Read The Left-Handed Woman for Free Online

She also says that he doesn’t wash any more. In her opinion those are indications …”
    The woman: “And what else does Franziska think?”
    Bruno laughed; the woman smiled. When he held out his hand to her, she started back. He only said, “Marianne.”
    The woman: “I’m sorry.”
    Bruno: “I was only trying to get a look at your coat; there’s a button missing.”
    They fell into a hopeless silence.
    Bruno said to the child, “Stefan, I’m going to show you how I intimidate people who come to my office.” He took the woman by the arm and, using her as a foil, acted out the following scene, with now and then a look of connivance
at the child: “First I make my victim sit in a corner, where he feels helpless. When I speak, I thrust my face right into his. If my caller is an elderly person”—his voice fell to a whisper—“I speak very softly to make him think his hearing has suddenly failed him. It’s also important to wear a certain kind of shoes, with crepe soles, like these that I’m wearing; they’re power shoes. And they have to be polished until they glow. One has to emanate an aura of mystery. But the main thing is the intimidating face.” He sat down facing the woman and began to stare; supporting his elbow on the table and holding up his forearm, he closed his fingers to make a fist, but not entirely: his thumb still protruded, as though prepared to thrust and gouge. While staring, he twisted his lips into a grimace, and said, “I’ve also got a special salve from America; I put it around my eyes to stop me from blinking, or around my mouth to keep my lips from twitching.” Then and there he smeared salve around his eyes. “This is my power stare, with the help of which I hope to become a member of the board soon.” He stared, and the woman and child looked at him.
    He waved his hand to show that the act was over and said to the child, “Next Sunday we’ll go to the greenhouse at the Botanical Gardens and see the carnivorous plants. Or to the Planetarium. They project the Southern Cross on a dome that looks like the night sky—it’s as if you were really in the South Seas.”
    He took them to the door. He whispered something in
the woman’s ear; she looked at him and shook her head. After a pause Bruno said, “Nothing is settled, Marianne,” and let her out.
    Alone, he hammered his face with his fist.
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    The woman and the child left the office building. Stepping out into the quiet street, they shut their eyes, dazzled by the glare of the winter afternoon. They turned onto a busy street with bank buildings on both sides, one reflected in the windows of another, and walked toward the center of town. At a stoplight the child assumed the attitudes of the little men on the signals, first in stopping, then in crossing. In the pedestrian zone he kept stopping at shopwindows; the woman went ahead, then stopped to wait. In the end she always came back to pull the child along. Every few steps there was a poster advertising the evening edition of a mass-circulation newspaper, always with the same headlines. As the sky began to darken, they crossed a bridge over a river. The traffic was heavy. The child was talking. The woman gestured that she couldn’t hear him, and the child shrugged. They walked along the river in the dusk, the child moving in a different rhythm from hers, first stopping, then running, so that she was always having to wait or run after him. For a while she walked beside the child, exaggerating the briskness of her stride as an example, prodding him with silent gestures.
When he stopped to stare at a bush some distance away, hardly visible in the twilight, she stamped her foot and the heel of her shoe broke off. Two young men passed close to her and belched in her face. The woman and the child stopped at a public toilet by the river. She had to