The Left-Handed Woman (9 page)

Read The Left-Handed Woman Online

Authors: Peter Handke

Tags: #Modern

BOOK: The Left-Handed Woman
8.53Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
The woman and Bruno stood on the terrace. After a while Bruno asked, “Have you decided what you're going to do with yourself?”
The woman answered, “No. For a moment I saw my future clearly and it chilled me to the bone.”
They stood looking down at the garages; plastic bags were skittering over the pavement. The elderly woman was walking down the street without her dog, a long evening dress showing under her coat. She waved at them with both arms, as if she knew everything, and the two of them waved back.
The woman asked if he had to go to the office next day.
Bruno: “Don't talk about it now.”
Arm in arm, they stepped through the terrace door into the living room. The chauffeur, who was drinking, pointed at them and cried out, “By God, love still exists!”
The salesgirl slapped his outstretched finger and said, “The child is sleeping.”
The chauffeur repeated his remark more softly.
The publisher, who was leaning against Franziska's chair, nodded and dozed off. Franziska stood up gingerly, took the chauffeur by the hand and danced with him, cheek to cheek.
The woman was standing at the window. The actor came over to her.
They both looked out; the stormy sky glittered with stars and was reflected in the space behind the stars. After a time he said, “There are some galaxies so distant that their light is weaker than the mere background glow of the night sky. I would like to be somewhere else with you now.”
The woman answered instantly, “Please don't put me in any of your plans.”
The actor looked at her until she looked back at him. Suddenly she said, “Once when I was in the hospital I saw an old, sick, desperately sad woman caressing the nurse who was standing by her bed—but only her thumbnail. Over and over again, only her thumbnail.”
They went on looking at each other.
Finally the actor said, “While we were looking at each other a moment ago, I saw the difficulties that have beset my life up to now as barriers that threatened my devotion to you, one barrier after another, and at the same time, as I continued to look at you, I felt that the difficulties were vanishing, one after another, until only you remained. I love you now. I love you.”
Bruno sat motionless, just drinking.
Taking over from the chauffeur, the salesgirl danced with Franziska.
Staggering a little, the chauffeur attempted a few steps toward this one and that one; in the end he stood still, all by himself.
Bruno versified into the air:
“Suffering's like a propeller
Except that it doesn't take you anywhere,
Whereas the propeller pulls you through the air.”
Franziska, who was still dancing, heard him and laughed.
The actor looked around from the window at Bruno, who asked him if it wasn't a beautiful poem.
The publisher answered with his eyes closed, as though he had only been pretending to be asleep. “I'll take it for our next year's house calendar.” He looked at the chauffeur. “Hey, you're drunk.” With a single movement he stood up and said to Franziska, “I'll drive you home. Where do you live?”
The chauffeur: “Oh, let's stay a little longer. Tomorrow you won't speak to me anyway.”
The publisher, to Franziska: “Haven't I met you somewhere?”
The salesgirl joined the woman at the window and said, “In my attic I often stand under the skylight, just to look at the clouds. It makes me feel I'm still alive.”
The salesgirl looked at her watch, and immediately the woman turned to the publisher, who was dancing slowly past with Franziska. “She has to go home to her child,” the woman said.
The publisher faced Franziska with his hand under his heart and bowed to the salesgirl. To the woman he said very seriously, “So once again we have not seen each other by daylight.”
The publisher and the salesgirl went to the door; jingling the car keys, the chauffeur stumbled after them. The publisher took the keys.
When the woman shut the door behind them and came back into the room, Franziska was sitting there alone, tugging at her short blond hair. The woman looked around for Bruno and the actor, and Franziska indicated with a gesture that they were down in the cellar. The music had stopped and the sound of a Ping-Pong ball could be heard. Franziska and the woman sat facing each other; on the terrace the wind rocked the rocking chairs.
Franziska: “The salesgirl and her baby! And you and your child! And tomorrow's another school day! To tell you the truth, children depress me. Sometimes I can tell by looking at them that they want to kill me with their voices, with their movements. They all shout at once. They rush back and forth until I'm sick with dizziness and ready to suffocate. What use are they? What do they give us?”
The woman hung her head as though in assent. After a while she replied, “Possibly a little more to think about.”
Franziska was holding a visiting card in her hand. “As he was leaving, your publisher gave me his card.” She stood up. “Now even I would like to be alone.”
The woman put her arm around her.
Franziska: “Ah, that's better.”
At the open door, with her coat on, she said, “I have
my spies. They tell me you've been talking to yourself.”
The woman: “I know. And I've come to like these little conversations so much that I exaggerate them on purpose.”
Franziska, after a pause: “Close the door or you'll catch cold.” She walked slowly down the street, step after step, her head bent forward; one hand hung down behind as if she were pulling a loaded supermarket cart after her.
The woman went down to the cellar, where Bruno and the actor were. Bruno asked, “Are we the last?”
The woman nodded.
Bruno: “We'll just finish this set.”
They played very earnestly. Folding her arms against the chill in the room, the woman watched them.
All three together, they mounted the stairs.
At the coatrack Bruno dressed to go out. So did the actor; at first he tried to put his head through one of the armholes of his sleeveless sweater.
The woman noticed and smiled.
She opened the door.
Bruno already had his coat on; the actor followed him out and said to Bruno, “I've got my car.”
Bruno looked into space for a moment and then replied, “That's good. I've perspired a bit.”
Standing at the door, the woman looked after them as they walked to the car.
They stopped and pissed side by side, with their backs to her. When they proceeded on their way, they kept
changing sides, because neither wanted to be on the right.
The woman went back into the house. She closed the door and locked it. She carried glasses and bottles into the kitchen, emptied the ashtrays, washed up. She moved the chairs in the living room back into their old positions, opened a window and aired the room.
She opened the door to the child's room; the child was just turning over in bed, and one of his toenails, which Bruno had done a poor job of cutting, scratched against the sheet.
Standing at the hall mirror, she brushed her hair. She looked into her eyes and said, “You haven't given yourself away. And no one will ever humiliate you again.”
She sat in the living room, propping her legs on a second chair, and looked at the sketch the chauffeur had left. She poured herself a glass of whiskey and pushed up the sleeves of her sweater. She smiled to herself and shook the dice cup, leaned back and wiggled her toes. For a long time she sat perfectly still; her pupils pulsated evenly and grew gradually larger. Suddenly she jumped up, took a pencil and a sheet of paper, and began to sketch: first her feet on the chair, then the room behind them, the window, the starry sky, changing as the night wore on—each object in every detail. Her strokes were awkward and uncertain, lacking in vigor, but occasionally she managed to draw a line with a single, almost sweeping movement.
Hours passed before she laid the paper down. She looked at it for some time, then went on sketching.
 
