The Possibility of “What If”

The Possibility of “What If?” is the novel’s recurring invitation to imagine an outcome beyond what people expect, and then to consider whether that possibility can be acted upon. Associated especially with Leo Matienne, the question begins as a habit of poetic speculation about the elephant and gains practical force when Leo uses it to encourage the magician to try again. It does not promise success; it keeps failure from becoming the only imaginable answer.

Leo’s Habit of Possibility

Leo has the soul of a poet and likes questions that have no answers. The questions he favors—“What if?” and “Why not?” and “Could it possibly be?”—are not requests for settled explanations. They let him look at events without deciding in advance that the familiar account is the only one available. After the elephant appears, that habit gives the extraordinary event a space in which to mean more than spectacle.

Standing at the top of a hill, Leo watches the lamplighter bring the avenue’s lamps to life one by one. As the globes illuminate the street below, he wonders whether the elephant has arrived bearing “a message of great importance,” and whether everything might be changed by her coming. He waits until the avenue is fully lit before continuing down toward home. The scene links speculation with attention: Leo does not hurry to explain the elephant, but gives the possibility time to gather significance.

The question stands out against a surrounding weariness with expectation. At the fishmonger’s, a customer says she has worn herself out expecting something special; the fishmonger’s account of a magician’s performance likewise insists that “Nothing was expected.” Yet the performance brings an elephant, precisely what no one expected. The contrast gives the question its first dramatic charge: an event that seems impossible can occur even where nobody has prepared a place for it.

The Elephant’s Arrival and Adele’s Dream

Leo’s questions do not establish what the elephant’s arrival means. Instead, they keep its meaning open while the story shows different characters trying to interpret it. In Adele’s recurring dream, the elephant comes to the Orphanage of the Sisters of Perpetual Light and tells Sister Marie that she has come for Adele, who belongs elsewhere. The elephant’s words suggest that the child’s life may extend beyond the orphanage, but Sister Marie says she cannot understand them and closes the door. Adele watches the elephant walk away.

The dream persists in the cold, dark dormitory. Adele learns the elephant’s words so completely that she can repeat them verbatim, and during the day she repeats, “‘It is the one you are calling Adele I am coming for to keep.’” To Adele, the sentence becomes like a poem, blessing, or prayer. Its promise is not yet fulfilled, but the repeated words preserve a possibility that the closed door has interrupted rather than disproved. The episode also makes hearing consequential: the elephant speaks, Sister Marie cannot make sense of her, and Adele carries the message forward in memory.

From Imagination to Shared Action

Later, “What if?” moves between Leo and Peter in a room where Vilna Lutz’s thump from above interrupts the conversation. Leo has tipped his chair back, and Gloria warns him that it is bad for the chair. He brings all four legs down, smiles, and asks, “What if?” After he follows with “Could it be?”, Peter answers yes without looking up at the ceiling; he keeps his eyes on Leo. Peter then returns the question, and Leo answers him in the same spirit. The exchange makes possibility shared rather than solitary: Peter does not merely listen to Leo’s habit but takes it up himself.

That shared language matters when Leo and Peter face the magician’s refusal. The magician has already tried and failed to send the elephant back, and he admits that he did not want to return her because she was the finest magic he had performed. Leo first clears his throat, then says the two words “What if?” The magician recognizes the question as belonging to magic. Leo answers that it belongs both to magic and to everyday life, and asks what might happen if the magician merely tried. The exchange does not erase the earlier failure or the magician’s attachment; it reframes a failed attempt as insufficient reason to rule out another.

Meaning and Limits

Across these scenes, the question changes function without losing its openness. For Leo, it is a poetic disposition: he entertains unanswered possibilities, whether imagining a message in the elephant’s arrival or watching lamps appear along an avenue. In Adele’s dream, the possibility takes the form of a promise repeated even after an attempted communication ends with a closed door. With Peter and the magician, it becomes an appeal to make another attempt.

The phrase is powerful because it does not settle what cannot yet be known. The fishmonger’s story establishes that the unanticipated can happen, while the magician’s failed effort establishes that possibility is not certainty. Leo’s question bridges those facts: it cannot guarantee that the spell will work, but it can reopen the decision to try. In that sense, “What if?” is both an imaginative method and a small act of resistance against resignation, making room for a different outcome without pretending that it has already occurred.