The Left-Handed Woman

by Peter Handke

  The publisher: “Maybe there really is a new beauty that we just haven’t learned to see. I love the city myself. From the roof of our office building I can see as far as the airport; I can see planes landing and taking off in the distance, without hearing them. There’s a delicate beauty about it that moves me deeply.” And after a pause, “And what are you going to do now?”

  The woman: “Put on my nicest dress.”

  The publisher: “You mean we can get together?”

  The woman: “I’m going to dress to go on working. All of a sudden I feel like it.”

  The publisher: “Do you take pills?”

  The woman: “Now and then—to keep awake.”

  The publisher: “I’d better not say anything, because I know you take every warning as a threat. Just try not to get that sad, resigned look that so many of my translators have.”

  She let him hang up first; then she took a long silk dress from the closet. At the mirror she tried on a string of pearls but took them right off again. She stood silent, looking at herself from one side.

  The gray of dawn lay over the colony; the street lamps had just gone out. The woman sat motionless at the desk.

  She got up and, closing her eyes, zigzagged about the room; then she paced back and forth, turning on her heel every time she came to a wall. Then she walked backward very quickly, turning aside and again turning aside. In the kitchen she stood at the sink, which was piled high with dirty dishes. She put the dishes into the dishwasher and reached over to the counter and turned on the transistor, which instantly began to blare wake-up music and cheery speaking voices. She turned it off, bent down, and opened the washing machine; she took out a tangled wad of wet sheets and dropped them on the kitchen floor. She scratched her forehead violently until it bled.

  She opened the mailbox outside the house; it was full of junk mail. No handwriting except perhaps for the imitation script in advertising circulars. She crumpled the sheaf of papers and tore them up. She went about the bungalow, putting it in order, stopping, turning around, bending down, scraping at a spot here and there in passing, picking up a single grain of rice and taking it to the garbage pail in the kitchen. She sat down, stood up, took a few steps, sat down again. She took a roll of paper toweling that was leaning in a corner, unrolled it, rolled it up again, and finally put it down not far from its old place.

  The child sat watching as she moved fitfully around him. With a brush she swept the chair he was sitting on and silently motioned him to stand up. No sooner had he done so than she pushed him away with her elbow and brushed the seat of his chair, which was not the least bit dirty. The child moved back a step or two and stood still. Suddenly she flung the brush at him with all her might, but only hit a glass on the table, which burst into pieces. She came at the child with clenched fists, but he only looked at her.

  The doorbell rang; they both wanted to answer. She gave the child a push and he fell backward.

  When she opened the door, no one seemed to be there. Then she looked down, and there was the child’s fat friend, crouching; he had a crooked grin on his face.

  She sat rigid in the living room while the child and his fat friend jumped from a chair onto a pile of pillows, singing at the top of their lungs: “The shit jumps on the piss, and the piss jumps on the shit, and the shit jumps on the spit …” They screeched and writhed with laughter, whispered into each other’s ears, looked at the woman, pointed at her, and laughed some more. They didn’t stop and they didn’t stop; the woman did not react.

  She sat at the typewriter. The child came up on tiptoes and leaned against her. She pushed him away with her shoulder, but he kept standing beside her. Suddenly the woman pulled him close and throttled him; she shook him, let him go, and averted her eyes.

  At night the woman sat at the desk; something rose slowly from the lower edge of her eyes and made them glisten; she was crying, without a sound, without a movement.

  In the daylight she walked along a straight road, in the midst of a flat, treeless, frozen landscape. On and on she walked, always straight ahead. She was still walking when night fell.

  She sat in the town movie house with the two children beside her, surrounded by the cataclysmic din of an animated cartoon. Her eyes closed, she dozed off, then shook herself awake. Her head drooped on Stefan’s shoulder. Openmouthed, the child kept his eyes on the picture. She slept on the child’s shoulder until the end of the film.

  That night she stood over the typewriter and read aloud what she had written. “‘“And no one helps you?” the visitor asked. “No,” she replied. “The man I dream of is the man who will love me for being the kind of woman who is not dependent on him.” “And what will you love him for?” “For that kind of love.”’” Once again she shrugged.

  She lay in bed with her eyes open. On the bedside table beside her there was a glass of water and a clasp knife. Outside, someone hammered on the shutters and shouted something. She unclasped the knife, got up, and put on a wrapper. The voice was Bruno’s. “Open or I’ll kick the door in. Let me in or I’ll blow the house up.” She put the knife down, switched on the light, opened the terrace door, and let Bruno in. His coat was open over his shirt. They stood facing each other; they passed through the hallway to the living room, where the light was on. Again they stood facing each other.

  Bruno: “You leave the light on at night.” He looked around. “You’ve moved the furniture, too.” He picked up some books. “And now you’ve got entirely different books.” He stepped closer to her. “And the toilet case I brought you from the Far East—I bet you haven’t got it any more.”

  The woman: “Won’t you take your coat off? Would you care for a glass of vodka?”

  Bruno: “You’re being pretty formal, aren’t you?” And after a pause, “How about yourself? Haven’t you got cancer yet?”

  The woman didn’t answer.

