There was also a beautiful antique harpsichord in one corner of the parlor.
All together the sunroom was a magical setting by starlight, despite the number of wicker chairs and wicker settees crammed into it. Joe guessed that as many as thirty or forty people could have found a place to sit in the room at any one time, more if any degree of intimacy had been allowed. Of course the Sisters had been famous hostesses when they were younger, so perhaps this vast array of spectator seats beside the Nile was only to be expected.
Yet with only the three of them now in the room, a certain melancholy air to the parlor was unmistakable. An inevitable feeling of time having slipped away on the currents beyond the open French doors, taking with it a host of memories of laughter and gaiety and leaving behind these hauntingly empty wicker shapes as ghostly reminders of other worlds and other eras, forgotten now elsewhere, surviving only in the hearts of these two tiny ancient women.
Big Belle found her knitting and stiffly arranged herself in a wicker chair beneath the portrait of Catherine the Great. Little Alice cocked her head at the portrait of Cleopatra and nodded wistfully, as if hearing some echo flit across the water. Joe, meanwhile, smiled at them both and gazed out through the open French doors at the night and the river.
You’ve hurt your ear, said Belle somberly. Were you trying to listen to something too closely?
I’m afraid so, answered Joe.
It’s like that, is it?
I’m afraid.
Belle continued to stare at him.
You remind me of my Uncle George, she announced abruptly. He used to wear a short beard and a shirt without a collar, and there was generally a makeshift bandage someplace on his head. He had your coloring and your build and he must have been about your age when he passed on.
Jesus, thought Joe. And I bet he gambled away the family fortune and dabbled in underage barmaids and drank himself to death. Sounds like the voice of doom and this is no way to get things started. But the important thing is, did they like this Uncle George or not?
Belle still stared at him severely.
Oh help, thought Joe, the curse of Uncle George is upon me. But mightn’t that compulsive lecher have been a wee mite endearing to his lovely young nieces just once in a while? Maybe a friendly smile in their direction as he lurched down the gloomy winter corridors of their family estate, before he fired up the samovar and locked himself in the study to mutter over Paracelsus and rage with his vodka bottles? An uncle-ly pat perhaps, warm and respectable, before he went crashing out into the night to attack the peasant girls in their hovels? Before he stole all the family jewels and all the deeds to the family estates and fled on the spring train from St Petersburg, racing to Nice of course, there to madly gamble everything away in a monumental fit of drunken hysteria?
Belle’s face softened.
The poor dear drank to excess but we were always very fond of him, she said, as if reading Joe’s thoughts.
Three cheers for the rascal then, Joe almost shouted, I always knew Uncle George would pull it out in the end. Of course he drank to excess, but didn’t all the great souls in Russia either drink or love to excess in the nineteenth century? Of course they did, poor dears, but the fact is we’re still very fond of them.
Joe smiled.
That’s a handsome harpsichord in the corner. Do you play it?
Oh no, Alice does. My instrument is that little one you see on top of the harpsichord. It’s a kind of old-fashioned bassoon.
Known as a piccolo faggotina in F, Alice called out gaily. Leave it to Belle to find an instrument with a name like that. Belle will have her own way, Mother used to say. She will do exactly as she pleases.
Little Alice laughed.
Belle and her faggotina, she chirped. Her faggotina, the piccolo instrument she plays. I mean things weren’t said that directly in the old days. One just didn’t step into a parlor and blurt out things like that, but of course Belle always did. And in F, mind you, so there was no way to misinterpret what she was saying. I mean realll-ly.
Little Alice tossed her curls.
Do you like shepherdesses? she called out to Joe.
Big Belle sniffed, studying her knitting.
And how is the poor man supposed to interpret that, Alice? My sister, she called out to Joe, is referring to those porcelain figures on the table beside you.
Joe inspected the figures. He picked one up and admired it.
Oh that one? Little Alice called out, twirling a ribbon on her shawl. That one was an Easter present from a Serbian prince.
A birthday present, declared Belle. And he was hardly a prince.
Little Alice pushed back her curls. She smiled prettily at Joe.
Belle is so contrary, she just can’t help it. Belle will find fault, Mother used to say. She will be stubborn.
Affectionately, Little Alice gazed at her sister.
Should you be drinking that gin straight, dear? You know what the doctor said.
The doctor be hanged, proclaimed Big Belle emphatically, and Little Alice sighed, a faraway look in her eyes.
Well perhaps that porcelain was a present for my birthday, but I still remember that Serbian prince as if it were yesterday. His older brother had gambled away the family fortune, the castles and estates and everything, and then he had sneaked away to Nice where he lived in shame in a small garret room he rented, occasionally writing sketches on Balkan intrigue for the local newspapers. Dimitri had to go to work on the stock exchange in Cairo but he never held it against his older brother. He used to visit Nice every spring to pay off his brother’s tradesmen. He would have liked to have given his brother money but he knew his brother would just gamble it away. Finally the brother died of consumption in his garret one dark winter night, leaving a note that said, Forgive me, brother. Dimitri cried, but really it was a blessing for everyone.
