For a good two hours now Simon and Alice had been receiving their guests at the door of the great hall where the wedding feast was unfolding. Simon had never seen his wife so beautiful. He said as much to every new arrival, to the point of embarrassing the young woman.
“Have you seen my wife? She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Or else, to a close friend: “Don’t be jealous—you’ll never have one like her anyway!”
After a while, however, they had to mingle in the hall with the rest of the family and the guests, so that the arrival of Uncle Abraham—hesitant and far-off, as was his habit—passed all but unnoticed by most. Alice merely heard Simon murmur: there’s Uncle Abraham; I’ll introduce him to you in a little while. In a wholly inexplicable way, she kept her gaze fixed at length on the old man, full of curiosity. As he came in, many people had turned toward him, but only two or three went over to greet him. He was an old man of whom one might have said that he was venerable beneath his abundant white hair. But very quickly one could tell that this word did not suit him at all. Indeed, despite a few star-shaped wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, his face bore few traces of the eighty-two years he had already lived. What struck one about him at once was that blue gaze, at once deep and direct, which he laid upon everything around him—a gaze that seemed still to marvel at the things of life. The fine, straight nose, the permanent half-smile uncovering even teeth, and the astonishing fineness of his skin completed the impression that one had before one not an accomplished octogenarian but a man in his prime, serene and yet plunged into a curious melancholy.
Very quickly the astonishing old man vanished from Alice’s sight. The agitation of the crowd, the people who wanted at all costs to kiss the bride, Simon dragging her along behind him—all of this kept Alice from seeing where he had gone.
As was his habit, Uncle Abraham withdrew a little to one side, watching the celebration as though he had entered the vast salon by chance—full as it was of guests talking and laughing, a glass in hand, nibbling petits fours. Why did this wedding seem to him so different from all those he had already attended? Of course, the whole family was there. He recognized most of the ladies in their carefully chosen dresses—cousins, the wives of friends now departed, people always of a certain age, naturally. The majority of the young girls in their daring dresses, on the other hand, remained more or less unknown to him. The music, the conversations, the general joyful agitation, the people calling out to one another from a distance—everything was like those evenings that had punctuated the last fifty years of his life. “So what is it that seems odd to me today?” he asked himself. “What is hiding deep within me that I can’t manage to bring into the light?”
He let himself drift into reverie over all those bygone years of his life, avoiding the episodes that had marked him so irreparably. Despite the hubbub, the music, the greetings from afar, the images filed past, as though set on the glossy pages of an album, with that derisory and violent power that old photographs hold over a tired memory. Each one evoked a place, an anecdote, a person… My God, did I really live through all that? Is it really so long, half a century? Familiar faces succeeded one another, moments, events that had marked his whole life. But when Natacha’s face surged up within him without warning, haloed by her long black hair, he tried—alas, always in vain—to close the album again. Was it because of that hair, precisely, that he had taken to calling her Natte, or quite simply because the diminutive flowed naturally from the name? He had never really known.
“I love you, Natacha, I love you beyond everything that… But you have to be patient a little; the family will come around in the end—”
“Come now! Come now! Don’t talk nonsense, Abraham! I know you love me. Only here’s the thing: your family sees just one thing—I’m not one of yours. I’m not Jewish, so for them I can’t be your wife. It’s as simple as that.”
“Don’t say that, Natacha! There’s no question of anything depriving me of you.”
“Abraham, your Natte exists only for you. And I—I don’t want you to cut yourself off from your own, to renounce father and mother for me, or even to drift away from this culture in which you were raised.”
“Natte, you’re hurting me. We’re together, the two of us, aren’t we?”
“Of course, Abraham, we’re together when we’re alone. I love you as you love me, but it’s impossible; I don’t really believe in it anymore…”
“Natte? You don’t believe much anymore in what—in us?”
“In a house that would be ours, with children who would be ours, a house where your mother and your father could sit at our table, eat with us!”
“Natacha, I believe in it. You’ll see, we’ll have that house, we’ll have those children. Children of our own—do you realize?”
