The Strangely Wonderful: Tale of Count Balásházy

by Karen Mercury

  “Oh, my. That will cost a lot of men some hard labor. Let us hope the tree doesn’t get hit by lightning.”

  Paul scoffed at the insignificance of this feat. “Bah, only five thousand persons, and twelve days to erect just the central pillar. Ramavo can certainly afford those men!”

  His proud, shining eyes told Dagny he wished to be worshiped for this accomplishment, and indeed, of all his myriad triumphs, this was most likely the crowning one. Thrilled he had chosen to reveal it to her, a wave of hot joy coursed through her to be standing near the great man. Dagny wound her arms around his neck.

  “It’s a giant achievement, Paul. I’m so honored to … be associated with such a great man as you.”

  Paul gathered her to him, lifting her chin and regarding her face, as though calculating whether her dimensions would suit his next project. “My doll, you give me the power, the will to continue, to build, to achieve.”

  The honor was all too much, and as was Dagny’s habit, she translated this transport of passion into an act of prurience, the only mode of expression available to her. just the central pillar Sliding her hand down the front of his trousers, she grasped his rigid cock, pleased with the manner the strapping, arrogant man gasped in weakness, and as she massaged the bulbous head of it in her palm, she whispered, “Please, my big lord … fuck me right now.”

  That was all the direction Paul needed to bend at the knees, grab her around the backs of her thighs, and lay her out upon the desk, sweeping inkwells, charts, and rulers to the floor. He neglected a protractor that pierced the back of her Delacroix corset—Paul had presented her with the corset, advertised to produce a “graceful and sylph-like tournure,” but she’d torn out all the padding she certainly did not need.

  “Oh, ma poupée dévergondée,” Paul groaned. Dagny didn’t understand most of his passionate French, but was certain it all meant something terribly lovely, and he pressed a lusty, clove-scented kiss upon her before kneeling to unbutton her petticoats and yank them to the floor.

  Taking this opportunity to snatch the protractor from her lower back, she smiled down at the wide shoulders setting to work underneath her skirts, and a trifling thought entered her brain. Cloves? Paul wasn’t a farmer, and there wasn’t a clove within thirty miles of his city. Perhaps he was using cloves to—

  “Ah!” Dagny cried out with the sheer surprise of being taken so abruptly, as Paul speared her to the desktop without bothering to do any more than unbutton his trousers. She was carried off on the utter wave of his delight as he covered her with his torso, lunging into her with majestic swooping movements of his muscular hips. Unprepared as she was for an assault, she had to make adjustments by lunging her own hips to meet him, with the end result that she quite felt she was embarking upon a sprightly out-of-doors activity, such as riding a spirited stallion without a saddle.

  “Ah, my precious voluptuous doll!” Paul called out with more vitality than was usual. In his vigor his kiss became a roaring bite, and Dagny turned her head to one side. Not having been fiddled with in preparation, her tail was quite dry, and her inner thighs ached from the power of his lust. In the past she’d been accustomed to such onslaughts, so she raised herself up on her palms in her attempts to give him a more favorable advantage. She attempted to strip the plum overcoat from his impressive shoulders, she licked and bit the side of his sweaty throat, and tried to unbutton his frill so as to reach that nugget, the center of all men’s carnality, the nipple of his breast.

  Will he never come? This was far too strange, this longevity in a man who had formerly been as rapid, satisfying, and deep as a roiling tornado. This was a man who had already overspent himself.

  Dagny gasped, “My great big bull of a man … your gratification is all I want … I am just a voluptuous feminine doll, here for the taking … Your cock yearns to spend hot male seed inside of me …”

  And, as she choked out these words, she bit down on his nipple.

  Ah … The result, though anticlimactic in its strength, was of vast relief to the woman who was rubbed sore like a butter churn. She fell back upon the desk in her anguish. I simply must have more practice at this … Then it wouldn’t be such a painful bother.

  His strangled calls resembled the monstrous sounds she’d heard adorable black-crowned lemurs make in treetops. It was remarkably similar, in fact, as the monkeys were merely saying hello to one another. “Hello, how are you? How is your day going?” Paul did look so brutishly handsome with the strands of long blond hair coming loose from his queue, panting as though she were the ultimate repository for his masculine urges.