The brother died at noon on a summer solstice, stated Big Belle conclusively. He fell under a carriage in Nice while chasing a young French sailor across the street, in full view of everyone. As for Dimitri, he was in no way an aristocrat. He got his start by making a corner on coffee, the Piraeus, 1849.
I said he worked on the stock exchange, mused Little Alice, which is the same thing really. Anyway, I can picture him as if it were yesterday. A plump figure of a gentleman in a white coat that shined from ironing, waving his long white ivory-handled flyswatter as he came down the club steps on the stock-exchange side of the street. The peddlers would be running after him, offering him early asparagus and mangoes and calling him count or baron. Of course, he was no such thing. Just a rich Greek who had made a killing in cotton.
Annex the Crimea, thundered Big Belle. Damn those Turks. Organize a colony called Alaska.
But a generous man, mused Little Alice. He was always giving me porcelain shepherdesses.
Big Belle looked up from her knitting.
Who’s that you’re talking about, dear? One of your beaux?
Yes, Dimitri. That rich stockbroker from the Balkans whose nationality I always mix up. I’ve just never been able to get the Balkans straight in my mind. Was he a Serbian or an Albanian or a Croat, or was he some other odd thing? You remember him, Belle.
I certainly do. I probably knew him better than you did, although I was only his paramour’s sister. He always came to me for advice before he made one of his periodic plunges in the market.
Well what was he, Belle? Was he an Albanian?
No. He was a Montenegrin peasant and he got his start in coffee, the Piraeus, 1849. He was something of a pirate and the only cotton he ever saw must have been in his children’s underwear. He himself wore silk…. Dimitri, yes. Married late. A good catch. Everybody had an eye on him. The advice he wanted from me would sometimes get out of hand. After a while I had to refuse to meet him in private.
Big Belle turned to Joe.
You’ll have to forgive my sister. She makes things up, always has. Flighty.
I am not, Little Alice called out, sitt
ing up straight in her chair.
Thick-thighed, added Alice under her breath.
What’s that? said Belle over her knitting.
Dimitri gave me that porcelain in 1879, mused Alice. I remember because that was the year he asked me to move into the villa where the drawing room was done in the Turkish style. All the things in it, the woods and the velvets and the lamps of pink and blue Bohemian glass, everything was faded and opaque and dusty. And the rooms on the first floor all smelled of cinnamon and Arab cooking.
You’re making things up again, said Big Belle. The year was 1878, the year Pius IX died. You’re trying to move up dates to make yourself seem younger than you are.
Thick-thighed, whispered Little Alice.
Belle gazed at her sister affectionately.
I’ll have you know the men I’ve been acquainted with have always preferred women with some meat on their bones.
Tra-la, twittered Alice. And especially the bones women sit on?
And what’s that supposed to mean?
Just that if they hadn’t fancied a plump bottom to begin with, they wouldn’t have been coming around to see you in the first place. After all, you were known as Big Belle for a reason.
Belle smiled with satisfaction.
On that account, I never heard a single complaint from any man. They were always pleased and often ecstatic.
I’m sure they were, said Alice. Why wouldn’t they be? Those kinds of men always did prefer you.
When men go oystering, replied Belle, there are those kind and then there are the other kind. And as I recall, the latter were always talking about you in the cafés. Pretty Little Alice and her pretty little mouth. Oh I remember.
Do you now? But how did you know what they were saying in the cafés, Belle? I always thought cafés were for silly people and you only went into town to see your stockbroker?
And a good thing I did, too. If I hadn’t, I can’t imagine where we’d be today. The Lord only knows what would have become of us if our future had been left in your hands.
Belle, really. This houseboat was a gift to whom, I might ask?
And who has paid the bills on it for the last forty years, if I might ask?
Alice tossed her head.
Money has never meant anything to me, that’s true enough. I’ve always been a gypsy at heart. Who cares about money? Who cares?
Belle sniffed.
That’s easy for you to say. Nothing more substantial than a daydream has ever meant anything to you.
Dimitri, mused Alice. His ironing woman was a Copt, I remember. She had the Coptic cross tattooed on her wrists and she spoke Italian because she’d been educated by nuns.
You’d be the one to know, said Belle. You always did like to poke around in the servants’ quarters.
Because I always found them interesting, that’s why. More interesting than the people who strut in drawing rooms and put on airs. Servants have fascinating things to tell you. That’s where I learned to read hands and Tarot cards.
Put on airs? What’s that supposed to mean?
Just that that Croat or whatever he was, that Dimitri, was a terrible bore. Oh Belle, he was. Admit it for once.
He was Montenegrin and fabulously wealthy, and if you’d had an ounce of sense you could have asked him for that villa and he would have given it to you, instead of just those little porcelain trinkets.
Money money money, never anything but money. I like my shepherdesses and I don’t give a hoot about money.
Of course you don’t, why should you? Haven’t I always been here to see that we’re provided for?
But he was such a bore, Belle. All he could talk about was his tedious researches into the Balkan aristocracy. I mean really, who could care about such a ludicrous notion? That and his daubs, as he called them, those cheap paintings he bought in Europe and insisted on attributing to unknown pupils of various seventeenth-century masters. Dimitri indeed. That Croat.
