The Strangely Wonderful: Tale of Count Balásházy

by Karen Mercury

  Tomaj made a few feeble attempts at reasoning with his fellow landowners. “In India, you will be subject to their laws.”

  Chick chuckled. “Which are not many, with Company Raj!” He referred to the British East India Company, notorious for their swashbuckling disregard of native rule.

  Tomaj continued his halfhearted attempts at convincing Chick to stay. “In India, highwaymen roam the countryside, strangling people with silk scarves! It’s said they are the cruelest, most rapacious ‘thugs’ to ever roam the British Empire.”

  “I thought that would be you and your band!” joked Gratton, causing Tomaj to throw up his hands in despair and retreat to the verandah.

  He argued late into the night with Youx, Broadhecker, and Zaleski. The situation disturbed him so greatly he’d even fallen back into the old opium habit, something he’d shunned for a few months. One of the best foremast Jacks by the name of Robert Loblaw, having tired of having to walk past men sewn up in animal hides and hung on poles, had taken sail on a tea-wagon to Ceylon, taking his Malagasy wife and children away from Harmony Row. Tomaj worried it would be an example more would follow. Yet for every man lost, two more always arrived by way of vessels from New Bedford or Barbados throwing seamen overboard, American whalers weary of whaling, or hands taking a French leave. Barely a week went by without a hand appearing in Harmony Row because he’d heard mention of Mavasarona Bay, enquiring if the colony was as utopian as legend insisted.

  “This will all calm down,” Tomaj opined, not without logic. “This always happens after the death of a monarch. It’s a cleansing of the elements that aren’t liable to fall in line with the new regime.”

  “As we are often fond of describing ourselves,” Youx uttered, straight of face, from behind a cloud of smoke.

  Tomaj went to the picture window that had yet to be replaced with glass. That was a hard commodity to come by these days, with many ships being thwarted from standing into Tamatave. He managed a small chuckle, reflecting on how the ricemen had assumed there was no glass in the window, spurring them to leap through like leopards.

  On the morrow, Dagny and Bellingham were off on their longest excursion yet into the northern forest. They would spend four nights in the jungle. Tomaj pondered whether he should withdraw his offer for the aye-aye, perhaps extend the same offer for something much more domestic and easily discovered, then reasoned she would seek the critter anyway. He didn’t like her traipsing in the countryside like that, but he didn’t have much authority over it as, he was finding more and more, his authority over most everything was dwindling.

  “Cap’n Balásházy likes to tell ghost tales late at night, especially when we’re on the middle watch.” Over the fire, Hector turned the stick upon which the grouse was skewered. “The better to give us a terrible pucker. One in particular I’ll never forget. This cove fought next to the captain under Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, and would often repeat this story—story always the same, so you knew it was true.”

  Dagny readied the coffeepot. She didn’t like coffee, but it helped when one had to stay awake all night. “I don’t know how particularly interested I am, Hector. There are enough boggards, tromba and bilo spirits floating about this island, I don’t think it would be beneficial—”

  “Oh, it’s bang-up fun in the middle of the night. Especially like it is now, with the mist sort of oozing amongst the mastheads and rigging … except here we have trees, but them liana do resemble rigging.”

  “I don’t want to hear it, Hector.”

  “This cove grew up in a river area of Tennessee,” Hector barreled ahead, “with his mum and dad and eight brothers and sisters. One night around 1807, strange phenomenons began to happen—”

  “Phenomena.”

  “—strange phenomena began to happen.”

  “Tennessee, eh?” said Sal, arriving stealthily and nearly silently with an armload of more wood and various aromatic herbs. He had decided to accompany them since he’d already discovered the secret of red fireworks. “Do tell, young Hector Bellingham.”

  Hector accepted a log that he added to the fire. “Well, one day the father was inspecting his cornfield, when he saw an eerie creature, with the body of a dog and the head of a rabbit! He shot at it, but it vanished. That very night, they began to hear noises outside their cabin as though someone were beating on the walls. They always rushed out, and saw no one. Soon, the children began to complain of noises, like rats chewing the legs of their bedsteads.”

  Sal nodded. “Interesting.”

  “A spirit entity popped up, slapping the children, throwing their pillows to the ground, tearing the bedclothes off them!”

