Page 634 - A Little Life: A Novel

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AT LEAST ONE Saturday a month now he takes half a day off from work and
goes to the Upper East Side. When he leaves Greene Street, the
neighborhood’s boutiques and stores haven’t yet opened for the day; when
he returns, they are closed for the night. On these days, he can imagine the
SoHo Harold knew as a child: a place shuttered and unpeopled, a place
without life.
His first stop is the building on Park and Seventy-eighth, where he takes

the elevator to the sixth floor. The maid lets him into the apartment and he
follows her to the back study, which is sunny and large, and where Lucien is
waiting—not waiting for him, necessarily, but waiting.
There is always a late breakfast laid out for him: thin wedges of smoked
salmon and tiny buckwheat pancakes one time; a cake glazed white with

lemon icing the next. He can never bring himself to eat anything, although
sometimes when he is feeling especially helpless he accepts a slice of cake
from the maid and holds the plate in his lap for the entire visit. But although
he doesn’t eat anything, he does drink cup after cup of tea, which is always
steeped exactly how he likes it. Lucien eats nothing either—he has been fed
earlier—nor does he drink.
Now he goes to Lucien and takes his hand. “Hi, Lucien,” he tells him.

He had been in London when Lucien’s wife, Meredith, called him: it was
the week of Bergesson’s retrospective at MoMA, and he had arranged to be
out of the city on business. Lucien had had a massive stroke, Meredith said;
he would live, but the doctors didn’t yet know how great the damage would
be.
Lucien was in the hospital for two weeks, and when he was released, it

was clear that his impairment was severe. And although it is not yet five
months later, it has remained so: the features on the left side of his face
seem to be melting off of him, and he cannot use his left arm or leg, either.
He can still speak, remarkably well, but his memory has vanished, the past
twenty years deserting him completely. In early July, he fell and hit his head
and was in a coma; now, he is too unsteady to even walk, and Meredith has