Page 363 - A Little Life: A Novel

him that there were certain things he would have to wait to know until he
grew up. The first time Brother Luke tickled him, he had gasped and then
laughed, uncontrollably, and Brother Luke had laughed with him, the two of

them tussling on the floor beneath the orchids. “You have such a lovely
laugh,” Brother Luke said, and “What a great smile you have, Jude,” and
“What a joyful person you are,” until it was as if the greenhouse was
someplace bewitched, somewhere that transformed him into the boy
Brother Luke saw, someone funny and bright, someone people wanted to be
around, someone better and different than he actually was.
When things were bad with the other brothers, he imagined himself in the

greenhouse, playing with his things or talking to Brother Luke, and repeated
back to himself the things Brother Luke said to him. Sometimes things were
so bad he wasn’t able to go to dinner, but the next day, he would always
find something in his room that Brother Luke had left him: a flower, or a
red leaf, or a particularly bulbous acorn, which he had begun collecting and
storing under the grate.

The other brothers had noticed he was spending all his time with Brother
Luke and, he sensed, disapproved. “Be careful around Luke,” warned
Brother Pavel of all people, Brother Pavel who hit him and yelled at him.
“He’s not who you think he is.” But he ignored him. They were none of
them who they said they were.
One day he went to the greenhouse late. It had been a very hard week; he
had been beaten very badly; it hurt him to walk. He had been visited by

both Father Gabriel and Brother Matthew the previous evening, and every
muscle hurt. It was a Friday; Brother Michael had unexpectedly released
him early that day, and he had thought he might go play with his logs. As he
always did after those sessions, he wanted to be alone—he wanted to sit in
that warm space with his toys and pretend he was far away.
No one was in the greenhouse when he arrived, and he lifted the grate

and took out his Indian doll and the box of logs, but even as he was playing
with them, he found himself crying. He was trying to cry less—it always
made him feel worse, and the brothers hated it and punished him for it—but
he couldn’t help himself. He had at least learned to cry silently, and so he
did, although the problem with crying silently was that it hurt, and it took
all your concentration, and eventually he had to put his toys down. He
stayed until the first bell rang, and then put his things away and ran back