The Left-Handed Woman

by Peter Handke

  The woman replied with a strange violence, “You don’t know anything about him. Maybe he’s happy some of the time.”

  The publisher turned to the child. “Now you’re going to see some magic. I’m going to make that cork disappear from the table.” The child looked at the table. The publisher pointed one hand up in the air and said, “There it goes.” But the child kept his eyes glued to the cork, and the publisher dropped his arm. He said quickly to the woman, “Why do you defend the man?”

  As though in answer, the woman tickled the child, kissed him on the head, picked him up, put him on her lap, hugged him.

  The publisher: “Don’t you like my company? I have the impression that you keep so busy with the child only so you won’t have to pay any attention to me. What’s the sense of this mother-and-child game? What have you to fear from me?”

  The woman pushed the child away and said, “Maybe you’re right.” And to the child, “Go to bed.”

  The child didn’t move, so she picked him up and carried him off.

  She came back alone and said, “Stefan doesn’t want to sleep. The champagne makes him think of New Year’s Eve, when he can always stay up until past midnight.” The publisher drew the woman down beside him on the broad armchair; with an air of forbearance she let him.

  The publisher said slowly, “Which is your glass?”

  She showed him and he picked it up. “I want to drink out of your glass, Marianne.”

  Then he smelled her hair. “I like your hair because it only smells of hair. It’s more a feeling than a smell. And another thing I like is the way you walk. It’s not a special kind of walk, as with most women. You just walk, and that’s lovely.”

  The woman smiled to herself. Then she turned to him as though a sudden desire to talk had come over her. “One day a lady was here. She played with Stefan. All of a sudden he sniffed at her hair and said, ‘You smell.’ The woman was horrified. ‘Of cooking?’ she cried. ‘No, of perfume,’ he said, and that relieved her completely.”

  After a while the publisher looked at her as if he didn’t know what to do next. The child called her, but she did not respond. She looked back toward his room as though curious. The publisher kept his eyes on her but lowered his head. “You have a run in your stocking.” She waved her hand, meaning she didn’t care, and when the child called her again she stood up but didn’t leave the room.

  She sat down in her old place, across from the publisher, and said, “What I can’t bear in this house is the way I have to turn corners to go from one room to another: always at right angles and always to the left. I don’t know why it puts me in such a bad humor. It really torments me.”

  The publisher said, “Write about it, Marianne. One of these days you won’t be with us any more if you don’t.”

  The child called a third time and she went to him instantly.

  Left alone, the publisher looked tired. His head sagged slightly to one side. He straightened up; then he smiled, apparently at himself, and let his body go limp again.

  The woman came back and stood in front of him. He looked up at her. She laid her hand on his forehead. Then she sat down across from him again. He took her hand, which was resting on the table, and kissed it. For a long time they said nothing.

  She said, “Should I play some music for you?” He shook his head without a moment’s reflection, as though he had expected the question. They were silent.

  The publisher: “Doesn’t your telephone ever ring?”

  The woman: “Very seldom in the last few days. Not much in the winter, anyway. Maybe in the spring?” After a long silence she said, “I think Stefan is asleep now.” And then, “If you weren’t my boss now, in a manner of speaking, I might let you see how tired I am.”

  The publisher: “And besides, the bottle is empty.”

  He got up and she saw him to the door. He took his coat, stood with bowed head, then straightened up. Brusquely she took his coat out of his hands and said, “Let’s have another glass. I just had a feeling that every minute I spend alone I lose something that can never be retrieved. Like death. Forgive the word. It was a painful feeling. Please don’t misunderstand me. There’s still a bottle of red Burgundy in the kitchen. It’s a heavy wine, it puts you to sleep.”

  They stood by the living-room window, drinking the red wine. The curtains were open, and they looked out into the garden; snow was falling.

  The publisher said, “Not long ago I broke with a girl I loved. The way it happened was so strange that I’d like to tell you about it. We were riding in a taxi at night. I had my arm around her, and we were both looking out the same side. Everything was fine. Oh yes, you have to know that she was very young—no more than twenty—and I was very fond of her. For the barest moment, just in passing, I saw a man on the sidewalk. I couldn’t make out his features, the street was too dark. I only saw that he was rather young. And suddenly it flashed through my mind that the sight of that man outside would force the girl beside me to realize what an old wreck was holding her close, and that she must be filled with revulsion. The thought came as such a shock that I took my arm away. I saw her home, but at the door of her house I told her I never wanted to see her again. I bellowed at her. I said I was sick of her, it was all over between us, she should get out of my sight. And I walked off. I’m certain she still doesn’t know why I left her. That young man on the sidewalk probably didn’t mean a thing to her. I doubt if she even noticed him …”

  He drained his glass. They stood silently, looking out of the window. The woman with the dog appeared, looked up, and waved; she was carrying an open umbrella.

  The publisher said, “It’s been a beautiful evening, Marianne. No, not beautiful—different.”

  They went to the door.

