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Part 1: Lispenard Street: Chapter 3
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Little Life, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma
Identity
Success and Happiness
Friendship and Human Connection
Pain and Suffering
Summary
Analysis
Jude likes to walk on Sundays. The tradition began five years ago, when he was new to the city and needed to orient himself. Now, he rarely misses a walk. Andy takes issue with this habit—it’s great Jude wants to exercise, he reasons, but swimming would be easier on Jude’s legs. Willem sometimes joins Jude on his walks; they meet up outside the theater’s stage-door after Willem’s afternoon performance, have a meal or drink, and part ways before the evening show.
If Jude’s doctor (Andy) thinks walking is too much for Jude, it’s probably a sign he shouldn’t be doing it. Yet Jude walks anyway—perhaps to deny (or at least minimize) the reality of his disability. In addition, that Jude makes a point to see Willem on his walks reaffirms their closeness. Years have passed, and yet the friends continue to go out of their way to spend time with each other.
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They still live at Lispenard Street, though both of them are now able to afford a better place. Other than the times they meet up outside the stage-door, Jude hardly sees Willem these days. Three years ago, on Willem’s 29th birthday, he learned that he’d won a part in a successful play. The play allowed him to quit working as a waiter just over a year later. Jude went to see the play, The Malamud Theorem, five times.
Willem’s ambition has paid off, and he has found success in his career, thus fulfilling a typical genre convention of the bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel. Still the fact that Willem and Jude continue to live together despite being able to afford separate apartments—and the fact that Jude has seen Willem’s play five times—is evidence of what good friends they are.
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As Jude nears 30, he feels no pressure to become something, even as his friends lament the many things they haven’t done and the things they’ve failed to become. But Jude likes the idea of being 30—it makes him feel like a real adult. When he was at the monastery as a kid, Brother Michael would tell stories about all his travels. Jude, then a young boy, asked Brother Michael when he’d be allowed to travel, and the monk had replied, “When you’re older. […] When you’re thirty.” And in a few weeks, Jude finally will be 30.
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Sometimes, as Jude stands alone in the apartment preparing to go on his Sunday walk, he marvels at the fact that he has his own place. The first year there, he’d been embarrassed about his responsible habits—more characteristic of an older person than someone fresh out of college—and he hid the back-up stashes of paper towels under his bed. Willem discovered the hidden essentials one day and wondered why Jude was so embarrassed. Still, Jude felt vulnerable that he couldn’t maintain the charade of the person he wanted himself to be. Jude has been taught that it’s bad to share the things that make a person different from others, unlike his friends.
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Today, Jude plans to walk to the Upper East Side and meet Willem outside the theater. He hasn’t done this in nearly a year, since he’s been spending Saturdays in the Upper East Side tutoring a 12-year-old boy named Felix. Jude found the job through Malcolm’s father. But it’s spring break for Felix, who is on vacation with his family, so there’s no way Jude will run into them.
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Jude tutors Felix in Latin, math, German, and piano. He feels bad for Felix—he’s clearly bright enough, but he lacks focus, passion, and confidence. Felix is only 12, but it seems, to Jude, that he’s already completely disillusioned with life. And he doesn’t have any friends.
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After one tutoring session, Mr. Baker (Felix’s father) confronts Jude privately to ask him what he thinks is “wrong with Felix.” Jude starts to say that Felix’s problem is that he’s unhappy, but he realizes that happiness is “an extravagance, an impossible state to maintain.” Instead, Jude tells Mr. Baker that Felix is simply “shy.”
The next week, Felix doesn’t want to play the piano, so Jude plays something for Felix instead—Haydn’s Sonata No. 50, a happy piece and one of Jude’s favorites.
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When Jude finishes playing, Felix bursts into tears. Jude is instantly ashamed of himself for showing off. Then Felix confides in Jude that he doesn’t have any friends. Until now, Jude has only sympathized with Felix in an abstract, theoretical way. But now, he feels for the suffering child. Jude will go out with people he loves and cares about—and who (probably) love and care about him back. Meanwhile, Felix will be here, totally alone. Jude promises Felix that he’ll make friends soon, though he has no way of knowing this. As Jude leaves the Bakers’ house that day, he realizes why Felix is always so pale and forlorn: he’s already realized that love and companionship are arbitrary and not guaranteed.
