AS SLUSHY HAD FORETOLD, WHEN DAGNY ARRIVED home at her cottage, there was a summons for her to proceed to Mantasoa. Sal had rushed off on an excursion into the northern rain forest near Nosy Tovaraty, convinced he knew where Tomaj’s celestine mines were.
“But you said he doesn’t want you knowing,” Dagny protested. “He’d tell you if he wanted you to know.”
“Oh, something about Chinese pirates coming to kill me if I know where the mines are,” said Sal, shoving bundles of cooked rice rolled in banana leaves into a knapsack. “That doesn’t frighten me. I’m sure Tomaj doesn’t own all the mines. I might just happen upon one that he doesn’t know about.”
“Why are the Chinese pirates so interested in celestine?”
Sal stopped his activity, looked blankly at the floor, and shrugged. “Maybe they don’t have any in China.”
“Hmm. Take the Lang’s pistol with you, then.”
Dagny invited Zeke to Mantasoa. Zeke had just received his own message from King Radama, approving his plans for the lodge. This news seemed, oddly, to irritate Zeke.
“How did that happen so fast?” he grumbled as the filanzana bearers trudged up the road to Mantasoa. “I didn’t even ask for his approval! What do I care if that pixy-led barbarian king approves of my lodge or not?” Zeke swatted at a swarm of radiant sunset moths with his straw sailor hat crowned with a pom-pom. One of his goals today was to rescue his beaver Quaker hat from Boneaux. Until then, he seemed to reckon the ridiculous French hat would fend off the hordes of wanton women who were eager to get their claws into him. Whereas the beloved Quaker hat kept women at bay by its religious aura, the pom-pom hat would scare them away by its sheer silliness.
“You should care, Zeke. If you have the King’s approval, then everything will run smoothly.”
“You suppose Boneaux pushed through the approval?”
“Boneaux? No, I think not…”
“Oh, yes? How are you so sure of that?”
“Because … Tomaj said he would push it through. Personally. With the king.” She waited for great clouds of disgust that never came. “Boneaux has more influence with Ramavo. Tomaj has influence with the king.”
When they reached the laboratory of the Maison des Singes Diaboliques, Zeke headed for the carpentry shop, where he imagined he could order a few new bedsteads and tables for his inn. “I need a better bar for the saloon,” he said. “The one I have must’ve been taken from a Mexican bodega, because it’s only about three feet tall. That’d be fine, if only Chinamen wanted to get as drunk as a tinker. But the regular white fellows might mistake it for a bootblack stand.”
Dagny hurried into the laboratory, eager to see her sifaka. Tomaj hadn’t allowed her to collect a specimen, citing native fady taboo, so she’d paid someone to collect one for her. She had stuffed its nose and throat with cotton and packed it in salt before having it shipped back to the Maison, where Tomaj or a tribe of irate fady believers were least likely to see it.
Ignoring the gathering of white men over by a cast-iron contraption of some kind on the other side of the warehouse, Dagny fairly skipped to her stuffing table, taking off her elaborate hat of shirred bottle-green velvet. She threw it on the table along with her gloves, where it looked quite at home next to a black and red Malagasy Coucal bird, who seemed as though it wanted to make a festive Christmas nest with the striped ribbon.
“Excuse me, gentlemen.” Boneaux’s voice echoed with authority about the cavernous warehouse, and his heels clicked over briskly. “Ah, Miss Ravenhurst! How good of you to come.” She imagined him rubbing his hands, though she didn’t look up from her sifaka package. “Oh! Sainte merde! Please, let us get away from that horrible rancid animal!”
“Oh, it’s not so—” Dagny choked, picking up her gloves to use as a mask against her mouth. “It’s not so terribly bad, Monsieur! I just should have perhaps eviscerated it prior to having it transported.”
“No, no!” Paul held his own gloves to his mouth and nose, and he gestured for an assistant. “Veuillez retirer cet animal immédiatement!”
“No, no! Paul—Monsieur, you cannot. It’s a rare genus of lemur that I collected over in—south of Tamatave. Please, Monsieur. Allow me to skin it, to save the skeleton and the skin.”
Paul’s face wrinkled, like he’d just had a plate of Icelandic sheep’s testicle aspic waved under his nose. “All right.” He shooed away the assistant. “But let us retreat to my office.”
“Mademoiselle!” called Chick the blacksmith, one of the men in the group. “Is your brother here?”
She knew he meant Sal, of whom Chick was inordinately fond. “No,” Dagny called back cheerfully. “He’s out prospecting.”
“Prospecting, eh?” Paul took a seat behind the desk. He reached into a drawer for a bottle of brandy, today proffering two snifters upon the desktop. She knew he must not be angry with her, and she relaxed to see his smiling burly face of which she was so fond. If she were lucky, he would not mention her voyage to Fort Dauphin at all. “Your brother is an odd duck. In one manner, he is so elegant, like a Ganymede. In the other manner, he is so rough, prospecting in the forest for days on end! No amount of dirt ever seems to bother him!”
“Yes, he’s really very fond of dirt.”
“Yes, yes, yes …”
“On the ground, not on his person, of course.”
“Well, now. You see, Miss Ravenhurst.” Why did he call her that, when they were in the office with the door closed? “Today I have not much time to spend with you, only a business proposal to make. First, let me toast. To all of your successful natural discoveries!”
Dagny raised her eyebrows with surprise. Paul had never expressed much interest in the natural world, unless it was something he could harvest for an invention, or something he could burn or build with. Dagny clinked glasses with him, and drank.
“That brings up my proposal, for it involves animals. Your aye-aye, to be exact. I should like to be the first to display it at the Menagerie du Jardines des Plantes in Paris! With your name duly noted as the discoverer, my doll, of course!” He raised his glass in another toast, but Dagny sat immobile.
“Why … I don’t think I can do that, Paul. I’ve already promised Count Balásházy that I will turn the aye-aye over to him. If I find one, of course. I told you I’d made that promise.”
Paul’s face turned seductive, and he looked up at her from under his lashes, his lips pursed. “Now, my doll. Who is more important to you, I or that despicable freebooter? Who after all has sheltered you and your family and has given you all employment?”
Dagny smiled. “Why, you, of course, Paul. I don’t mean to seem ungrateful, for you have done more for my family and I than … why, anyone we’ve ever been acquainted with. You are a warmhearted, generous, great man of industry! But I do try to stay honorable in my dealings with others, and the count, well… I made the agreement with him several weeks ago. You can respect that, can you not? Being a man of honor yourself?”
“Oh, yes, yes, of course. I see that you are a woman of honor, and do not wish to take back your agreement. But …” A sly glint came into his eye then. “What if I were to say to you that I will offer you seven thousand dollars for this rodent? What then, eh, my doll?”
“Paul!” Dagny clapped her hands together. “That is entirely too much! No, I cannot accept the offer, I absolutely cannot. In fact, I was going to tell the count that his five thousand dollars was much too dear—”
Paul sat up straight now, palms down on the desktop. “What if I were to say that your giving me this honor would make me the happiest man in Madagascar? I would consider it fair payment for all I have done for you … and your family.”
If he couched it that way, Dagny could not refuse. “All right, then. I can give you the second one I find. Is that not fair? Your exhibition in Paris will most likely happen a lot sooner, and be much bigger news in the scientific world, than Tomaj’s—than Count Balásházy’s tiny exhibition in Pamplemousses.”
Paul smiled. “Yes, that is true. But let us not say you give me the second rodent you find. Let us say you give me the first one that you find … on my property.”
On his property? The area Dagny was most likely to discover the creature was the area north of Nosy Tovaraty, inland from Île Sainte-Marie and the Bay of Antongil. This might not be Tomaj’s land, but it was much closer to Barataria than to Mantasoa, and Tomaj could much more easily lay a claim to it than Paul.
“All right, deal, Monsieur Boneaux.” She extended a hand, and Paul leaned far over his desk to kiss it, looking up at her with shining eyes.
“Ah, Miss Ravenhurst. You have made me a happy man. Of course …” he wiggled an eyebrow at her. “You do always make me a most happy man.” Standing erect, he added, “I am sorry, I must get back to my engagement with my men.”
Coming around to her side of the desk, he laid his hands upon her shoulders and kissed her, rather gently for him. Dagny imagined it was because he didn’t want to become unduly aroused. His large hands did slide up her ribs, but he stopped short and withdrew, holding her chin between his fingers, amused. “Before you skin your monkey, can you have your filanzana bearers move the conveyance? Some of my men are exercising in the yard, and we’ve placed the filanzanas off to one side.”
“How is the mechanical dodo coming along? I should like to glimpse it again.”
“Ah, it is … it has gone away, to the silversmith’s shop, for certain gears needs to be fabricated.”
Dagny went back to the main concourse where the filanzana bearers gathered. A few strummed valihas, and others engaged in an awkward sport where they tried to roll large stones down a lane toward other smaller stones.
Emerging from behind a traveler’s tree hedge, a frantic Malagasy man ran toward her, proffering a bundle, followed by approximately twenty jogging men. The fellow shoved the black furry bundle at Dagny. “Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle! Look what we have found!”
Dagny accepted the cat-sized creature as the men pressed in around her, the dank odor of the unwashed jungle threatening to smother her. She gasped when she beheld the leathery bat ears she had heard so much of, her fingers smoothing over the tail that looked like that of a fluffy fox, but was in actuality bristly. Opening the mouth with two fingers, she finally beheld the ever-growing incisors that could chisel through coconut husk. The eyes were closed, so she could not tell if they resembled a staring owl. “Aye-aye!” she whispered to the hushed crowd.
Some were afraid to speak its name aloud, so only a few responded, “Eh-eh,” which was how they pronounced it.
“But—Inona ity?” What is this? “It has been—mamono.” Killed.
“Eny.” Yes. “We do not like this animal.”
“Well, yes, but… I would much prefer a live one. Tsy tìako ity.” I do not like this. “Can you not capture one alive?”
While she attempted to convey the word “capture” in a combination of French, Malagasy, and sign language, Paul approached, full of jollity.
“Miss Ravenhurst, I forgot to mention to you. My men have made a sort of felt out of fur and fibers that you may be able to use for your stuffed—my, what is this?”
“Eh-eh!” a few bold men exclaimed to their master.
“Aye-aye!” Dagny cried needlessly, in her excitement shoving the dead animal up against Paul’s waistcoat. “Isn’t it wonderful? It’s a real, living—well, perhaps not so very ‘living’—”
Throwing his hands in the air, Paul backed away from the lemur. “Où l’avez-vous trouvé?” he asked the men.
As they climbed over each other to be the first to tell him where they’d found the creature, Zeke meandered up, limping.
“God-damnit,” he snarled. “The carpenters said it’d take three months to make a saloon bar for me, because all the wood for hundreds of miles around here is going to make the queen a jackass palace or other. I’m just going to have to use some of that inferior soft palm wood, and the bar will look like a mushroom, unless you think Balásházy happens to have a bar from Russia lying around. That seems like the sort of thing he’d have. Now I’ve stepped on something …”
Lifting his foot behind him, Zeke stretched to see over his shoulder. “Oh, fuck me dry!” he bawled, apparently unaware that was a favorite motto of Balásházy’s. “The queer fish animals they have around here! Will you take a look at this, Dagny?”
Cradling the dead aye-aye, Dagny squatted down to view the bottom of Zeke’s boot. There, as flat as a coin and nearly as bashed, was the tiniest chameleon she’d ever seen. His poor protruding eyes had been flattened in surprise, and his squashed mouth wailed for salvation. The critter was only an inch long! This must be the miniscule chameleon she had never been able to view. “Wait, Zeke … let me peel it off your boot.”
Paul said, “Did you hear, my doll? This man has found this rodent not fifteen miles from here … on my property!”