  “Ah, sacrée merde, I’m coming.”

  “And so is Christmas,” Dagny muttered.

  Again she thought of the count, and a feeling of gratitude overcame her, that there was nothing of the wondrously strange fairy tale about Paul. What woman needed to be toyed with by chimerical, graceful whims of mysterious men? What good did it do one to follow such an enigmatic man who was doubtless up to no good? No, it was much better to have straightforward dealings with the sort of undisguised and blunt fervor of Monsieur Paul Boneaux. The other sort of man would only lead one down an incomprehensible road that would only bring uterine fury, and, worse yet, onanism that ate away the brain.

  Still, she felt filthy enough to immediately run to the backhouse, a structure that Paul, with his love of architecture, had kindly enough built at the rear of the library, and emptied herself as completely as she could.

  She accepted the snifter of brandy that the gentleman offered to her. The burning cleansed her throat. He had set himself to rights, and looked prepared to receive a levee of analytical engineers.

  “Paul,” she said lightly. “Did you come from Antananarivo just this forenoon?”

  Paul raised his eyebrows happily. “Why, yes, my doll.” He fondled a tower of the Chief Wife’s palace as though it were a warm cupcake.

  “And when did you first arrive there?”

  “Arrive? Why, maybe three days ago.”

  “Yes?” She tried to appear frivolous by waltzing about him. “I am just wondering … were the Chief Wife to find out about me, would she not be angry?”

  Paul snuffled in the indignant manner of a man who pretends to not understand. “Angry? Why would she be? She is not a selfish woman. She is the bearer of the divine sang real, she carries blood so lofty in the eyes of Malagasy people that it cannot be degraded or ennobled by any other unions.”

  “Ah.” Dagny paused, running a fingertip down the bridge of her lover’s nose. “I see. And in your new little palace, where will she house her imperial bodyguard of eight ‘sparrow hawks’?” The “sparrow hawks” were finely molded young men Ramavo kept at her lusty behest—no more than eight, and no less. If she tired of one, he was commanded to kiss her foot, painted pink with poison.

  Paul shrugged carelessly, pointing to a cupola. “We haven’t discussed it, but here, I imagine … yes, here, I’m certain.”

  Dagny pretended to scrutinize the cupola, twirling around the brandy in her snifter. “I’m sure Ezekiel told you I fell into the water yesterday.”

  Exhaling with relief, Paul cried, “Yes, yes! He did tell me that!” Releasing the cupcake tower, he placed his free hand on her shoulder, frowning with concern. “Yes, my most precious doll, he said Salvatore told him someone from the plantocracy pulled you from the water! I shall send that fellow some gifts, although from what Ezekiel told me, he isn’t in need of anything.”

  A strange wash of reminiscence came over Dagny, as if she had endured decades of painful loneliness since she’d walked the botanical parklands of Barataria, and had fallen into the count’s lush russelia juncea beds. “No, there’s no need for you to send anything.”

  “Ah, then! I have something to show you, something I’ve built for you.”

  Pointing an illustrative forefinger to the ceiling, Paul scuttled to a wooden cabinet. Intrigued, Dagny followed. Built for me? He means he had a slave build it, whatever it is.


  With almost as much lavish grandeur as he’d presented the elfin palace, Paul waved his hand at the cabinet door, opening it with a flourish. “I wanted to wait until I was finished to present it, but now I cannot resist… Behold!”

  Bending forward, she inhaled, and forgot to exhale.

  In his excitement, Paul lit a lamp and held it over the cabinet, pulling out the board upon which the object sat.

  Dagny breathed, “It looks like a …”

  Paul slung his arms over the cabinet door. “Your dodo bird, exactly.”

  At last she was unable to tolerate the sight of the exquisite metal bird any longer, and she regarded Paul with a new face devoid of cynicism. “How … did you make this?”

  For it was a metal bird about three feet in length, with musculature created of entwined strands of copper pulled and twisted together precisely, creating spaces, ligaments, and tendons. The bird bent forward as if eating, balanced delicately by solid metal feet and the angle of his wings, which spread out in shiny arcs of lustrous beauty. Gleaming gears of the smallest daintiness were inside of the bird’s belly, as though a watchmaker had climbed inside and built a mechanical wonderland.

