The Left-Handed Woman

by Peter Handke

Genres: Family Life; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

A young woman faces loneliness and alienation on a journey to find her own life outside of being a wife and mother in Nobel Prize-winning author Peter Handke’s The Left-Handed Woman.

One evening, when Marianne and her husband, Bruno, are dining out together to celebrate his return from a business trip, Marianne listens to him speak and realizes suddenly yet finally that Bruno will leave her. Whether at that moment, or in years to come, she will be deserted. And instinctively Marianne knows she must fend for herself and her young son now, before that time comes.

She sends Bruno away and settles down to a life alone, at first experiencing moments of panic, restlessly wandering in rooms grown stifling. The stillness of the house wears her down, and she starts taking long walks, or visiting with her close friend, Franziska.

Gradually, what began as a selfish escape from the prospects of the future becomes in fact liberation. The environment she'd always hated--a no man's land of identical houses, with all curtains drawn--recedes; her relationships with those dear to her become less threatening, less necessary; and Marianne finds a new pattern for her life and the strength to go on alone.

Release date: April 7, 2020

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Print pages: 78

Sample

The Left-Handed Woman

She was thirty and lived in a terraced bungalow colony on the south slope of a low mountain range in western Germany, just above the fumes of a big city. She had brown hair and gray eyes, which sometimes lit up even when she wasn't looking at anyone, without her face changing in any other way. Late one winter afternoon she was sitting at an electric sewing machine, in the yellow light that shone into the large living room from outside. One entire side of the room consisted of a single pane of glass, looking out on the windowless wall of a neighboring house and on a grass-overgrown terrace with a discarded Christmas tree in the middle of it. Beside the woman sat her eight-year-old son, bent over his copybook, writing a school essay at a walnut table. His fountain pen scratched as he wrote, and his tongue protruded from between his lips. Now and then he stopped, looked out of the window, and went on writing more busily than ever. Or he would glance at his mother, who, though her face was averted, noticed his glance and returned it. The woman was married to the sales manager of the local branch of a porcelainconcern well known throughout Europe; a business trip had taken him to Scandinavia for several weeks, and he was expected back that evening. Though not rich, the family was comfortably well off, with no need to think of money. Their bungalow was rented, since the husband could be transferred at any moment.
The child had finished writing and read aloud: "'My idea of a better life. I would like the weather to be neither hot nor cold. There should always be a balmy breeze and once in a while a storm that makes people huddle on the ground. No more cars. All the houses should be red. The trees and bushes should be gold. I would know everything already, so I would not have to study. Everybody would live on islands. The cars along the street would always be open, so I could get in if I happened to be tired. I would never be tired any more. They wouldn't belong to anyone. I would always stay up at night and fall asleep wherever I happened to be. It would never rain. I would always have four friends, and all the people I don't know would disappear. Everything I don't know would disappear.'"
The woman stood up and looked out of the smaller side window. In the foreground a line of motionless pine trees. Below the trees several rows of individual garages, all as rectangular and flat-topped as the bungalows. The driveway leading to the garages had a sidewalk, and though it had been cleared of snow a child was pulling a sled along it. Down in the lowland, far behind the trees, lay the outskirts of the city, and from somewhere in the hollowa plane was rising. The woman stood as if in a trance, but instead of going stiff she seemed to bend to her thoughts. The child came and asked her what she was looking at. She didn't hear him, she didn't so much as blink. The child shook her and cried, "Wake up!" The woman shook herself, and put her hand on the child's shoulder. Then he, too, looked out and in turn lost himself, openmouthed, in the view. After a while he shook himself and said, "Now I've been woolgathering like you." They both began to laugh and they couldn't stop; when their laughter died down, one started up again and the other joined in. In the end they hugged each other and laughed so hard that they fell to the floor together.
The child asked if he could turn on the television. The woman answered, "We're going to the airport now to meet Bruno." But he was already turning on the set. The woman bent over him and said, "Your father has been away for weeks. How can I tell him that ..." The child heard nothing more. The woman made a megaphone with her hands and shouted as if she were calling him in the woods, but the child only stared at the screen. She moved her hand back and forth in front of his eyes, but the child bent his head to one side and went on staring openmouthed.
The woman stood in the space outside the garages in her open fur coat. Puddles of melted snow were freezing over. The sidewalk was strewn with the needles of discarded Christmas trees. While opening the garage door,she looked up at the colony and its tiers of box-shaped bungalows, some of which were already lighted. Behind the colony a mixed forest--most!y oaks, beeches, and pines--rose gently, unbroken by any village, or even a house, to the top of one of the mountains. The child appeared at the window of their "housing unit," as her husband called the bungalow, and raised his arm.
At the airport it wasn't quite dark yet; before going into the terminal, the woman saw bright spots in the sky over the flagpoles with their shimmering flags. She stood with the others and waited, her face expectant and relaxed, open and self-possessed. Word came over the loudspeaker that the plane from Helsinki had landed, and soon the passengers emerged from behind the customs barrier, among them Bruno, carrying a suitcase and a plastic bag marked "Duty-Free Shop." He was just a little older than she, and his face was drawn with fatigue. He wore, as always, a double-breasted gray pin-striped suit and an open shirt. His eyes were so brown that it was hard to see his pupils; he could watch people for a long time without their feeling looked at. He had walked in his sleep as a child, and even now he often talked in his dreams.
In front of all the people, he rested his head on the shoulder of his wife's fur coat, as if he had to take a nap that minute. She took his suitcase and plastic bag, and then he was able to throw his arms around her. For a long time they stood embracing; Bruno smelled slightly of liquor.
In the elevator that took them to the underground garage, where she had parked, he looked at her and she observed him. She got into the car first and opened the door from inside. Instead of getting in, he stood looking straight ahead. He beat his forehead with his fist; then he held his nose and tried to blow air out of his ears, as though the long flight had stopped them up.
On the road to the small town on the mountain slope where the bungalow colony was, the woman put her hand on the radio knob and asked, "Would you like some music?" He shook his head. By then it was dark; nearly all the lights were out in the high-rise office buildings along the road, but the housing developments on the hills were bright.