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Jude can speak French and German, he’s a math whiz, and he knows a lot of the Bible by memory. He also knows how to birth a calf, unclog a drain, and how to identify poisonous mushrooms. But Jude thinks that most of his knowledge is useless. And there’s so much he doesn’t know—for example, he doesn’t get most pop culture references, and he hasn’t tried a lot of foods. For this reason, he’s always felt most confident and protected in the classroom. But he could never ask others for help or answers, since this “would be an admission of extreme otherness,” and it would make him feel “exposed.”
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In college, Jude would feel left out when his friends would reminisce about their childhoods. He knew nothing of their “curfews, and rebellions, and punishments,” and their conventional lives fascinated him. Jude never talked about his past, and his silence was both “a necessity and a protection.” It also made him seem “more mysterious and more interesting,” though neither of these things are true.
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But not everybody accepted Jude’s silence. In fact, it even earned him his nickname. Around the time that Malcolm got into postmodernism and decided that he was “post-black,” JB was criticizing Malcolm, claiming that he would’ve needed to actually be Black in the first place to move beyond it. And Malcolm would have to be so “uncategorizable” that nobody could put him in a box for conventional identity to not apply to him. JB turned to Jude as an example: Jude, JB claims, has no discernable race, sexuality, or past. Jude is post everything: he’s “Jude the Postman.” Though the nickname didn’t stick, Jude thinks about it often—it reminds him of all the ways he’s unlike others.
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If Jude were to tell the truth to anyone, though, that person would be Willem, the friend Jude trusts most. Lately, Jude has become convinced that Willem knows something about his past, but he always convinces himself that he’s only projecting this onto Willem because he wants to confide in Willem. He’s long known that his childhood wasn’t normal, but it took getting to college to understand just how abnormal it really was.
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By their third year of college, Jude, Willem, JB, and Malcolm were an established clique. They lived in a building called Hood Hall, and everybody called them “The Boys in the Hood.” One night, they order pizza and smoke some weed. Malcolm and JB are debating the nature of evil (Malcolm attacks JB for not having read Plato) when suddenly, JB interrupts the argument to ask Jude what happened to his legs. They’ve all been friends for so long, and JB thinks it’s odd that Jude hasn’t told him. Willem, protective of Jude, warns JB to shut up. But Malcolm sides with JB, insisting that it hurts their feelings to think that Jude doesn’t trust them.
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Jude feels embarrassed that Willem always has to defend him, and so he tells a version of the truth. He explains that he was in a car accident when he was 15. The room is silent. Malcolm asks if Jude could walk before the accident, and Jude explains that he used to run cross-country. JB says he’s sorry. Only Willem says nothing in response. Soon, word spreads across campus, and eventually the story becomes that Jude was the victim of a drunk driving incident. Jude is conflicted. The story gives him “an opportunity for reinvention” that he’s always craved. But he can’t accept this reinvention in his own mind, because what happened to him wasn’t an accident.
Another moment that sticks out is when Jude had a severe episode at the end of his shift at the library. Willem and the librarian, a kind woman named Mrs. Eakeley, moved Jude to the break room to recover. Mrs. Eakeley asked Jude why he needed his braces, and Willem replied, “A car injury.” Later, Jude realized that Willem said “injury,” not “accident,” and he wondered if this word choice was intentional.
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It was Ana, Jude’s only social worker and the only person who didn’t betray him, who convinced him to go to college. He remembers sitting on the porch in Ana’s backyard, eating banana bread Ana’s girlfriend Leslie had made. Ana’s face was the first face he saw when he woke up in the hospital that day, and she was by his side even when he wasn’t awake. They didn’t talk about much then. She’d ask him about his pain, and if he needed anything. The doctor told Jude he would likely never fully recover from his injuries. Ana helped him through those early days of pain. When an episode ended, she’d give him water and promise him that things would be better someday.
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The narrative flashes back to Jude’s time at the hospital. In the weeks after he first wakes up, Ana brings him books. Jude knows Ana is a social worker the court has assigned to him. But weeks pass before she asks him about the accident. Jude claims he doesn’t remember, and she patiently tells him that it’s okay if he can’t talk for now—they know the basic facts of the story—but some day, he’ll have to open up to her about it. Apparently, shortly after he first woke from his surgery, he’d told Ana everything. But he doesn’t remember doing this, and he wonders how much he told her. Ana tells Jude that his confession made her believe that the men who did this to him deserve to go to hell.