“Abraham, you know better than I do the importance your father attaches to what he calls transmission. Never—neither he nor your mother will ever accept, will ever be able to accept, that…”
Uncle Abraham gave a start, stunned to have recovered with such precision this conversation he had had fifty years before, just before… Yes, back then, she still called him Abraham. The anecdotal aspect of what he had exchanged with Natacha astonished him. He even felt something like anger before these words that seemed to reduce that period of his life to some ordinary lovers’ quarrel. Into what mist had vanished the transcendence that had inhabited him then? In what murky water had the unbreakable love that bound them dissolved? No! No! He must not, on an evening like this, plunge back into what had broken him forever. How could he still, at over eighty, see again the young man he had been, hear his own voice utter the marvels he had believed in at the very dawn of his existence? And then… Oh! Natte, my Natte! He had not known how, he had not been able to. He made a disillusioned gesture against his own thoughts.
And yet he began, unconsciously, to recount the years that had passed since that day when… Let’s see, that scene I just relived, it was in 1950. Maybe in 1951. That is, I was twenty-four or twenty-five. So it’s been nearly fifty-six years since Natacha… Well over half a century, he said to himself, and another sort of anger, an absurd one this time, swept over him before the erosion and the trivialization that time inflicted on the most vivid emotions and the most terrible memories.
The music, the crisscrossing conversations, the children’s laughter, their jostling, the violent, manifold lights of the hall—all of this dazzled Alice, and frightened her at the same time. She looked at the things, the people, the guests’ outfits, tried to recognize someone here or there, but she had landed in Simon’s life such a short time ago that only the faces of two or three of his friends were familiar to her. And of course those of her brand-new parents-in-law. She steeped herself in everything that was in the process of making up her new life. A life that had nothing to do with the one that had been hers until then. Until this day she was living like a dream. Until Simon. Once again the unease she had felt at her first meeting with the family of the man she loved swept over her. She smiled, she offered a word, a gesture, but she was obliged to make an effort to do so, as when one forces oneself, abroad, to speak the language of the country one is visiting. No, she observed it at every instant: this world was not hers. Men, young or old, kissed her, showed her a spontaneous, natural affection that moved her; women welcomed her, offered her with a kind of tenderness explanations for everything around her. And there was as much joy as sincerity in their manner. In spite of everything, she could not share in it. She could not even enter naturally into this universe that was being offered to her, after all, with an authentic kindness.
She began again to smile at all those who approached her. She replied with a kind word, stammered in the surrounding hubbub. She accepted the hand held out to her, or the glass, or the little cake. But she realized that she was unconsciously looking for the strange old man who had intrigued her from the start. She wanted to dissolve into the great celebration where she felt so alone, without truly managing to. Nothing changed deep down inside her. With her eyes she searched for the silhouette of Simon, his smile, his eyes—Simon, her only mooring in this ocean across which she felt she was sailing without a rudder. But the man who had won her over so quickly four months earlier was standing far from her, over there, near a long table laden with little dishes. He was surrounded by his close friends, champagne in hand and laughter on his lips. The words he had spoken in the very first minute of their meeting came back to her: “Alice, until this second, I believed that life was lived flat against the ground. But you came, and I realized that you were at once the sky and the bird.” She rediscovered the emotion she had felt on hearing those words, but she also remembered that she had found them slightly excessive and, as it were, marked by a somewhat manufactured poetry. Someone offered her a cigarette, which she declined. She went on studying the throng of guests. They all knew one another; they were all at once different and alike, a hundred and one at the same time.
“Alice, my dear, come over here near us. Don’t leave us all alone, Henri and me. I can see you’re looking for Simon, but he’s going to have you for the rest of his life!” It was her mother-in-law, in a complicated dress, who had come to fetch her and was leading her off to another end of the hall. This way of laughing, of clasping one another by the shoulders, the hand they laid on the arm of the person they were addressing, the songs they took up in chorus—all of that was what she did not know how to do and what, she realized, excluded her from the celebration. This music at whose door she stood, irresolute and ill at ease, unable to enter, this music was theirs. “Being Jewish—can it be learned?” she suddenly asked herself. “Can it be learned? Are there exams for it? A diploma to enter their house?” No answer came to her from this evening of which she was, nonetheless, the center.