After a while Bruno said, "It was always so dark in Finland--day and night. And I couldn't understand a single word of the language! In every other country a few of the words are similar--but there's nothing international about that language. The one thing I've remembered is the word for beer--'olut' I got drunk fairly often. Early one afternoon, when just a little light had come into the sky, I was sitting in a self-service café. All at once I began to scratch the table in a frenzy. The darkness, the cold in my nostrils, and not being able to speak to anyone. It was almost comforting to hear the wolves howl one night. Or to pee into a toilet bowl with our company's initials on it. There's something I've been wanting to tell you, Marianne. I thought of you often upthere, of you and Stefan. For the first time in all the years since we've been together, I had the feeling that we belonged to each other. Suddenly I was afraid of going mad with loneliness, mad in a cruelly painful way that no one had ever experienced before. I've often told you I loved you, but now for the first time I feel that we're bound to each other. Till death do us part. And the strange part of it is that I now feel I could exist without you."
The woman rested her hand on Bruno's knee and asked, "And how did the business go?"
Bruno laughed. "Orders are picking up again," he said. "Those northerners may not eat very well, but at least they eat off our china. The next time, our Finnish customers will have to come down here and see us. The prices have stopped falling; we don't have to give such big discounts as we did during the crisis." He laughed again. "They don't even speak English. We had to talk through an interpreter, a woman with a child and no husband, who studied in Germany--in the south, I think."
The woman: "You think?"
Bruno: "No, of course not. I know. She told me."
After putting the car away they walked past a lighted phone booth with a shadowy form moving about inside, and turned into one of the narrow, deliberately crooked lanes that cut across the colony. He put his arm over her shoulders. While opening the door of their house, thewoman looked back at the half-dark lane and the tiers of bungalows, all with their curtains drawn.
Bruno asked, "Do you still like it here?"
The woman: "Sometimes I wish we had a stinking pizza joint outside the door, or a newsstand."
Bruno: "I know I'm always relieved to get back."
The woman smiled to herself.
In the living room the child was sitting in a big, broad armchair, reading by the light of a standing lamp. He looked up for a moment when his parents came in. Bruno stepped close to him, but he didn't stop reading. Finally he smiled almost imperceptibly, stood up, and searched Bruno's pockets for presents.
The woman came from the kitchen, carrying a silver tray with a glass of vodka on it, but by then there was no one in the living room. She went down the hall and looked into the rooms that branched off it like cells. When she opened the bathroom door, Bruno was sitting motionless on the rim of the tub, watching the child, who was already in his pajamas, brush his teeth. The child had rolled up his sleeves to keep the water from running into them. He carefully licked the toothpaste from the open tube and then, standing on tiptoe, put the tube back on the shelf. Bruno took the glass of vodka from the tray and asked, "Aren't you drinking anything? Have you made any plans for the evening?"
The woman: "Why? Am I different than usual?"
Bruno: "You're always different."
The woman: "What do you mean by that?"
Bruno: "You're one of the few people I don't have to be afraid of. What's more, you don't make me want to playact." He sent the child away with an affectionate pat.
In the living room, as they were picking up the toys the child had been playing with that day, Bruno stood up and said, "My ears are still buzzing from the plane. Let's go to the hotel in town for a festive dinner. It's too private here for my taste right now. Too--haunted. I would like you to wear your low-cut dress."
The woman was still squatting on the floor, picking up toys. "What will you wear?" she asked.
Bruno: "I'll go just as I am. I always do. I'll borrow a tie at the reception desk. I feel like walking. All right?"
The hotel restaurant, whose lofty ceiling gave it a palatial look, was half empty. Bruno was still adjusting his tie as they walked into the dining room, guided by a bowlegged waiter. The headwaiter pulled out chairs for them, and they had only to let themselves sink down. They unfolded their white napkins in unison and laughed.
Bruno not only ate everything on his plate but wiped the plate clean with a piece of bread. Afterward, holding up and gazing into a glass of Calvados, which took on a reddish glow in the light of the chandeliers, he said, "Tonight I felt the need of being served like this! How sheltered one feels! A taste of eternity!" The headwaiter stood in the background as Bruno continued. "I read anEnglish novel on the plane. There's a passage about a butler who combines dignity with eagerness to serve. The hero watches him and meditates on the mature beauty of the feudal master-servant relationship. To be waited on in this proud, respectful way, if only for a brief moment at tea, reconciles him not only with himself but also, in some strange way, with the whole human race." The woman turned away; Bruno spoke to her, and she turned back but did not look at him.
Bruno said, "We'll spend the night here. Stefan knows where we are. I left the telephone number on his bedside table." The woman lowered her eyes and Bruno motioned to the waiter, who bent over him. "I need a room for the night," he said. "You see, my wife and I want to sleep together right away."
The waiter smiled. There was nothing conspiratorial, only sympathy in the way he looked at them. "There's a trade fair on at the moment, but I'll inquire," he said. At the door he turned around and added, "I'll be back in a moment."
The two were alone in the dining room. Candles were still burning on all the tables, and around them needles were falling almost soundlessly from sprays of evergreen. Shadows moved over the tapestries of hunting scenes on the walls. The woman gave Bruno a long look. Though she was very grave, her face lit up almost imperceptibly.
The waiter came back and said in a voice that sounded as if he had been hurrying, "Here is the key to the towerroom. Statesmen have slept there, but I'm sure you see no harm in that." Bruno dismissed the waiter's remark with a wave of the hand, and without seeming offensive the waiter added, "I wish you a very good night. I hope the tower clock doesn't disturb you; you see, the big hand purrs every minute."
As Bruno opened the door to the room, he said very calmly, "Tonight I feel as if everything I'd ever wished for had come true. As though I could move by magic from one place of happiness to another, without transition. I feel a magic power, Marianne. And I need you. And I'm happy. Everything inside me is buzzing with happiness." He smiled at her, and there was surprise in his smile. They went in and switched on all the lights--in the vestibule and bathroom as well as the bedroom.
In the first gray of dawn the woman was awake. She looked toward the window, which was partly open; the curtains were parted, and the winter fog was blowing in. The minute hand purred softly. She said to Bruno, who was sleeping beside her, "I want to go home."
He understood her instantly, in his sleep.