  The publisher: “I shall take the liberty of making your phone ring now and then, even in the dead of winter.”

  He put on his coat. In the doorway she asked him if he had come in his car; the snow was swirling into the house.

  The publisher: “Yes. With a chauffeur. He’s waiting in the car.”

  The woman: “You let him wait all this time?”

  The publisher: “He’s used to it.”

  The car was outside the door, the chauffeur sitting in half-darkness.

  The woman: “You’ve forgotten to give me the book I’m to translate.”

  The publisher: “I left it in the car.”

  He motioned to the chauffeur, who brought in the book.

  The publisher handed it to the woman, who asked, “Were you putting me to the test?”

  The publisher, after a pause: “You’re entering on a period of long loneliness, Marianne.”

  The woman: “Everybody has been threatening me lately.” And to the chauffeur, who was standing beside them, “What about you? Are you threatening me, too?” The chauffeur smiled uncomfortably.

  That night she stood alone in the hall with the book. The snow crackled on the skylights in the flat roof overhead. She began to read: “Au pays de l‘idéal: J’attends d’un homme qu’ll m’aime pour ce que je suis et pour ce que je deviendrai.” She attempted a translation: “In the land of the ideal: I expect a man to love me for what I am and for what I shall become.” She shrugged.

  In broad daylight she sat at the table with her typewriter in front of her, and put on her glasses. She divided the book she was to translate into daily quotas of pages, and after each quota she wrote the corresponding date in pencil; by the end of the book she had arrived at a date in mid-spring. Haltingly, stopping to leaf through the dictionary, to clean a letter on the typewriter with a needle, to wipe the keys with a cloth, she wrote the following sentence: “Up until now all men have weakened me. My husband says: ‘Michele is strong.’ The truth is that he wants me to be strong in connection with things that don’t interest him: the children, the household, taxes. But when it comes to the work I hope to do, he destroys me. He says: ‘My wife is a dreamer.’ If wanting to be what I am is dreaming, then I want to be a
dreamer.”

  The woman looked out at the terrace. School satchel in hand, stamping the snow off his boots, the child appeared. He came in by the terrace door and laughed. The woman asked why he was laughing.

  The child: “I never saw you in glasses before.”

  The woman took her glasses off and put them on again. “You’re back so early.”

  The child: “They dropped two classes again.”

  While the woman went on typing, the child came closer and sat down; he was very quiet. The woman stopped working and looked into space. “You’re hungry, aren’t you?” she said. The child shook his head.

  The woman: “Do you mind my doing this?”

  The child smiled to himself.

  Later she worked in the bedroom, at a table by the window. The child appeared in the doorway with his fat friend. “It’s so cold out,” he said. “And we can’t go to Jürgen’s house, because they’re cleaning.”

  The woman: “But they were cleaning yesterday.” The child shrugged, and she turned back to her work.

  The children stayed in the doorway. Though they didn’t move, the woman was conscious of their presence and turned around.

  Later, while she was writing, the sound of a record came from the next room: the screeching voices of actors imitating children and goblins. She stood up and went down the hallway to the room. The record was turning on a small record player; there was no one to be seen. She turned it off, and in that same moment the children rushed screaming from behind the curtains, apparently to frighten her; since they had also exchanged clothes, they succeeded.

  She said to them, “Look. What I’m doing is work, even if it doesn’t look that way to you. A little peace and quiet means a lot to me. When I’m working, I can’t think of other things; it’s not like when I’m cooking, for instance.”

  The children gazed at the air and began, first one, then the other, to grin.

  The woman: “Won’t you try to understand?”

  The child: “Are you cooking something for us now?”

  The woman bowed her head. Then the child said malignantly, “I’m sad, too. You’re not the only one.”

  She sat at the typewriter, in the bedroom; she didn’t type. It was quiet in the house. The children came in from the hallway, whispering and giggling. Suddenly the woman pushed the typewriter aside, and it fell to the floor.

  At a nearby shopping mart she loaded enormous packages into a pushcart and pushed it from section to section of the enormous store until it was full. At the checkout counter she stood in a long line; the carts of those ahead of her were just as full as hers. In the parking lot she. pushed the heavy cart, whose wheels kept turning to one side, to her car. She loaded the car, even the back seat; she couldn’t see out of the rear window. At home she stored her purchases in the cellar, because all the closets and the deep freezer were already full.

  At night she sat at the table in the living room. She put a sheet of paper into the typewriter and sat still, looking at it. After a while she folded her arms over the typewriter and laid her head on her arms.

  Later in the night she was still there in the same position, now asleep.

  She awoke, switched off the lamp, and left the room. Her face showed the pattern of her sweater sleeve. Only the street lights were still on in the colony.

  They visited Bruno at his office in town. From the window one could see the city skyline. Bruno sat with her on a sofa, while the child read at a table in the corner.

  He looked at the child. “Franziska thinks Stefan has been strikingly withdrawn lately. She also says that he doesn’t wash any more. In her opinion those are indications …”

  The woman: “And what else does Franziska think?”