  Bruno: “Is one permitted to smoke?”

  He sat down; she remained standing.

  Bruno: “So here you are, living the good life, alone with your son, in a nice warm house with garden and garage and good fresh air! Let’s see, how old are you? You’ll soon have folds in your neck and hairs growing out of your moles. Little spindly legs with a potato sack on top of them. You’ll get older and older, you’ll say you don’t mind, and one day you’ll hang yourself. You’ll stink in your grave as uncouthly as you’ve lived. And how do you pass the time in the meanwhile? You probably sit around biting your nails. Right?”

  The woman: “Don’t shout. The child is asleep.”

  Bruno: “You say ‘the child’ as if I’d forfeited the right to use his name. And you’re always so reasonable. You women, with your infernal reason. With your ruthless understanding of everything and everyone. And you’re never bored, you bitches. Nothing could suit you better than sitting around and letting the time pass. Do you know why you women can never amount to anything? Because you never get drunk by yourselves! You lounge around your tidy homes like narcissistic photos of yourselves. Always acting mysterious, squeaking to cover your emptiness, devoted comrades who stifle people with your stupid humanitarianism, machines for the emasculation of all life. You creep and crawl, sniffing the ground, until death wrenches your mouths open.” He spat to one side: “You and your new life! I’ve never known a woman to make a lasting change in her life. Nothing but escapades —then back to the same old story. You know what? When you remember what you’re doing now, it will be like leafing through faded newspaper clippings. You’ll think of it as the only event in your life. And at the same time you’ll realize that you were only following the fashions. Marianne’s winter fashion.”

  The woman: “You thought that out before you came, didn’t you? You didn’t come here to talk to me or be with me.”

  Bruno shouted, “I’d rather talk to a ghost.”

  The woman: “You look awfully sad, Bruno.”

  Bruno: “You only say that to disarm me.”

  For a long time they said nothing.
Then Bruno laughed; he turned away and sobbed for a moment, then pulled himself together. “I walked here. I wanted to kill you.” The woman stepped closer, and he said, “Don’t touch me. Please don’t touch me.” After a pause, “Sometimes I think you’re just experimenting with me, putting me to the test. That makes me feel a little better.” After another pause, “Yesterday I caught myself thinking what a comfort it would be at times if there were a God.”

  The woman looked at him and said, “Why, you’ve shaved your beard off.”

  Bruno shrugged. “I did it a week ago. And you’ve got new curtains.”

  The woman: “Not at all. It’s still the old ones. It would make Stefan happy to get a letter from you.”

  Bruno nodded and the woman smiled.

  He asked her why she was smiling.

  “It just occurred to me that you’re the first grownup I’ve spoken to in days.”

  After they had stood for quite some time, each making little gestures as though in private, Bruno asked how she was getting along.

  The woman answered calmly, as though not speaking of herself at all, “One gets so tired all alone in the house.”

  She went with him when he left. They walked side by side as far as the phone booth. Suddenly Bruno stopped walking and stretched out on the ground with his face down. She crouched beside him.

  On a cold morning the woman sat in a rocking chair on the terrace, but she wasn’t rocking. The child stood beside her, watching the clouds of vapor that came out of his mouth. The woman looked into the distance; the pines were reflected in the window behind her.

  In the evening she walked through the almost empty streets of the small town, as if she were going somewhere. She stopped in front of a large, lighted ground-floor window. A group of women were sitting in a kind of schoolroom with a blackboard. Franziska was standing at the blackboard with a piece of chalk, inaudibly elucidating some economic principle. Notebooks were clapped shut; Franziska sat down with the others. She said something that made the others laugh, not aloud, more to themselves. Two women had their arms around each other. Another woman was smoking a pipe. Still another was wiping something off her neighbor’s cheek. Franziska stopped talking, and a few women raised their hands. Franziska counted the hands, then some others raised theirs. In the end they all banged their desks as though in applause. The scene seemed peaceful, as though these women were not a group but individuals brought together by an inner need.

  The woman left the window. She walked through the deserted streets. The clock in the church tower struck. When she passed the church, people were singing inside and someone was playing the organ.

  She went in and stood to one side. Several people were standing in the pews, led in song by the priest; now and then someone coughed. A child was sitting in the midst of the standing singers with his thumb in his mouth. The organ droned. After a while the woman left.

  On the way back to the colony, along the dark avenue of trees, she made gestures as though talking to herself.

  During the night she got up, stood alone in the kitchen, and drank a glass of water. Then there was a stillness, with no other sound than the beating of her heart.

  At midday the woman and Franziska, both bundled up, sat side by side on the terrace, in two rocking chairs. They watched the children, who were chopping up the dried-out Christmas tree and throwing the pieces into a fire.

  After a while Franziska said, “I understand why you couldn’t come in to our meeting. I, too, have moments, especially just before I have to leave my quiet apartment for a meeting, when the thought of going out among people suddenly makes me feel dead tired …”

  The woman: “I’m waiting for your ‘but.’”