  “Oh, please!” said Dagny, furiously stirring the pot of rice. “I don’t need to be any more afraid than I already am! Spirits and goblins, indeed …”

  “If you don’t believe, then why are you afraid?” Sal asked.

  “They was hit so hard there’d be marks left on them!” Hector asserted. “In particular bad hurt was this one sister, Betsy. But that weren’t all. They began to hear a voice, like a feeble old grandma whispering, chanting hymns. One day, the father confided in a family friend, who came over to spend the night. After having his bedclothes violently torn from him, he jumped up and shouted, ‘I ask you in the name of the Lord God, who are you and what do you want?’”

  “Hector! Isn’t that meat done yet?” Dagny cried.

  “No, let him finish the story,” Sal said. “I’ve heard of, and indeed personally witnessed, several incidents like this. They usually revolve around someone in their teen years. So what happened when the fellow shouted?”

  “It were quiet the rest of the night.” Hector’s eyes were round. “But later, the voice got louder, it could be understood. Once, it quoted word for word a sermon that was taking place miles away. Another cove, claiming to be a ‘witch tamer,’ came with a gun, planning on shooting it. But he started leaping in all directions, screaming he was being stuck with pins and beaten!”

  “Shut up! Give me that meat!” Dagny snatched the skewer from the lad’s hand.

  He was not deterred. “But the crowning glory … the absolute height of the spirit’s torment … came when the father was found dead with a funny odor on his breath. Turned out to be a bottle nearby, and when they gave one drop to the cat, it scragged dead away. The spirit cackled and laughed and said that she had given ol’ Jack a big dose of it, and it fixed him!”

  “Eerie,” Sal marveled.

  Hector shrugged, now gazing avidly at the meat Dagny took off the stick. “Cap’n Balásházy says it’s to keep us awake during the watch.”

  “Well, I do believe it works!” Dagny said. “I know I shall never sleep now!” They had been trying a new strategy during this expedition: to stay awake and wait for the aye-aye to put his arm into the gourd.

  Sal said, “The most astounding case I saw once, in South Carolina, involved this woman around forty years of age who suddenly started writing things, essays, poems, things that claimed to be of an entity, a spirit who’d lived in England in the seventeenth century. She wrote poems, even novels, things that would have been impossible for the woman herself to know, speaking in an archaic language.”

  “Now I like this story a bit better,” Dagny said. “As long as it doesn’t involve the spirit throwing anything.”

  “Well, the spirit moved her hand,” Sal said. “It was what we called a ‘ghost sickness,’ but no one had much interest in curing her, because it was so fascinating. Ghost sickness is the hardest to cure. Usually involves someone who has lived a violent life, someone who no longer cares what happens to them. You can treat them as long as they still have the ability to ask for help.”

  “Hmm,” grunted Hector, stuffing a cube of meat into his mouth. “Cap’n Balásházy did have that ghost sickness, until you came along.”

  Much later that evening, the three sat vigil in separate but close watches, each with their own gourd. They had discovered three likely anthocleista t
rees with holes dug from their trunks—chewed by the aye-aye because they had heard grubs moving inside. Dagny alone possessed the night-glass, so she had a bit of an advantage. She looked often at the trees under which Sal and Hector sat, but there was to be very little movement—no talking—no smoking.

  Dagny had learned this during many nights stalking other nocturnal creatures—bats, red foxes, and owls. She fell into a sort of light trance and was able to sit for many hours in this manner, not excited, edgy, or aroused, yet not asleep. Her mind functioned at a low level of awareness, fleeting images drifting in languidly, to be replaced with others. She heard every animal sound, every sibilation and whirr, knowing what to discount as extraneous. Diminutive mouse lemurs squeaked, and cicadas thrummed in the underbrush.

  She’d always felt a little more at home and safer in the out-of-doors, perhaps because when Zeke and his mother had moved into their house, she and Zeke could always be found, when anyone bothered looking for them, camping on a hillcrest or by a stream. They rarely slept inside.

