The Strangely Wonderful: Tale of Count Balásházy

by Karen Mercury

  Tomaj enjoyed the company of the lusty, passionate king. Before the splendid arrival of the shipwrecked “Grand Frenchman,” Tomaj had worked with the missionaries to set up the first printing press, training hundreds of apprentices in metal working, locating lime to set up a tannery and shoe factory, someone always croaking before they could quite get everything in working order. He introduced the manufacture of bricks, soap, and sulphur, and with Chick and Alexander Cameron, who was put in charge of public works, they constructed an aqueduct to bring water from a lake.

  Tomaj wasn’t an industrialist like Boneaux was. Tomaj did these things in between cruises to amuse himself and Radama. He had the wherewithal to get stores and instruments, and it amused him to see the faltering attempts of the London Missionary Society to teach the natives to read and write. As he’d formed a bucolic democracy with the men of Mavasarona, Tomaj had hoped the remainder of the island could come together in bourgeois happiness.

  Radama’s dead, Tomaj kept thinking as he rounded the last peninsula before Tamatave. Of course Radama’s sister’s son, Rakotobe, would be the new king, since Radama had never sired a child, either through disinterest or revulsion, with his Queen Consort, the cruel Ramavo who was so enamored of Boneaux. Rakotobe was a fine, moderate youth who had trained at the sides of the missionaries. Once Tomaj finished his business in Tamatave, he would take the journey to Antananarivo, to pay his respects to Rakotobe.

  As he approached the village, many friendly citizens waved their arms to inform him that his godowns were ablaze. From here he could stow the holds of his purchaser’s vessels without them ever having to enter Mavasarona Bay. Indeed, two of the five warehouses Tomaj owned were nearly halfway consumed by fire, while a growing crowd of ignoramuses stood and gawked with their hands at their sides.

  “What in the name of razana is going on around here?” was the general gist of his rant in Malagasy. “Where’s the damned bucket brigade? We’re right next to an ocean, you damned minegny lackbrains! Look, right here!” Tearing to an untouched godown, Tomaj unlocked the hasp, entered, and threw empty buckets at the useless bystanders. “Move! What is wrong with you? I’ll pay you well!”

  “The …” a stammering longshoreman at last uttered. “The Port Admiral said we’re not to try to put out the fire.”

  Oho! That same damned Port Admiral again, was it?

  Tomaj shouted, “I’ll pay every man who helps put out the fires twenty dollars and all the real Jamaican rum he can drink for two days!”

  About fifteen men instantly grabbed buckets and dashed for the ocean. Another thirty rocked fore and aft on their feet, as though pitching in a wicked scend.

  “You! Ranaivo! How many times have I given your family food, and put you to work on my ships? Rakasikefy! I’ve known you for ten years, we’ve played music and gotten drunk together, how much arrack have I given you? Rajebo, how much incense have I given you for your tromba ceremonies, and herbal mixtures for your aoly amulets?” These men so singled out finally slipped free, joining the bucket brigade. “Now you stand here like a herd of dumb cattle and tell me you can’t help because the Port Admiral told you not to?”

  Grabbing his own bucket, Tomaj fell to muttering to himself. “Why, I’ll seize that clinchpoop to the shrouds and give him so many lashes with the cat he won’t have any skin left. Damned skinless bastard …”

  When he returned to the godown to splash his meager bucket on the towering flames, Youx rode up. As they ferried buckets up the line, Tomaj told him about the admiral’s edict. Youx agreed it was all a nefarious plot involving the king’s death, his Queen Consort Ramavo, and the baboon Boneaux.

  “The people are petrified to death, don’t you see?” Tomaj said.

  “We’ve got to wipe out that worthless eunuch without balls!” agreed Youx.

  “Which one?”

  “The admiral for one! After that… Boneaux!”

  Tomaj flung the bucket of water on the godown, and was rewarded with a face full of burned porcelain smoke, then tossed the empty bucket to the next man. “Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “But perhaps we won’t have to really go looking for Boneaux.”

