The Left-Handed Woman by Peter Handke Page B

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, the
woman 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 an
English novel on the plane. There’s a passage about a butler