Page 603 - A Little Life: A Novel

regularly—he had to remind himself that, once again, this was who Jude
was, and that the surgery hadn’t changed this, either.
Still, “Maybe we should call these The Happy Years,” he told Jude one

morning. It was February, it was snowing, and they were lying in bed,
which they now did until late every Sunday morning.
“I don’t know,” Jude said, and although he could only see the edge of his
face, Willem could tell he was smiling. “Isn’t that tempting fate a little?
We’ll call it that and then both of my arms will fall off. Also, that name’s
taken already.”
And it was—it was the title of Willem’s next project, in fact, the one he

would be leaving for in just a week: six weeks of rehearsals, followed by
eleven weeks of filming. But it wasn’t the original title. The original title
had been The Dancer on the Stage, but Kit had just told him that the
producers had changed it to The Happy Years.
He hadn’t liked this new title. “It’s so cynical,” he told Jude, after
complaining first to Kit and then to the director. “There’s something so

curdled and ironic about it.” This had been a few nights ago; they had been
lying on the sofa after his daily, thoroughly draining ballet class, and Jude
was massaging his feet. He would be playing Rudolf Nureyev in the final
years of his life, from his appointment as the ballet director of the Paris
Opéra in nineteen-eighty-three, through his HIV diagnosis, and until he first
noticed the symptoms of his disease, a year before he actually died.
“I know what you mean,” Jude had said after he had finally finished

ranting. “But maybe they really were the happy years for him. He was free;
he had a job he loved; he was mentoring young dancers; he had turned
around an entire company. He was doing some of his greatest choreography.
He and that Danish dancer—”
“Erik Bruhn.”
“Right. He and Bruhn were still together, at least for a little while longer.

He had experienced everything he had probably never dreamed he would
have as a younger man, and he was still young enough to enjoy it all:
money and renown and artistic freedom. Love. Friendship.” He dug his
knuckles into Willem’s sole, and Willem winced. “That sounds like a happy
life to me.”
They were both quiet for a while. “But he was sick,” Willem said, at last.
“Not then,” Jude reminded him. “Not actively, at least.”

“No, maybe not,” he said. “But he was dying.”