The Left-Handed Woman (3 page)

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Authors: Peter Handke

Tags: #Modern

BOOK: The Left-Handed Woman
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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. Wherever 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.”
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.

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