The Left-Handed Woman

by Peter Handke

  The woman: “Sit home biting my nails.”

  Franziska: “No, seriously. Is there someone else?”

  The woman only shook her head.

  Franziska: “What will the two of you live on? Have you thought of that?”

  The woman: “No. But I’d like to start translating again. At the publishing house where I used to work, they kept me busy with the foreign contracts. But when I left, the boss said I could do books. He’s been making me offers ever since.”

  Franziska: “Novels. Poems! Good God! I bet they’ll pay you twenty marks a page. Maybe three marks an hour.”

  The woman: “I believe it’s fifteen marks a page.”

  Franziska gazed at her. “I do wish you’d come to our group soon. You’ll see. When we get together, every single one of us comes to life. And we don’t exchange recipes! You have no idea how blissful women can be together.”

  The woman: “I’ll be glad to come sometime.”

  Franziska: “Have you ever lived alone?”

  When the woman shook her head again, Franziska said, “I have. And I despise it. I despise myself when I’m alone. Oh, by the way. Bruno will stay at my place for the present—unless you take him back this afternoon, which wouldn’t surprise me. I still can’t believe it all. But I’m delighted all the same, Marianne, and in some strange way I’m proud of you.”

  She drew the woman to her and embraced her. Then she gave the child, behind the comic book, a tap on the knee and asked, “How does moneybags fleece his poor relation this time?” Immersed in his reading, the child didn’t react, and for a time no one spoke. Then the woman said, “Stefan always wants to be the rich one—he says he’s the better man.”

  Franziska raised her empty glass to her lips and went through the motions of drinking. She put the glass down and looked back and forth between woman and child. Little by little, her features softened. (That was Franziska’s way. Sometimes, for no particular reason, she would suddenly melt into speechless tenderness and her face, relaxing, would take on a likeness to the faces of many other, very different women—as though in this undirected tenderness she discovered herself.)

  At home, in the hallway of the bungalow, the wall cupboards were open, and the woman was getting ready to pack Bruno’s bags. The suitcases were on the floor in front of her, and when she opened one of them she found the child curled up inside; he jumped up and ran away. From a second suitcase popped one of Stefan’s friends, a rather fat little boy named Jürgen, who followed him out onto the terrace. There they pressed their faces against the window and stuck out their tongues, which instantly felt the sting of the ice-cold glass. On her knees in the hallway, the woman carefully folded Bruno’s shirts. Then she dragged the suitcases into the living room, and left them there, all ready to be called for. When the bell rang, she hurried into the kitchen. Bruno walked in, and looked around like an intruder. He saw the suitcases, called his wife, and, pointing at them, said with a grin, “Have you taken my picture off the bedside table?”

  They gave each other their hands.

  He asked what Stefan was doing, and she motioned toward the big window, behind which the two children were silently making faces.

  After a while Bruno said, “Isn’t it strange what happened to us this morning? And neither of us was drunk. Now I feel rather silly. Don’t you?”

  The woman: “Yes, I suppose so. Well, no, not really.”

  Bruno took the suitcases. “It’s a good thing the office opens up again tomorrow … . You’ve never lived alone.”

  The woman: “So you’ve come from Franziska?” And then she said, “Don’t you want to sit down?”

  On his way out Bruno shook his head and said, “You take it so lightly … . Do you even remember that there was once a closeness between us that may have been based on the fact of our being man and wife but went far beyond it?”

  The woman shut the door behind him and stood there. She heard the car driving off; she went to the coatrack beside the door and thrust her head in among the coats.

  As the dusk deepened, the woman did not turn on the light but sat looking at the television screen. Their set had a special channel for watching the colony playground. The silent black-and-white image revealed her son balancing himself on a tree trunk, while his fat friend kept falling off; except for the two of them, the playground was forsaken. The woman’s eyes glistened with tears.

  The woman and the child took their supper alone in the living room. She had already finished and was watching the child, who guzzled and smacked his lips. Otherwise, it was very still, except now and then for the buzzing of the refrigerator in the kitchen, which was connected with the living room by a service hatch. There was a telephone at the woman’s feet.