At that instant a cry burst out, taken up on all sides: “Long live the bride! Long live the bride!” The music quickened, transforming the whole hall into a pulsing stage; dancing seized hold of everyone, young and old mingled together; the furniture, the chandeliers, the very walls, everything began to tremble, to spin. “The chair! The chair!” cried a man’s voice, deep and laughing. “A chair? Why a chair?” she wondered. Once more she noticed that everyone understood what was meant. Everyone but her. She found herself seated on a chair that had sprung up she knew not whence, and felt herself being lifted. They were carrying her away; she was soaring toward the great crystal chandelier. The cries, the laughter, the songs filled the hall almost to a paroxysm. She felt as if drawn up by the ceiling. A few meters from her, she caught sight of another chair rising into the air as well, bearing a laughing, radiant Simon. From afar he blew her kisses with his hand. A little lost, almost unaware of what she was living through, she began to look around her, panicked at the thought of falling. And it was then that she caught sight of the handsome old man for the second time. He stood, upright, alone and motionless amid the frenzy that surrounded him. He did not sing like everyone else; he was simply there, silent and smiling, magnificent beneath his white mane of hair. Yes, he was alone, and seemed to offer affection mechanically to all those who approached him. But very quickly, in the hubbub and the mad waltz of the two chairs, he vanished from her sight once again, leaving her grappling with a mountain of questions.
Uncle Abraham suddenly understood what made this evening so peculiar for him. Of course, it could only be that! The family had explained to him a few weeks earlier, with a kind of embarrassment, that the young bride was not Jewish. On the spot, he had not wanted to register that sort of reality. But of course, it all came back to him suddenly like a boomerang. What he had tried to conceal for years surged abruptly within him, as if time had stood still. His own father stood before him, hand raised to heaven, eyes burning with a fire he had never seen in him. The terrible words began to buzz in his ears, drowning the music and the joy around him beneath their malevolent hail… “Listen to me well, Abraham: never will I give my consent to a marriage that is none. Do you think it’s for this that God allowed me to pass through the horror of Nazism? To find myself with a son whose children will never be Jewish? Do you think I’ll accept that the flesh of my flesh not be blessed by that Rav who gives us so many beautiful Shabbats since the end of that horrible war? And besides, this Natacha, with a name like that—she surely belongs to one of those families that invented the pogroms. So listen to me: if you marry this girl, kind as she may be, for me you will no longer exist…” Words spoken more than half a century ago. It was unbelievable.
Uncle Abraham passed a hand through his hair, then over his face. Beads of an unhealthy sweat were forming here and there on his cheeks and trickling down to his neck.
The music had taken possession of the young and the old as if a new blood had begun to flow in everyone’s veins and arteries. The rhythm of the Ashkenazi dances seized the hall. Alice no longer perceived anything but this sensation of flying above the earth. The songs had ended by steeping her in a joy such as she had never known. She saw herself so surrounded, so protected, that the disagreeable feeling that had spoiled the whole beginning of the evening seemed to vanish all at once. Yes, a new reality was insinuating itself into her: at last, she was there, she was part of this whole from which she had thought herself excluded. She no longer experienced herself as the stranger one receives, whom one handles with care, to whom everything must be gently explained. Of course, the champagne, to which she was unaccustomed, had something to do with it, but still, the champagne did not explain everything. “I’m like them, I’m like them,” she caught herself murmuring with a childlike joy, “I’m part of them all! I said yes two days ago to that ever-so-kind mayor with his tricolor sash. So I’m Simon’s wife. I’m even Simon’s Jewish wife.”
For of course she could not forget the religious ceremony that had taken place two days earlier in a synagogue that the family and their close friends had described as liberal. The Rabbi had had her repeat formulas that he translated at once. She had suppressed the awkward feeling of being in another country on hearing that Hebrew tongue, of which, obviously, she understood nothing. And there had been too those little skullcaps on the men’s heads, that silky veil they called the taleth (prayer shawl) and that they all wore over their shoulders, on top of their clothes. She remembered the shiver that had run through her when she found herself beside Simon, she too beneath that taleth that seemed at once to unite them and to shelter them from some rain she could not name. Together they had listened to the Rabbi’s sermon, marked by humor and lightness, but she had been the only one to start at the sound of the glass that had been deliberately shattered—a symbol whose naïve explanation had nonetheless been given to her the day before. Yes, all of it came back to her like a new set in which she would henceforth live.
