Page 503 - A Little Life: A Novel

him, but to his shame, he was unable to find the words to discuss it with
him. He told himself that even if he could find the words, Jude wouldn’t
talk about it until he was ready, but the truth, Willem knew, was that he was

too much of a coward, and that cowardice was really the only reason for his
inaction. But then he had come home from Texas, and they’d had sex after
all, and he had been relieved, and relieved too that he had enjoyed it as
much as he had, that there had been nothing strained or unnatural about it,
and when it turned out that Jude was much more sexually dextrous than he
had assumed he would be, he allowed himself to be relieved a third time.
He couldn’t bring himself, however, to determine why Jude was so

experienced: Had Richard been right, and had Jude been leading some sort
of double life all this time? It seemed too tidy an explanation. And yet the
alternative—that this was knowledge Jude had accumulated before they had
met, which meant these would have been lessons learned in childhood—
was overwhelming to him. And so, to his great guilt, he said nothing. He
chose to believe the theory that made his life less complicated.

One night, though, he’d had a dream that he and Jude had just had sex
(which they had) and that Jude was next to him and crying, trying to stay
silent and failing, and he knew, even in the dream, why he was crying:
because he hated what he was doing; he hated what Willem was making
him do. The next night he had asked Jude, outright: Do you like this? And
he had waited, not knowing what the answer would be, until Jude had said
yes, and then he had been relieved yet again: that the fiction could continue,

that their equilibrium would remain unchanged, that he wouldn’t have to
have a conversation that he didn’t know how to begin, much less lead. He
had an image of a little boat, a dinghy, rocking wildly on the waves, but
then righting itself again and sailing placidly on, even though the waters
beneath it were black and filled with monsters and floes of seaweed that
threatened with every current to pull the poor small boat beneath the

ocean’s surface, where it would glug out of sight and be lost.
But every so often, too sporadically and randomly to track, there would
be moments when he would see Jude’s face as he pushed into him, or, after,
would feel his silence, so black and total that it was almost gaseous, and he
would know that Jude had lied to him: that he had asked him a question to
which only one answer was acceptable, and Jude had given him that
answer, but that he hadn’t meant it. And then he would argue with himself,