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dishes. She put the dishes into the dishwasher and reached over to the counter and turned on the transistor, which instantly began to blare wake-up music and cheery speaking voices. She turned it off, bent down, and opened the washing machine; she took out a tangled wad of wet sheets and dropped them on the kitchen floor. She scratched her forehead violently until it bled.
    She opened the mailbox outside the house; it was full of junk mail. No handwriting except perhaps for the imitation script in advertising circulars. She crumpled the sheaf of papers and tore them up. She went about the bungalow, putting it in order, stopping, turning around, bending down, scraping at a spot here and there in passing, picking up a single grain of rice and taking it to the garbage pail in the kitchen. She sat down, stood up, took a few steps, sat down again. She took a roll of paper toweling that was leaning in a corner, unrolled it, rolled it up again, and finally put it down not far from its old place.
    The child sat watching as she moved fitfully around him. With a brush she swept the chair he was sitting on and silently motioned him to stand up. No sooner had he done so than she pushed him away with her elbow and brushed the seat of his chair, which was not the least bit dirty. The child moved back a step or two and stood still. Suddenly she flung the brush at him with all her might,
but only hit a glass on the table, which burst into pieces. She came at the child with clenched fists, but he only looked at her.
    The doorbell rang; they both wanted to answer. She gave the child a push and he fell backward.
    When she opened the door, no one seemed to be there. Then she looked down, and there was the child’s fat friend, crouching; he had a crooked grin on his face.
    She sat rigid in the living room while the child and his fat friend jumped from a chair onto a pile of pillows, singing at the top of their lungs: “The shit jumps on the piss, and the piss jumps on the shit, and the shit jumps on the spit …” They screeched and writhed with laughter, whispered into each other’s ears, looked at the woman, pointed at her, and laughed some more. They didn’t stop and they didn’t stop; the woman did not react.
    She sat at the typewriter. The child came up on tiptoes and leaned against her. She pushed him away with her shoulder, but he kept standing beside her. Suddenly the woman pulled him close and throttled him; she shook him, let him go, and averted her eyes.
    At night the woman sat at the desk; something rose slowly from the lower edge of her eyes and made them glisten; she was crying, without a sound, without a movement.

    In the daylight she walked along a straight road, in the midst of a flat, treeless, frozen landscape. On and on she walked, always straight ahead. She was still walking when night fell.
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    She sat in the town movie house with the two children beside her, surrounded by the cataclysmic din of an animated cartoon. Her eyes closed, she dozed off, then shook herself awake. Her head drooped on Stefan’s shoulder. Openmouthed, the child kept his eyes on the picture. She slept on the child’s shoulder until the end of the film.
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    That night she stood over the typewriter and read aloud what she had written. “‘“And no one helps you?” the visitor asked. “No,” she replied. “The man I dream of is the man who will love me for being the kind of woman who is not dependent on him.” “And what will you love him for?” “For that kind of love.”’” Once again she shrugged.

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    She lay in bed with her eyes open. On the bedside table beside her there was a glass of water and a clasp knife. Outside, someone hammered on the shutters and shouted something. She unclasped the knife, got up, and put on a wrapper. The voice was Bruno’s. “Open or I’ll kick the door in. Let me in or