The chair had stopped rising and was beginning to turn amid the cries, to dance as if it formed a couple with her very self. Everyone was singing one of those Yiddish airs they seemed to know by heart, but which, for her, remained external and as if tacked on. A strange contagion prompted her too to strike up a song, just to do as everyone else did. In a low voice, she began to hum the Brassens song she adored, “L’auvergnat.” But of course, she was the only one listening to the lyrics she had always loved. In the wild rhythm that carried her along, in the general hubbub, her refrain rang out of tune. And so, as soon as she heard herself murmur—it is yours, this song, you, the man of Auvergne who…—she knew that she was not Jewish, that she never would be. Irrepressible tears, invisible to most, darkened her eyes, blurred her sight. She hung over the hall by at least two meters and, despite her tears, despite her anxiety about falling, she caught herself looking down, as if from a plane, on this celebration of which she was the queen and which, nonetheless, she did not feel deep within herself. And it was at this paroxysmal instant that she saw him for the third time. The handsome old man with the white hair was there, standing against a pillar, still serene and smiling, but alone as she felt herself alone in the midst of all these people. Decidedly, something in this man intrigued her, seemed odd to her. Yes, that was it exactly: the old man seemed as much a stranger as she herself to the general jubilation. She did not even notice that the chair had come back down to the floor. She found herself in Simon’s arms, swept into a mad waltz. She closed her eyes, letting herself be carried away by the music, by the happiness of being held tight by the man she loved, and did not even realize that she had sunk into a kind of unconsciousness—that, in fact, she had fainted.
When she opened her eyes, she saw that she had been laid on one of the great sofas of the salon. Anxious faces surrounded her—Simon and his father, a kind aunt who had been introduced to her at the very start of the evening, a friend, others more or less unknown.
“Well now, what’s this you’re doing to us?” asked Simon, with feigned cheerfulness.
“I don’t know, it’s nothing. The champagne, perhaps… I’m not used to it… Or else it’s that chair that… I don’t know…”
A man was cutting through the crowd of guests to approach her.
“Let him through,” said Simon, “it’s our friend Doctor Schwartz.”
The doctor took her wrist for a few seconds.
“Why, we have a remarkable pulse,” he said after a minute, “this little heart is in fine form. Just bring me a glass of water.”
As soon as the glass was brought to her, he took a box of tablets from his pocket and held one out to Alice:
“Here, swallow this.”
She found herself, a little later, seated on the famous chair. The guests withdrew politely, leaving her alone with Simon. It was then that she saw the handsome old man approach. He was smiling as she had never seen a man smile. She told herself that this thought was absurd and sought to probe it. But yes, quite simply, she had never seen a man with that smile because this man smiled the way a woman can smile. A mother, more precisely.
“Ah! Uncle Abraham,” said Simon, “come over here near us. I know you’re always present when there are little troubles, eh? Alice, let me introduce my Uncle Abraham. He couldn’t be present Thursday, at the synagogue, but—”
“Wrong, Simon,” the old man interrupted him, “you always get it wrong. I’m not your uncle, I’m your great-uncle.”
“Yes, it’s true, Alice—Abraham is my grandfather’s brother, but since for me he has no age, I sometimes even take him for an older brother.”
At that instant, the leader of the little orchestra that was animating the celebration came to whisper a few words in Simon’s ear.
“Uncle Abraham,” said the latter, “may I entrust my bride to you? I have a matter to settle.”
“Take all the time you need, my boy, I’ll watch over your beloved. Well now, my little Alice,” he added, turning toward her, “those tears, a little while ago—what were they about?”
She looked at him, stunned and moved:
“How did you see that… when I was perched up there, on that chair? How could you make out… my… my tears? Realize that I was crying…?”
“Oh! you know, one doesn’t always see with the eyes. Come over here, I must tell you about it.”
Then, without even giving her time to recover, Uncle Abraham declared, peremptory:
“Alice, little Alice, you are the most beautiful bride I’ve seen in a long time! But don’t forget that as of this evening you are entering your true country.”
Alice held back from asking the old man for explanations. She had no wish to hear once more the lament of belonging explained to her—being goy, being Jewish—she’d had enough of it. And yet she overcame her anxiety.
“And my true country, Uncle Abraham—what is it?”
“Why, the land of wonders, little Alice, it’s the land of wonders!”
They found themselves in a small parlor adjoining the great hall. Uncle Abraham’s face had grown graver, less serene too.
