Peter and Adele are reunited

Peter and Adele are reunited when the elephant’s procession reaches the Orphanage of the Sisters of Perpetual Light on a snowy night. Adele recognizes her brother among the people following the elephant; Peter recognizes her and, at once, acts on the promise he made to their mother. The scene joins two homecomings: the elephant is being led toward home, and Peter finds the sister he had feared lost.

Approach Through the Snow

The reunion begins not with a knock or a call to Adele, but with the sounds and sights of the approaching group. Upstairs in the dormitory, Adele hears Iddo barking. She rises, goes to the window, and sees snow moving in the streetlamp’s light. Its resemblance to her dream makes her speak aloud about the snow, but the decisive recognition comes when she sees the elephant walking down the street behind a boy. The procession also includes a policeman, a man pushing a woman in a wheelchair, a small man bent sideways, a beggar, and the black dog.

Adele does not pause to test whether the scene is real. She turns from the window, runs barefoot down the dark stairs, crosses the great room and hallway, passes the sleeping Sister Marie, and throws open the orphanage door. Her cry, “Here I am!”, makes her the one who answers the procession. The directness of her response matters: she has seen enough to leave the building without waiting for an explanation, and the reunion begins through recognition and movement rather than through a planned meeting.

The public spectacle surrounding the elephant gives this private moment a wider context. On the first Saturday of each month, people from across Baltese line up to see her, bringing varied occupations, ages, and circumstances into one queue. The narrator says that each person carries hopes, dreams, desires for revenge, and desires for love; secretly, they expect the sight of the elephant to deliver them or make their wishes come true. Adele’s encounter gives that collective expectation a specific, personal shape. She does not merely hope for a change: seeing the elephant, the boy, and the dog gives her a reason to run outside and meet what she has been waiting for.

Recognition and Kinship

The first person to meet Adele at the orphanage is the black dog, who runs to her through the snow and circles her, barking. Sister Marie then sees Adele standing outside in her nightgown with no shoes. But when Sister Marie calls Adele’s name, it is the boy holding his hat who turns. His spoken repetition of Adele’s name carries both uncertainty and recognition; he asks it as if it were at once a question and an answer.

Peter Augustus Duchene picks Adele up because the weather is cold and her feet are bare. The action is also bound to an older obligation: he had promised their mother long ago that he would always take care of Adele. He tells her plainly, “I am your brother.” Adele’s response develops in stages. She first smiles in disbelief, then moves into belief and joy, and asks his name. When he answers, she repeats “Peter” and connects him with the elephant, saying that he brought her. Peter replies that he brought the elephant—or that she brought him—and treats the distinction as immaterial. He then calls to Leo Matienne to announce that Adele is his sister. Leo answers that he knows and can see it.

That exchange makes the relationship explicit without requiring Adele to possess a memory of Peter that the scene does not establish. She learns who he is from his declaration; he confirms their kinship and the promise behind his care through what he does. The reunion is therefore both recognition and introduction: the brother knows whom he has come to find, while the sister receives the identity of the person who has arrived.

From Reunion to a Shared Journey

The reunion does not end with Peter carrying Adele indoors. Adele turns her attention back to the elephant and asks whether she must be cold, where she is going, and where the group is taking her. Peter answers that they are taking her home. Her concern places the elephant’s welfare within the newly recovered sibling relationship: Adele is already looking beyond her own reunion to the vulnerable traveler beside them.

The group’s arrangement makes this shared purpose visible. Peter walks in front of the elephant, carrying Adele; Leo Matienne walks next to him. Behind the elephant comes Bettine LaVaughn in her wheelchair, pushed by Hans Ickman, followed by Bartok Whynn and then Tomas with Iddo at his heels. Sister Marie brings up the rear. For the first time in fifty years, she is not standing at the orphanage door. The procession thus carries her away from the place where she has remained for decades, while bringing Peter and Adele together outside its threshold.

As they move through the snowy streets, Peter experiences each lamp post, doorway, tree, gate, and brick as newly vivid. The objects seem to speak the fortune-teller’s words and the hope he had held: “She lives, she lives, she lives.” The warmth of Adele’s breath against his cheek confirms that she is alive in the immediate, physical sense, while the repeated words give that fact the force of a hope finally fulfilled. The setting does not merely frame the reunion; the street and its familiar objects become part of Peter’s changed perception as he walks with his sister.

Consequences and Significance

Peter and Adele’s meeting resolves the separation at the heart of Peter’s search, but the scene presents its consequence as a beginning in company rather than a withdrawal into privacy. Peter carries Adele while leading the elephant home; Leo, Bettine LaVaughn, Hans Ickman, Bartok Whynn, Tomas, Iddo, and Sister Marie all travel with them. Adele’s concern for the elephant immediately links her reunion with the group’s effort to return the animal to her home.

After the magician has walked away into the snow, Bettine LaVaughn feels a great weight leave her, laughs, and embraces Adele. She says the child is cold and that they must go inside; Leo agrees. This closing movement brings the outdoor reunion toward shelter and care. It also places Adele within a circle of people who respond to her presence, while the elephant’s journey and the company’s shared walk have made the siblings’ recovery part of a wider gathering. The scene’s decisive change is therefore not only that Peter finds his sister: the promise to their mother can now be acted upon, and the family bond becomes tangible in the act of carrying Adele through the cold.