A Sorrow Beyond Dreams by Peter Handke Read Free Book Online Page A

edge, and then suddenly raise her hand to her cheek. At this her husband, as often as not, would leave the house, stand outside the door for a while clearing his throat, and come in again. She sat there with her hand on her cheek until her son asked for a slice of bread with something on it. To stand up she had to prop herself on both hands.
    Another son wrecked the car and was thrown in jail for driving without a licence. Like his father, he drank, and again she went from tavern to tavern. What a brood! He paid no attention to her reproofs, she always said the same thing, she lacked the vocabulary that might have had some effect on him. “Aren’t you ashamed?”—“I know”, he said—“You could at least get yourself a room somewhere else.”—“I know.” He went on living at home, duplicated her husband, and even damaged the next car. She packed his bag and put it outside thehouse; he left the country. She dreamed the worst about him, wrote him a letter signed “Your unhappy mother”, and he came right back. And so on. She felt that she was to blame. She took it hard.
    And then the always identical objects all about her, in always the same places! She tried to be untidy, but her daily puttings-away had become too automatic. If only she could die! But she was afraid of death. Besides, she was too curious. “I’ve always had to be strong; I’d much rather have been weak.”
    She had no hobbies; she didn’t collect anything or swap anything. She had stopped doing crossword puzzles. She had given up pasting photographs in albums; she just put them away somewhere.
    She took no part in public life; once a year she gave blood and wore the blood donor’s badge on her coat. One day she was introduced on the radio as the hundred thousandth donor of the year and rewarded with a gift basket. Sometimes she went bowling at the new automatic bowling alley. She giggled with her mouth closed when the tenpins all toppled over and the bell rang.
    Once, on the Heart’s Desire radio programme, relatives in East Berlin sent the whole family greetings, followed by Handel’s
Hallelujah Chorus
.
    She dreaded the winter, when they all spent their days in one room; no one came to see her; when she heard a sound and looked up, it was always her husband again: “Oh, it’s you”.
    She began having bad headaches. She couldn’t keep pills down; at first suppositories helped, but not for long. Her head throbbed so that she could only touch it, ever so gently, with her fingertips. Each week the doctor gave her an injection that eased the pain for a while. But soon the injections became ineffectual. The doctor told her to keep her head warm, and she went about with a scarf on her head. She took sleeping pills but usually woke up soon after midnight; then she would cover her face with her pillow. She lay awake trembling until it was light, and the trembling lasted all day. The pain made her see ghosts.
    In the meantime her husband had been sent to a sanatorium with tuberculosis; he wrote affectionate letters, he begged her to let him lie beside her again. Her answers were friendly.
    The doctor didn’t know what was wrong with her; the usual female trouble? Change of life?
    She was so weak that often when she reached out for something, she missed her aim; her hands hung down limp at her sides. After washing the lunch dishes, she lay down awhile on the kitchen sofa; it was too cold in the bedroom. Sometimes her headache was so bad that she didn’t recognise anyone. Nothing interested her. When her head was throbbing, we had to raise our voices to talk to her. She lost all sense of balance and orientation, bumped into the corners of things, and fell down stairs. It hurt her to laugh, she only grimacednow and then. The doctor said it was probably a strangulated nerve. She hardly spoke above a whisper, she was even too miserable to complain. She let her head droop, first on one side, then on the other, but the pain followed her.
    “I’m