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Ana facilitates Jude’s transfer into a home with the Douglasses, an evangelical Lutheran family that fosters two other kids—Rosie, an eight-year-old girl with Down syndrome; and Agnes, a nine-year-old girl with spina bifida. There are ramps for Agnes and Jude to use. Though Jude eats and sleeps at the Douglasses’ house, it’s Ana who cares for him. She takes him to his doctor’s appointments and watches him as he relearns how to walk. It’s Ana who gets him to write down what happened between him and Dr. Traylor. She also prevents Jude from having to testify in court—even without Jude’s testimony, they had plenty of evidence to put away Dr. Traylor for a long time.
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When the doctors tell Jude that he isn’t strong enough to go to school yet, Ana finds him a tutor. She also makes him consider going to college. His teachers in Montana have raved about him, and even though his education hasn’t been “traditional,” his test scores are fantastic and he knows more than most (if not all) of his peers. Ana cautiously says that, perhaps, Jude “may ha[ve] something to thank Brother Luke for after all.” And so, Ana helps him apply to college, and she even pays his application fee.
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When Jude learns that he’s been accepted on a full scholarship, he tells Ana it’s all because of her. “Bullshit,” she replies. But by now, Ana is very sick and can only whisper. Later, Jude will realize that he was too “self-absorb[ed]” to catch the many signs of Ana’s worsening illness—“her weight loss, her yellowing eyes, her fatigue.” He’s always told her she shouldn’t smoke, and she always laughs and tells him she knows this.
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Ana continues to urge Jude to talk about what happened to him—it’s an important step in his healing process, and it will only get harder to discuss as more time passes. But Jude can’t. By June, Ana is bedridden and hospitalized. One day, she tells him that Leslie will take him shopping for the things he’ll need for school. She promises him that he’ll do great in college. But she also tells him that the kids there will ask him about his past, and where he grew up. What will he tell them? “I don’t know,” says Jude. Ana looks at him. One day, she assures him, he’ll figure out how to talk about what happened to him.
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Ana dies two weeks later, on July 3rd. Not long after, the Douglasses move to San Jose. They take Agnes with them, and Rosie is reassigned to a new family. The Douglasses tell Jude to stay in touch, but he already knows that he won’t. He’s too desperate to move forward and reinvent himself. He’s placed in an emergency shelter, which is a sad, gray dormitory full of boys whose pasts and behavioral issues make them difficult to place in conventional foster homes. When it’s time for Jude to leave for college, the dormitory gives him money to pay for school supplies. Leslie takes him shopping. Jude’s grief for Ana is so painful that he sometimes thinks it would’ve been better if he’d never met her in the first place. And then it’s time to take the bus north to school. Leslie comes to the station to say goodbye. Everything he owns fits in one backpack.
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At school, Jude is the first of his suitemates to arrive. Malcolm, his parents, and all his things arrive next. Seeing all the fancy things Malcolm has, Jude feels momentarily angry with Ana—how could she have thought he’d fit in here? Months pass, and Jude feels a little more at home. But the feeling that he’s different never leaves him. And he also realizes that Ana will be the only person he won’t have to explain everything to. She would never ask him prying questions about why he only wears long sleeves or doesn’t like to be touched. Jude receives a Christmas letter from Leslie that first year. It’s his last connection to Ana, but he throws it out, determined to leave the past behind.
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Jude starts clerking for Judge Sullivan during his third year in law school. Judge Sullivan would always say that there are two kinds of people in the world: people who believe, and people who don’t. In his courtroom, belief is important. After Judge Sullivan leaves for the day, Jude grins across the room at Thomas. Thomas is a conservative too, but he’s “a thinking conservative.” Jude and Thomas began clerking for Judge Sullivan the same year. Jude’s law professor Harold encouraged him to apply—the judge was known to always hire one clerk whose political beliefs differ greatly from his own. And, Harold told Jude, Jude was one of the best students he’s ever had. The compliment embarrasses Jude.
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Jude interviews with Judge Sullivan in Washington the following year. Sullivan mentions that he’s heard that Jude can sing and asks if he can sing something now—something that says something about his character. The comment catches Jude off guard, since he’s never mentioned this hobby to anyone. Had Harold overheard him singing late one night when Jude thought he was alone? Jude sings Mahler’s “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen.” He translates the first line as “I have become lost to the world.” For Jude, the song is about loss and about “escape and discovery.” When Jude finishes, Judge Sullivan applauds and asks Jude where he learned to sing so well. “The brothers,” replies Jude, explaining that he was raised Catholic—but isn’t Catholic anymore. Sullivan thanks Jude for coming by and tells him he’ll reach out later.
