Both portraits, in fact, might have been meant to represent unsuspected aspects of a giggly little Queen Victoria in the frolicsome days of her youth, before she took on the burdens of empire, the tiny future queen having decided to succumb to fantasy one rainy afternoon in some castle or other, and abandoned herself to the secret joys of dressing up, as little girls were known to do. This impression was reinforced by the fact that the young faces in the two portraits were close enough in appearance to be the faces of twins. Tiny twins. Yet even in the portraits, the girlish figure of Catherine the Great was noticeably bulkier than the girlish figure of Cleopatra.
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 fagot tina, she chirped. Her fagot tina, 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.