“And we’re boarding up the windows to make it more like a real jail,” Jonathan said. “Then you’ll work harder to get out of here. When you’ve given us a picture we like for all the good food you ate, then we’ll let you go your way.”

“You just can’t keep me a prisoner that way,” Josef managed to say. “Why, it’s … it’s immoral. I won’t be able to paint, all locked up. And I need light to begin with. You can’t board up the windows.” At first he was just relieved—he was alive, after all. But loneliness and isolation would be unbearable, he realized. They picked the one thing most likely to drive him out of his mind.

He’d escape somehow, he told himself, as he stared up at their flushed, triumphant faces.

But that afternoon, they boarded up the windows. There was no food that entire day or night, and he couldn’t paint. They left lanterns, but he just sat there in the gloomy darkness without lighting them. He couldn’t sleep. Finally he just paced the room … angrier and angrier … and banged on the door in the middle of the night. He’d drive them crazy with his noise at least. But no one paid the slightest attention.

He wore himself out, slamming his body against the door, shouting, throwing furniture. Disgusted, he realized that nothing would work. “They mean what they said,” he said aloud, wonderingly. He hadn’t really believed them. But a bargain was a bargain to Elgren and Jonathan. It was as simple as that. If he showed signs of real starvation, they’d probably just send the women to relatives so that his condition didn’t weaken their resolve.

Prickles of panicky sweat broke out on his face, trickling into his mustache. He didn’t even know if he could produce a decent painting now to begin with. Being forced to work would just make things worse. If he couldn’t make himself work, how could anything else? He glowered at the boarded windows. Hosentauf really meant to lock him up for good, to starve him if necessary. He could hardly believe it, he thought again. He’d never hurt anyone in his life. To begin with, how had they taken him so seriously?

His thoughts wavered. Once he felt his teeth crunch down into an apple. With great gusto he bit into the crisp skin. It split with a popping sound. Cursing, he sat up and looked about the room which now had an ominous waiting air that made him pull the blankets up to his chin.

In the morning, Jonathan and Elgren came up together. They glanced about. “No work, no food,” Jonathan said.