Little Alice smiled warmly.
Even Uncle George, the poor dear, used to say the same thing. Well after she had all those operations, Belle decided she was going to walk again. And she went on trying and trying with her lips tight and her jaw set, and finally she did it. The doctors said it was a miracle but I knew it was just Belle being herself.
Belle likes to pretend, you see, that she doesn't believe in miracles. She likes to think she's too rational for things like that.
Little Alice laughed merrily, then turned serious.
So she learned to walk again, and soon after that she had a stroke. That's what you notice about her left side, she's partly paralyzed. Usually I get her medicine for her, but tonight she didn't want me to because you're here, I could tell. And that's why I let her bring you your whiskey and pour my sherry, because I could tell she wanted so much to do it. Belle's proud that way. She wants to keep up appearances.
I just thought you should know, added Little Alice. So you wouldn't think badly of her.
I could never do that, said Joe.
And she was always so talented, continued Little Alice. Everyone admired her for it. She used to write beautiful stories in French and Russian which she'd learned mostly on her own, from books, because she's so clever with languages. And comedies that were witty and subtle and made you laugh and laugh long after you'd finished them. Belle was going to be a writer, you see, and I was going to be a painter.
Privately, we always had those dreams, just between the two of us.
Little Alice looked down at her hands.
Those particular dreams didn't work out for either of us. But there were other things to compensate, and Belle has never stopped writing. The work that has come to mean the most to her is a history of the life of Alexander the Great, for children, which she has worked on for years and years. She's completed three or four volumes but she hasn't gotten to the end yet, and it's all told simply and directly so that a child can understand it and appreciate the great accomplishments. Not the military victories so much as the journeys to strange lands and all the strange peoples Alexander met, so children can appreciate what it means to try hard and live your own life. Someday she may finish it, I don't know.
Shyly, Alice looked up.
Or maybe not? Maybe she can't bring herself to finish it and the story of Alexander the Great will just go on and on forever, like the Nile?
Little Alice smiled.
It's true that people are affected by where they live, and we've lived here so long it's almost like a dream.
Oh yes, we're ancient and we know it. Sometimes I think we're as old as the pyramids, so much has passed by us here.
She laughed.
But I'm chattering again, aren't I? Belle's right, I just can't help myself. But you see I never wanted to become old and even now I don't feel old, even though I look a hundred and ten, more or less. I know it sounds strange, but inside I feel exactly the same as I did when I used to go for my runs early in the morning and I'd come back and find Belle sitting on the porch, reading, and Mother would bring us cookies and milk. Inside, it's still me.
Little Alice frowned.
And I could never picture myself living like those little old ladies you used to see around here, who never appeared in public until the sun went down. You used to see them gathering like old crows on the corners of small empty streets just after sunset, shaking their ancient hats and chatting in French with Greek or Armenian accents, or Syrian or Maltese accents, and then they'd go strolling off in a cluster along the flowered railings to their daily card game in some damp darkened room that you knew would be cluttered with heavy Moorish-style furniture, the arabesques and mother-of-pearl gleaming feebly in the gloom, the fragile inlaid filigree all gummed up with dust.
I hate dark rooms, whispered Little Alice. And I don't want to look like an old crow in some ridiculous old-fashioned hat, and I hate those tiresome card games old women play and the heavy gloomy furniture that always goes with them. I like things light and airy and I never wanted to be old, and somehow I've never been able to picture myself that way. I know I'm as ancient as the hills but I don't feel that way. I feel as if I'm just still me.
Little Alice abruptly smiled.
But here I am prattling again. Tell me, do you like Egypt? It's changed so much since we first came here.
Originally, Belle and I were on the stage and that's why we never married. In those days actresses never got into families. Nowadays it's different, but it used to be like that.
You must have been very young when you came to Egypt, said Joe.
Oh yes, we were. With white camellias in our shining dark hair. And it was unforgettable, that first sparkling winter we were here, nearly three-quarters of a century ago.
Was it that long ago?
Yes, that's when it was. We came for the opening of Aïda, for the first performance of Aïda that was ever given anywhere. But we didn't come as wealthy tourists or as the guests of someone who was wealthy. We were poor then and we didn't know a soul in Egypt and we came as slave-girls in Aïda, just two little slave-girls off at the back of the stage. Aïda opened at the khedivial opera house in honor of the opening of the Suez Canal, and there were guests from all over the world in Cairo then, and not one of them paid a penny for anything. Everything was free, given by the Magnificent, the khedive Ismail. The shops and hotels all over Egypt just sent in their bills to the minister of finance, who paid the lot of them without a murmur. The road to the pyramids was built then, so the Empress Eugénie could visit them in her carriage.
Little Alice nodded to herself.
And even though we were just slave-girls in the production, we began to attract a certain amount of attention, because we were twins, I suppose. And before long we were being invited around to dinners and to sunset sails on the Nile, and then later came the beautiful houses, the villas that were museums of china and carpets, the rarest in the world. And Belle had her residences and I had mine, and it was lavish, I can tell you. We used to call on each other in our carriages or meet along the river somewhere, and then in the evenings we'd be sitting in our separate boxes at the opera, in the first tier, our breasts covered with diamonds and every pair of glasses in the house turning from one of us to the other, looking to see what we were wearing and watching to see which gentlemen we spoke to, and with how much enthusiasm.
Little Alice smiled shyly.
People used to talk about us in those days but I don't suppose they do anymore. I don't suppose people even remember we're still alive.
Oh yes they do, said Joe. And there are all kinds of mysterious tales about the mysterious sisters who live in a rambling houseboat on the Nile.
Little Alice clapped her hands in delight.
There are? Still? Even though we're a hundred and ten, more or less?
Little Alice grew wistful.
What kinds of tales? Where do they say we came from?
Ah, now that's the most mysterious part of all. Nobody claims to know where you really came from, but one story is that you were Russian princesses running away from a family scandal. An uncle had gambled everything away in Nice, or some such thing, so friends bundled the two of you into a sealed train in St Petersburg one cold winter night, at the Finland Station, and you went abroad with the best of old Russia in your suitcases and never went back again.
It sounds like a nineteenth-century novel, whispered Alice happily.
It does, doesn't it? And then there's a totally different story, just as intriguing, about the two of you being Hungarian actresses who went to Paris at a young age and became a hit there. And another story begins in Venice, and another in Vienna, and just on and on. There's no end to them really, and one is more exotic than the other.