Second Place by Rachel Cusk

Author:Rachel Cusk [Cusk, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571366323
Google: NYANEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2021-05-03T23:00:00+00:00

Kurt announced that he had decided to be a writer. He wished to begin writing a book straight away. He had once heard a writer say that writing with a pen and paper was preferable to any other way, because the muscular movement of the hand was conducive to the formation of sentences. Kurt had decided that he would follow that advice. He asked for a number of pens and two big blocks of plain paper to be bought, the next time anyone went to town. I said he could use the little downstairs study if he wanted, since it was quiet and no one else needed it. It had a good-sized desk that faced away from the window – I believed most writers agreed, I said, that it was better not to have anything to look at.

As a choice of costume for his new career, Kurt decided on a long black velvet housecoat, a red tam-o’-shanter jammed far back on his head, and to top it off, rope-soled espadrilles on his bare feet. He walked fatefully off to the study in those espadrilles, carrying a block of paper under each arm and the pens in the pocket of the housecoat, and closed the door. Later, walking past the window, I saw that he had moved the desk to face the garden and the glade, so that he could see, and be seen by, everyone who passed. He was there in the window when you went out, and he was there when you came back in again. He wore a very doleful expression, looking into the far distance, and appeared not to know you if you happened to meet his eye. I wondered whether part of his intention – far from hiding himself away – was to attract attention, specifically Justine’s, while at the same time keeping her under surveillance, since she was now spending a lot of her time outdoors with Brett. They did all sorts of things together, exercises, watercolour painting, even archery, using a beautiful old wooden bow Brett had apparently found in the junk shop in town and had repaired and polished up, and since the weather continued to be windless and warm they did most of it outside on the lawn or in the shade of the trees in the glade, all beneath the baleful gaze of Kurt. A few times they took Tony’s boat out for the day, while Kurt remained at his window, though they had invited him to go with them. He had become a sort of icon fixed in a frame, reproaching us all for our triviality and wasted time.

By spending most of the day in the study, Kurt had effectively declared himself occupied with matters of a higher order than fence-mending or mowing, and so his affiliation to Tony quickly receded. It was now L he appeared to identify as his natural ally. I sometimes saw them in the early evening, walking in the glade and talking, though I don’t know how these conversations had come about or who had initiated them.

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