5

Up to now, the few things Goldmund knew of his mother had come from what others had told him. Her image had almost faded from his memory. Of the little he thought he knew of her, he had told Narcissus next to nothing. Mother was a subject he was forbidden to mention—something to be ashamed of. She had been a dancer, a wild beautiful woman of noble, though poor, birth; Goldmund's father said that he had lifted her from poverty and shame; and since he couldn't be sure she was not a heathen, he had arranged to have her baptized and instructed in religion; he had married her and made her respectable. But after a few years of domesticated and ordered existence, she had remembered her old tricks and crafts, had started to make trouble and seduce men, had strayed from home for days and weeks at a time, had acquired the reputation of a witch, and, after her husband had gone to find her and taken her back to his house several times, she had finally disappeared forever. Her reputation had stayed alive, a wicked reputation that flickered like the tail of a comet, until it had been extinguished. Slowly her husband recovered from the years of disorder, fear, and shame, of the never ending surprises she sprang on him. In place of the unredeemed wife, he educated his little son, who greatly resembled his mother in features and build; he grew nagging and bigoted, instilling in Goldmund the belief that he must offer up his life to God to expiate his mother's sins.

This was the tale Goldmund's father told of his lost wife, although he preferred not to speak of her. He had hinted at it to the Abbot the day he brought Goldmund to the cloister. It was all known to the son as a terrible legend, but he had learned to push it aside and had almost forgotten it. The real image of his mother had been completely forgotten and lost, an altogether different image that was not made of his father's and the servants' tales and dark wild rumors. He had forgotten his own true living mother-memory. And now this image, the star of his earliest years, had risen again.

"I can't understand how I could have forgotten," he said to his friend. "Never in my life have I loved anyone as much as I loved my mother, unconditionally, fervently. Never did I venerate or admire anyone as I did her; she was sun and moon to me. God only knows how it was possible to darken this radiant image in my soul, to change her gradually to the evil, pallid, shapeless witch she was to my father and to me for many years."

Narcissus had recently completed his novitiate and had donned the habit. His attitude toward Goldmund was strangely changed. Because Goldmund, who had often before rejected his friend's hints and counsel as cumbersome superiority and pedantry, was now, since his deep experience, filled with astonished admiration of his friend's wisdom. How many of his words had come true like prophecies, how deeply had this uncanny man seen inside him, how precisely had he guessed the secret of his life, his hidden wound, how deftly had he healed him!

At least Goldmund seemed to be healed. Not only had the fainting spell been without evil consequences, but all that was unformed and unauthentic in Goldmund's character had somehow melted away, his mistaken vocation to monkhood, his belief that he was obliged to render particular service to God. The young man seemed to have grown younger and older all at once. He owed it all to Narcissus.

But Narcissus was now conducting himself with a strange caution toward his friend. He looked upon him with great modesty, no longer in the least condescending or instructing, while Goldmund admired him more than ever. He saw Goldmund fed from secret sources to which he, himself, had no access; he had been able to further their growth, but had no part in them. Though he was glad to see his friend freeing himself of his guidance, he also felt sad. He saw that this friendship, which had meant so much to him, was nearing its end. He still knew more about Goldmund than Goldmund knew about himself. Goldmund had rediscovered his soul and was ready to follow its call, but he did not know where it would lead him. Narcissus knew this and felt powerless; his favorite's path led to regions in which he himself would never travel.

Goldmund's eagerness to learn had decreased considerably, as had his desire to argue with his friend. Shamefacedly he remembered some of their former discussions. Meanwhile Narcissus began to feel the need for seclusion; either because he had completed the novitiate or because of his experience with Goldmund, he felt drawn to fasting and long prayers, frequent confessions, voluntary penitence, and Goldmund understood this, could almost share in it. Since his cure, his instincts had been sharpened. Although he had no inkling of where his future would lead him, he did feel strongly, often with anguishing clarity, that his destiny was shaping itself, that this respite of innocence and calm was coming to an end, that all within him was taut and ready. These premonitions were often blissful, kept him awake half the night like a sweet infatuation; at other times they were full of darkness and suffocation. His long-lost mother had come back to him: that was deep happiness. But where was her enticing call leading him? Into uncertainty and entanglement, into need, perhaps into death. It did not lead to quiet, mildness, security, to the monk's cell, to collective cloister life. Her call had nothing in common with his fathers orders, which he had for so long confused with his own wishes. Goldmund's piety fed on this emotion; it was often as strong and burning as a violent physical sensation. He would repeat long prayers to the holy Mother of God, letting flow the excessive feelings that drew him toward his own mother. But often his prayers would end in those strange, magnificent dreams of which he had so many now: day-dreams, with half-awake senses, dreams of her with all his senses participating. The mother-world would spray its fragrance about him, look darkly from enigmatic eyes of love, rumble deep as an ocean, like paradise, stammer caressing, senseless endearments, or rather endearments that filled his senses with a taste of sweetness and salt and brushed his hungry lips and eyes with silken hair. His mother meant not only all that was graceful; not only were her gentle look of love and sweet, happiness-promising smile caressing consolations; but somewhere beneath this enticing exterior lay much that was frightful and dark, greedy and fearful, sinful and sorrowful, all that gave birth and all death.

