Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life

“All I want,” he’d said to Jude one night, trying to explain the satisfaction that at that moment was burbling inside him, like water in a bright blue kettle, “is work I enjoy, and a place to live, and someone who loves me. See? Simple.”

Jude had laughed, sadly. “Willem,” he said, “that’s all I want, too.”

“But you have that,” he’d said, quietly, and Jude was quiet, too.

“Yes,” he said, at last. “You’re right.” But he hadn’t sounded convinced.

That Tuesday night, they are lying next to each other, half talking and half not in one of the meandering almost-conversations they have when they both want to stay awake but are both falling asleep, when Jude says his name with a sort of seriousness that makes him open his eyes. “What is it?” he asks him, and Jude’s face is so still, so sober, that he is frightened. “Jude?” he says. “Tell me.”

“Willem, you know I’ve been trying not to cut myself,” he says, and Willem nods at him and waits. “And I’m going to keep trying,” Jude continues. “But sometimes — sometimes I might not be able to control myself.”

“I know,” he says. “I know you’re trying. I know how hard it is for you.”

Jude turns from him then, and Willem rolls over and wraps his arms around him. “I just want you to understand if I make a mistake,” Jude says, and his voice is muffled.

“Of course I will,” he says. “Jude — of course I will.” There is a long silence, and he waits to see if Jude will say anything else. He is thin, with a marathon runner’s long muscles, but in the past six months, he has become thinner still, almost as thin as when he was released from the hospital, and Willem holds him a little tighter. “You’ve lost more weight,” he tells him.

“Work,” Jude says, and they are quiet again.

“I think you should eat more,” he says. He had to gain weight to play Turing, and although he’s lost some of it, he feels massive beside Jude, something puffed and expansive. “Andy’s going to think I’m not doing a good job taking care of you and he’s going to yell at me,” he adds, and Jude makes a sound he thinks is a laugh.

The next morning, the day before Thanksgiving, they are both cheery — they both like driving — and load their bag and the boxes of cookies and pies and breads that Jude has baked for Harold and Julia into the car and set off early, the car bouncing east over the cobble-stoned streets of SoHo, and then whooshing up the FDR Drive, singing along to the Duets soundtrack. Outside Worcester they stop at a gas station and Jude goes in to buy them mints and water. He waits in the car, leafing through the paper, and when Jude’s phone rings, he reaches over and sees who it is and answers it.

“Have you told Willem yet?” he hears Andy’s voice saying even before he can say hello. “You have three more days after today, Jude, and then I’m telling him myself. I mean it.”

“Andy?” he says, and there is a sudden, sharp silence.

“Willem,” Andy says. “Fuck.” In the background, he can hear a small child’s delighted voice trill out—“Uncle Andy said a bad word!”—and then Andy swears again, and he can hear a door sliding shut. “Why’re you answering Jude’s phone?” Andy asks. “Where is he?”

“We’re driving up to Harold and Julia’s,” he says. “He’s getting water.” On the other end, there is silence. “Tell me what, Andy?” he asks.

“Willem,” Andy says, and stops. “I can’t. I told him I’d let him do it.”

“Well, he hasn’t said anything to me,” he says, and he can feel himself fill with strata of emotions: fear layered upon irritation layered upon fear layered upon curiosity layered upon fear. “Andy, you’d better tell me,” he says. Something in him starts to panic. “Is it bad?” he asks. And then he begins to plead: “Andy, don’t do this to me.”

He hears Andy breathing, slowly. “Willem,” he says, quietly. “Ask him how he really got the burn on his arm. I have to go.”

“Andy!” he yells. “Andy! ” But he’s gone.

He twists his head and looks out the window and sees Jude walking toward him. The burn, he thinks: What about the burn? Jude had gotten it when he tried to make the fried plantains JB likes. “Fucking JB,” he’d said, seeing the bandage wrapped around Jude’s arm. “Always fucking everything up,” and Jude had laughed. “Seriously, though,” he’d said, “are you okay, Judy?” And Jude had said he was: he had gone to Andy’s, and they had done a graft with some artificial skin-like material. They’d had an argument, then, that Jude hadn’t told him how serious the burn was — from Jude’s e-mail, he had assumed it was a singe, certainly not something worthy of a skin graft — and another one this morning when Jude insisted on driving, even though his arm was still clearly hurting him, but: What about the burn? And then, suddenly, he realizes that there is only one way to interpret Andy’s words, and he has to quickly lower his head because he is as dizzy as if someone had just hit him.

“Sorry,” Jude says, easing back into the car. “The line took forever.” He shakes the mints out of the bag, and then turns and sees him. “Willem?” he asks. “What’s wrong? You look terrible.”

“Andy called,” he says, and he watches Jude’s face, watches it become stony and scared. “Jude,” he says, and his own voice sounds far away, as if he’s speaking from the depths of a gulch, “how did you get the burn on your arm?” But Jude won’t answer him, just stares at him. This isn’t happening , he tells himself.

But of course it is. “Jude,” he repeats, “how did you get the burn on your arm?” But Jude only keeps staring at him, his lips closed, and he asks again, and again. Finally, “Jude! ” he shouts, astonished by his own fury, and Jude ducks his head. “Jude! Tell me! Tell me right now! ”

And then Jude says something so quietly he can’t hear him. “Louder,” he shouts at him. “I can’t hear you.”

“I burned myself,” Jude says at last, very softly.

“How?” he asks, wildly, and once again, Jude’s answer is delivered in such a low voice that he misses most of it, but he can still distinguish certain words: olive oil — match — fire .

“Why? ” he yells, desperately. “Why did you do this, Jude?” He is so angry — at himself, at Jude — that for the first time since he has known him, he wants to hit him, he can see his fist smashing into Jude’s nose, into his cheek. He wants to see his face shattered, and he wants to be the one to do it.

“I was trying not to cut myself,” Jude says, tinily, and this makes him newly livid.

“So it’s my fault?” he asks. “You’re doing this to punish me?”

“No,” Jude pleads with him, “no, Willem, no — I just—”

But he interrupts him. “Why have you never told me who Brother Luke is?” he hears himself ask.

He can tell that Jude is startled. “What?” he asks.

“You promised me you would,” he says. “Remember? It was my birthday present .” The final words sound more sarcastic than he intended. “Tell me,” he says. “Tell me right now.”

“I can’t, Willem,” Jude says. “Please. Please.”

He sees that Jude is in agony, and still he pushes. “You’ve had four years to figure out how to do it,” he says, and as Jude moves to put the keys in the ignition, he reaches over and snatches them from him. “I think that’s enough of a grace period. Tell me right now,” and then, when there is still no reaction, he shouts at Jude again: “Tell me.”

“He was one of the brothers at the monastery,” Jude whispers.