“Yes,” he replied, with a surly bark. “I have known what it was to lie in bed for three days, because I had nothing to eat.”
Gudrun was looking at him with large, grave eyes, that seemed to draw the confession from him as the marrow from his bones. All his nature held him back from confessing. And yet her large, grave eyes upon him seemed to open some valve in his veins, and involuntarily he was telling.
“My father was a man who did not like work, and we had no mother. We lived in Austria, Polish Austria. How did we live? Ha!—somehow! Mostly in a room with three other families—one set in each corner—and the W.C. in the middle of the room—a pan with a plank on it—ha! I had two brothers and a sister—and there might be a woman with my father. He was a free being, in his way—would fight with any man in the town—a garrison town—and was a little man too. But he wouldn’t work for anybody—set his heart against it, and wouldn’t.”
“And how did you live then?” asked Ursula.
He looked at her—then, suddenly, at Gudrun.
“Do you understand?” he asked.
“Enough,” she replied.
Their eyes met for a moment. Then he looked away. He would say no more.
“And how did you become a sculptor?” asked Ursula.
“How did I become a sculptor—” he paused. “Dunque—” he resumed, in a changed manner, and beginning to speak French—“I became old enough—I used to steal from the market-place. Later I went to work—imprinted the stamp on clay bottles, before they were baked. It was an earthenware-bottle factory. There I began making models. One day, I had had enough. I lay in the sun and did not go to work. Then I walked to Munich—then I walked to Italy—begging, begging everything.”