  Her mouth turned up at the corners when an image of Tomaj drifted in. It may have been hours that she was able to amuse herself with images of him, tall, broad, and dangerously swarthy. How much kinder had the Hungarian Emir-el-Bahr turned out to be. He was even kinder to Hector, giving him a good chamber on the same floor as his own at Barataria, when Dr. Lyall had booted the boy out of Dagny’s cottage. She wondered if Tomaj had undertaken a cruise he’d mentioned considering, past the northern peninsula of Madagascar and onto Zanzibar. He wanted more silks and spices to replace those that had burned. If he did go, he’d be gone at least a month while he waited for the trades to turn. She hoped he didn’t go on that cruise. Weren’t those Zanzibari maidens particularly beautiful …? Images of veils, incense pots, and musical bells came to mind, and Dagny didn’t like these thoughts, so she thought about Barataria instead …

  Her eyes popped wide open. Something was moving near her head. Another boa? Boas made no noise, and this thing clearly crawled on feet and made a vague snuffling sound. She was leaning against the tree, so the thing must be clinging to the trunk behind her, out of her vision.

  Then she heard it, the delicate tapping she’d imagined hearing for so many months. Tap-tap-tap against the bark of the tree to locate cavities where grubs might be dwelling, she’d concluded from hearing Malagasey describe it. Tap-tap-tap, closer and closer to her ear. She breathed as shallowly as possible, just enough to avoid fainting, praying it would come closer and not be scared away by any sudden movement, though she’d heard aye-ayes were bold and unafraid of people.

  It chewed on some bark, sending tiny pieces of wood falling to her shoulder. Dagny prayed for Sal or Hector not to take it into their head to rustle into the jungle for a piss.

  The aye-aye ate some grubs that it extracted with its elongated middle finger, and then it continued down the trunk, probably head-first, toward her shoulder. Its two front hands alighted on her shoulder and then, balancing on one hand apparently, it tapped her earlobe.

  Oh, yes. Oh, no.

  It inserted its twiggy finger into her ear.

  How deep could that finger go? Deep enough to puncture her eardrum, she surmised from having studied and stuffed the specimen Paul had bought for her.

  Dagny thought like lightning. How fast could they climb? She had no idea. She wore her leather gloves, prepared after hearing of the power of their constantly growing rodent’s incisors that cut through coconut hulls (and wooden cages) in a matter of minutes.

  “Ah!” she shouted in a whisper just as she turned and whisked her hands upward to seize the creature.

  It thrashed wildly, and what she hadn’t expected was the screeching cry it emitted, so loud and raucous it sent every lemur within a mile radius running like streaks of lightning through the canopy branches, probably assuming she was a fossa. It flashed its bright wide yellow eyes at her, its cup-like ears turning independently every which way, and Dagny held fast.

  She clambered to her feet and ran in Hector’s direction, but Hector was quicker, barreling toward her with the iron cage in one hand, shouting, “Aye-aye, aye-aye, aye-aye, aye-aye …”

  “Aye-aye, indeed, Hector, he’s terrified, open that damned cage!”

  Hector was level-headed in most unusual situations, and in a flash he had the cage door open. Dagny stuffed the cooperative lemur inside—it was eager to get as far away from her as possible. As Hector latched the cage shut, the animal lunged and jumped at the bars, uttering the most heartrending squeals, like a baby.

  Dagny and Hector grasped each other’s shoulders. “We did it, we did it!” Dagny cried.

  “We did it, we did it!” Hector agreed.

  They leapt up and down simultaneously as if skipping rope, just as Sal belatedly raced over.

  “You got it, you got it!” he repeated, on his knees before the aye-aye cage, but as there was no moon, only yellow eyes gleamed back at him. “Let’s bring it back to the camp, let me light the lantern!”

  As Sal dashed off into the darkness, Dagny and Hector fell to their knees beside the cage.

  “How’d you do it?” Hector demanded.

  “It crawled onto my shoulder! It stuck its long finger into my ear!”

  “Into your ear?” Hector laughed with delight as he clambered off to his gourd. He shook it upside down until his own bait of an egg fell out, but they didn’t want to risk opening the cage door again. “Give it something nice, show it we’re not its enemy.”

  Sal brought over the lantern and his own bait of live grubs that he shook into the cage. The aye-aye wasn’t too intimidated to grab the grubs and stuff two of them halfway into its mouth, without taking its enormous, hobgoblin eyes off the humans who marveled at it.

