Page 279 - A Little Life: A Novel

Board of Education that Harold is editing, and of one of Laurence’s twin
daughters, who is getting married, and then Harold says, grinning, “So,
Jude, the big birthday’s coming up.”

“Three months away!” Julia chirps, and he groans. “What are you going
to do?”
“Probably nothing,” he says. He hasn’t planned anything, and he has
forbidden Willem from planning anything, either. Two years ago, he threw
Willem a big party for his fortieth at Greene Street, and although the four of
them had always said they’d go somewhere for each of their fortieth
birthdays, it hasn’t worked out that way. Willem had been in L.A. filming

on his actual birthday, but after he had finished, they’d gone to Botswana on
a safari. But it had been just the two of them: Malcolm had been working
on a project in Beijing, and JB—well, Willem hadn’t mentioned inviting
JB, and he hadn’t, either.
“You have to do something,” says Harold. “We could have a dinner for
you here, or in the city.”

He smiles but shakes his head. “Forty’s forty,” he says. “It’s just another
year.” As a child, though, he never thought he’d make it to forty: in the
months after the injury, he would sometimes have dreams of himself as an
adult, and although the dreams were very vague—he was never quite
certain where he was living or what he was doing, though in those dreams
he was usually walking, sometimes running—he was always young in
them; his imagination refused to let him advance into middle age.

To change the subject, he tells them about Dr. Kashen’s funeral, where
Dr. Li gave a eulogy. “People who don’t love math always accuse
mathematicians of trying to make math complicated,” Dr. Li had said. “But
anyone who does love math knows it’s really the opposite: math rewards
simplicity, and mathematicians value it above all else. So it’s no surprise
that Walter’s favorite axiom was also the most simple in the realm of

mathematics: the axiom of the empty set.
“The axiom of the empty set is the axiom of zero. It states that there must
be a concept of nothingness, that there must be the concept of zero: zero
value, zero items. Math assumes there’s a concept of nothingness, but is it
proven? No. But it must exist.
“And if we are being philosophical—which we today are—we can say
that life itself is the axiom of the empty set. It begins in zero and ends in

zero. We know that both states exist, but we will not be conscious of either