The Left-Handed Woman by Peter Handke Read Free Book Online Page A

would make Stefan happy to get a letter from you.”
    Bruno nodded and the woman smiled.
    He asked her why she was smiling.

    â€œIt 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.
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    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.
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    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.

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    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: