THE BRAZIL HAD LONG BEEN A PASSION FOR TOMAJ, and during several recent conversations with Sal, he’d come to the inevitable conclusion that there they would find salvation. THE BRAZIL HAD LONG BEEN A PASSION FOR TOMAJ, and during several recent conversations with Sal, he’d come to the inevitable conclusion that there they would find salvation.
Since the murder of Paul Boneaux and Tomaj’s attendant escape from the clutches of Ranavalona’s soldiers, the queen had sent intermittent regiments to his gates. The soldiers clamored for Tomaj’s head, as well as the neck of the pirate crazy enough to chop off the head of a man already dead. There were simply too many people in Mavasarona Bay armed to the teeth, in particular the brutal American whalers whom the soldiers would not harm, and they were able to repel the soldiers, but for how long?
All in all, it was time to make sail for unfamiliar lands and found a new colony.
Sal and Radriaka were kept constantly busy overseeing the stowing of Stormalong’s hold with celestine for the Italians. Tomaj reasoned when soldiers saw those operations they would relax, for would he cruise off for new ports and abandon his plantation with only celestine to succor a minimal crew of waisters?
There were a few Malagasy pirogue skippers, accustomed to raiding in the Mozambique Channel, as well as captains of Arab sambuks from Zanzibar and up the Red Sea. From Zeke’s reports, they were engaged making a proper potmess of things aboard Boneaux’s frigate. Apparently all were sea lawyers often seen sword fighting on deck, no one willing to allow another to be captain, always fouling the cables.
Tomaj handed the running of Barataria to Ian MacKendrick. He was an enterprising and missionary whaleman from Nantucket, weary after ten years of cruising to New Zealand, Australia, and New Holland. MacKendrick epitomized the ascendancy of the American whale trade over the English, with the peculiar American advantages of superior wisdom, daring, and zeal. As bluff as bull beef, as were all Nantucketers who had put in more than a year in the Pacific, MacKendrick was weary of risking his life for a few barrels of oil. Tomaj had to admit it was a tough life, stripping the “blanket-pieces” of blubber, with long poles bailing liquid spermaceti out of whale cases. “Trying out” was the most disagreeable and savage part of the whaling business. Tomaj and his men, who could cheerfully and lustfully hack a ship’s crew to pieces and spew their brains upon the deck with no more compunction than a spider lunching upon her mate, became nauseated with the stories of the huge mountains of flesh and blubber lying about the decks. Tomaj conjured up Dante’s images of the infernal regions from MacKendrick’s descriptions of the hissing boilers and vile cross-seas of flame from the furnace flues. “If this warn’t hell on a small scale,” MacKendrick said, “I don’t know what to call it.”
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?” Dagny 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.