They walked slowly down the path leading out of the park. Bruno had his arm around her. After a while he ran ahead and turned a somersault on the hard-frozen sod.
The woman stopped walking and shook her head. Bruno, who had gone on a little way, looked back questioningly. She said, "Nothing, nothing at all," and again shook her head. She stood looking at Bruno, as though looking at him helped her to think. Then he came back to her. Turning away from him, she looked at the frost-covered trees and bushes, which were briefly shaken by the morning breeze.
The woman said, "I've had a strange idea. Well, not really an idea, more like an--illumination. But I don't want to talk about it. Let's go home now, Bruno. Quickly. I have to drive Stefan to school."
Bruno stopped her. "Woe if you don't tell me."
The woman: "Woe to you if I do tell you."
Even as she spoke, she couldn't help laughing at the strange word they had used. The long look they exchanged was mocking at first, then nervous and frightened, and finally resigned.
Bruno: "All right. Out with it."
The woman: "I suddenly had an illumination"--another word she had to laugh at--"that you were going away, that you were leaving me. Yes, that's it. Go away, Bruno. Leave me."
After a while Bruno nodded slowly, raised his arms in a gesture of helplessness, and asked, "For good?"
The woman: "I don't know. All I know is that you'll go away and leave me." They stood silent.
Bruno smiled and said, "Well, right now I'll go backto the hotel and get myself a cup of hot coffee. And this afternoon I'll come and take my things."
There was no malice in the woman's answer--only thoughtful concern. "I'm sure you can move in with Franziska for the first few days. Her teacher friend has gone away."
Bruno: "I'll think about it over my coffee." He went back to the hotel.
In the long avenue leading out to the colony she took a hop step and suddenly started to run. At home she opened the curtains, switched on the record player, and started making dance movements even before the music began. The child appeared in his pajamas and asked, "What are you doing?"
The woman: "I think I'm depressed." And then, "Dress yourself, Stefan. It's time for school. I'll be making your toast in the meantime." She went to the hall mirror and said, "Christ ... Christ ... Christ."






