Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life

“I think we should go to Morocco,” he said as they walked slowly home, and Willem looked at him.

“I’ll look into it,” Willem said, and took his arm to move him out of the path of a bicyclist who was zooming down the street.

“I want to get you something for your birthday,” he said, a few blocks later. Really, he wanted to get Willem something to thank him, and to try to express what he couldn’t say to him: a gift that would properly convey years of gratitude and love. After their earlier conversation about the play, he had remembered that Willem had, in fact, committed the previous year to a project that would be shooting in Russia in early January. But when he mentioned this to him, Willem had shrugged. “Oh, that?” he’d asked. “Didn’t work out. It’s fine. I didn’t really want to do it anyway.” He had been suspicious, though, and when he had looked online, there were reports that Willem had pulled out of the film for personal reasons; another actor had been cast instead. He had stared at the screen then, the story blurring before him, but when he had asked Willem about it, Willem had shrugged again. “That’s what you say when you realize you and the director really aren’t on the same page and no one wants to lose face,” he said. But he knew that Willem wasn’t telling him the truth.

“You don’t need to get me anything,” Willem said, as he knew he would, and he said (as he always did), “I know I don’t need to, but I want to.” And then he added, also as he always did, “A better friend would know what to get you and wouldn’t have to ask for suggestions.”

“A better friend would,” Willem agreed, as he always did, and he smiled, because it felt like one of their normal conversations.

More days passed. Willem moved back into his suite at the other end of the apartment. Lucien called him a few times to ask him about one thing or another, apologizing as he did, but he was happy to get his calls, and happy that Lucien now began their conversations by complaining about a client or a colleague instead of asking how he was. Aside from Tremain and Lucien and one or two other people, no one at the firm knew the real reason he’d been absent: they, like his clients, had been told he was recovering from emergency spinal cord surgery. He knew that when he returned to Rosen Pritchard, Lucien would immediately restart him on his normal caseload; there would be no talk of giving him an easy transition, no speculation about his ability to handle the stress, and he was grateful for that. He stopped taking his drugs, which he realized were making him feel dopey, and after they had left his system, he was amazed by how clear he felt — even his vision was different, as if a plate-glass window had been wiped clean of all grease and smears and he was finally getting to admire the brilliant green lawn beyond it, the pear trees with their yellow fruit.

But he also realized that the drugs had been protecting him, and without them, the hyenas returned, less numerous and more sluggish, but still circling him, still following him, less motivated in their pursuit but still there, his unwanted but dogged companions. Other memories came back to him as well, the same old ones, but new ones too, and he was made much more sharply aware of how severely he had inconvenienced everyone, of how much he had asked from people, of how he had taken what he would never, ever be able to repay. And then there was the voice, which whispered to him at odd moments, You can try again, you can try again , and he tried to ignore it, because at some point — in the same, undefinable way that he had decided to kill himself in the first place — he had decided he would work on getting better, and he didn’t want to be reminded that he could try again, that being alive, as ignominious and absurd as it often was, wasn’t his only option.

Thanksgiving came, which they once again had at Harold and Julia’s apartment on West End Avenue, and which was once again a small group: Laurence and Gillian (their daughters had gone to their husbands’ families’ houses for the holiday), him, Willem, Richard and India, Malcolm and Sophie. At the meal, he could feel everyone trying not to pay too much attention to him, and when Willem mentioned the trip they were taking to Morocco in the middle of December, Harold was so relaxed, so incurious, that he knew that he must have already thoroughly discussed it with Willem (and, probably, Andy) in advance, and given his permission.

“When do you go back to Rosen Pritchard?” asked Laurence, as if he’d been away on holiday.

“January third,” he said.

“So soon!” said Gillian.

He smiled back at her. “Not soon enough,” he said. He meant it; he was ready to try to be normal again, to make another attempt at being alive.

He and Willem left early, and that evening he cut himself for the second time since he was released from the hospital. This was another thing the drugs had dampened: his need to cut, to feel that bright, startling slap of pain. The first time he did it, he was shocked by how much it hurt, and had actually wondered why he had been doing this to himself for so long — what had he been thinking? But then he felt everything within him slow, felt himself relax, felt his memories dim, and had remembered how it helped him, remembered why he had begun doing it at all. The scars from his attempt were three vertical lines on both arms, from the base of his palm to just below the inside of his elbow, and they hadn’t healed well; it looked as if he had shoved pencils just beneath the skin. They had a strange, pearly shine, almost as if the skin had been burned, and now he made a fist, watching them tighten in response.

That night he woke screaming, which had been happening as he readjusted to life, to an existence with dreams; on the drugs, there were no dreams, not really, or if there were, they were so strange and pointless and meandering that he soon forgot them. But in this dream he was in one of the motel rooms, and there was a group of men, and they were grabbing at him, and he was desperate, trying to fight them. But they kept multiplying, and he knew he would lose, he knew he would be destroyed.

One of the men kept calling his name, and then put his hand on his cheek, and for some reason that made him more terrified, and he pushed his hand away, and then the man poured water on him and he woke, gasping, to see Willem next to him, his face pale, holding a glass in his hand. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Willem said, “I couldn’t get you out of it, Jude, I’m sorry. I’m going to get you a towel,” and came back with a towel and the glass filled with water, but he was shaking too badly to hold it. He apologized again and again to Willem, who shook his head and told him not to worry, that it was all right, that it was just a dream. Willem got him a new shirt, and turned around as he changed and then took the wet one to the bathroom.

“Who’s Brother Luke?” asked Willem, as they sat there together in silence and waited for his breathing to return to normal. And then, when he didn’t answer, “You kept screaming ‘Help me, Brother Luke, help me.’ ” He was quiet. “Who is he, Jude? Was he someone from the monastery?”

“I can’t, Willem,” he said, and he yearned for Ana. Ask me one more time, Ana , he said to her, and I’ll tell you. Teach me how to do it. This time I’ll listen. This time I’ll talk .

That weekend they went to Richard’s house upstate and took a long walk through the woods that backed the property. Later, he successfully completed the first meal he’d cooked since he was released. He made Willem’s favorite, lamb chops, and although he’d needed Willem’s help carving the chop itself — he still wasn’t agile enough to do it on his own — he did everything else by himself. That night he woke again, screaming, and again there was Willem (though without the glass of water this time), and him asking about Brother Luke, and why he kept begging for his help, and again, he wasn’t able to answer.