s face every time his hand would touch Dagny’s? He capered around her as though a faun tooting on a lute, the way he lifted his knees, grinning like an impudent elf every time his bloated face was required to turn her way. Why, if Tomaj chanced to meet that arrogant ass on a fair footing, say Whampoa Harbor at Canton, he’d blast his bilgey rump into a celestial altitude that even a sextant couldn’t find.

  Now, that was a pleasant thought. Tomaj smiled as he touched Ellie’s hand.

  The quadrille ended, and Tomaj was obligated to promenade with Ellie around the perimeter of the room, but he didn’t offer her any refreshments as he should have, and he handed her off to her next dance partner, Errol Zaleski. Madagascar balls were extremely equitable affairs in that the king might dance with a commoner, and a man who normally would take it into his head to wrestle with crocodiles might escort a high-bred courtesan, if he bathed beforehand, which Zaleski had today.

  Ignoring the solitary women who adorned the walls of the ballroom, Tomaj found Salvatore in the smoking room chatting with Chick and having a cheroot.

  “Ah, I’m glad to see you’ve been introduced,” said Tomaj, taking a fresh glass of champagne from a passing salver.

  At this early hour of the ball, Chick’s waistcoat was already the victim of some relentless broadsides of the buffet table. But then Chick was a blacksmith, who with Alexander Cameron had royal contracts to build water mills and reservoirs, one of those innovative men of business who enjoyed the work, and was only there because his wife wished to dance with Tomaj. “Yes, this able fellow has been expedient in locating potash and soda for my use in the glassware factory, and he now says he can find lime for the tannery. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, would you?” Chick chortled with jollity. “He appears more the high society Almack’s sort, with this peacock macaroni business about the throat and neck! And what jewelry! Why, if I wasn’t already wed, I’d take him for a beauty in her first London season!”

  “Yes,” agreed Tomaj warmly, “you wouldn’t take him for a fellow who wanders about the highlands with rocks in his head.”

  Rather than recoil from the obese and happy Chick, Sal patted him on his shoulder. “Chick, you best fix on locating my sister if you wish to secure a spot on her dance card. Believe it or not, she’s a rarer beauty than me.”

  Chick became agitated at this thought, whipping his head this way and that. “Where? Where?”

  Tomaj laughed. “I believe she’s dancing the Scotch reel with Gratton. Go join the queue awaiting her to finish. Come, Sal,” Tomaj said, as Chick rushed off, “I have a commodity in my pocket that might interest you more than potash.”

  Sal followed Tomaj out to the garden, a lackluster affair that comprised more stone pathways and garden benches than plants. Tomaj found a suitable spot behind a tall palm that was overtaken with jessamine vines. They sat on a bench, and Tomaj withdrew his traveling opium pipe.

  Sal’s eyes widened. “Ah,” he said reverently. “I thought you might be showing me some celestine, but this is even better … at the moment.”

  “The Black Smoke. Tell me, Salvatore,” said Tomaj, pinching some opium-drenched hashish from an ivory container. “You were standing right there when I invited Dagny to dance the waltz with me. Did she agree?”

  When Salvatore posed his profile to look distantly out at nothing in particular, one could detect traces of a history steeped in crime, or shame. Something Sal wished to forget about, and something Tomaj wished to know. Tomaj wanted nothing more than to take the darling man in his arms, soothe him, and protect him from the evils that he seemed completely incapable of fighting himself. Smiling sadly, Sal looked down at a clump of round white flowers. “She said ‘yes’ more to you than to the first five fellows who asked.” Brightening now, he turned his face to Tomaj and said, “I do know she fancies you, Count.”

  “Bah!” Tomaj scoffed. He lit his pipe with the spill he’d brought from the smoking room. He sucked powerfully on the jade pipe stem, gratified at the taste of fusty parchment that imbued his nostrils and seemed to bloom in between his eyes. “I don’t suppose she has much room in her heart to fancy anyone, Sal … not with that beau she’s in love with in the picture.”

  Sal’s face stilled. Tomaj handed him the pipe, and the spill in Tomaj’s hand trembled with the faintest quiver. “She’s not in love with that beau.”

  Tomaj smiled warmly. “Now you’ve made me curious. What leads you to say that?”

  “Oh. Just probably that I wish she wasn’t. I’m not that fond of him myself. At least, I was fond of him, in a bearish sort of bumbling way, until I met you.” He now
looked directly at Tomaj from under silken eyelashes. “I much prefer you. And I know she fancies you.”

  Tomaj urged the pipe to Sal’s lips, but the man never took his eyes from Tomaj. His directness was unnerving. “How do you know this?”

  Sal sucked deeply of the pipe. His answer took a long time in coming. “Because.” He exhaled, streams of musty smoke emitting from his perfect nostrils. “I was at home in Tamatave when she returned with Zeke in a lather, his finger broken. He yelled at her, and she yelled back at him. ‘Course, Zeke always does that. Yell. You have to know him, Count. He’s not as bad as he seems. He thinks he’s protecting Dagny. He’s only accustomed to being belligerent…”

  “I understand that,” Tomaj said quietly.

  “It sometimes looks like he goes to great lengths … Anyway, to answer your question. I’ve known that most exemplary woman for a long time. And she said some things in your defense. Oh, adorable things, things I’ve never heard her say, such as, ‘That man has more charm than you can balance on your pisiform.’”

  “Pisiform?” Tomaj breathed, alarmed.

  Sal laughed, handing the pipe back to Tomaj. “Apparently a pisiform is a tiny bone in one’s hand.”

  “Ah.” Tomaj took the pipe, but didn’t wish to smoke any longer. It was joy enough to be sitting here, mellow and carefree, fireflies lightly flitting about, the inharmonious strains of the last Scotch Reel movement flowing like a cross-tide through the humid waves of air. “Why is your name Salvatore, when you’re a Quaker from Pennsylvania?”

  “Pennsylvania? Oh, ah. I’m not from Pennsylvania. I’m from South Carolina. Can’t you tell by my accent?”

  During a long silence, revelers emerged from the house, smoking and shouting, laughing.

  “South Carolina, then?” Tomaj said casually.

  Sal opened up his palm to the skies. “Yes, my great-grandfather was a Cherokee warrior who served with Colonel James Moore against the Tuscarora in 1713. I know, I look all white—too white—but my great-grandpa was red. I can trust you. There were certain laws in South Carolina that compelled me to move to New York, where I knew the laws were more forgiving—”