It was a bright winter morning; the mist, which was breaking up, shed an occasional slow snowflake. Outside the school the woman met her friend Franziska, who was also Stefan's teacher, a solidly built woman with short blond hair and a voice that made itself heard in the midst of any gathering, even when she wasn't raising it. She was always expressing opinions, less from conviction than forfear that her conversation might otherwise be thought trivial.
The school bell had just begun to ring. Franziska greeted the child with a slap on the back and said to the woman as he vanished in the doorway, "I know all about it. Bruno phoned me right away. Do you know what I said to him? 'At last your Marianne has woken up.' Is that how you feel? Are you really serious?"
The woman: "I can't talk now, Franziska."
The teacher started into the building and called back, "Meet me at the café after school. I'm so excited."
The woman emerged from the dry cleaner's carrying bundles; stood in line at the butcher's; in the parking lot of the town supermarket stowed heavy plastic shopping bags in the back seat of her Volkswagen. Then, with still a bit of time to kill, she walked around the big, hilly park, past frozen ponds with a few ducks sliding about on them. She wanted to sit down somewhere, but the seats of all the benches had been removed for the winter. And so she stood looking at the cloudy sky. Some elderly people stopped near her, and they, too, looked at the sky.
She met Franziska at the café; the child sat beside her reading a comic book. Franziska pointed at the book and said, "That duck is the only comic-book character I tolerate in my class. I even encourage my pupils to read his sad adventures. They learn more about real life from this eternal victim than they could from anyone else in this homeowner's paradise, where all existence boils down toimitating TV." The woman and the child behind the comic book exchanged glances.
Franziska: "And what will you do now that you're on your own?"
The woman: "Sit home biting my nails."
Franziska: "No, seriously. Is there someone else?"
The woman only shook her head.
Franziska: "What will the two of you live on? Have you thought of that?"
The woman: "No. But I'd like to start translating again. At the publishing house where I used to work, they kept me busy with the foreign contracts. But when I left, the boss said I could do books. He's been making me offers ever since."
Franziska: "Novels. Poems! Good God! I bet they'll pay you twenty marks a page. Maybe three marks an hour."
The woman: "I believe it's fifteen marks a page."
Franziska gazed at her. "I do wish you'd come to our group soon. You'll see. When we get together, every single one of us comes to life. And we don't exchange recipes! You have no idea how blissful women can be together."
The woman: "I'll be glad to come sometime."
Franziska: "Have you ever lived alone?"
When the woman shook her head again, Franziska said, "I have. And I despise it. I despise myself when I'm alone. Oh, by the way. Bruno will stay at my place for thepresent--unless you take him back this afternoon, which wouldn't surprise me. I still can't believe it all. But I'm delighted all the same, Marianne, and in some strange way I'm proud of you."
She drew the woman to her and embraced her. Then she gave the child, behind the comic book, a tap on the knee and asked, "How does moneybags fleece his poor relation this time?" Immersed in his reading, the child didn't react, and for a time no one spoke. Then the woman said, "Stefan always wants to be the rich one--he says he's the better man."
Franziska raised her empty glass to her lips and went through the motions of drinking. She put the glass down and looked back and forth between woman and child. Little by little, her features softened. (That was Franziska's way. Sometimes, for no particular reason, she would suddenly melt into speechless tenderness and her face, relaxing, would take on a likeness to the faces of many other, very different women--as though in this undirected tenderness she discovered herself.)






