Page 365 - A Little Life: A Novel

He had been avoiding Luke for a little more than a week when one day
he went down to his hiding place and saw the brother there, waiting for
him. He looked for somewhere to hide, but there was nowhere, and instead

he began to cry, turning his face to the wall and apologizing as he did.
“Jude, it’s all right,” said Brother Luke, and stood near him, patting him
on the back. “It’s all right, it’s all right.” The brother sat on the cellar steps.
“Come here, come sit next to me,” he said, but he shook his head, too
embarrassed to do so. “Then at least sit down,” said Luke, and he did,
leaning against the wall. Luke stood, then, and began looking through the
boxes on one of the high shelves, until he retrieved something from one and

held it out to him: a glass bottle of apple juice.
“I can’t,” he said, instantly. He wasn’t supposed to be in the cellar at all:
he entered it through the small window on the side and then climbed down
the wire shelves. Brother Pavel was in charge of the stores and counted
them every week; if something was missing, he’d be blamed. He always
was.

“Don’t worry, Jude,” said the brother. “I’ll replace it. Go on—take it,”
and finally, after some coaxing, he did. The juice was sweet as syrup, and
he was torn between sipping it, to make it last, and gulping it, in case the
brother changed his mind and it was taken from him.
After he had finished, they sat in silence, and then the brother said, in a
low voice, “Jude—what they do to you: it’s not right. They shouldn’t be
doing that to you; they shouldn’t be hurting you,” and he almost started

crying again. “I would never hurt you, Jude, you know that, don’t you?”
and he was able to look at Luke, at his long, kind, worried face, with his
short gray beard and his glasses that made his eyes look even larger, and
nod.
“I know, Brother Luke,” he said.
Brother Luke was quiet for a long time before he spoke next. “Do you

know, Jude, that before I came here, to the monastery, I had a son? You
remind me so much of him. I loved him so much. But he died, and then I
came here.”
He didn’t know what to say, but he didn’t have to say anything, it
seemed, because Brother Luke kept talking.
“I look at you sometimes, and I think: you don’t deserve to have these
things happen to you. You deserve to be with someone else, someone—”