Page 223 - A Little Life: A Novel

would be troubling reminders that what he knew of Jude was only what
Jude allowed him to know: he called Jude daily when he was away
shooting, usually at a prearranged time, and one day last year he had called

and they’d had a normal conversation, Jude sounding no different than he
always did, and the two of them laughing at one of Willem’s stories, when
he heard in the background the clear and unmistakable intercom
announcement of the sort one only hears at hospitals: “Paging Dr. Nesarian,
Dr. Nesarian to OR Three.”
“Jude?” he’d asked.
“Don’t worry, Willem,” he’d said. “I’m fine. I just have a slight infection;

I think Andy’s gone a little crazy.”
“What kind of infection? Jesus, Jude!”
“A blood infection, but it’s nothing. Honestly, Willem, if it was serious, I
would’ve told you.”
“No, you fucking wouldn’t have, Jude. A blood infection is serious.”
He was silent. “I would’ve, Willem.”

“Does Harold know?”
“No,” he said, sharply. “And you’re not to tell him.”
Exchanges like this left him stunned and bothered, and he spent the rest
of the evening trying to remember the previous week’s conversations,
picking through them for clues that something might have been amiss and
he might have simply, stupidly overlooked it. In more generous, wondering
moments, he imagined Jude as a magician whose sole trick was

concealment, but every year, he got better and better at it, so that now he
had only to bring one wing of the silken cape he wore before his eyes and
he would become instantly invisible, even to those who knew him best. But
at other times, he bitterly resented this trick, the year-after-year exhaustion
of keeping Jude’s secrets and yet never being given anything in return but
the meanest smidges of information, of not being allowed the opportunity to

even try to help him, to publicly worry about him. This isn’t fair, he would
think in those moments. This isn’t friendship. It’s something, but it’s not
friendship. He felt he had been hustled into a game of complicity, one he
never intended to play. Everything Jude communicated to them indicated
that he didn’t want to be helped. And yet he couldn’t accept that. The
question was how you ignored someone’s request to be left alone—even if
it meant jeopardizing the friendship. It was a wretched little koan: How can

you help someone who won’t be helped while realizing that if you don’t try