  She asked Stefan if she should put him to bed. He answered, “I always put myself to bed.”

  The woman: “Let me come with you at least.”

  To the child’s surprise she helped him into his pajamas. Then she tried to pick him up and put him into bed. He resisted and climbed in by himself, whereupon she pulled up the blankets and tucked him in. He was holding a book, and pointed out a picture in it, showing high mountains in a bright light; jackdaws were flying about in the foreground. He read the legend under the picture aloud: “‘Mountain scene in the late fall: Even at this time of year the summits beckon if the weather cooperates.’” He asked her what it meant and she translated; it meant you could still go mountain-climbing in the late fall if the weather was good. She bent over him and he said, “You smell of onions.”

  Alone in the kitchen, the woman approached the garbage pail. She was holding the child’s plate, which still had some food on it, and she had her foot on the pedal of the pail, so that the lid was already raised. Still bent over, she forked a few morsels into her mouth, chewed them, and tossed what was left into the pail. Then for a time she remained motionless in the same posture.

  That night, lying on her back in bed, she opened her eyes wide. There was no sound to be heard but her breath against the bedclothes and a suspicion of her pounding heart. She went to the window and opened it, but the silence only gave way to a soft murmur. She carried her blanket into the child’s room and lay down on the floor beside his bed.

  One morning some days later the woman sat typing in the living room. In an undertone she read what she had written: “‘I am finally in a position to consider your repeated offers of translation from the French. Please let me know of your conditions. At the moment I should prefer nonfiction. I have a pleasant memory of my days in your office’”—to herself, she added “in spite of the sprained wrists I was always getting from typing all day” —“‘and look forward to hearing from you.’”

  She threw the letter in the mailbox beside the phone booth at the edge of the colony. When she turned away, Bruno was coming toward her. He seized her roughly by the arm, then looked around to see if anyone was watching. Up the road an elderly couple equipped for hiking—knickers, knapsacks, and walking sticks—had turned around. Bruno pushed the woman into the phone booth. Then suddenly he apologized.

  He gave her a long look. “Do we have to go on with this game, Marianne? I, for one, am sick of it.”

  The woman replied, “Now, don’t start talking about the child.”

  He struck out, but the phone booth was too cramped, and he didn’t really hit her. He raised his hands as though to bury his face in them, but let them drop. He said, “Franziska thinks you don’t know what you’re doing. She says you have no inkling of the historical conditions that determine your conduct.” He laughed. “Do you know what she says you are? A private mystic. She’s right. You are a mystic. Damn it, you’re sick. I told Franziska a bit of electroshock would straighten you out.”

  After a long silence the woman said, “Of course you can come and see us whenever you like—on weekends, for instance—and take Stefan to the zoo. Or the Historical Museum.”

  Another silence. Suddenly Bruno produced a photograph of her, held it up, and then set f
ire to it with his lighter. She tried not to smile and looked at something else; then she smiled after all.

  Bruno left the phone booth and threw the burning photograph away; she followed him. He looked around and said calmly, “What about me? Do you think I don’t exist? Do you suppose there’s no one in the world but you? I exist, too, Marianne. I exist!”

  At that moment the woman pulled Bruno, who had started to wander off into the roadway, out of the path of a car.

  Bruno asked, “Do you need money?” and took out some banknotes.

  The woman: “We have a joint account, you know. Or have you closed it?”

  “Of course not. But take this anyway, even if you don’t need it. Please.” He held out the money, and in the end she took it, after which they both seemed relieved. In leaving, he sent Stefan his love. She nodded and said she would visit him soon in his office.

  When he had walked quite a way, Bruno called back over his shoulder, “Don’t be alone too much. It could be the death of you.”

  At home the woman stood at the hall mirror and looked into her eyes—not to see anything special but as a way of calmly thinking about herself.

