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, sitting 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.