You may say that now, but I’ll have you know the stocks I recommended he give you that Christmas paid excellent dividends for decades. Right up until the last war, thank you.
Well you ought to thank me, Belle. If there were any dividends, I certainly earned them. Do you know he actually told me once that Albania was a good place to buy paintings? Ah ha, I thought, now it’s all going to come out. A mysterious tale about stolen masterpieces and a secret castle high in the Albanian Alps known only to dissolute Russian princes and unscrupulous Levantine art dealers. That’s what I imagined, but when I asked him why Albania was a good place to buy paintings, his answer was that they were cheap there. Can you believe it? Of course paintings were cheap in Albania, why wouldn’t they be? What kind of a painting could you have found in Albania sixty years ago? Or today, for that matter? Of course they were cheap, how ridiculous. They were utterly worthless.
Stop prattling, said Belle. There are no Alps in Albania. Don’t become overexcited just because we have a male guest, you’re not a fifteen-year-old flirt anymore. Stop squirming and try to compose yourself. Would you like more sherry?
I think I will have a little more. Being reminded of Dimitri makes me thirsty…. Arghh. Always that sticky starchy taste gumming up my throat before the guests arrived for dinner. And there was never any relief from it. An hour later, between soup and fish, just when I was beginning to be able to swallow normally again, Dimitri would come prancing down to my end of the table and wiggle his eyebrows and whisper something about a quick private stroll down to the bushes at the end of the garden. Between soup and fish, mind you, and I would even have to make up the excuse we gave our guests. Dimitri indeed…. Arghh. What a Croat. You’re right that there was nothing aristocratic about the way he got through a dinner.
Belle had put aside her knitting and was stiffly crossing the room to Alice’s chair, a decanter in her hand. Her left arm was hanging down in some strange way, Joe noticed, and she almost seemed to be dragging her left foot. She poured from the decanter into Alice’s glass.
Is that all I get, just a half? My throat’s suddenly dry as can be.
Your nerves, dear. Remember what the doctor said.
He’s a silly young fool.
That’s as it may be, but we know what happens when you drink too much sherry. Remember what happened that last evening with Dimitri.
I do remember too, said Alice. We were getting to the end of dinner and the savory was just about to be brought in, when Dimitri came prancing down to my end of the table and wiggled his eyebrows and whispered the usual whisper, and I just stood up and smiled and spoke very clearly to the guests, most of whom were his business associates.
Please excuse us, dears, but Dimitri simply insists we race down to the end of the garden so I can taste his very own savory behind the bushes, the sticky starchy kind, tra-la. But start right in because we’ll be back in a minute. Dimitri’s always very fast in the garden, or anywhere.
Little Alice laughed.
And that was the last I saw of him and his boring stockbroker crowd. Dimitri bolted faster than he’d ever done anything in his life, even behind the bushes.
Alice, said Belle affectionately. Try to behave yourself. I just can’t imagine what Joe must be thinking.
Belle was stiffly, slowly, returning to her chair. Was her face set like that because of pain? wondered Joe.
Alice emptied her sherry glass at a gulp. She smiled across the room at Joe.
I did drink too much sherry that evening, she confided, and I am excitable. And I’m also impulsive and changeable and not the most practical person in the world, just as Belle says. But we are what we are, aren’t we? Belle has a head for solid facts and dates and things like that, and I just don’t. When I remember things I think of colors and patterns and impressions. It’s just the way I am.
Belle had resumed her knitting. Joe noticed her loving glance at her sister.
You used to paint beautifully, said Belle.
Oh no, not beautifully, but I enjoyed it and that was th
e important thing. It was a way of expressing myself. I always used to say I’d be a recognized painter by the time I was fifty.
Little Alice looked down at her lap.
But it didn’t work out that way, she added in a quiet voice.
Alice has crippled hands, said Belle softly. Arthritis. It happened years ago. It was very unfair.
Oh well, murmured Alice, we can’t have everything. And there’s always a reason why something should be so, rather than otherwise. At least that’s what I’ve always told myself.
She smiled. A bright smile.
I’m a dreamer, she said, Belle’s right about that too. When I was little I used to get up early and go out and run through the fields to feel the wind in my hair, and then I’d climb a tree somewhere to spy on people. But I wasn’t spying on them really, it was just that I liked to look over walls. I hate walls, I’ve always hated walls. So I used to climb trees so there’d be no walls, and I’d look down into people’s yards and make up stories about what they were doing. When I went out for my run Belle would still be in bed, but then when I got back she would be sitting on the front porch, reading a book. Belle was always reading as a child. She will be bookish, Mother used to say. She will be stubborn and not go out and play like other children. You always had your nose in a book then, didn’t you, dear? And I could never understand it. I always wanted to be out running and exploring and living like a gypsy, and I could never understand how someone could just sit around all day and read.
Belle wrinkled her nose. She sniffed contentedly.
You silly. What do you think reading is? I could go all over the world in books.
Nile Shadows (The Jerusalem Quartet Book 3) Page 31