The adolescent would sink deeply into these dreams, into these many-threaded webs of soul-inhabited senses. Enchantingly they resurrected not only the beloved past: childhood and mother love, the radiantly golden morning of life; but in them also the future swung, menacing, promising, beckoning, dangerous. At times these dreams, in which mother, Virgin, and mistress all fused into one, seemed horrendous crimes to him afterwards, blasphemies, deadly, unpardonable sins; at other times he found in them nothing but harmony and release. Life stared at him, filled with secrets, a somber, unfathomable world, a rigid forest bristling with fairy-tale dangers—but these were mother secrets, they came from her, led to her, they were the small dark circle, the tiny threatening abyss in her clear eye.

So much of his forgotten childhood surged up during these mother dreams, so many small flowers of memory bloomed from the endless depth of forgetfulness, golden-faced premonition-scented memories of childhood emotions, of incidents perhaps, or perhaps of dreams. Occasionally he'd dream of fish, black and silver, swimming toward him, cool and smooth, swimming into him, through him, coming like messengers bearing joyous news of a more gracious, more beautiful reality and vanishing, tails flipping, shadowlike, gone, having brought new enigmas rather than messages. Or he'd dream of swimming fish and flying birds, and each fish or bird was his creature, depended on him, could be guided like a breath, radiated from him like an eye, like a thought, returned to him. Or he'd dream of a garden, a magic garden with fabulous trees, huge flowers, and deep blue-dark caves; the eyes of unknown animals sparkled in the grass, smooth-muscled serpents slid along the branches; giant moist-glistening berries hung from vine or bush, he'd pick them and they'd swell in his hand and leak warm juices like blood, or they had eyes which they'd move with cunning seduction; groping, he'd lean against a tree, reach for a branch, and see and feel between trunk and branch a curling nest of thick tousled hair like the hair in the pit of an arm. Once he dreamed of himself, or of his name-saint, he dreamed of Goldmund of Chrysostom, who had a mouth of gold, who spoke words with his golden mouth, and the words were small swarms of birds that flew off in fluttering groups.

Once he dreamed that he was tall and adult but sat on the floor like a child, that he had clay in front of him and was modeling clay figures, like a child: a small horse, a bull, a tiny man, a tiny woman. The modeling amused him and he gave the animals and men ridiculously large genitals; it seemed wonderfully witty to him in his dream. Then he grew tired of the game and walked off and felt something alive at his back, something soundless and large that was coming nearer and when he looked around he saw with great astonishment and shock, but not without joy, that his small clay figures bad grown and come to life. Huge mute giants, they marched past him, continuing to grow, monstrous, silent; tower-high, they traveled on into the world.

He lived in this dream world more than in the real one. The real world: classroom, courtyard, library, dormitory, and chapel were only the surface, a quivering film over the dream-filled superreal world of images. The smallest incident could pierce a hole in this thin skin: a sudden hint in the sound of a Greek word during a tedious lesson, a whiff of scent from Father Anselm's herb satchel, the sight of a garland of stone leaves protruding from the top of a column in a window vault—these small stimulants were enough to puncture the skin of reality, to unleash the raging abysses, streams, and milky ways of an image world of the soul that lay beneath peacefully barren reality. A Latin initial changed to his mother's perfumed face, a long note in the Ave became the gate to Paradise, a Greek letter a galloping horse, a rearing serpent that quickly slithered off through the flowers, leaving the rigid page of grammar in its place.

He rarely spoke of it, only occasionally did he give Narcissus a hint of his dream world.

"I believe," he once said, "that the petal of a flower or a tiny worm on the path says far more, contains far more than all the books in the library. One cannot say very much with mere letters and words. Sometimes I'll be writing a Greek letter, a theta or an omega, and tilt my pen just the slightest bit; suddenly the letter has a tail and becomes a fish; in a second it evokes all the streams and rivers of the world, all that is cool and humid, Homer's sea and the waters on which Saint Peter wandered; or it becomes a bird, flaps its tail, shakes out its feathers, puffs itself up, laughs, flies away. You probably don't appreciate letters like that very much, do you, Narcissus? But I say: with them God wrote the world."