“Oh, is that so?” Dagny said as she stood. She waved the flat lizard in the air, frowning at it. “Well, I don’t believe a dead aye-aye is of much use to anyone.”
Paul stilled. “Dead? What is wrong with dead? Aren’t all of your animals dead?”
“Is that your aye-aye?” Zeke queried, fearlessly taking the animal from Dagny and holding it up to inspect it.
“But you shoot all of your specimens!” Paul cried.
Dagny corrected, “Some of them, if I cannot get them any other way. But I’ve heard the aye-aye is dauntless and unafraid of humans, and I’ve devised a way to catch a live one. A stuffed aye-aye at Jardines des Plantes will hardly cause the uproar that a live one would. I was under the impression our agreement was for a live one.”
“Bah!” Paul spat. “You merely don’t want this one because you want to find a live one for your lover!”
Holding out the flat chameleon with indignation, Dagny put her free hand on her hip, but Zeke beat her to it, turning to Paul and questioning, “Might I ask, how did you know this one was shot? Have you looked at it?”
Paul sputtered as he tried to reach for the expired lemur. “I … I have assumed that it was shot, because most dead animals are!”
Zeke stomped backward into the crowd of men, holding the lemur away from Paul’s clutches. “It’s fairly evident that you had foreknowledge of this critter just ‘happening’ to be here at this moment, which would seem to invalidate whatever agreement you made with my sister.” Zeke could be a creepy customer when he had half a mind to.
“Foreknowledge? That is impossible! Dagny and I have just made this agreement not a quarter of an hour ago, isn’t that right, doll? I think it is what they call synchrone, such happenings that, that happen at just the precise—”
“Ow!” yelped the fellow who had brought the aye-aye, as Zeke was not only stamping on his foot, but shoving the deceased creature in his face, as well. Clawing the odious animal from his face, the fellow demanded of Boneaux, “Monsieur, when will you give me the five dollars you said for the monkey?”
“Aha!” bellowed Zeke, falling even farther back into the clutch of men, now holding the poor creature to his chest. “Five dollars, eh?”
“Five dollars?” cried Dagny. “Why, Paul, that’s highway robbery! Zeke, give this man twenty dollars, and let’s take our leave.”
Boneaux made one final lunge, whisking the flattened lizard from Dagny’s grip. To hold onto it would have meant its utter disintegration, so she relinquished it, much to his superior satisfaction.
He now fluttered the forlorn lizard, crowing, “I will keep this for you … next to your smelly monkey!” He glanced at the chameleon, jumped with fright, and dropped it.
The men now all crowding around the hunter who had received the twenty dollars, Zeke and Dagny made their escape back to the filanzana.
“Wow,” said Zeke, as they clambered aboard the conveyance. He held the aye-aye propped up in his lap, fashioning it into a sitting position, ready for tea. “So this is the sacred goal of the animal world? Fairly ghoulish. Look at this long finger!”
The bearers lifted the palanquin chair and set off trotting down the rise. The aye-aye’s arm jiggled as though urging friends to deal him another hand of cards. Zeke continued, “That Boneaux could sure use a serious jawbation, trying to give you that flapdoodle. As if you’d be a gump enough to believe that bilgewater. The monkey just walked by at the exact same moment…” Zeke fell to chuckling to himself and clucking his tongue. “Besides, aren’t these nocturnal critters?”
“I did believe that nonsense at first. I may have even taken him at his word, though I would never have allowed him to give me seven thousand dollars for it, for an animal I didn’t collect myself… if you hadn’t happened along. You surprise me, brother!”
“What?” Zeke said vaguely, playing with the monkey.
“You’ve always defended Paul, told me I needed to continue meeting with him, though you hated it, of course. But you’ve never questioned a single thing he’s said or done, and now you’re jumping to my defense!”
Zeke chortled. “‘The man who never changes his opinion is like stale water that gives birth to mental reptiles.’”
Dagny sputtered. “Zeke! You’re just full of surprises today!”
Zeke dandled the monkey on his knee. “We’ll be all right without Boneaux, once I get my lodge going. What was that on the bottom of my shoe, anyway?”