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Jude returns to Cambridge. He thinks he totally botched the interview, but a week later, Sullivan calls and tells Jude he’s won the position. When Jude arrives at Harold’s office for his shift the next day, Harold tells him that he needs Jude to run errands with him instead. They leave and go to an expensive men’s store, and Harold buys Jude two suits for his new job with Sullivan. Jude tries to protest, but Harold tells Jude he deserves this. Then Harold leaves. Marco, the salesman, starts to measure Jude, but Jude “flinche[s] reflexively.” Jude apologizes. When Marco finishes, Jude examines himself in the mirror. His new suit disguises and protects him—and it hides his scars.
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Later, back at his modest apartment, Jude thinks about Harold’s gift. The suits were generous, but they also made him feel uncomfortable. He’s known for a while that Harold respects him as a student, but the gift suggests that Harold likes Jude as an actual friend. So why should Jude feel as self-conscious as he does? It’s taken him so long already to feel comfortable around Harold. For most of Jude’s life, adult men have been interested in him for one reason. Though Harold doesn’t seem like one of those men, Brother Luke hadn’t, either.
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Jude can’t remember much about his first year knowing Harold. He thinks back to his first lecture. Harold congratulated Jude and the other One Ls. Some new students, Harold says, are here because they want to get money from people. Others want to change the world. In this class, they’ll learn that not all contracts are fair. But the class will teach them what fairness looks like—and to know the difference “between what is fair and what is necessary.” The speech moves Jude.
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Jude starts to work for Harold several days each week. He also works at the library, and at a bakery called Batter. He’s worked at Batter since his undergraduate years, and the owner, Allison, trusts him with the most complicated orders. One day, she gives him a particularly tricky order, placed by a customer (the customer is Harold, whom Jude didn’t yet know that well) for his microbiologist wife, to construct sugar cookies decorated to look like bacteria. Jude comes through. The next week, Harold, not knowing that it was Jude who made the cookies, raves about how much Julia’s lab liked them. Jude takes pride in Harold’s praise, but he keeps it to himself.
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One night in March, Harold invites Jude to have dinner at his house. When Harold opens the door to greet Jude, Jude can smell pasta cooking in the kitchen. Julia, a tall woman with short brown hair, greets Jude warmly. Over dinner, Jude learns about Julia, who was raised in Oxford and moved to America to attend graduate school at Stanford. But soon, the focus shifts to Jude. Julia asks him where he grew up. “South Dakota and Montana, mostly,” replies Jude. Harold asks if Jude’s parents were ranchers. Jude answers that lots of people out west are ranchers and then remarks on the beautiful landscape of the west. Harold calls out Jude for avoiding Julia’s question, but Julia says to leave him alone.
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Jude wants to grow closer to Harold, but this requires him to open up to him, and Jude isn’t ready for this. And Harold is so persistent: he’s constantly finding ways to shift the focus of their conversations to Jude’s past. Once, when Harold offers Jude a paper bag of cookies, he asks Jude if his parents baked for him when he was a child. “No,” says Jude. Finally, Jude outright tells Harold that his parents are dead. Harold says he’s sorry—his own parents recently died, though of course, he’s much older than Jude. Jude tells Harold he wasn’t close with his parents. When Jude grows frustrated and snaps at Harold for being nosy, Harold tells Jude that it’s what friends do.
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During one dinner at Harold’s house, Jude meets Harold’s best friend, Laurence, an appellate court judge in Boston; and Laurence’s wife Gillian, an English professor. They ask him about the pure math degree he's getting from MIT. Jude tells them he likes pure math because it’s “essentially a conversation between truths and falsehoods.” You write a formula to test if something is real. “Video, ergo est,” Laurence observes. (“I see it, therefore it is.”) Yes, Jude smiles, but that’s more what applied math is about. Pure math, by contrast, is “Imaginor, ergo est.” (I imagine it, therefore it is.)
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Harold interjects, jokingly asking Jude how he ended up in law school. Jude laughs, but this is a difficult question—one whose answer he changes depending on his audience. The real reason—that he wants to protect himself and be untouchable—isn’t something he feels he can say aloud. Tonight, he offers that the law isn’t so different from pure math. It can be stretched and interpreted to answer any question. The main difference is that whereas the law is about governance, pure math is about the truth.
