Nile Shadows

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.

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.