  When Tomaj’s pilfering, marauding crew of sea rovers arrived, they were able to save part of one godown, while the other, full of pearls, jades, and porcelain, was an inestimable loss. Fortunately Tomaj had stowed the smaller, more manageable and valuable items like diamonds from Golkonda, sapphires from Kashmir, and Burmese rubies in a room in Barataria, and a new shipment of ivory and opium was still in his godowns inside the fort, awaiting news from the purchasers.

  Tomaj wiped his face with a sooty length of silk. “Write a note to Dick Burton,” he told Youx. “Last I heard he was at Simon’s Town in False Bay. Tell him, ‘All China and Japan cargo burned. All other Far East intact.’ If that god-damned admiral will let us get a letter out on the next packet ship.”

  “D’ye find it curious at all that it was only the Chinese cargo burned?” Youx posited. “Ah, look who finally arrives when the fire’s all out. He should know better than to annoy you.”

  Zeke Zhukov wandered down the beach from town, wrists bare underneath the short frayed cuffs, as though he hadn’t found a new coat yet. For no apparent reason, he had a carefree attitude Tomaj had never seen in him before, as he looked about amiably from under the brim of a japanned leather hunting cap that gave him the look of a phaeton driver.

  “What manner of outlandish hat will that blateroon come up with next?” Youx mused. “Castillo has got the extra shot and powder, if you’ve need of any.”

  “No mind,” Tomaj sighed. Now that the immediate panic had gone, he was enervated. He no longer felt like even killing a rat, and languor seeped into his limbs. “Something Dagny told me about Zeke last night …” Had that been last night? It seemed a fortnight ago. “He might not be a terribly odious cove, after all. Antoine, can you secure this mess as best you can? I think we should take the remaining stuff back to Barataria, set up a convoy of some of the smaller vessels with a strongly armed wafter …”

  Zeke waited for Tomaj to finish instructing Youx. He waved to sundry Malagasy men, shaking some hands, and even uttering a few words in the native tongue, everyone without exception greeting Zeke with eagerness. Apparently now that he was Tamatave’s first tavern keeper, he knew on which side his bread was buttered. Perhaps he would be a good businessman after all.

  When Youx tottered off, Zeke shook Tomaj’s hand. Tomaj was too weary to attempt any grappling moves, and they walked back up toward the village.

  “To be honest, Count,” Zeke said affably, “I did smell the fire earlier, but I was literally standing on a ladder holding over my head this gargantuan chandelier made from elephant teeth, waiting for some workers to rig up hooks. I could’ve stood on the bar, if I had one taller than a Chinaman’s dressing table.”

  “That’s perfectly all right, although you could’ve been one of the few allowed to help me, seeing as how all the natives were instructed by the Port Admiral not to attempt to put out the fire.”

  Zeke sighed. “I heard about that. I’ve got to say, I think it has something to do with Boneaux. I trust that guy about as far as I can throw my mother’s boudoir.”

  “That’s a refreshing change of opinion, coming from one who was formerly famous for prostituting his sister at the hands of that duck-fucker from Frogland.”

  Zeke rubbed his stubbled face. “Yes, well. I can’t say as I blame you for taking that attitude. I’ve been a no-count son of a sea cock in that regard. It’s just that, the other day I caught him trying to pull a cute trick on my sister. You have to see things my way. I was biding my time until I could make money with the tavern. He’s the richest man on the island—well, maybe the second richest, after you—and he’s not a bad sort. He never struck her, and gave her all sorts of fancy rigs that she deserves to have, after all the sliming about we did in New York.”

  “Oh, so is that your criteria for a lover for your sister? A fellow who doesn’t
strike her?”

  Zeke stopped in the road. They were in sight of his establishment, a fine native two-story building with twelve-foot-high ceilings, thatched with traveler’s tree fronds. Round the sides of the building’s porches were fixed a number of benches upon which men lounged, drinking, playing cards and musical instruments.

  Zeke was just as tall as Tomaj, which meant he loomed over all the Malagasy who swarmed them, trying to get their attention for varying reasons. His look was sober and bald. “Count, I’ve heard you came from New York, in what hoity-toity neighborhood I don’t know, but perhaps you know the Sixth Ward. Dagny’s customers were men of a—let’s just say riff-raff, reptiles, men who were used to smacking their wives, and if that wasn’t good enough, why, they’d …”

  What was Zeke saying? Customers?

