After Aunt Julie finished her tea, she leaned against the armchair by her window and became absorbed in the gentle, endless dance of the snow falling outside. On this newly begun winter day, there was a weariness that troubled her completely, that seemed to drive her even more toward despair. On such stormy, snowy days, people her age wouldn’t leave their rooms. But at least they had their amusements. Whereas now, she had grown so tired of sitting and sipping tea… Oh, if only it were summer, she could go out walking under the life-giving sun, leaning on her thick cane, and return home among happy families. Sometimes she would go out for a stroll with one or two old friends, and what pleasant times she would have.
Below the window, there was a noise in the courtyard. Aunt Julie shook off her melancholy and brought her head close to the windowpane. Her grandchildren were going to school. Rosy-cheeked, strong little ones… throwing snowballs at each other, pushing, nestling into the snow, disappearing into the white thickness of the snow. Aunt Julie remembered how much she too had loved the snow when she was a child like them.
These snows that now forced her to sit in her room—how much she had loved them back then. These snows… These snows dancing with pure joy and delight against everything, how sacred they were in their purity and sincerity. Finally, with an involuntary impulse, she stood up. Now a longing had awakened in her aged heart: to walk in the snow like a young girl, to have fun…
She put on her thickest clothes, wrapped her head. She left her room. Leaving the household astonished and to their questioning words, she laughed and said, “What did you think? I’m going out…” and went out the door. A cold, snowy wind greeted her, wrapping around her cheeks. She paid no attention and walked on.
Soon she turned and looked at her house. How content, how happy she was to have left that dark, black, sleeping house. Oh… How beautiful, how white, everything was white. Occasionally, like the black dots on the seven of spades card, flocks of eight or ten crows passed through the whiteness. Now, bringing all the adventures of her life before her eyes, she continued on her way. How many times had she gone walking around here when the snow was falling like this. The somersaults she’d done here as a child, the snowballs trembling before her eyes, laughing, awakening her now-sleeping blood. She looked around—there was no one. She bent down to the ground. Making a ball, she threw it into the air. Finding a strange pleasure in this, she threw until she was tired. Now she had broken into a sweat. As she was wiping her perspiration, a shadow passed by her and, recognizing her, said, “Well, Aunt Julie, what are you doing around here?”
It was the town’s municipal doctor. Aunt Julie answered: “Just taking a little walk, my boy.”
“On such a day… Very dangerous, dear aunt, very dangerous.”
“On the contrary, son, it feels very sweet to me.”
The young doctor, laughing and walking away, was saying: “Hurry home quickly, aunt, this weather is dangerous…”
What was wrong with this weather, this dancing, white weather? Between her age and this season, Aunt Julie now felt a dreamlike connection. She walked, strolling through the springtime of her life. Right here, in this street, she had a life-giving memory—her old lover… What pleasant courtship they had in this house with a garden, where no one saw, no one knew, what happy moments she had spent. At that moment she wanted to see her old lover. She knocked on the door; her lover’s grandchild opened it. She asked: “Is your grandfather home?…”
“Yes, but he’s very ill.”
“Ill?…”
“Yes, you can see him.”
She passed through the courtyard, the stairs where she saw a shadow of memory of her old spirit everywhere. In the room whose fabrics and carpets had now faded, a strange smell of sickness floated. Her lover’s daughters, grandchildren were crying at his bedside. She advanced, bent down: “Monsieur Louis… Don’t you recognize me?”
The patient couldn’t recognize her. The deathly silence of moments near agony was making him delirious.
After Aunt Julie left there, she was passing through the snow again, but not as enthusiastic and dreamy as before. A pain, slight at first, gradually increasing toward her ribs, wanted to drive her to thoughts of death; an ache in her back, near her neck, accompanied her. Finally she managed to get home. Trembling, she undressed and went straight to bed.
Aunt Julie is terribly ill. Her whole family has gathered in her room… Night vigils followed one another. The last vigil that came at midnight shook her badly. At that hour they had sent for the doctor… Now everyone is silent and mournful… Aunt Julie, distracted and unaware, was waiting for the doctor in this calamitous silence.