  Paul spoke in the old soft voice that had first entranced her months ago. “It’s of brass, and silver. I studied one of your stuffed ducks, and created it from that, engravings, the words of natives, and what you told me of the dodo you seek. When finished, he will move. It’s an automaton.”

  “He’s incredible.” She wasn’t certain she’d even said that, her head was so light.

  “I do this for you, my doll.”

  “And what will he do, when he’s finished?”

  Paul’s face shone with dignity. “He will be automated at the mouth by a gas flue. He will eat gunpowder, and this will result in …” His face took on a shameful hue then, and he’d never looked more loveable than when he looked down at her bodice.

  “He’ll …?”

  He exploded in mirth then. “He will shit bullets!”

  They both burst into delighted laughter, clutching each other by the arms, and collapsing onto a divan where they’d often made love.

  Paul smoothed her hair back and gazed upon her fondly. “Ah, Dagny. I hope you will make an appearance at Sergeant Townshend’s ball in a month. I anticipate seeing you in that beautiful dress of patent lace with the blue barège scarf I had sent to your cottage. Ezekiel said he would dance a wonderful quadrille with you. He is a fine dancer.”

  “Yes,” Dagny agreed, brushing her fingers over his full lips. “Zeke is a good dancer.”

  “All right, now what about this farmer dud Sal said you met in the harbor?”

  Dagny sighed. “Zeke. He’s hardly a ‘dud.’ He’s a count from New York—though I think he’s originally from Russia or something, at least he’s got a very aristocratic Russian accent—and he’s built the most fantastic botanical gardens I’ve seen outside of Kew.” She’d never really been to London, but felt as if she had, having read so many books on it, and studied the biography of Sir Joseph Banks in her every waking moment. “Besides, he did save my life. For that you must be grateful.”

  She looked sideways at her brother who shared the filanzana with her. His profile was stubborn, jutting jaw askew, frayed jacket cuffs barely covering his wrist bones. He clenched his ridiculous black Quaker hat atop his skinny knees. Why Zeke, a staunch iconoclast through and through, had insisted on wearing the silly hat that, after all, he’d purchased in New York just before leaving on the ship for Africa, was something Dagny enjoyed musing upon. She’d decided that he feared the lustful approaches of native women he’d heard so much about, and they would naturally desist once they saw the hat and realized he was a Quaker. Of course all Malagasy, having been so overrun by Pennsylvania Quakers in the past couple of years, would instantly recognize the hat. “I believe you must be grateful, anyway.”

  “Why, sure, I’m grateful, of course! I can think of a lot of ass-wipers in this desolate Podunk that would’ve left you rotting at the bottom of the sea.”

  “Bay.”

  “Bay. Doesn’t stop him from being a shallow Muscovite sap to my way of thinking, leastways ‘til I meet this grand savior of womankind and find out he’s not just in it for the—well, let’s just say the beast with two backs.”

  Dagny erupted with laughter at her brother’s descriptive powers. “Zeke! In the first place, I’m not so sure he’s from Moscow. He may very well be from Transylvania or one of those other abominable countries where counts abound like apples in a tree, so you may be right about that, after all. In the second place … he has no interest in humping, ‘leastways’ not a white woman who might be interested in a respectable union.”

  “Yes. Well. There you have it.” He turned to her, pointing an accusatory forefinger. “How do you know that? Were you sitting around drinking tea and suddenly out with it, ‘Dear Miss Ravenhurst, I’m only interested in humping native women, so you might as well get your hand out of my—’”

  “Zeke!” Dagny assumed the haughty injured look she’d perfected of late. “What makes you think I’d have my hand anywhere upon the genteel count’s person? I’ve got Monsieur Boneaux, after all, and that should be enough for anyone.”

  Remembering that, Zeke became a bit more complacent, smashing the wide-brimmed hat onto his head. “Did you tell the count about Boneaux?”

