The Left-Handed Woman Read Online Free PDF Page B

children, the household, taxes. But when it comes to the work I hope to do, he destroys me. He says: ‘My wife is a dreamer.’ If wanting to be what I am is dreaming, then I want to be a dreamer.”
    The woman looked out at the terrace. School satchel in hand, stamping the snow off his boots, the child appeared. He came in by the terrace door and laughed. The woman asked why he was laughing.
    The child: “I never saw you in glasses before.”
    The woman took her glasses off and put them on again. “You’re back so early.”
    The child: “They dropped two classes again.”
    While the woman went on typing, the child came closer and sat down; he was very quiet. The woman stopped working and looked into space. “You’re hungry, aren’t you?” she said. The child shook his head.
    The woman: “Do you mind my doing this?”
    The child smiled to himself.

    Later she worked in the bedroom, at a table by the window. The child appeared in the doorway with his fat friend. “It’s so cold out,” he said. “And we can’t go to Jürgen’s house, because they’re cleaning.”
    The woman: “But they were cleaning yesterday.” The child shrugged, and she turned back to her work.
    The children stayed in the doorway. Though they didn’t move, the woman was conscious of their presence and turned around.
    Later, while she was writing, the sound of a record came from the next room: the screeching voices of actors imitating children and goblins. She stood up and went down the hallway to the room. The record was turning on a small record player; there was no one to be seen. She turned it off, and in that same moment the children rushed screaming from behind the curtains, apparently to frighten her; since they had also exchanged clothes, they succeeded.
    She said to them, “Look. What I’m doing is work, even if it doesn’t look that way to you. A little peace and quiet means a lot to me. When I’m working, I can’t think of other things; it’s not like when I’m cooking, for instance.”
    The children gazed at the air and began, first one, then the other, to grin.
    The woman: “Won’t you try to understand?”
    The child: “Are you cooking something for us now?”

    The woman bowed her head. Then the child said malignantly, “I’m sad, too. You’re not the only one.”
    She sat at the typewriter, in the bedroom; she didn’t type. It was quiet in the house. The children came in from the hallway, whispering and giggling. Suddenly the woman pushed the typewriter aside, and it fell to the floor.
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    At a nearby shopping mart she loaded enormous packages into a pushcart and pushed it from section to section of the enormous store until it was full. At the checkout counter she stood in a long line; the carts of those ahead of her were just as full as hers. In the parking lot she. pushed the heavy cart, whose wheels kept turning to one side, to her car. She loaded the car, even the back seat; she couldn’t see out of the rear window. At home she stored her purchases in the cellar, because all the closets and the deep freezer were already full.
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    At night she sat at the table in the living room. She put a sheet of paper into the typewriter and sat still, looking at it. After a while she folded her arms over the typewriter and laid her head on her arms.

    Later in the night she was still there in the same position, now asleep.
    She awoke, switched off the lamp, and left the room. Her face showed the pattern of her sweater sleeve. Only the street lights were still on in the colony.
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    They visited Bruno at his office in town. From the window one could see the city skyline. Bruno sat with her on a sofa, while the child read at a table in the corner.
    He looked at the child. “Franziska thinks Stefan has been strikingly withdrawn lately.