`There you are!' he cried, `there you are! There is not only no need for our places of work to be ugly, but their ugliness ruins the work, in the end.Men will not go on submitting to such intolerable ugliness.In the end it will hurt too much, and they will wither because of it.And this will wither the work as well.They will think the work itself is ugly: the machines, the very act of labour.Whereas the machinery and the acts of labour are extremely, maddeningly beautiful.But this will be the end of our civilisation, when people will not work because work has become so intolerable to their senses, it nauseates them too much, they would rather starve.Then we shall see the hammer used only for smashing, then we shall see it.Yet here we are -- we have the opportunity to make beautiful factories, beautiful machine-houses -- we have the opportunity --'
Gudrun could only partly understand.She could have cried with vexation.
`What does he say?' she asked Ursula.And Ursula translated, stammering and brief.Loerke watched Gudrun's face, to see her judgment.
`And do you think then,' said Gudrun, `that art should serve industry?'
`Art should interpret industry, as art once interpreted religion,'
he said.
`But does your fair interpret industry?' she asked him.
`Certainly.What is man doing, when he is at a fair like this? He is fulfilling the counterpart of labour -- the machine works him, instead of he the machine.He enjoys the mechanical motion, in his own body.'
`But is there nothing but work -- mechanical work?' said Gudrun.
`Nothing but work!' he repeated, leaning forward, his eyes two darknesses, with needle-points of light.`No, it is nothing but this, serving a machine, or enjoying the motion of a machine -- motion, that is all.You have never worked for hunger, or you would know what god governs us.'
Gudrun quivered and flushed.For some reason she was almost in tears.
`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.
`Dunque, adesso -- maintenant -- I earn a thousand pounds in a year, or I earn two thousand --'
He looked down at the ground, his voice tailing off into silence.
Gudrun looked at his fine, thin, shiny skin, reddish-brown from the sun, drawn tight over his full temples; and at his thin hair -- and at the thick, coarse, brush-like moustache, cut short about his mobile, rather shapeless mouth.
`How old are you?' she asked.
He looked up at her with his full, elfin eyes startled.
` Wie alt? ' he repeated.And he hesitated.It was evidently one of his reticencies.
`How old are you? ' he replied, without answering.
`I am twenty-six,' she answered.
`Twenty-six,' he repeated, looking into her eyes.He paused.Then he said:
` Und Ihr Herr Gemahl, wie alt is er? '
`Who?' asked Gudrun.
`Your husband,' said Ursula, with a certain irony.
`I haven't got a husband,' said Gudrun in English.In German she answered, `He is thirty-one.'
