The Strangely Wonderful: Tale of Count Balásházy

by Karen Mercury

  Whales, MacKendrick said, had recently become more circumspect, or “more scary,” and less easy to capture. Seamen out for three or four years usually returned home in debt to the ship, and no one watched for their interests. The captain cheated natives who brought them wood for fuel, reneging on contracts, and obliged the crew to assist him in his designs, MacKendrick even being told to go out on the jib-boom and blaze away on his flute, to assist the trickery of the grumbling men below stowing the wood. The men held a consultation to raise a subscription to pay the natives’ bill, but weren’t able to scrape up two dollars’ of property, because they owed the rags they wore to the outfitter.

  “It’s treatment like this that renders the natives treacherous and hostile. There has been more done to destroy the friendly feelings of the inhabitants of the Indian and Pacific Oceans toward Americans by the rascality of whaling captains, than all the missionaries from the United States can ever atone for,” MacKendrick said. He opined the results of these villainies were attacks upon whaling vessels, and the murder of the whole crew.

  Tomaj felt fine about giving the tiller to him and his hardy crew, and MacKendrick bargained that he would gladly do so, if Tomaj promised to take the slippery captain with him to the Brazil, or at least drop him off with the Royal Navy in Simon’s Town to be hung. So a deal was struck, and many a morning levee were given over to teaching MacKendrick and his men the workings of the sugar and coffee plantations, MacKendrick learning at the feet of the foremen who had been operating for ten years.

  Tomaj explained to Dagny that in the Brazil, there was a Portuguese fort taken over by cannibals. A German soldier of fortune had been carried away by them and nearly eaten, to be washed down with a pleasant drink called kawi. “The Brazil is a land with a future,” Tomaj told Dagny. “We shall buy a mansion near Rio de Janeiro. There is sugarcane and coffee for me, and gold for Sal in the Minas Gerais region. There are lead mines and rubies to be found near São Paolo. For you there are silvered waterways, and a one-hundred-sixty-foot-long sea serpent. The São Francisco River is riddled with creatures such as man-eating fish.”

  A few Harmony Row men chose to stay with their wives and children, but most, and most importantly all of the seasoned hands, chose to come with Tomaj. The Rabelaises were willing to try their hand in the Brazil. All of the ramatoas were staying, much to Dagny’s relief Tomaj was certain. MacKendrick would retain Holy Eleanora Brown as head ramatoa. She was the proud great-granddaughter of the pirate captain James Plantain, and had a long aristocratic history in Madagascar, so no harm would come to her.

  He was happy. Tomaj had never felt friendly in the vicinity of that word. It had suspicious tonalities that he wasn’t satisfied with. Happiness always seemed to precede doom, so he’d always strived to be as unhappy as possible. It was an odd sensation, happiness, but daily Tomaj grew to understand it.

  In the glass-house, Dagny tinkered with her “Ravenhurst case,” a sort of miniature glass-house she’d devised to transport her plants across the Atlantic. Tomaj gave her a tall table so she could sit with her head at the proper angle for him to paint, while she nailed and glued together all the pieces Smit had constructed for her. Up until now, she said, there was no way of transporting living plants across the cold salty waters, and they had to travel as seeds or corms, most with no hope of ever being resurrected. With these tiny glass-houses that resembled doll-houses, she could set them in the hold if they desired night, or out on deck to absorb the sun.

  Dagny’s voice was pleasing, soft and feminine. “Tomaj. I think these cases also might protect plants against such pollution as exists in the air in London.”

  Tomaj’s brush paused in midair. Soft splotches of filtered sun the yellow shade of orpiment fell upon her hair and bare shoulders as she glued a wooden bar in place. “That does make sense, malala.”

  Dagny’s face changed from repose to exhilaration when the door opened, and Zeke entered. Zeke bent down low to avoid the doorjamb that Tomaj had built tall enough for an Amazon, perhaps because today he wore the beaver Quaker hat of days gone by. “Greetings, neighbors and soon to be family once again,” he proclaimed unhappily. He strode to the table that held the tray of oysters, slurping one from its shell. Smacking his lips, he gazed about the ceiling of the glass-house as though a map to the fountain of youth would be revealed to him.

  Standing on tiptoes, Dagny kissed Zeke’s face while Tomaj poured him a glass of Montrachet. Handing it to Zeke, Tomaj remarked, “I thought you lost that pious rig to Monsieur Boneaux.”