  Bruno laughed; the woman smiled. When he held out his hand to her, she started back. He only said, “Marianne.”

  The woman: “I’m sorry.”

  Bruno: “I was only trying to get a look at your coat; there’s a button missing.”

  They fell into a hopeless silence.

  Bruno said to the child, “Stefan, I’m going to show you how I intimidate people who come to my office.” He took the woman by the arm and, using her as a foil, acted out the following scene, with now and then a look of connivance at the child: “First I make my victim sit in a corner, where he feels helpless. When I speak, I thrust my face right into his. If my caller is an elderly person”—his voice fell to a whisper—“I speak very softly to make him think his hearing has suddenly failed him. It’s also important to wear a certain kind of shoes, with crepe soles, like these that I’m wearing; they’re power shoes. And they have to be polished until they glow. One has to emanate an aura of mystery. But the main thing is the intimidating face.” He sat down facing the woman and began to stare; supporting his elbow on the table and holding up his forearm, he closed his fingers to make a fist, but not entirely: his thumb still protruded, as though prepared to thrust and gouge. While staring, he twisted his lips into a grimace, and said, “I’ve also got a special salve from America; I put it around my eyes to stop me from blinking, or around my mouth to keep my lips from twitching.” Then and there he smeared salve around his eyes. “This is my power stare, with the help of which I hope to become a member of the board soon.” He stared, and the woman and child looked at him.

  He waved his hand to show that the act was over and said to the child, “Next Sunday we’ll go to the greenhouse at the Botanical Gardens and see the carnivorous plants. Or to the Planetarium. They project the Southern Cross on a dome that looks like the night sky—it’s as if you were really in the South Seas.”

  He took them to the door. He whispered something in the woman’s ear; she looked at him and shook her head. After a pause Bruno said, “Nothing is settled, Marianne,” and let her out.

  Alone, he hammered his face with his fist.

  The woman and the child left the office building. Stepping out into the quiet street, they shut their eyes, dazzled by the glare of the winter afternoon. They turned onto a busy street with bank buildings on both sides, one reflected in the windows of another, and walked toward the center of town. At a stoplight the child assumed the attitudes of the little men on the signals, first in stopping, then in crossing. In the pedestrian zone he kept stopping at shopwindows; the woman went ahead, then stopped to wait. In the end she always came back to pull the child along. Every few steps there was a poster advertising the evening edition of a mass-circulation newspaper, always with the same headlines. As the sky began to darken, they crossed a bridge over a river. The traffic was heavy. The child was talking. The woman gestured that she couldn’t hear him, and the child shrugged. They walked along the river in the dusk, the child moving in a different rhythm from hers, first stopping, then running, so that she was always having to wait or run after him. For a while she walked beside the child, exaggerating the briskness of her stride as an example, prodding him with silent gestures. When he stopped to stare at a bush some distance away, hardly visible in the twilight, she stamped her foot and the heel of her shoe broke off. Two young men passed close to her and belched in her face. The woman and the child stopped at a public toilet by the river. She had to take the child into the men’s side, because he was afraid to go in alone. They locked themselves into a stall; the woman closed her eyes and leaned her back against the door. Above the partition separating their stall from the next a man’s head appeared; he had jumped up from the floor. A second later it appeared again. Then the man’s grinning face appeared below the partition, at her feet. She took the child and fled, stumbling on her broken shoe. They passed a ground-floor apartment where the television was on. An enormous bird flew across the foreground of the screen. An old woman fell on her face in the middle of the street. Two men whose cars had collided sprang at each other; one tried to strike out, but the other held him motionless.

  It was almost night. The woman and the child were in the center of the city, at a snack bar between two big office buildings, and the child was eating a pr
etzel. The roar of the traffic was so loud that a long-lasting catastrophe seemed to be in progress. A man came into the snack bar; he was bent almost double and had his hand on his heart. He asked for a glass of water and gulped it down with a pill. Then he sat down, stooped and wretched. The evening church bells rang, a fire truck passed, followed by a number of ambulances with blue lights and sirens. The light flashed over the woman’s face; her forehead was beaded with perspiration, her lips cracked and parched.

  Late in the evening she stood by the long windowless side wall of the living room, in the half shadow of the desk lamp: deep quiet; dogs barking in the distance. Then the phone. She let it ring a few times, then answered in a soft voice. The publisher said in French that her voice sounded strange.

  The woman: “Maybe it’s because I’ve been working. That seems to affect my voice.”

  The publisher: “Are you alone?”

  The woman: “The child is with me, as usual. He’s asleep.”

  The publisher: “I’m alone, too. It’s a clear night. I can see the hills where you live.”

  The woman: “I’d love to see you in the daytime.”

  The publisher: “Are you working hard, Marianne? Or do you just sit around, out there in your wilderness?”

  The woman: “I was in town with Stefan today. He doesn’t understand me. He thinks the big buildings, the gas stations, the subway stations, and all that are wonderful.”