Page 512 - A Little Life: A Novel

as he passes him. “You know, Willem,” he says, squeezing his palm,
“Jude’s not the only one we love,” and he nods again, his vision blurring,
and tells Harold good night and leaves.

Their bedroom is silent, and for a while he stands, staring at Jude’s form
beneath the blanket. Willem can tell he’s not actually asleep—he is too still
to actually be sleeping—but is pretending to be, and finally, he undresses,
folding his clothes over the back of the chair near the dresser. When he slips
into bed, he can tell Jude is still awake, and the two of them lie there for a
long time on their opposite sides of the bed, both of them afraid of what he,
Willem, might say.

He sleeps, though, and when he wakes, the room is more silent still, a
real silence this time, and out of habit, he rolls toward Jude’s side of the
bed, and opens his eyes when he realizes that Jude isn’t there, and that in
fact his side of the bed is cool.
He sits. He stands. He hears a small sound, too small to even be named as
sound, and then he turns and sees the bathroom door, closed. But all is dark.

He goes to the door anyway, and fiercely turns the knob, slams it open, and
the towel that’s been jammed under the door to blot out the light trails after
it like a train. And there, leaning against the bathtub, is Jude, as he knew he
would be, fully dressed, his eyes huge and terrified.
“Where is it?” he spits at him, although he wants to moan, he wants to
cry: at his failing, at this horrible, grotesque play that is being performed
night after night after night, for which he is the only, accidental audience,

because even when there is no audience, the play is staged anyway to an
empty house, its sole performer so diligent and dedicated that nothing can
prevent him from practicing his craft.
“I’m not,” Jude says, and Willem knows he’s lying.
“Where is it, Jude?” he asks, and he crouches before him, seizes his
hands: nothing. But he knows he has been cutting himself: he knows it from

how large his eyes are, from how gray his lips are, from how his hands are
shaking.
“I’m not, Willem, I’m not,” Jude says—they are speaking in whispers so
they won’t wake Julia and Harold, one flight above them—and then, before
he can think, he is tearing at Jude, trying to pull his clothes away from him,
and Jude is fighting him but he can’t use his left arm at all and isn’t at his
strongest anyway, and they are screaming at each other with no sound. He is

on top of Jude, then, working his knees into his shoulders the way a