  Zeke was in the worst sort of brown study. “Oh, I’ve got my ways of doing things.” He looked Tomaj in the eye. “Slushy left behind some students that’ve been in my employ.”

  Dagny remarked, “Oh, how lovely! It’s nice to know his legacy is carried on. Who are they? We could use a few more good men like that around here.”

  Betraying not a single twinge of joy, Zeke paced the nave and gulped his wine. His Quaker coat was older than ever, the cuffs so frayed one could see right through the fabric to Zeke’s bony wrists. “Yes, well, just a few more fellows that’re coming with me when I join you on your voyage of discovery to the Brazil.”

  Swallowing the last of the wine, Zeke exhaled mightily and looked up at the tallest palms that the gardeners had recently truncated, to prevent their breaking through the glass roof.

  Dagny and Tomaj were so retarded with wine and oysters, it was Dagny who eventually cried out, “Coming with us? Zeke! What made you decide?”

  Zeke had always refrained from throwing in his lot with them, instead preferring to say he was going to stick with his lodge, as it was the first operation he’d ever accomplished on his own.

  Tomaj joined in the approbation, placing a hand on Zeke’s shoulder. “Zeke. That’s good news indeed. You can start a new kipping ken in Rio de Janeiro.”

  “Is that my aye-aye up there?” Zeke had inexplicably taken to calling the aye-aye “his,” although Dagny had named it Slushy. Zeke pointed at Dagny with the empty glass. “What’s he doing up there, tearing around quick as a streak of lightning? He’s supposed to be asleep during the day!”

  Hands on her hips, Dagny also regarded the lemur with a smile. “Yes, he’s been doing that. I think being acclimated to the diurnal monkeys has changed his sleeping rhythms. See? Look at him go! He’s playing!”

  At the whoop of “playing,” Stormalong finally stood and stared at Zeke with a cocked head. Nothing else had been able to rouse her, she was that imperturbable.

  Tomaj asked Zeke, “What prompted you to make this decision?”

  Zeke shrugged carelessly. “Might’ve had something to do with finding my headman Izaro this morning dipped into a hole filled with boiling water up to his armpits.”

  Tomaj and Dagny went stiff as statues. Stormalong looked expectantly at Zeke, as though toys, snacks, and canine delights would come raining on her at any moment. Only Zeke moved, shrugging again, finding renewed delight in the aye-aye antics in the bower.

  Dagny went to Tomaj’s side, putting her face against his shoulder, her arms around his waist. They gazed with tired eyes at Zeke’s back.

  Zeke sighed deeply, several times. “This place is loco.” He chuckled. “See, I’ve been studying Portuguese, in preparation for the Brazil.”

  Tomaj said, “You’ve always been welcome to come with us.”

  Sighing a few more times, Zeke turned to face the couple. Smiling, he put his glass down on the table and stood upright. He stuck out his paw to shake Tomaj’s hand. “You’re a good man, Count Balásházy.” He nodded briskly. “I’m glad to see your intentions toward my sister are honorable.”

  Tomaj nodded somberly. “Of course.” He felt the fragmented bone in Zeke’s finger where he’d broken it untold months ago.

  Zeke nodded and tore his hand away. He kissed Dagny on the forehead with a loud smack, waved to everyone in the glass-house including the aye-aye and the dog, and headed for the door.

  “Where you going?” D
agny cried.

  Zeke flung an arm and shouted, “Got business to attend to! Can’t lie around in the sack all day!” He stood outside the glass-house and turned to face them. “Got to find Zaleski! If I’m going somewhere as barbaric as the Brazil, I’ll need to know how to chop the head off a dead cannibal.”

  Zeke sprinted away, his form coruscating behind the window glass into a strange image of a Quaker preacher.

  Tomaj and Dagny remained for awhile looking at the door, holding each other. Finally Dagny sighed and looked up at Tomaj.

  He stroked her hair. “Why is his last name Zhukov? He always used to accuse me of being Russian, as though it were an odious thing.”

  Dagny laughed. “Because his mother was Russian. She was an odious person. She lived only for herself and money, and had no love for her family.” She sighed deeply. “I think that’s why he hates Russians.”

