Kudos by Rachel Cusk Read Free Book Online Page A

her room Linda would hear the sound of them talking and laughing. These other writers, she went on, mocked the countess behind her back in discreet and witty ways that left no evidence that could be used later against them. Whether this was because they loved her or because they hated her Linda couldn’t tell, but after a while she realised it was neither. They didn’t love or hate anything, or at least so that you could see; it was just that they were in the habit of never showing their hand.
    At mealtimes the countess would take only the tiniest bites of the food, and then she would light a cigarette and smoke it very slowly before stubbing it out in her plate. She dressed for dinner in gowns that were tight and low-cut and she was always dripping with jewellery – gold and diamonds and pearls – on her arms and fingers and around her throat, as well as suspended from her ears, so that she made a centre of light in the shadowy dining room. It was impossible, in other words, to be unaware of her: she would watch the people around the table with a rapt, glittering, hawk-eyed expression, prowling the conversation like a predator monitoring its hunting-ground. Because they were conscious of her, everyone made an effort to say witty and interesting things. Yet because she didn’t conceal herself the conversation was never real: it was the conversation of people imitating writers having a conversation, and the morsels she fed on were lifeless and artificial, as well as being laid directly at her feet, so that the spectacle of her satisfaction was artificial too. They all worked hard at this contrivance, Linda said, which was puzzling because she couldn’t see what any of them were actually getting out of it. The countess, she added, wore her hair piled so high on her head that it made her neck seem exceptionally fragile, so that you felt you could reach out and snap it in two with your hands.
    At this remark the publisher gave an alarmed shout of laughter and Linda looked at him expressionlessly.
    â€˜I didn’t actually snap it,’ she said.
    Those mealtimes were a torture, she resumed presently, not just because of what she now realised was their atmosphere of mutual prostitution, but also because she felt so tense that her stomach was one big knot and she couldn’t eat the food. In fact she probably ate even less than the countess herself, and one evening the countess turned to her, her coruscating eyes open in wonder, and expressed surprise that Linda was so large, since she ate so little.
    â€˜I thought she might be angry about it,’ Linda said, ‘because the maid was having to take away my plate full of wasted food, but in fact it was the only time she showed any interest in me, as though her idea of friendship with another woman was just sharing moments of self-torture. And in fact whenever the maid came to clear the table or to bring new courses I had to stop myself from getting up and helping her.’
    At home she generally avoided doing housework, she went on, because those kinds of chores made her feel so unimportant that she wouldn’t have been able to write anything afterwards. She supposed they made her feel like an ordinary woman, when most of the time she didn’t think about being a woman, or perhaps didn’t even believe she was one, because athome it wasn’t a subject that came up. Her husband did most of the domestic work, she said, because he liked doing it and it didn’t have the same effect on him that it did on her.
    â€˜But in Italy I started to feel that if I did the chores it would justify my existence,’ she said. ‘I even started to miss my husband. I kept thinking about him and about how critical I always am of him, and increasingly I couldn’t remember why I criticised him, because the more I thought about him the more perfect he became in my head. I started to think about our daughter and about how cute and innocent she