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

only sky and the barest suggestion of the treetops. The woman pretended to be horrified. “So that’s how grownups look to children!”
    At home she got into the bathtub and the child got in with her. They both leaned back and closed their eyes. The child said, “I can still see the trees on the mountain.” Steam rose from the water. The child whistled in the bathtub and the woman looked at him almost severely.
    Later she sat up straight at the typewriter and typed rapidly. In the twilight the colony looked as though it belonged to the forest, which rose up behind it, and to the darkening sky.
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    In the morning the woman, among others, walked about the pedestrian zone of the small town; she was carrying a rumpled, tired-looking plastic bag. One of the people up ahead of her was Bruno. She followed him. After a while he turned around as though by chance, and instantly she said, “The other day I saw a sweater that would be just right for you in that shop.” She took his arm and they went in. A salesgirl was sitting, resting, with a
mannequin behind her. Her eyes were closed and her hands, which were somewhat red and rough, lay in her lap; her brows were drawn together as though relaxation were painful, and the corners of her mouth drooped. She jumped up as they came in, upsetting her chair and stumbling over a clothes hanger that was lying on the floor.
    She sneezed, put on her glasses, sneezed again.
    The woman said slowly, as though to soothe her, “Last week, I saw a man’s sweater in the window. Gray cashmere.”
    The salesgirl fingered through a pile on one of the shelves. The woman, who was looking over the salesgirl’s shoulder, picked out the sweater and handed it to Bruno to try on. A baby’s scream could be heard from one corner of the shop, where there was a basket on the floor. The salesgirl said, “I don’t dare go near it with my cold.” The woman went over and pacified the child just by bending over the basket. Bruno had the sweater on; he looked at the salesgirl, who merely shrugged and gave her nose a prolonged blowing. The woman told Bruno in an undertone to keep it on. He was going to pay, but she shook her head, pointed at herself, and gave the salesgirl a banknote. The salesgirl pointed at the empty till, and the woman said in the same undertone that she would come by for the change next day. “Or come and see me. Yes, come and see me.” She quickly wrote down the address. “You’re all alone with the baby, aren’t you? It’s nice to see someone in a shop who isn’t a ghost with makeup on.
Forgive me for talking about you as if I had a right to.”
    As they were leaving, the salesgirl took out a pocket mirror and looked at herself; she held a chapstick under her nose and passed it over her lips.
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    Outside the woman said to Bruno, “So you’re still in the land of the living.”
    Bruno answered almost gaily, “I myself am surprised some afternoons to see that I’m still in existence. Yesterday, incidentally, I noticed that I’ve stopped counting the days since I’ve been without you.” He laughed. “I had a dream in which people all went crazy, one after another. Every time it hit somebody, you could see that he began to enjoy his life, so there was no need for the rest of us to feel guilty. Does Stefan still ask for me?”
    While removing the price tag from the back of the sweater, the woman said, “Come soon.” She walked away, and he took another direction.
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    In the evening the woman was sitting in the café, reading a newspaper and muttering to herself. The actor came along and stopped at her table. “I recognized your car in the parking lot,” he said.
    She looked at him without surprise and said, “I’ve been
reading the paper again for the first time in ages. I’d lost track of what was going on in