  “Of course not. I merely mentioned that I had a swain, to let him know that he could stop being hysterical that I might consider him my next quarry. Which, of course, he would be, if not for …”

  Zeke sat erect with a merchant’s alacrity. “He would be?” He set to musing, rubbing his sparsely bearded chin—another ploy to fend off the hordes of dusky dames. “Yes, yes … Sal did say he seemed to have quite an operation going there. Sounded like a mansion bigger than Boneaux’s, even. What’s his business? Don’t see how shipbuilding could be the lucrative thing in these parts … Some kind of major farming operation, likely.”

  Dagny glanced at her venally mercantile brother. “Yes, you could say that. I got the impression he has some rather large sugar plantations. He seems to fancy himself a ruler of the coastal peoples; they all apply to him for aid or direction. He seemed to know about celestine mining, and he did have a gigantic celestine ring on his … on his finger.”

  “Yes, yes, he told Sal he could introduce him to some mining baboon or other. For whatever good that is. Like a bunch of rocks are going to be our fortune, unless they’re made of gold … I’m telling you, Dagny, you know well that I’m not comfortable with you kowtowing to that—well, don’t take me wrong, Boneaux is a fine man, an upstanding man, well-respected in the community and …”

  “But he has no sway over coastal operations.”

  Zeke’s lower jaw jutted out so stridently it seemed prepared to fly over the edge of the filanzana. It wiggled around in various directions of its own accord until Zeke chose to set it free by proclaiming, “He has no sway over coastal operations, yes! Every soaked potato-head from Fort Dauphine up to Saint Mary’s Island operates in his own small world, paying no respect to anyone, going his own way. It’s every man for himself out there! How’s an honest merchant such as myself supposed to set up business when every last man jack is out to stick a shift into your back at any—”

  “It’s shiv, Zeke.”

  “What?”

  “The word is shiv. It’s a kind of knife.”

  Zeke returned his jaw to a semblance of normalcy. “My point is, do you think this Russian Count fellow might have some coastal relationships that could help me start a trade goods business?”

  Dagny sighed deeply, considering. “Yes. He might. In fact, he mentioned he’d be at Sergeant Townshend’s ball in a fortnight. Maybe we can discuss it then. Do you have any more of those peanuts?”

  Zeke handed Dagny a banana leaf funnel full of raw peanuts. Suddenly, he stood, half-crouching, causing the filanzana to wobble precariously, coconuts rolling over the side. “Hey, hey, hey.
Which way are these yokels going? This isn’t the right way.” He shaped his hand into a cone and shouted through it. “Hey, pal! You’re going the wrong way!”

  Dagny remained impervious. “Zeke. You could try speaking Malagasy. They might understand you then.”

  “Ah, who’s got time to learn any confounded languages? Hey, pal! That’s not the way to Tamatave!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  PAINTING IN THE GLASS-HOUSE

  Barataria, Mavasarona Bay

  THE GLASS-HOUSE WAS HIS FAVORITE SPOT IN BARAtaria.

  Although many had suggested that it was redundant to build a grand house of glass merely to shelter plants identical to the ones that thrived in the jungle, Pellegrin Tomaj Balásházy liked the idea of it. Where else could one sit as if in the out-of-doors on the many, many days that it ceaselessly poured rain, and stay utterly warm and dry? Here one could huddle like a safe beetle under the fronds of the three-story-tall giant ferns and umbrella trees, while overhead the drumming roar of rain against the glass created the illusion one was securely tucked away beneath a thundering waterfall. Tomaj valued security above all.

  Although theoretically, according to their democratic Articles of Agreement, all the men in Tomaj’s party shared equally in their prizes, in practice the boatswain Broadhecker, the carpenter Smit, and chief gunner Hegemsness took one and a quarter shares each, and Tomaj and Youx often took two shares to the others’ one—and these ones were squandered on food, drink, and soused pilgrimages to neighboring islands Anjouan, Grande Comoro, and Querimba off Mozambique. Thus, the majority of his men lived in huts not much better than the natives in Harmony Row. It was not Tomaj’s fault if he was the only one with foresight to have bought land that he cleared for sugar, coffee, and vanilla, employing Malagasy to whom he paid a salary—a pittance for a vazaha, to be sure, but far more than the baskets of rice and invoices for clothing that the majority of slaves of the island received. In this way, he also obtained the most enthusiastic, strong workers.