 
 
In
the daylight she sat in the rocking chair on the terrace. The moving crowns of the pine trees were reflected on the window behind her. She began to rock; she raised her arms. She was lightly dressed, with no blanket on her knees.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Written in Paris during the winter and
spring
of 1976
Kaspar and Other Plays (1970)
 
The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1972)
 
Short Letter, Long Farewell (1974)
 
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (1975)
 
The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays (1976)
 
A Moment of True Feeling (1977)
And so they all, each in his own way, reflectingly or unreflectingly, go on with their daily lives; everything seems to take its accustomed course, for indeed, even in desperate situations where everything hangs in the balance, one goes on living as though nothing were wrong.
 
Goethe,
Elective Affinities
Translation copyright © 1977, 1978 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. Originally published in German under the title
Die linkshändige Frau
© 1976 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main All rights reserved
 
 
Published simultaneously in Canada by
McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd., Toronto
 
 
Designed by Cynthia Krupat
 
 
eISBN 9781466806962
First eBook Edition : December 2011
 
 
Second printing, 1978
The text of this book first appeared in
The New Yorker
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Handke, Peter. / The left-handed woman.
Translation of Die linkshändige Frau.
I. Title.
PZ4.H2363Le
[
PT2668.A5
]
/ 833'9'14 / 78-5568

Other books

Forest Ghost by Graham Masterton
One Night of Misbehavior by Shelley Munro
The Lost Hearts by Wood, Maya
Guilty Pleasures by Tasmina Perry
The Secret by Rhonda Byrne