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Jude cites Fermat’s last theorem as an aggressively rambling and ugly—and therefore disappointing—mathematical proof. Beautiful proofs are “succinct, like a beautiful ruling.” Jude realizes he’s been rambling on about math and beauty for quite some time, and he apologizes. But Laurence orders him not to apologize—he’s giving them probably the most riveting conversation they’ve had at Harold’s house. Jude spots Harold mouthing to Laurence, “See?” Laurence nods affirmatively. Jude wonders if the dinner tonight was a test he hadn’t known about, and if so, he’s glad he’s apparently passed.
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Late one night, during Jude’s second year at law school, Jude is at Harold’s house when a snowstorm hits. Jude is about to call a cab, but Harold insists that Jude stay over. As he lies in bed that night, Jude pretends that Harold and Julia are his parents, and that he’s come home from law school to visit them.
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The next summer, Harold invites Jude to his and Julia’s beach house in Truro, on Cape Cod. He also invites Jude’s friends to join them, so Jude brings along JB, Malcolm, and Willem. He admires the ease with which his friends open up to Harold, answering all his questions about their pasts. And then, summer ends, and the fall semester begins. One of Jude’s friends must have mentioned something to Harold in Truro, because Harold stops asking prying questions.
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When Jude moves to Washington, D.C. for his clerkship, and then to New York to work for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he assumes that Harold and Julia will forget about him, but they stay in touch and visit often. Harold calls Jude every Saturday to ask about his boss, Marshall—the deputy U.S. Attorney. The U.S. Attorney’s office reminds Jude a bit of “the home.” It’s male-dominated and full of “hostility” from so many competitive people existing in such close quarters. Jude works with a team on securities fraud cases. Everyone on Jude’s team tries to have something—an accomplishment or a quirk—that sets himself apart from the others. Jude has his math degree from MIT; Citizen, with whom Jude is friendliest, graduated from Cambridge; and Rhodes was a Fulbright Scholar in Argentina.
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On the rare occasion that the U.S. Attorney himself comes into the office, Citizen jokes, “Time to whip out the credentials.” And then all the assistant prosecutors swarm around the U.S. Attorney and try to get him to notice them. But Jude never mentions his one connection: Harold is good friends with Adam, the U.S. Attorney. Harold asked if he could put in a good word for Jude, but Jude declined—officially, so that he could prove that he could do things on his own, but also, because he doesn’t want Harold to ever “regret his association with him.”
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The Thanksgiving after Jude moves to New York, Harold sees one of Jude’s episodes. The pain is so bad that Jude has to curl up inside the pantry until it passes. The next time Jude is at Harold’s place, they’ve rearranged the house and put the guest bedroom on the ground floor.
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One day, while they’re cleaning Harold’s house in preparation for a party for Julia’s 51st birthday, Jude finds a book of Laurence’s. Jude jokingly threatens to tell Laurence. Harold leaps toward Jude, playfully pretending to attack him. But Jude “recoil[s] violently” to avoid Harold’s body, and the force of it thrusts Jude back into the bookcase, breaking a ceramic mug Harold’s son, Jacob, had made for him.
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Harold is silent. Jude apologizes profusely, again and again. He offers to leave. Harold quietly tells Jude it’s okay—it was an accident, and he’s not angry. Jude wants to cry. After all Harold has given him, he’s “destroy[ed] something precious created by someone who had been most precious.” Harold goes upstairs after this. Julia returns, and Jude expects Harold to have told her how careless Jude has been, but Harold hasn’t. Later, Jude writes Harold a letter to apologize some more. He receives a letter from Harold a few days later—and he keeps it for the rest of his life. In the letter, Harold tells Jude that he loved the mug, but he loves Jude more. He also says that sometimes, in life, “things get broken,” and even when they can’t be repaired, “life arranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.”
For years, Jude hopes that his legs and spine might one day heal. But Andy tells Jude that his injuries will never heal—and they’ll only get worse as Jude ages. To this day, Andy is the only person who has seen Jude fully naked. Though he’s an orthopedic surgeon, Andy treats Jude for all kinds of maladies.