  Someone else was at the glass-house door. Tomaj froze to attention, since it wasn’t often Broadhecker was all ahoo about anything. Broadhecker skidded to a stop as he flung the door open. “The soldiers are back, and they’re climbing the ramparts! About three hundred of them, and one just shot Erich Planét!”

  Tomaj released Dagny and strode forward. “Where?”

  Broadhecker shook his head, momentarily confused. “Where did they shoot Planét? In the ass!”

  Turning to Dagny, Tomaj pointed a stiff arm. “You stay here. Do not move. I’ll be right back.”

  Not this again, Tomaj thought as he outran Broadhecker in their haste to gain the ramparts. We have to leave Madagascar. Tonight.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  THE SPIRIT OF THE CAPE

  IT HAD BEEN GETTING COLDER AS THEY ENTERED THE “horse latitudes,” that tropical vortex off the coast of Zulu-land. Hot air sank toward the ocean’s surface in these latitudes, Tomaj had explained to Dagny, and caused the doldrums that becalmed them for several days. Now the breeze freshened as they headed toward the “roaring forties” where they hoped to round Cape Agulhas, Agulhas being the actual southernmost cape, and not the Cape of Storms.

  Dagny drew her pelerine closer about her shoulders as she approached the quarterdeck. “Ah!”

  She cried aloud, jumped back a step, and put a hand to her breast when a shadowy figure leaped out from behind a ladder.

  Then away bullies, away, away for Rio!

  Sing fare-ye-well, me Liverpool girl,

  And we’re bound for the Rio Grande.

  Dagny was quite accustomed to Zaleski’s ways by now, so she breathed relief and said conversationally, “Errol, why exactly do they call it the ‘roaring forties’?”

  An iridescent halo ringed the moon. Someone had told her this predicted high wind. In the nearly full moonlight that flickered over his face with the shivering of a sail, Zaleski appeared to give this much thought. “Loud, nasty prevailing winds occurring most horrifically in the southern Indian Ocean where there ain’t no land to prevent them. This current we’ve been cracking down the coast on? Right around Cape Agulhas it meets with the icy Pacific and gets pushed back, creating powerful eddies that suck up vessels if you don’t look alive and get your sails set just so. You’ve got to take in the spritsail, lower down the trysail, bear up another point at least, and—”

  “I see,” Dagny said, fearing another nautical harangue coming upon the first mate. “But it’s not so very fearsome, is it? Have you seen the captain?”

  Zaleski shrugged, “—take in the topsail, if you’re smart… Upon the quarterdeck, I imagine.”

  As Dagny took her leave, Zaleski called out, “It’s why we’ve built up the bulwarks and rail, Miss Ravenhurst! Have no fear! We’ll keep as much sail as we can bear.”

  Dagny gained the quarterdeck under an odd press of emotions. The past few days she’d felt quite nerveless and dependent upon Tomaj to brace her up. It had seemed to start a few days out from the Mauritius, after giving up her aye-aye to the director at Pamplemousses. Perhaps this was how women felt when losing a child, for now she clung even more stridently to poor Hector. Without the unfortunate Slushy, Hector had suddenly sprung into a youth “as long as a spare topmast, strong enough to knock down an ox, and hearty enough to eat him,” and he didn’t want to be seen too much under a woman’s wing, although he still came to her for formal lessons in natural science.

  She knew it wasn’t becoming or manly for a captain to have a woman at his heels, so she tried to give Tomaj as wide a berth as possible. Dagny was surprised to see many of the Barataria men including Zaleski, Broadhecker, and Smit had brought their Malagasy wives, but they rarely consorted on deck, and basically ignored the women. Some half-caste children ran underfoot, but Dagny hadn’t sorted out yet whose they were.

  Tomaj was never cruel to Dagny regardless of her interruptions and now, as six bells were struck, she hoped he’d be alone.

  Tomaj leaned over the larboard rail. Springing up jauntily, he didn’t see her, and strode forward toward the bow. Perhaps she uttered a squeak or some feminine sound, for he stopped striding abruptly and turned, like a marionette. He smiled when he came to her.

  “Going below?” she asked.

  He took her arm and steered her back to the rail. “No, no, just taking a last turn on deck, malala. Getting a lunar observation.”

  “Everything is all right?” Looking down the gunwale, she saw Frost, Sansing, and Planét all leaning over the rail gazing forward.

  “Everything’s on a split yarn—everything’s fine. We’re just looking at a few grampuses.”