  She spoke out loud. “I don’t care what you people think. The more you have to say about me, the freer I will be of you. Sometimes I have the impression that the moment we discover something new about a person it stops being true. From now on, if anyone tells me what I’m like, even if it’s to flatter or encourage me, I’ll take it as an insult and refuse to listen.” She stretched out her arms. There was a hole in her sweater, under one armpit; she stuck her finger into it.

  All of a sudden she started moving the furniture. The child helped her. When they had finished, they stood in different corners of the living room, surveying the new arrangement. Outside, it was raining—a furious winter rain that bounced off the hard ground like hail. The child pushed the carpet sweeper in all directions; bareheaded on the terrace, the woman cleaned the big window with old newspapers. She squirted spot-remover foam on the carpet. She threw papers and books into a plastic garbage bag standing beside other bags that had already been tied up. She took a rag and polished the mailbox outside the door; she placed a ladder under the living-room light, climbed up, unscrewed a bulb, and put in a much stronger one.

  That evening the room was resplendent. The walnut table, now covered with a white tablecloth, was set for two; in the center a thick yellow beeswax candle was burning, and the wax was sizzling audibly. The child folded the napkins and placed them on the plates. To the sound of soft dinner music (“dinner music in the housing unit,” as Bruno had put it), they sat down facing each other. As they unfolded their napkins in unison, the woman gasped, and the child asked if she was depressed again. She shook her head for a long time, in negation but also in surprise; then she took the lid off the serving dish.

  During the meal the child told her the latest news: “Listen to what happened at school. Our class took off their coats and boots and put on their slippers and school smocks in four minutes flat. The principal timed us with a real stopwatch. It took us ten minutes at the beginning of the term. The principal said we could easy get it down to three minutes by the end of the year. We’d have done it today if that fat Jiirgen hadn’t got all tangled up in his coat buttons. And then he cried all morning. In recess he went and hid in the cloakroom and peed in his pants. You know how we’ll make it in three minutes? We’ll start running at the top of the stairs and take everything off before we get there.”

  The woman said, “So that’s why you always want to wear your light coat in spite of the cold—because it’s easier to unbutton!” She laughed.

  The child: “Don’t laugh like that. You laugh like fat Jürgen. He always knocks himself out trying to laugh. You’re never really pleased. You were only pleased with me once—that time when we were bathing and all of a sudden I came swimming up to you without my life preserver. You picked me up and you were so happy you were screaming.”

  The woman: “I don’t remember.”

  The child: “But I remember.” And he shouted malignantly, “I remember! I remember!”

  That night the woman sat by the window with the curtains drawn, reading; a thick dictionary lay beside her. She put her book aside and opened the curtains. A car was just turning into one of the garages, and on the sidewalk an elderly lady was walking her dog. As though nothing escaped her, she looked up at the window and waved.

  The woman pushed her cart down one of the narrow aisles of the town supermarket; if someone came along in the opposite direction, she had to turn into a side passage. Empty carts jangled as a clerk collected them; a handbell was rung at the bottle-return window; the P.A. system poured out music, punctuated by announcements of the bargains of the day, week, and month. For a time the woman stood motionless, looking around her more and more calmly; her eyes began to shine.

  In a quieter aisle she ran into Franziska, who was pulling her cart behind her.

  Franziska: “At the bread counter just now I saw them wrapping a loaf of bread for a local woman; a Yugoslav came next and they just handed his to him unwrapped … I usually go to the corner grocer, even if his salad is half withered or frozen. But I can’t afford such philanthropy every day.”

  Both were jostled, and the woman said, “Sometimes I feel good in this place.”

  Franziska pointed to a peephole in a polystyrene partition, behind which a man in a white smock sat watching the customers. She had to shout to make herself heard above the noise. “I suppose that living corpse gives you a sense of security?”

  The woman: “He’s right for the supermarket. And the supermarket is right for me. Today, at least.”

  As they waited in line at the checkout counter, Franziska stroked the woman’s elbow and said with an air of embarrassment, “I bet we’ve picked the wrong line. We’ll still be waiting when all those people on the right and left are on their way home. It happens to me every time.”