“You see, my little Alice, a little less than sixty years ago now, I met at a birthday party at a university friend’s a young girl who was dressed in a smile. I don’t know how else to put it. She was wholly within her smile. That smile was in her eyes, on her lips too, of course, but it seemed inexplicably to descend along her neck, sliding over her shoulders, to arrive at her hands resting on mine—her hands, which I gazed at in wonder. I had the feeling I had met a supernatural being.”
It’s strange, Natacha, this is the first time I’ve spoken of you to a stranger since you left. It’s as if you were stepping forward into a second life. Which of the two of us is making a gift of it to the other? Is it I who am bringing you back into the world, or did you never leave it? When I think about it, I tell myself that it’s you, Natacha, who ought to be with me this evening, you who ought to lead this mad dance. You can, since you’re only twenty-two. Since you’ll always be… Oh! my Natte! You’re quite right to laugh, I’m a ridiculous old man with my mania for wanting to relive what has dissolved into the gray of the years…
Uncle Abraham had half-closed his eyes. Alice, run through by an intense emotion, knew that he was on a journey known only to himself, but a journey he had already made a thousand and a thousand times. A strange feeling of pride swept over her at being, even for one evening, and at the age she was, the confidante of the strange old man. After a long minute, he turned toward her again:
“Yes, little Alice, I must tell you about that first evening. I was twenty-four—no, twenty-five, I think. It feels odd to you, doesn’t it, to tell yourself that I could have been a young man of twenty-five. But for me it’s no surprise, because, in a way, I still have them, those twenty-five years…”
He seemed to gather himself, as one sees certain believers literally draw themselves together on the threshold of prayer.
“That smile I was telling you about was named Natacha. But I do believe I always nicknamed her Natte, because, from the start, she had been for me the image of all the Nattes—the braids—of the earth. I remember very well that first time I gave her that nickname. It’s funny, I seem still to hear our conversation:
“‘Well then,’ she had said to me, ‘I have to find you a nickname too, only you don’t leave me much choice. It’s true—if I remember rightly, in your Old Testament, Abraham was a Patriarch. But I’m hardly going to call you Patriarch. Give me an idea!’
“‘An idea, an idea, how do you expect me to give you an idea? I only have ideas when I’m listening to a concerto or a symphony.’
“‘Well, there you are, without meaning to you’ve given it to me, this idea.’
“‘Ah! I’m curious to know it.’
“‘Come now, think a little—concerto, symphony, Abraham, it’s quite simple, I’m going to call you Brahms.’
“And she burst out laughing.”
Uncle Abraham had fallen silent, his eyes in the distance. Was he still listening to that laughter flow within him like cool water? After a few minutes, he turned toward Alice, who had remained respectfully silent:
“You know, little Alice, this is the first time in very many years that I’ve let this name and this nickname come out of me before anyone else. But I don’t know why, this evening became very particular to me the moment I caught sight of you, the moment I saw your tears…”
“Uncle Abraham, I’m very, very moved, and quite astonished that you should have chosen me to speak of this… Natacha. Of Natte, I mean… Is it because…?”
Alice did not dare to put into words the heart of her thought. Without paying any attention to the emotion he had aroused, Uncle Abraham went on:
“Yes, Natacha entered into me, entered my life as if she had been born that day. I mean, like a baby that comes into the world and suddenly fills it with its laughter and its tears. We loved each other every day and every night of that year. Every hour, every minute. Everywhere, in the streets, in the buses that weren’t so crowded back then, in the corridors of the metro, in the cafés—everywhere, I took to murmuring Natte, as if I wanted to rebaptize all of Paris with that nickname. My friends no longer saw me; the Jewish holidays became terrible for me to live through, since on those days Natte could not be near me. And then, there was my father and my mother. My father, above all.”
“Your father?”
“Yes, my father brutally decreed that Natacha could not enter our family. I still remember today the night that fell upon me on hearing my father speak. The thing is, every time he uttered the words our family, everyone knew he was about to say something grave, something irreversible. You see, Alice, I had children too, a boy and a girl, but later, much later, and with another woman who left this world a few years ago. But Natte remains the strongest thing I have known in my existence.”
Alice felt the need to help the old man out of this kind of obsession into which she sensed he was shutting himself. She tried to make their conversation more ordinary:
“Ah! you have children, Uncle Abraham?”
“Yes, but they’re grown now, they’ve made their lives in the United States and I don’t see them much. You see, they’re not even here this evening. Still, they’re the most beautiful gifts Hélène left me.”