  “It was a hellish racket to be in, Count, but we had no choice. We were hicks from Pennsylvania, and we had no trade skills, unless you count growing corn, scything hay, and quilting, none of which was in huge demand in New York at the time. Well, the quilting maybe—Dagny tried to earn money as a laundress, but she was usually too tired for that.”

  Zeke rambled some more about the squalid nature of tenements, but Tomaj’s loud brain shut him out. Customers. How could he have been such a boorish jackfool? Demanding that the precious woman stop acting like a lick-spigot, when, in fact … Zeke spoke as though he assumed Tomaj already knew.

  Did it matter? No, it didn’t. But Tomaj now understood why Dagny dressed so finely, why she’d reverted to impeccable Quaker manners in all things, yet why sometimes, when she was made hot about a subject, there was a flavor of street sordidness about her. Tomaj adored this craven, modern aspect of her, the personality that let him know beyond a doubt she was the proper one to invite on the cruise to Fort Dauphin. Men could carouse, curse, and play all manner of strange instruments around her, and she always sat there, smiling … Unruffled.

  “… so you see, Count, that’s why she was so taken aback when she discovered that you’re a… the nature of your business. It’s not you she dislikes.” Zeke scoffed skyward at this thought. “Fact, she likes you better than anyone she’s ever known. Excepting me and Sal, of course. She just doesn’t want to be sent back into the eternal hellfire of scum-licking, cowdung-eating, vile-smell-smelling—”

  “Zeke.” Tomaj came to his senses. “I understand completely. Dagny is a beloved gem of a woman, and she deserves much better than I, but certainly better than Boneaux. Sal most likely has the same conundrum, then, but it doesn’t seem to bother him as profoundly. Do you know where Sal is? I sent some men up to the mines to search for him.”

  “Not that you guys smell bad. Oh, Sal?” Zeke turned and headed up to his knocking shop. “He left about three days ago on some mining expedition, looking for adamantine spars. Haven’t seen him since. Why don’t you come up to my establishment and wash? I’ve got water running through pipes, and issuing forth into a sink, if you can call a copper tub that Indians wash their feet in a sink …”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE ENDLESS EASTERN FOREST

  DAGNY. DAGNY.”

  The voice came from a distant realm, the remote place that often spoke to her when she slept. This must be the same voice, then, urging her to wake and continue into another dreaded day where she didn’t wish to venture. Wake, wake, the damned voices always said. You have work to do. She always wished she could just be allowed to continue sleeping …

  “Hector …” she murmured.

  “Who’s Hector?” asked the voice from above.

  “The trondro …”

  “The fish is all right.”

  Her face had been turned down to the sand, and rested on a scaly surface that supported her like warm armor. Someone wrenched her, her face turned to the sky, exposing her to the sun she’d been trying to hide from under the pectoral fin of the breathing fish.

  “No …”

  “Dagny, you’re sunstruck. I’m taking you to a cool pool.”

  “Cool pool …” Her mouth turned into a smile at the sound of the words.

  Someone carried her, she bounced, and soon there was shade. Dappled splotches of darkness moved across her face. Her arms flopped wildly, as though she tried to hail someone. Wasn’t there something she was supposed to be doing …? Someone always needed her help …

  Oh. Tomaj. Where did he come from? He was the god, the voice she’d been hearing.

  “Now, I’m not going to plunge you directly into the water. That might cause a reaction and your heart might seize itself.”

  “Yes,” she smiled. “That’s right. Put me down right here.”

  He laid her into a cradle of refreshing ferns where her feet slid on rocks. Dagny opened her eyes to a bower of palms, an interlocking network of finely made threads against a white sky that purled beauty, and she was glad to be of the earth again. That always happened, eventually. Eventually she was always happy that she’d been called back, to continue working.

  Tomaj held her on his lap, his grand hands supporting her skull. Why did his waistcoat smell of smoke? She lifted a hand and touched his mouth.

