Page 146 - A Little Life: A Novel

space between the brother’s desk and the radiator.) And Brother Matthew
had an original clothbound edition of The Bostonians, which had a soft-
rubbed green spine and which he once held before him so he could look at

its cover (“Don’t touch! I said don’t touch!”). Even Brother Luke, his
favorite of the brothers, who rarely spoke and never scolded him, had a bird
that all the others considered his. Technically, said Brother David, the bird
was no one’s, but it had been Brother Luke who had found it and nursed it
and fed it and to whom it flew, and so if Luke wanted it, Luke could have it.
Brother Luke was responsible for the monastery’s garden and
greenhouse, and in the warm months, he would help him with small tasks.

He knew from eavesdropping on the other brothers that Brother Luke had
been a rich man before he came to the monastery. But then something
happened, or he had done something (it was never clear which), and he
either lost most of his money or gave it away, and now he was here, and just
as poor as the others, although it was Brother Luke’s money that had paid
for the greenhouse, and which helped defray some of the monastery’s

operating expenses. Something about the way the other brothers mostly
avoided Luke made him think he might be bad, although Brother Luke was
never bad, not to him.
It was shortly after Brother Peter accused him of stealing his comb that
he actually stole his first item: a package of crackers from the kitchen. He
was passing by one morning on the way to the room they had set aside for
his schooling, and no one was there, and the package was on the countertop,

just within his reach, and he had, on impulse, grabbed it and run, stuffing it
under the scratchy wool tunic he wore, a miniature version of the brothers’
own. He had detoured so he could hide it under his pillow, which had made
him late for class with Brother Matthew, who had hit him with a forsythia
switch as punishment, but the secret of its existence filled him with
something warm and joyous. That night, alone in bed, he ate one of the

crackers (which he didn’t even really like) carefully, breaking it into eight
sections with his teeth and letting each piece sit on his tongue until it
became soft and gluey and he could swallow it whole.
After that, he stole more and more. There was nothing in the monastery
he really wanted, nothing that was really worth having, and so he simply
took what he came across, with no real plan or craving: food when he could
find it; a clacky black button he found on the floor of Brother Michael’s

room in one of his post-breakfast prowlings; a pen from Father Gabriel’s