Page 364 - A Little Life: A Novel

downhill toward the kitchen, where he would peel carrots and potatoes and
chop celery for the night’s meal.
And then, for reasons he was never able to determine, not even when he

was an adult, things suddenly became very bad. The beatings got worse, the
sessions got worse, the lectures got worse. He wasn’t sure what he had
done; to himself, he seemed the same as he always had. But it was as if the
brothers’ collective patience with him were reaching some sort of end. Even
Brothers David and Peter, who loaned him books, as many as he wanted,
seemed less inclined to speak to him. “Go away, Jude,” said Brother David,
when he came to talk to him about a book of Greek myths the brother had

given him. “I don’t want to look at you now.”
Increasingly he was becoming convinced that they were going to get rid
of him, and he was terrified, because the monastery was the only home he
had ever had. How would he survive, what would he do, in the outside
world, which the brothers had told him was full of dangers and temptations?
He could work, he knew that; he knew how to garden, and how to cook, and

how to clean: maybe he could get a job doing one of those things. Maybe
someone else might take him in. If that happened, he reassured himself, he
would be better. He wouldn’t make any of the mistakes he had made with
the brothers.
“Do you know how much it costs to take care of you?” Brother Michael
had asked him one day. “I don’t think we ever thought we’d have you
around for this long.” He hadn’t known what to say to either of those

statements, and so had sat staring dumbly at the desk. “You should
apologize,” Brother Michael told him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Now he was so tired that he didn’t have strength even to go to the
greenhouse. Now after his classes he went down to a corner of the cellar,
where Brother Pavel had told him there were rats but Brother Matthew said

there weren’t, and climbed onto one of the wire storage units where boxes
of oil and pasta and sacks of flour were stored, and rested, waiting until the
bell rang and he had to go back upstairs. At dinners, he avoided Brother
Luke, and when the brother smiled at him, he turned away. He knew for
certain now that he wasn’t the boy Brother Luke thought he was—joyful?
funny?—and he was ashamed of himself, of how he had deceived Luke,
somehow.