'No, I have not worked for hunger,' she replied, 'but I have worked!' 'Travaille--lavorato?' he asked. 'E che lavoro--che lavoro? Quel
travail est-ce que vous avez fait?' He broke into a mixture of Italian and French, instinctively using a
foreign language when he spoke to her.
'You have never worked as the world works,' he said to her, with
sarcasm.
'Yes,' she said. 'I have. And I do--I work now for my daily bread.' He paused, looked at her steadily, then dropped the subject entirely.
She seemed to him to be trifling.
'But have YOU ever worked as the world works?' Ursula asked him.
He looked at her untrustful.
'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.' 'The Italians were very good to me--they were good and honourable to
me. From Bozen to Rome, almost every night I had a meal and a bed,
perhaps of straw, with some peasant. I love the Italian people, with
all my heart.