Page 150 - A Little Life: A Novel

The door to his room—a converted closet, windowless and wide enough
for only a cot, at one end of the second story above the dining hall—was
always left open, unless one of the brothers or the father were with him, in

which case it was usually closed. But even as he rounded the corner from
the staircase, he could see the door was shut, and for a while he lingered in
the quiet, empty hallway, unsure what might be waiting for him: one of the
brothers, probably. Or a monster, perhaps. After the stream incident, he
occasionally daydreamed that the shadows thickening the corners were
giant leeches, swaying upright, their glossy segmented skins dark and
greasy, waiting to smother him with their wet, soundless weight. Finally he

was brave enough and ran straight at the door, opening it with a slam, only
to find his bed, with its mud-brown wool blanket, and the box of tissues,
and his schoolbooks on their shelf. And then he saw it in the corner, near
the head of the bed: a glass jar with a bouquet of daffodils, their bright
funnels frilled at their tops.
He sat on the floor near the jar and rubbed one of the flowers’ velvet

heads between his fingers, and in that moment his sadness was so great, so
overpowering, that he wanted to tear at himself, to rip the scar from the
back of his hand, to shred himself into bits as he had done to Luke’s
flowers.
But why had he done such a thing to Brother Luke? It wasn’t as if Luke
was the only one who was kind to him—when he wasn’t being made to
punish him, Brother David always praised him and told him how quick he

was, and even Brother Peter regularly brought him books from the library in
town to read and discussed them with him afterward, listening to his
opinions as if he were a real person—but not only had Luke never beaten
him, he had made efforts to reassure him, to express his allegiance with
him. The previous Sunday, he was to recite aloud the pre-supper prayer, and
as he stood at the foot of Father Gabriel’s table, he was suddenly seized by

an impulse to misbehave, to grab a handful of the cubed potatoes from the
dish before him and fling them around the room. He could already feel the
scrape in his throat from the screaming he would do, the singe of the belt as
it slapped across his back, the darkness he would sink into, the giddy bright
of day he would wake to. He watched his arm lift itself from his side,
watched his fingers open, petal-like, and float toward the bowl. And just
then he had raised his head and had seen Brother Luke, who gave him a

wink, so solemn and brief, like a camera’s shutter-click, that he was at first