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For as much as Andy knows about Jude, Jude knows very little about Andy. He knows that Andy is from Ohio, that his father is Gujarati, and his mother is Welsh. When Andy gets married at his in-laws’ house on the Upper West Side, Andy’s new wife, Jane, runs to Jude, embraces him, and says, “I’ve heard so much about you!” Andy gives Jude a kiss on the cheek—it’s the first time he’s done this, and it’s awkward, but Jude appreciates this attempt at closeness. Jude also appreciates Andy’s “unflappability.” In college, he’d pound on Jude’s door when Jude missed a follow-up appointment. When Andy asks for Jude’s history in their appointments, he writes it down without comment.
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It’s less than four years before the novel’s present day (when Jude is nearly 30) that Andy explicitly brings up Jude’s childhood. And it’s on this occasion that they have their first real fight. The fight begins with Jude’s “botched suicide attempt” right before the New Year’s Eve party. The incident infuriates Andy, and at their next regular appointment, Andy angrily tells Jude he should have had him hospitalized—and the only thing that’s holding him back now is that he knows Jude hadn’t really been trying to kill himself. Jude claims that Andy is exaggerating.
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When Andy says he’s going to have Jude committed if Jude hurts himself again, Jude angrily threatens to sue Andy. Jude’s implication that Andy cares about money more than he cares about Jude offends Andy. Andy tells Jude that his unwillingness to take care of himself is hurting everyone around him—and if he keeps it up, Andy won’t be his doctor anymore.
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The argument makes Jude reflect on his relationship to his past. He’s rarely angry about it, since he thinks that he deserves everything that has happened to him. He knows that Andy finds his avoidance “illogical,” but as a doctor, Andy is supposed to “make people better,” and so Andy believes anyone can be healed.
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Days go by after the big fight, and still, Andy and Jude don’t call each other. Jude bangs his injured wrist against his desk as he reads at night, a bad tic he’d developed many years ago. Then, a week later, on Sunday, Andy shows up at Lispenard Street. He apologizes, and Jude apologizes, too. Still, Andy’s stance hasn’t shifted—he still thinks Jude should see someone. Jude knows this, but he doesn’t promise to see anyone. From then on, Andy examines Jude’s arms at every appointment to check for new cuts.
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Then, two years later, one of Jude’s leg wounds opens, and the injury (which is not self-inflicted) pushes his cutting to the back burner. The Philadelphia surgeon who’d first treated him warned Jude that his injury affected his whole body, and so he should expect injuries like this one to recur. This is the 11th time Jude has had this kind of injury. It’s never clear what causes it, and the skin on his legs is so delicate that it could be something as inconsequential as a bug bite or brushing against the edge of a filing cabinet. It’s like something out of a horror movie—a wound that won’t close on its own.
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Jude starts seeing Andy every Friday night so that Andy can clean and remove dead tissue from the wound. It’s incredibly painful, but Andy reminds him that it’s a good thing if he can feel pain in his legs—it means the nerves are still alive.
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Now (in the novel’s present, when Jude is taking his Sunday walk), Jude recalls the “damp and gummy” sensation he felt on his leg earlier. He knew the wound (which has been splitting and only partially healing for the past 20 months) has split. Eventually, the pain becomes so unbearable that he has to sit on a park bench. He considers going to Andy’s office but thinks Andy deserves a day off. As Jude sits and tries to wait out the episode, he thinks about “his body’s treason,” how he must “keep maintaining it” when it does nothing but “betray[]” him over and over again. He should have died, but he didn’t. It seems foolish to keep “trying to repair something unfixable,” especially if it’s only for the sake of “[h]is mind.”
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Finally, the pain improves enough for Jude to walk back to his apartment. He can wait until tomorrow to call Andy. Jude thinks about the New Year’s Eve incident. He still doesn’t know what made him get Willem and go to Andy to save him—letting the accident kill him would have been the easier option. And yet, that night, as it became clear that he had made the decision to live, he couldn’t help but long to return to the year just after the injury, when everything had seemed so full of promise.
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The narrative segues into Jude’s memory of growing up in a monastery in South Dakota. Brother Peter teaches him math and always reminds him that he’s lucky to be there; as an infant, Jude had been abandoned next to a trash bin behind a drugstore. Whenever Jude asks about how he came to live at the monastery, Brother Peter reminds him to focus on the future instead of dwelling on the past, which the monks “had created […] for him.”