  He was a handsome devil in his velvet gentleman’s coat. She had not cut his hair in two months and now saw the purpose in that. With the long, thick skein of a silken pigtail tossed forward over his shoulder, it served as a warm cravat, stuffed between the lapels of the coat. “Grampus? That’s awfully scientific for you fellows, especially Planét.” She didn’t want to appear a “buttock and tongue,” so she snuggled her torso against his, gratified when he visibly melted and bent to touch his mouth to her face.

  “Ah, but it’s the influence of the bewitching American naturalist that has everyone so entranced.”

  Although she doubted that, the tiny bite he laid against the side of her throat gave her shivers. “Ah,” she whispered. “Come below. Let’s crack a Montrachet, and I shall bathe you.”

  He nuzzled her neck—she’d need to shave him, as well, she thought with a purr and a smile. “Dagny Edvarda. You have a way of tearing a man away from such vast orgies of pleasure as can often be found on …” Standing erect, he turned and looked forward now, too, and sighed wistfully. “… on deck late at night with a bunch of smelly, foul hands.”

  They stopped by the wheel to share a few cryptic words with Youx, who was relighting the binnacle lamp.

  “The thermometer has fallen several degrees,” Youx reported without glancing at the captain.

  “Aye,” Tomaj agreed. “They’re in the tops keeping a bright lookout. Keep one man on each bow, one in the bunt of the foreyard, and keep Bellingham standing by the wheel.”

  Dagny shared a glance with Hector. How she wanted to reach out and muss his white hair, but she restrained herself. At his foot, Stormalong kept a mellow watch, lying as Dagny had seen lions do in engravings, with both forepaws straight out and her fluffy chest proudly panting. Dagny bent and mussed the fur on the dog’s head instead, so it stood straight up as though infused by lightning.

  Youx grunted. “The lookouts are set and every man’s at his station.”

  As Dagny went below, Tomaj murmured, “One moment, malala,” and returned to Youx. She stuck her head up the hatchway like a meerkat, just her eyes peering out.

  Tomaj told Youx, “Have a lifeline set up on each side of the deck.”

  “Aye aye,” Youx said. “Scuppers are clear and pumps are ready.”

  At the door of the great cabin, Dagny paused and told the sentry, “Pass the word for the cook to boil water for the captain’s bath,” but the captain stayed her hand.

  “Not
tonight.”

  Inside the cabin, she removed her pelerine and draped it over the chair by the dining table where her elephant bird egg remained propped between large celestine crystals. She liked to keep it there, like a grand Christmas centerpiece for the table.

  “Tomaj. Is Ramonja so useless that he can’t even boil water for your bath?”

  Tomaj slung his gentleman’s coat over a wooden peg. “He’s taking a caulk. The sea makes him ill. The cook doesn’t have to stand watches.”

  “Yes, I know. But you need a new steward. You need someone to care for you at all hours of the day.”

  Chuckling, Tomaj took her shoulders in his hands. “Why do you think I have you?”

  She shoved him away in jest. “Bah! I’m a scientist! I don’t have time to boil water.” She went to stand before the stern window, knowing Tomaj would follow. The moon must have been directly over the mainmast, for it cast nearly blinding highlights upon the churning of their wake. She noted they were making about nine knots, pleased to realize she was learning something of Tomaj’s life.

  He stood behind her, proffering a glass of Montrachet so red it resembled Siberian rhodozite, all else in the cabin muted in shades of gray and brown. “I know that, my love. I don’t want you boiling water for me, or bathing me, for that matter. You have more important things to do.” He touched his glass to hers, and they sipped. “Your aye-aye paper is winging its way to the Zoological Society in London, and you will discover many more plants and animals in the Brazil. Your fame will spread wider than mine, and—”

  “Oh, shall people write musical plays about me?” Dagny teased. Her free hand tossed the heavy silk of his pigtail over his shoulder, and moved to unbutton his shirt.

  Tomaj threw his head back and laughed. How beautiful his throat was! “Ah, malala. Is it not good enough that you’ve written such music upon a hardened, cold soul like mine?” Turning somber, he looked down at her and shook his head with bitter wonder. “I was a nasty hard case until you fell into my lagoon. I only wanted to save you because I thought you were Peg, taking a dive off a cliff after I rejected her. No. It’s nothing short of a miracle that I’m standing here today …”