“You drew those pictures, didn’t you?” I said. “Of poverty that individuals can’t help.”

Kathe Kollwitz apparently didn’t hear me, for she sat there, frozen, staring off into space. Perhaps she was remembering how she had sent her younger son to war, to his death. A draft notice had come for the older boy, but his brother, still too young, needn’t have gone. He had insisted, though, saying, “I want to fight to protect our homeland,” and Kollwitz couldn’t hide her joy at hearing this son, once a pampered child, now talking like a grown man. Sensing his mother’s pride, the boy again declared his intention to go, even as his father tried to stop him. His mother should have taken her husband’s side and refused to let him go. Not only to protect him from the danger; she should have taught him that war is never for the sake of the homeland. The sight of German and French boys of the same age, next-door neighbors, shooting and killing each other was too sad for comedy and too ridiculous for tragedy. And some were killed by their own country’s bombs, while others starved to death when their army’s food supply was cut off. All the lies about France being on the verge of invading Germany had been so transparent that looking back, she can’t see why she was stupid enough to believe them.

Kollwitz sat motionless, her right hand, big as a baseball mitt, covering half her face. She castigated herself for killing her own son, the shame and pain growing so strong she could hardly breathe. The sun would set, the moon rise and disappear, and the horizon would lighten again: if she sat here long enough, her body would turn to stone. As she gradually turned to stone, the pain subsided, little by little. She would stay here until the process was complete. But as her entire body was about to change, she stood up, took a hammer in her hand, and started pounding on her own shoulders, the sound ringing in the air. The stone crumbled, exposing the human skin underneath. Round shoulders, round elbows, a smooth line from wrist to hand, and a single thought flowing from the heart down to her fingertips, which brought the searing pain back. Kollwitz wailed, clawing at her breast and striking her forehead on the ground. She held her son, now cold, on her knees, leaning over and trying to warm him with her own body heat. Pressing her ear to her dead son’s chest, she waited patiently for the heartbeat that would never come. Looking up at the heavens she howled and cried until she grew hoarse, but even after her voice had given out, her whole body continued to shake. If only she could become a sculpture. Though she had produced many drawings and prints, she had known that she was meant to be a sculptor since her youth. And now, the only way to escape this pain was to become a sculpture herself.