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Many of Jude’s questions about his past go unanswered. The monks have conflicting “theories” about how Jude came to be there. Brother Peter claims that the monks took Jude in after the state couldn’t get anyone else to take him, since too many things about him—his ethnic background and his health, for instance—were unknown. Brother Michael thinks nobody would take him because he was from a poor town. Father Gabriel suggests that it was God’s will for Jude to end up there. When Jude would misbehave, practically all of the priests would offer “a fourth theory,” which was that Jude is bad and always has been, and so he must have done something to make his parents abandon him. Over time, Jude learns not to ask questions about his past.
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The monks also teach Jude to rid himself of his “possessiveness.” They tell him that nobody at the monastery owns anything—though Jude knows that Brother Peter has a tortoiseshell comb. And Brother Luke, Jude’s favorite monk, who is very quiet and doesn’t yell at Jude, has his own bird.
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Brother Luke runs the monastery’s garden and greenhouse. From others’ gossip, Jude learns that Brother Luke had been a rich man before he moved to the monastery, but he somehow lost all his money. Brother Luke also paid for the greenhouse. Not long after Brother Peter accuses Jude of stealing his comb (which Jude didn’t do), Jude actually steals something: a package of crackers, which he takes from the kitchen when nobody is looking. After this, Jude starts stealing more and more. He takes things he wants, but he steals for the sake of stealing.
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Jude is finally caught the day he takes Father Gabriel’s silver lighter off his desk. Jude shoves the lighter down his pants and leaves the classroom. But he runs into Brother Pavel outside, and the lighter falls out of his pants and clatters against the floor. The monks have beaten and shouted at him before, but what happens next is far worse. Father Gabriel takes Jude into his office. Then he soaks the edge of a handkerchief in olive oil, rubs the cloth on the back of Jude’s hand, and sets the hand on fire. Jude screams and passes out. When he wakes up, he’s back in his bed. All his stolen things are missing. From then on, he’s made to go to Father Gabriel’s office every night and remove his clothes, so that Father Gabriel can “examine inside him for any contraband.”
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Not long after, Jude starts to have midday “examinations” with Brother Peter. Around this time, he starts to have tantrums where he bangs his hand against the corners of wooden dinner tables. His “rages” control him, and he starts to feel like he’s living in a fog. The brothers respond by hitting Jude, sometimes so hard he loses consciousness. But he likes this “blackness,” where he can’t know what’s being done to him. He starts wetting his bed, which leads to more “examinations.” The more examinations he has, the more frequently he wets the bed. The brothers make him sleep in his soiled clothing and wear it to class the next day.
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One day, Jude is in his room with Father Gabriel and Brother Peter. He’s trying to be as quiet as possible, since he’s learned that they stop sooner if he cooperates. He sees Brother Luke passing by outside the doorframe and feels ashamed, so he goes to Brother Luke’s garden the next day and snaps of the heads of all Brother Luke’s daffodils, placing them in a pile at the door of the garden shed.
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At dinner that night, Jude is terrified and can’t stop thinking about how he’ll be punished for the daffodils. He scans the room for Brother Luke but can’t find him. Distracted, he drops the pitcher of milk he’s carrying. Brother Pavel throws Jude to the ground and sends him to his room.
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Jude runs to his room, which is really only a closet, and finds that the door is closed. Cautiously, Jude opens the door. Sitting in the corner is a bouquet of daffodils. Jude touches the flowers and feels immensely sad for what he did to Brother Luke. He wonders why he did it—after all, Brother Luke is the only brother who’s nice to him.
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The next day, Jude goes to the greenhouse after he’s finished with class—he’s decided to apologize to Brother Luke. But when Jude sees Brother Luke, he doesn’t know what to say and starts to cry. Brother Luke comforts him. Then he tells Jude he has something to show him. Brother Luke leads Jude toward the greenhouse. As an adult, Jude will identify this as the moment everything went wrong.
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Back in the present, Jude struggles to fit the key into the front door at Lispenard Street. He finally gets inside and sits down, and then he blacks out. When he wakes up, he will be alone (Willem will be out with a girlfriend), and the pus from his wound will have soaked through the bandage. He’ll reach out to Andy, shower, and remove the bandage (and the dead flesh and clotted blood attached to it). He’ll try not to shout from the pain. As he waits for the pain to pass, he’ll remember how “trapped he is” in his body that doesn’t work and that he “hates.” Though he’ll want to cry, he won’t—and he hasn’t. Not since what happened with Brother Luke.
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