Rachel Cusk - The Temporary

It was hard to concentrate on her job when a malignant consciousness of her greater emergency resided in her so heavy with unacknowledgement that it made the performance of the simplest activity difficult. The thought that she was suffering from some injustice, although its oppressions were barely noticeable, filled her with requirements for sympathy and concern, and looking at the faces brutal with ignorance around her she felt a constant urge to announce her misfortune and thus elicit a dispensation from her responsibilities. At the same time, it was hard to believe that the crisis by which she was officially declared to be gripped would ever come to its logical conclusion. Her faith in her own good fortune was here supported by evidence of a persuasive nature. She didn’t feel as if anything had physically happened, had observed no changes in herself which might signal the presence of a serious ailment — although her general grasp of those changes which were appropriate to her diagnosis had led her to suspect them once or twice — and in this unafflicted state it really seemed as if the problem might at any moment just disappear.

Her feelings of suspicion about this mysterious blockage, and her secret hopes for its evaporation, did not lessen her admiration of its power. It was certainly a triumph to be the proprietor of such a weapon, and it was hard, after all the awful things Ralph had done to her, not to feel some pleasure at having him at her mercy; but even with her eyes averted from the future, Francine could see that the shifting, explosive nature of her arsenal required skilful handling. The feeling of emptiness she had experienced when Ralph had made its disposal sound like a matter of course, the work of a moment, had sent her rushing to defend it; but in the delightful discovery that she had the inalienable right to do so, she had glimpsed a certain difficulty. Much as her dislike of criticism had been offended by Ralph’s suggestion that they might usefully get rid of something which could be said to be a part of her, her protective stance over what would eventually, hard as it might be to believe, effect her own overthrow resembled something of a trap. It would have been impossible at that point to tell Ralph that her feelings were largely theoretical, and hinged on what his preference inferred of his attachment to her, and even knowing that she had at least secured his attention failed to reassure her. Had he begged her to keep it, it would have been easier, she felt, to consider the possibility of not doing so; but his apparent indifference to the weight of her claims on him left her with the unpleasant responsibility of reminding him of them.

Her life had suddenly become somewhat unrecognizable, and it surprised her, not really able to see how she had got there, to have arrived in so unexpected a place. She barely knew herself in it, and in this unfamiliar state she had a dim consciousness of new structures rising in her overnight, of hasty extensions being added to more established facets. Normally she enjoyed lingering over the design of change, but now she was being pressed for such quick reactions that she had a disagreeable sense of events not turning out as she wanted them. It was clearly Ralph’s fault: she had tried to delay any talk of decisions, having yet perceived no outcome which pleased her and certain that one would at any moment present itself, but Ralph had forced her into saying things over which premeditation had given her no control. She had never even thought of such a situation before she found herself in it, and her instincts, used to a gentle life of service at the court of her self-interest, were wild and ineffectual in the field of battle. Her skill at pleasing herself and eliciting flattery, though practised, was being severely tested, but she could conjure up at such short notice no more reserves than those on which she had always depended. Several times she had thought of how pleasant it would be if, after punishing Ralph appropriately with it, their ‘accident’, as he called it, could just somehow be forgotten about, but this did not appear to be among her alternatives. The forked path of the future led, whichever of its vicious tongues one chose, only to what was undesirable.

Had she been less annoyed about the way their negotiations were going — and less conscious of the fact that this uninvited third party appeared to be elbowing her away from the centre of attention — she might have found it amusing to observe how Ralph danced at her every word as if his limbs had strings attached to them. She had said things merely to see what he would do, delighting at first in the excitement of the game, the height of its stakes; but since it had become clear that he wasn’t playing as she had expected him to, she had begun to suspect that the victory she pursued conferred only uncertain advantages. For once, there was nothing to be gained from getting her own way. All this talk of it being her decision — as if there were something she wanted to do! — made her predicament more frightening than ever. She supposed that when she had first told him of it, she had done so with the expectation of better things, a romance of emergency out of which some good might come; but nothing was happening as she had expected it to, and in reaching this false summit of her experiences she had felt the cataclysm of personal change, as a new range of unimagined, impossible ascents opened out above her.

The feeling that she was now far beyond the sphere of her abilities swamped her with the imminence of failure. She had never thought that she would be unhappy, but it was becoming clear that there was a vast world beyond the limits of her own, which her compass had been too occupied with directing her towards things that were to her liking to find: she felt its massive, secretive presence gradually unveiled in the slowly receding mists of her complacency, made out its continents of disappointment, its great seas of doubt. Yet even in the midst of these discoveries she began also to discern a more familiar route, a path which skirted complexity and meandered over care. It was still possible, she suspected, to pass through this new and frightening place with indifference, to tread these greater emotions under foot as she had learned to do lesser ones.

Sometimes, when she caught a certain expression making its hasty exit from Ralph’s face, it would occur to her that it was not he but she who had been captured; but like half-formed ice her independence cracked beneath her when she tried it and she would come reluctantly back to him for security. His denial of it made her dependence chafe even more. He had been kind to her, she supposed, but he possessed a certain detachment which suggested that he was observing their drama rather than playing his part in it; and, moreover, that it was failing to excite him. She had spent most of the last week at his flat, returning to her own only once to gather things she needed, but although she had enjoyed an exquisite satisfaction in the exercise of her rights, she had begun to fear lately that even that comfort would be taken from her. The last few times she had arrived Ralph had behaved oddly, as if he didn’t know why she was there, opening the door with a weary expression or worse still an attitude of surprise, and once even going out for the evening, leaving her alone in front of the television. For the first time Francine felt herself to be at a loss. She had never required attention so keenly, but could think of no new tactics to secure its satisfaction. If her affliction didn’t guarantee Ralph’s interest, what would? Sitting in the office one afternoon, it occurred to her that by presenting him with her absence she would deprive him of the opportunity to act as if she was a burden on him. The only ingenuity available to her was that of not telling Ralph what she was doing, and having no more sophisticated instrument with which to inflict pain, she was forced to content herself with it.