  Outside the supermarket a number of dogs were tied up and shivering with cold. Franziska took the woman’s arm. “Please come to our group meeting tomorrow night. They’ll all be so glad to have you. Right now they have a feeling that human thought is in pretty good shape but that life is elsewhere. We need someone who’s making a bit of a break with the normal way of life—in other words, who’s slightly nuts. You know what I mean.”

  The woman: “Stefan doesn’t like to be alone in the evening these days.”

  Franziska: “You can find the reasons for that in any psychology textbook. Bruno can’t stand being alone for very long, either. He says he keeps falling back into his nasty childhood habits. By the way, did you watch that documentary about lonely people last night?”

  The woman: “I only remember the bit where the interviewer says to one of them, ‘Won’t you tell me a story about your loneliness?’ And the man didn’t open his mouth; he just sat there.”

  After a pause Franziska said, “All the same, try and come tomorrow. We don’t screech like women at restaurant tables.”

  As the woman started for the parking lot, Franziska called after her, “Don’t take to solitary drinking, Marianne.”

  The woman moved on with her plastic shopping bags. One of the handles tore, and she had to hold her hand underneath the bottom.

  In the evening the woman and the child sat watching TV. The child finally jumped up and switched off the set. Confused and surprised, the woman said, “Oh, thank you,” and rubbed her eyes.

  The doorbell rang; the child ran and answered it. Feeling a little dizzy, the woman stood up. Through the open door bustled the publisher she had worked for, a heavyset but rather fidgety man of fifty, who when talking to someone had a way of coming closer and closer and assuming a slightly foreign accent. (He always seemed concerned about something, and unbent only when made to feel that he didn’t have to prove himself. A meeting with even his closest friends made him jumpy, as if he had just been awakened out of a deep sleep and wouldn’t be himself until fully awake. Wherev
er he happened to be, he behaved as if he were the host, and only if his interlocutor failed to react did his sociability, made truly disconcerting by his visible efforts to keep it going, give way to a relaxed composure in which he seemed to be resting from his constant need to communicate.)

  He had flowers in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other.

  He said, “I knew you were alone, Marianne. When a publisher gets a letter, he has to know how to read between the lines.” He handed her his offerings. “Ten years! Do you still recognize me? I, at least, remember every detail of the farewell party we gave you at the office, Marianne. I especially remember a certain smell of lilies of the valley behind a certain ear.”

  The child stood listening. The woman asked, “And what do you smell today?” The publisher took a deep breath.

  The woman: “It’s Brussels sprouts. Days later all the closets are still full of it. But it’s one vegetable that children like. I’ll get two glasses for the bubbly.”

  The publisher cried out, “Don’t say ‘bubbly.’ Say ‘champagne’!” And quickly, in a different tone, “How do you say ‘Brussels sprouts’ in French?”

  The woman said, “Choux de Bruxelles.”

  The publisher clapped his hands. “You pass. You see, I’ve brought you the autobiography of a young Frenchwoman. Naturally, it’s full of such words. You can start translating tomorrow.”

  The woman: “Why not tonight?”

  The publisher: “The lilies of the field didn’t work at night.”

  The woman: “Why bring them in?”

  “I suppose I was thinking of those lilies of the valley.”

  The woman only smiled. “Will you pull the cork?” She went to the kitchen with the flowers. The publisher tugged at the champagne cork. The child watched.

  They sat in the living room drinking. The child had a few sips, too. After a festive clinking of glasses, the woman caressed the child and the publisher said, “I had to come out here anyway. One of my authors lives in the neighborhood. I’m worried about him. A difficult case. He’s stopped writing. For good, I’m afraid. The publishing house is helping him out, of course. We’ve been irresponsibly generous. This evening I was urging him to write his autobiography at least—autobiographies are in great demand. But he only shook his head. He won’t talk to anyone any more; he only makes noises. He has a ghastly old age ahead of him, Marianne. No work, no friends.”