At home, in the hallway of the bungalow, the wall cupboards were open, and the woman was getting ready to pack Bruno's bags. The suitcases were on the floor in front of her, and when she opened one of them she found the child curled up inside; he jumped up and ran away.From a second suitcase popped one of Stefan's friends, a rather fat little boy named Jürgen, who followed him out onto the terrace. There they pressed their faces against the window and stuck out their tongues, which instantly felt the sting of the ice-cold glass. On her knees in the hallway, the woman carefully folded Bruno's shirts. Then she dragged the suitcases into the living room, and left them there, all ready to be called for. When the bell rang, she hurried into the kitchen. Bruno walked in, and looked around like an intruder. He saw the suitcases, called his wife, and, pointing at them, said with a grin, "Have you taken my picture off the bedside table?"
They gave each other their hands.
He asked what Stefan was doing, and she motioned toward the big window, behind which the two children were silently making faces.
After a while Bruno said, "Isn't it strange what happened to us this morning? And neither of us was drunk. Now I feel rather silly. Don't you?"
The woman: "Yes, I suppose so. Well, no, not really."
Bruno took the suitcases. "It's a good thing the office opens up again tomorrow ... . You've never lived alone."
The woman: "So you've come from Franziska?" And then she said, "Don't you want to sit down?"
On his way out Bruno shook his head and said, "You take it so lightly ... . Do you even remember that there was once a closeness between us that may have beenbased on the fact of our being man and wife but went far beyond it?"
The woman shut the door behind him and stood there. She heard the car driving off; she went to the coatrack beside the door and thrust her head in among the coats.
As the dusk deepened, the woman did not turn on the light but sat looking at the television screen. Their set had a special channel for watching the colony playground. The silent black-and-white image revealed her son balancing himself on a tree trunk, while his fat friend kept falling off; except for the two of them, the playground was forsaken. The woman's eyes glistened with tears.






The woman and the child took their supper alone in the living room. She had already finished and was watching the child, who guzzled and smacked his lips. Otherwise, it was very still, except now and then for the buzzing of the refrigerator in the kitchen, which was connected with the living room by a service hatch. There was a telephone at the woman's feet.
She asked Stefan if she should put him to bed. He answered, "I always put myself to bed."
The woman: "Let me come with you at least."
To the child's surprise she helped him into his pajamas. Then she tried to pick him up and put him into bed. Heresisted and climbed in by himself, whereupon she pulled up the blankets and tucked him in. He was holding a book, and pointed out a picture in it, showing high mountains in a bright light; jackdaws were flying about in the foreground. He read the legend under the picture aloud: "'Mountain scene in the late fall: Even at this time of year the summits beckon if the weather cooperates.'" He asked her what it meant and she translated; it meant you could still go mountain-climbing in the late fall if the weather was good. She bent over him and he said, "You smell of onions."
Alone in the kitchen, the woman approached the garbage pail. She was holding the child's plate, which still had some food on it, and she had her foot on the pedal of the pail, so that the lid was already raised. Still bent over, she forked a few morsels into her mouth, chewed them, and tossed what was left into the pail. Then for a time she remained motionless in the same posture.
That night, lying on her back in bed, she opened her eyes wide. There was no sound to be heard but her breath against the bedclothes and a suspicion of her pounding heart. She went to the window and opened it, but the silence only gave way to a soft murmur. She carried her blanket into the child's room and lay down on the floor beside his bed.
One morning some days later the woman sat typing in the living room. In an undertone she read what she had written: "'I am finally in a position to consider your repeated offers of translation from the French. Please let me know of your conditions. At the moment I should prefer nonfiction. I have a pleasant memory of my days in your office'"--to herself, she added "in spite of the sprained wrists I was always getting from typing all day" --"'and look forward to hearing from you.'"
She threw the letter in the mailbox beside the phone booth at the edge of the colony. When she turned away, Bruno was coming toward her. He seized her roughly by the arm, then looked around to see if anyone was watching. Up the road an elderly couple equipped for hiking--knickers, knapsacks, and walking sticks--had turned around. Bruno pushed the woman into the phone booth. Then suddenly he apologized.
He gave her a long look. "Do we have to go on with this game, Marianne? I, for one, am sick of it."
The woman replied, "Now, don't start talking about the child."
He struck out, but the phone booth was too cramped, and he didn't really hit her. He raised his hands as though to bury his face in them, but let them drop. He said,"Franziska thinks you don't know what you're doing. She says you have no inkling of the historical conditions that determine your conduct." He laughed. "Do you know what she says you are? A private mystic. She's right. You are a mystic. Damn it, you're sick. I told Franziska a bit of electroshock would straighten you out."
After a long silence the woman said, "Of course you can come and see us whenever you like--on weekends, for instance--and take Stefan to the zoo. Or the Historical Museum."
Another silence. Suddenly Bruno produced a photograph of her, held it up, and then set fire to it with his lighter. She tried not to smile and looked at something else; then she smiled after all.
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 endshe 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 withold 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 mornin