“Forgive me, I don’t yet know the family very well. Who is Hélène?”
“Hélène is the woman I married two or three years afterward.”
“After what, Uncle Abraham?”
Uncle Abraham fixed his deep blue gaze in Alice’s eyes. He seemed as astonished by the question as by the young woman in her wedding dress who had put it to him. Then he seemed to come back to himself, as one returns from a faraway journey. Alice, no longer quite sure where she stood, searched the crowd with her eyes for Simon.
“Uncle Abraham,” she said at last, “I wouldn’t want to be the cause of…”
But she stopped speaking, taken aback. She no longer knew quite what it was she did not want to be the cause of. Uncle Abraham laid a hand on her shoulder with infinite gentleness.
“No, Alice, don’t be embarrassed. I’ll tell you. Yes, I’m not quite sure why, but I must tell you about it. It was a spring day, a spring just being born, timid. The 17th of March 1951, to be exact. The day before, I had had yet another conversation with Natte, and I had announced to her that I had decided to marry her, in spite of everyone, before the coming of summer. I can still see her look, I can see her again, grave and smiling on the doorstep when I held her in my arms before leaving her. My decision had filled me with a deep and cloudless joy.
“‘See you tomorrow,’ Natte said to me, ‘see you tomorrow, my Brahms.’
“The elevator I had called was reaching the landing. At that instant, curiously, Natte said to me once more:
“‘When you get home, listen to the German Requiem. I know you have it. It’s magnificent and it isn’t sad. It’s the most beautiful of your works, my Brahms.’
“And she began to laugh as only she knew how to laugh when she teased me about the nickname she had given me. I went home, a little taken aback, and listened at length to the German Requiem. It was only the next day, in the afternoon, that I was told that Natacha, my Natte, had climbed over the balcony of her fifth-floor apartment and leapt into the void.”
“Oh! Uncle Abraham, forgive me, I didn’t know… I’m terribly confused, I’m sorry, and grieved even… I…”
“Why confused, my little Alice? It’s simply that Natacha had understood that this prohibition of my father’s, in spite of my twenty-five years, I would never have the courage to transgress. She had left me two lines written on a page of her notebook: Brahms, without you I don’t know where my music is, where, then, my life is. So try to forgive me. And since that 17th of March, Natte has not ceased to fall from the height of those five stories—but for me, she has also never arrived on the implacable cruelty of the pavement. I met and married Hélène, children appeared in my life, years went by, lost, worn away, and I was never able to make Natte smash against the asphalt.”
Uncle Abraham seemed as if relieved of a weight. He took Alice’s hand between his own and held it at length. At that instant, a long line of dancers invaded the small room. Someone said to no one in particular: there’s Uncle Abraham already wanting to steal the bride from us! They surrounded the two of them, then swept them into the great general dance.
“One does not resist the hora,” said Uncle Abraham, entering into the dance himself. Always smiling, he did not take his eyes off the young bride and Simon, who had rejoined her. The dancers, men and women mingled, began to form a long serpent that wound between the tables and the guests.
After a few minutes, Alice signaled to Simon that she felt a little tired. Discreetly, together they left the line of dancers.
“Darling, do you want me to bring you something?” asked Simon.
“No, no, I just want to sit down for a moment. And besides, you know, your Uncle Abraham talked to me a great deal. He even shook me to the core.”
“Oh! I can imagine. But what astonishes me is that he confided in you. He’s intrigued the whole family for years now. He’s very peculiar. It must be said that he’s been very alone ever since his wife—I mean Aunt Hélène—died when she was only about fifty. He never remarried. And besides, he doesn’t see his two children much.”
“Yes, I know, they’re in the United States.”
“Ah! he told you that too.”
The hora was coming back toward them, flooding the small parlor with laughter and song. They tried to sweep the couple up again, but Alice signaled that she was tired.
Lost, buffeted in the long line of dancers, Uncle Abraham felt his legs grow weak. In his chest, his old heart had begun to pound wildly. But, inexplicably, he wanted to go on, to finish this dance, to see it through to the end…
Well, anyway, we’ve finally got it, this celebration, my Natte. They won’t steal this evening of our reunion from us… Tell me, Natte, do you agree? My family came around in the end. Look at them, look how happy they all are to celebrate you! We’ve finally got there, you and I. You can see that I was right to keep you from arriving on that pavement—I was right, eh, Natte?