  Franziska: “I used to be the same as you. One day, for instance, I couldn’t speak. I wrote what I had to say on slips of paper. Or I’d open a closet door and stand there for hours weeping, because I couldn’t decide what to put on. Once I was on my way somewhere with a man, and suddenly I couldn’t take another step. He pleaded with me and I just stood there. Of course I was a lot younger … Haven’t you any desire to be happy, in the company of others?”

  The woman: “No. I don’t want to be happy. At the most, contented. I’m afraid of happiness. I don’t think I could bear it, here in my head. I’d go mad for good, or die. Or I’d murder someone.”

  Franziska: “You mean you want to be alone like this all your life? Don’t you long for someone who would be your friend, body and soul?”

  The woman cried out, “Oh yes. I do. But I don’t want to know who he is. Even if I were always with him, I wouldn’t want to know him. There’s just one thing I’d like”—she smiled, apparently at herself—“I’d like him to be clumsy, a regular butterfingers. I honestly don’t know why.” She interrupted herself. “Oh, Franziska, I’m talking like a teen-ager.”

  Franziska: “I have an explanation for the butterfingers. Isn’t your father like that? The last time he was here he wanted to shake hands with me across the table and he stuck his fingers in the mustard pot instead.”

  The woman laughed and the child turned his head, as though it were unusual for his mother to laugh.

  Franziska: “By the way, he’s arriving on the afternoon train. I wired him to come. He’s expecting you to meet him at the station.”

  After a pause the woman said, “You shouldn’t have done that. I don’t want anyone right now. Everything seems so banal with people around.”

  Franziska: “I believe you’re beginning to regard people as nothing more than unfamiliar sounds in the house.” She put her hand on the woman’s arm.

  The woman said, “In the book I’ve been translating there’s a quotation from Baudelaire; he says the only political action he understands is revolt. Suddenly it flashed through my mind that the only political action I could understand would be to run amok.”

  Franziska: “As a rule, only men do that.”

  The woman: “By the way, how are you getting along with Bruno?”

  Franziska: “Bruno seems made for happiness. That’s why he’s so lost now. And so theatrical! He’s getting on my nerves. I’m going to throw him out.”

  The woman: “Oh, Franziska. You always say that. When you’re always the one that gets left.”

  After two or three attempts to protest, Franziska said with a note of surprise, “To tell the truth, you’re right.”

  They looked at each other. The children seemed to have fallen out; they stood with their backs to each other gazing at the air, the fat one rather sadly. The woman called out, “Hey, children, no quarrels today.”

  The fat boy smiled with relief and—circuitously, to be sure, and with downcast eyes—the two of them moved closer to each other.

  The woman and the child were waiting at the small-town station. The train pulled in and the woman’s father, a pale old man in glasses, waved from behind a window. Years ago he had been a successful writer, and now he sent carbon copies of short sketches to the papers. He couldn’t get the door open; the woman opened it from outside and helped him down to the platform. They looked each other over and in the end they were pleased. The father shrugged, looked in different directions, wiped his lips, and said his hands smelled unpleasantly from the metal of the train.

  At home he sat on the floor with the child, who took his presents out of his grandfather’s bag: a compass and a set of dice. The child pointed at various objects in the house and outside and asked what color they were. Many of the old man’s answers were wrong.

  The child: “So you’re still color-blind?”

  The grandfather: “It’s just that I never learned to see colors.”

  The woman came in, carrying light-blue tea things on a silver tray. The tea steamed as she poured it, and her father warmed his hands on the pot. While he was sitting on the floor, an assortment of coins and a bunch of keys had fallen out of his pocket. The woman picked them up. “Your pockets are full of loose change again,” she said.

  The father: “That change purse
you gave me, it didn’t last long. I lost it on the way home.”

  Over the tea, he said, “The other day I was expecting a visitor. The moment I opened the door, I saw that he was drenched in rain from head to foot, and I’d just cleaned the house. While I was letting him in and shaking hands with him, I noticed that I was standing on the doormat wiping my feet for all I was worth, as if I were the wet visitor.” He giggled.

  “And you felt caught in the act. Does that still happen to you so often?”

  The father giggled and held his hand before his mouth. “What will embarrass me most of all is lying on my deathbed with my mouth open.”

  He swallowed some tea the wrong way.

  Then the woman said, “Tonight you’ll sleep in Bruno’s room, Father.”

  The father replied, “It doesn’t matter. I’ll be leaving tomorrow.”

  That evening the woman was writing in the living room; her father was sitting at some distance from her, watching her over a bottle of wine. After a while he came closer, and she looked up, undisturbed. He bent over her. “There’s a button missing on your coat. I’ve just noticed it.” She took off her coat and handed it to him.

  As she went on typing, he sewed on the button with needle and thread from a hotel sewing packet. Again his eyes rested on her. She noticed and gave him a questioning look. He apologized. And then he said, “You’ve become so beautiful, Marianne!” She smiled.

  She finished typing and made a few corrections. Her father tried in vain to open a fresh bottle of wine. She came to his assistance. He went to the kitchen to get her a glass. She called out to tell him where the glasses were. She heard him puttering for quite some time, then silence. In the end she went in and showed him.

  They sat across from one another, drinking. The father made a futile gesture or two. The woman said, “Go ahead and say it. That’s what you came for, isn’t it?”