Kudos by Rachel Cusk Read Free Book Online

herself with writers and artists. In the evenings you were expected to sit at the dinner table with her and supply stimulating conversation. The countess selected and invited the writers personally: most of them were young and male. In fact there was only one other woman writer there besides Linda.
    â€˜I’m fat and forty,’ Linda said, ‘and the other one was gay, so you can go figure.’
    One of the writers, a young black poet, had escaped on the second day. The countess had been particularly proud of capturing this poet: she boasted about him to anyone who would listen. When he announced his intention of leaving she went wild, alternately begging and demanding an explanation, but he was unmoved by her distress. It was not the right place for him, he said. He was not comfortable there and would not be able to work. And he had packed his bag and walked the three miles down into the village to get a bus, since the countess refused to help him by ordering a taxi. She had spent the rest of the two weeks coldly savaging him and his work to anyone who would listen. Linda had watched him disappear off down the long winding drive from her room. He walked with a light, bouncing stride, carrying his small knapsack over his shoulder. She very much wanted to do the same thing, while knowing at the same time that she couldn’t. The reason appeared to be the enormous size of her suitcase. Also, she wasn’t sure she could have walked three miles in her shoes. Instead she had sat in her antique-filled room with its beautiful view of the valley and whenever she looked at her watch, believing that an hour had passed, she would find that barely ten minutes had.
    â€˜I couldn’t write a word,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t even read. There was this antique telephone on the desk and I kept wanting to call someone up and get them to come and rescue me. One day I finally picked it up and it wasn’t connected – it was just a decoration.’
    The publisher let out a brief, high-pitched giggle.
    â€˜But why should they rescue you?’ he said. ‘There you are, sitting in a castle in the beautiful Italian countryside, with your own room and nobody bothering you and complete freedom to do your work. For most people that is a fantasy!’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ Linda said dully. ‘I guess it must mean there’s something wrong with me.’
    Her room in the castle was full of paintings and exquisite leather-bound books and costly rugs, she went on, and the linen on the bed was luxurious. Every last detail was in perfect taste and it was all scrupulously clean and polished and scented. After a while she realised that the only imperfect thing in it was herself.
    â€˜Our whole apartment could have fitted into that one room,’ she said. ‘There was this big wooden wardrobe and I kept opening it thinking I might find my husband living in there, spying on me through the keyhole. But in the end,’ she said, ‘I guess I sort of wanted to find him in there.’
    There was a terrace with a beautiful swimming poolright underneath her window but she never saw anyone swim in it. There were loungers placed around it and if you went and lay on one, a servant would automatically come out and bring you a drink on a tray. She had witnessed this mechanism several times without testing it herself.
    â€˜Why not?’ the publisher said amusedly.
    â€˜If I went out there and lay down and the servant didn’t come out,’ Linda said, ‘it would have meant something terrible.’
    Every morning the countess would emerge in her gold wrapper and lie on one of the loungers among the flowers in the sun. She would open her wrapper and reveal her skinny brown body and she would lie there like a lizard, sunbathing. After a few minutes one of the other writers would always walk past, as if by chance. Whoever it was would talk to the countess, sometimes for a long time. From