  “Tomaj …” She needed to tell him something.

  “Don’t fret, malala.” His voice was so beautiful, even more majestic than the voice of the god she thought she’d heard. “Everything is going to be all right.” His hand rained shattered droplets of water upon her breast. “Now I’m just loosening your gown, because you don’t need to wear this right now. I’m going to remove your bodice …”

  Breathing deeply, Dagny raised herself, and looked directly into his emotionless face. She lifted a hand, touching the plane of his cheekbone. “You’re alive …”

  At last he smiled a bit, removing layers of sweltering fabric from her form. “Yes, I’m alive. At least, I think I am. But you nearly weren’t, with your body hiding underneath that extinct fish.”

  How his eyes twinkled when he was happy! If she didn’t continue living, how would she continue saving his life? Oh … it was he who continually saved her, for some obscure reason … “Tomaj. I don’t hate you. I love you. I don’t care one whit if you’re a pirate.”

  His mouth made sshssing movements. “Don’t speak, malala. You’re not yourself at the moment. We just need to cool you off.”

  She wore only her chemise now, having given up the Delacroix corset many weeks ago, and she was able to breathe fully. “Why do you smell like smoke? Was there a fire?” She would die again gladly if only to feel the silken weight of the solid queue at the back of his neck, slithering hotly between her fingertips. He was alight with the health of masculinity, the sort that didn’t hurt a woman …

  “There was a fire, but it’s all taken care of now. And don’t worry about your fish, Hector. Workers are carrying it back to your cottage and placing it on your stuffing table. I know you need to keep the innards.”

  She even laughed. “Yes, the innards are important.”

  Rising, Tomaj assisted her into the welcoming water, where juvenile fish tickled her thighs, lily pads floating on the water’s skin. Dagny lifted a squirming fish. It flashed its helpless eye at her before she let it fall.

  “Here.” He was behind her—shirtless, dressed only in trousers!—and he took her into his lap, dipping her unbound hair into the water, and raising her feet to the sky. “Cool off your head.”

  The serene water brought sense back to her. Tomaj’s hand nestled her waist against him, ensuring that she wouldn’t drift away. Her hands hooked underneath her drawers, leaving them floating in the water, her legs kicking freely, bobbing above his lap.

  He smiled in his own delicious manner. “Why is it?”

  She whispered, “Why is what?”

  He looked to the bower overhead, so Dagny looked, too. A lemur scampered on a branch that bent under its scant weight. It uttered a thrilling cooo before it leapt onto another tree. “Scenes of violence are always followed by scenes of serenity.”

  He dribbled another handful of wat
er onto her neck and chest, submerging her head so that her ears were just covered. She was content in the cradle of his lap, floating weightlessly, and she closed her eyes.

  She must have slept, she had no idea how long, but when she opened her eyes it seemed the sun had moved at least two hours behind the arbor overhead. Raising only her torso in her watery bed, she saw she’d been using Tomaj as a pillow, and he was now taking a caulk beautifully, his head thrown back into a nest of ferns that caressed and reflected against his aristocratic face that looked made of marble. His mouth was closed, the exquisite corners turned up as though he dreamed of release, not gaping and snoring as Paul and so many other men did, like great sloppy bears in hibernating caves. He had a gash above his silken black brow, and an inflamed bruise lit up his jawbone, yet he slept peacefully, his hand hovering above her hip on a bed of the buoyant pistia stratiotes water lettuce.

  Realizing he hadn’t slept in days, Dagny tried to extricate herself quietly, so she could continue bathing in the deeper end of the pond. But she should have known better than to trick a pirate, for he jumped like a hungry chameleon, instantly alert, grabbing hold of her wrist.

  “It’s only me,” she whispered, and he exhaled.

  Taking a handful of water lettuce, Dagny lifted it to his neck, washing off the dirt and soot. Underneath the dirt his skin was creamy, polished dark by the sun, his throat powerful, and she continued sloughing the grime from his clavicle. His brilliant green eyes, enlightened to the shade of peridot by the reflections from all sides of the verdant pool, were serious, morose even.

  “What is your name?”