Second Place by Rachel Cusk (ebook smartphone .txt) 📕

of light. They seem almost to be beseeching one another, or striving to unify, and in their striving the oneness miraculously occurs. I go in often to look at it, and I never tire of watching that tension between the two shapes resolve itself before my eyes. I like to think, fancifully of course, that this was what L saw, the night he glimpsed Justine and me swimming.

Several months after these events, a letter came for me with a Paris postmark. Inside it was another letter. The second letter was from L. The first letter was from someone called Paulette, who wrote that she had been trying to find an address for me, having recovered an unaddressed letter from the hotel room in which L had died, which she believed was intended for me. She had read the numerous articles about L and had decided that I must be the ‘M’ of the letter. She was sorry it had taken so long for her to get it to me.

I opened it, Jeffers, with hands that didn’t tremble as much as you might expect. I believe I had – and have – come to see through the illusion of personal feeling, as L described it that day on the marsh. So many of the passionate feelings that have ruled me at one time or another have completely faded out of me. Why, then, should I let any feeling claim entitlement to lodge in my heart? I hope I have become, or am becoming, a clear channel. In my own way I think I have come to see something of what L saw at the end, and recorded in the night paintings. The truth lies not in any claim to reality, but in the place where what is real moves beyond our interpretation of it. True art means seeking to capture the unreal. Do you think so, Jeffers?

M

Did you tell me it was a bad idea to come here? If you did then you were right. You were right about quite a few things, if it makes any difference. Some people like to be told that.

Well, the edge is here, and I have fallen over it. I’m in a hotel and it’s cold and dirty. Candy’s daughter was meant to be coming to get me but she hasn’t come for three days now and I don’t know when she will ever come.

I miss your place. Why are things more actual afterward than when they happen? I wish I had stayed, but at the time I wanted to go. I wish we could have lived together sympathetically. Now I can’t see why we couldn’t.

I’m sorry for what I cost you.

This is a bad place.

L

Second Place owes a debt to Lorenzo in Taos, Mabel Dodge Luhan’s 1932 memoir of the time D. H. Lawrence came to stay with her in Taos, New Mexico. My version – in which the Lawrence figure is a painter, not a writer – is intended as a tribute to her spirit.

ALSO BY RACHEL CUSK

FICTION

Kudos

Transit

Outline

The Bradshaw Variations

Arlington Park

In the Fold

The Lucky Ones

The Country Life

The Temporary

Saving Agnes

NONFICTION

Coventry

Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation

The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy

A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rachel Cusk is the author of the Outline trilogy, the memoirs A Life’s Work and Aftermath, and several other works of fiction and nonfiction. She is a Guggenheim Fellow. She lives in Paris. You can sign up for email updates here.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Begin Reading

Also by Rachel Cusk

A Note About the Author

Copyright

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

120 Broadway, New York 10271

Copyright © 2021 by Rachel Cusk

All rights reserved

First edition, 2021

Ebook ISBN: 978-0-374-72079-7

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