  All at once, Hector shuddered mightily. “Ain’t that gruesome, though! It’s not a bat, not a cat, not a squirrel—you’re convinced it’s a lemur?”

  “It’s a lemur all right,” Dagny asserted.

  “Can I come with you to Pamplemousses when you exhibit it?”

  “Of course, dear Hector! And you, too, Sal. We must all go together, as co-discoverers. Well, it was described in 1782, so we didn’t discover it. But no one has as yet exhibited one, dead or alive!”

  The hike back to the camp half a mile away was a joyous occasion. Sal carried the cage on his head, Hector the lantern, and Dagny the gourds and night-glass.

  “How shall we keep it alive?” Hector wondered. “The cage is too small.”

  “I shall let it run around Tomaj’s glass house,” Dagny answered.

  Back at the camp, they celebrated their luck with more brandy than they’d been able to drink prior to the nightly vigil. Dagny dared to unlatch the cage far enough to deposit the egg inside, and they watched avidly as the lemur grasped it, retreating to a corner of the cage to chew its way through the shell.

  “Let’s get back to Barataria immediately,” Dagny said, and was surprised when Sal disagreed.

  “It’s nearly our bedtime; we’ve been sleeping during the day, and it’s a good two day’s walk back to Barataria. Two ridges over, south-southwest, I believe is one of Tomaj’s mines, correct me if I’m wrong, Hector.”

  Hector pointed. “Aye, just over them mountains. Maybe an hour walk.”

  Dagny frowned. “We were warned, Sal. And you promised Tomaj you’d not go poking about there.”

  Sal unfolded his battered, hand-drawn map. “Hear my idea. That mine is on the way to Barataria—well, just a few feet out of our way. Wouldn’t it be better to sleep close by the mine, just in case? There will be at least thirty—how many men, Hector?”

  “Aye, forty more like, and just as many eunuchs standing about, scratching their ballocks doing nothing.”

  “I don’t need to go into the mine, Dagny. I want to sleep just as much as you do, and to get home. I’m just saying, what if a fossa comes while we’re sleeping and kills your monkey in its cage?”

  Oh, yes. That did make sense. Fossa tended to stay away
from loud mines and people. “All right. We’ll just tell the mine foreman where we are, and go to sleep.”

  Sal nodded. “Go to sleep.”

  It was faster to take a filanzana up the cliff to Barataria from the anchorage than it would have been for Slushy to limp in his frustratingly slow gait.

  “Hàingana, hàingana,” he exhorted the bearers. Fast, fast.

  “God-damn those Berufsschläger in New York!” Slushy shouted to himself from between gnashed teeth. He shook a fist in the air. “If they didn’t beat me within an inch of my life, I could be dashing up this cliff like an ordinary athlete! Oh, why didn’t Broadhecker send Hellfire Dick? He’s the fastest man in Harmony Row! Oh, oh! This is too much for my heart…”

  “Run like a rigger, Slushy!” On the foreshore, Broadhecker bellowed through the speaking trumpet. “We’re right abaft you!”

  “Aye aye!” Slushy waved. “Ach, mein Gott im Himmel! What is becoming of this island? It used to be a paradise … now nothing but tromba ceremonies, people forced to take the tangena poison … Why, Radama’s sister just died, starved to death in captivity! No one dares throw a party for fear she might get wind of it—besides, she has stolen all the good musicians! There is no one left to play songs for the vazaha but us, and we can’t execute a waltz for the life of us …”

  Slushy clutched the pennant Broadhecker had heaved at him, the better to illustrate his story to Tomaj. The pennant had been torn from the dead fingers of a riceman who tried to escape in one of the junk’s “long dragon” boats. “Very fortunate the captain didn’t make sail for Zanzibar! I knew he didn’t, because he’s in love with the glorious Miss Ravenhurst, as who wouldn’t be? Hàingana, hàingana around that hedgerow, you lousy bitches! Go around the fountain! Ah … They only chose me as messenger because I’m the smallest, and the bearers can run faster with little me as a load. Oh, what does this mean, they are moored in the Bay of Antongil? They’ve been hidden by the Frogs at Île Sainte-Marie, we knew all along that they told us those whoppers in their parlezvous lingo!”