In the crush, Alice was looking for the old uncle with her eyes. He remained nowhere to be found. Suddenly she saw the dancers stop, look at one another. The music seemed to stumble, to hiccup, then a kind of anguishing silence settled in. A voice said: it’s Uncle Abraham.
In a single bound, Alice and Simon were on their feet. Hand in hand, they made their way through the guests, who let them pass with an embarrassed air. It was Alice who saw him first. He was slumped on a chair, arms hanging on either side of the armrests, surrounded by anxious people. Everyone was worried, suggesting a gesture, a glass, a little air. Someone said that Doctor Schwartz had been called. Indeed, the people soon parted to let the doctor through. Alice saw him take the old man’s pulse, then head toward a telephone set on a small side table.
“The SAMU [emergency medical service] will be here in a few minutes,” he said, turning back toward the family now gathered.
Alice approached Uncle Abraham gently. He had kept his eyes closed until then. His breathing was faint and as if jerky.
“Uncle Abraham,” murmured Alice, “are you all right?”
At the very instant she uttered this phrase, Alice felt its stupidity—worse, its uselessness. The old man opened his eyes and smiled at her.
“Oh! Natacha, you’ve come… You’re here, my Natte, you’ve finally come back. I… I…”
He gave the impression of searching for his words rather than of being short of breath.
“Don’t tire yourself, Uncle Abraham, we’ll soon take you to the hospital, and—”
“The hospital? But why? There’s no question of our spoiling our evening, Natacha. Look how everyone is celebrating you! It’s your celebration, Natte, the bride’s celebration. Your dress is magnificent, and you dance the hora as if… as if… you had done it all… all your… all your life…”
And he tried to clasp in his own the hand Alice had laid on his beautiful white hair.
“Uncle Abraham,” she finally said, a little embarrassed, “I’m Alice. I’m only Alice, do you remember? I’ve just married Simon, your nephew—your great-nephew, that is.”
“Natacha, I don’t quite understand what you’re telling me there. But come here close to me, my legs are a little heavy this evening. It must be the champagne, and…”
The old man fell silent and closed his eyes again. The siren of an approaching ambulance could be heard. Alice took the uncle’s hand in her own. Medics came in, another doctor too. The people made way for them. They set a stretcher down on the floor beside the chair on which Uncle Abraham was seated. With infinite care, they took hold of him under the arms and began to lift him. At that instant, the old man stood up, all by himself, to the astonishment of the whole gathering. He turned toward Alice:
“Natte, will you grant me this dance?” he said, opening his arms to her.
Taken aback, Alice looked at Simon as if to ask his advice. He signaled to her to do as the uncle was asking. She approached the old man, still standing and still smiling, flanked by the two medics, and held out her arms to him. He laid his two hands on the young woman’s hips, gave a strange sigh, as if imbued with voluptuousness, and said in a low voice, stumbling a little over the words:
“Natte, will you take as your husband… take as your husband… here present?”
Stunned, Alice, in her beautiful white dress strewn with lace, seemed made expressly for this kind of proposal. She looked at this old man standing before her, smiling and exhausted, who awaited her answer with a calm that was almost premonitory. She leaned a little closer to him and murmured a few words in his ear. Even Simon, who had rejoined his wife, did not catch what she had said.
Uncle Abraham had time to say:
“Oh! thank you, Natte, I…”
But he did not finish his sentence and collapsed onto the parquet floor.
Doctor Schwartz, who had rushed over to him, rose again, looking dismayed:
“He’s dead,” he said, “it’s over.”
Then, after a silence, he asked, curiously, half to no one in particular:
“How old was he?”
“Twenty-five,” said Alice, “he was twenty-five years old.”
Then she began to weep in silence, offering the astonishing spectacle of a young bride drowning her beautiful white dress in tears.
A little astonished, Simon held her against him before drawing her a little to one side.
“My Alice, what happened with Uncle Abraham, for him to speak to you like that?”
“Oh! Simon, almost nothing. I think I gave him a wedding he’d been waiting for over half a century.”
“A wedding? But what wedding is this? And besides, what did you say to him just now, in his ear?”
“Oh! just these few words, Simon, just these few words he’d been waiting for so long: Yes, my Brahms, I’ll gladly marry you, I’ll gladly marry you.”