"I do appreciate them greatly," Narcissus said sadly. "Those are magic letters, demons can be exorcised with them. But for the pursuit of science they are, of course, unsuitable. The mind favors the definite, the solid shape, it wants its symbols to be reliable, it loves what is, not what will be, what is real and not what is possible. It does not permit an omega to change to a serpent or a bird. The mind cannot live in nature, only against nature, only as its counterpart. Do you believe now that you'll never be a scholar, Goldmund?"

Yes, Goldmund had long since begun to believe it, resigned himself to it.

"I'm no longer intent on striving for a mind like yours," he said, half jokingly. "I feel about mind and learning the way I did about my father: I thought I loved him very much and wanted to become like him and swore by everything he did. But as soon as my mother reappeared, I knew the meaning of love again and my father's image had suddenly shrunk next to hers and become joyless, almost repugnant. And now I'm inclined to regard all things of the mind as father-things, as unmotherly, and mother-hostile, and to feel a slight contempt for them."

He spoke in a joking tone, and yet he was not able to bring a happy expression to his friend's face. Narcissus looked at him in silence; his look was like a caress. Then he said: "I understand you very well. There's no need for us to quarrel ever again; you are awakened, and now you recognize the difference between us, between mother-heritage and father-heritage, the difference between soul and mind. Soon you'll probably also realize that cloister life and striving for monkhood were a mistake for you, an invention of your father's. He wanted you to atone for your mother's memory, or perhaps avenge himself on her in this way. Or do you still believe that its your destiny to remain in the cloister all your life?"

Goldmund looked pensively at his friend's hands. How distinguished they were, severe as well as delicate, bony and white. No one could doubt that they were the hands of an ascetic and a scholar.

"I don't know," he said in the lilting, slightly hesitant voice he had recently acquired and that seemed to dwell lengthily on every sound. "I really don't know. You judge my father somewhat harshly. He has not had an easy life. But perhaps you're right in this too. I've been in the cloister school for over three years, and he's never come to see me. He wants me to stay here forever. Perhaps that would be best, I thought I wanted it myself. But today I'm no longer sure what I really want and desire. Before, everything was simple, as simple as the letters in my textbook. Now nothing is simple any more, not even the letters. Everything has taken on many meanings and faces. I don't know what will become of me, I can't think about that now."

"Nor need you," said Narcissus. "You'll find out where your road will lead you. It began by leading you back to your mother, and it will bring you closer to her still. As for your father, I'm not judging him too harshly. Would you want to go back to him?"

"No, Narcissus, certainly not. If I did, it would have to be as soon as I finished school; right now perhaps. Since I'm not going to be a scholar anyhow, I've learned enough Latin and Greek and mathematics. No, I don't want to go back to my father …"

Deep in thought, he stared ahead of him. Suddenly he cried out to Narcissus: "How on earth do you do it? Again and again you say words to me, or pose questions that shine a light into me and make me clear to myself. You merely asked if I wanted to go back to my father, and suddenly I knew that I didn't want to. How do you do it? You seem to know everything. You've said so many words that I didn't quite grasp when I heard them but that became so important to me afterwards! It was you who said that I take my being from my mother, you who discovered that I was living under a spell and had forgotten my childhood! What makes you know people so well? Couldn't I learn that too?"

Narcissus smiled and shook his head.

"No, my dear Goldmund, you cannot. Some people are capable of learning a great deal, but you are not one of them. You'll never be a student. And why should you be? You don't need to. You have other gifts. You are more gifted than I, you are richer and you are weaker, your road will be more beautiful and more difficult than mine. There were times when you refused to understand me, you often kicked like a foal, it wasn't always easy, I was often forced to hurt you. I had to waken you, since you were asleep. Recalling your mother to your memory hurt at first, hurt you very much; you were found lying in the cloister garden as though dead. It had to be. No, don't stroke my hair! No, don't! I don't like it."

"Can't I learn anything then? Will I always remain stupid, a child?"

"There will be others to teach you. What you could learn from me, you child, you have learned."

"Oh no," cried Goldmund, "we didn't become friends to end it now! What sort of friendship would that be, that reached its goal after a short distance and then simply stopped? Are you tired of me? Have you no more affection for me?"

Narcissus was pacing vehemently, his eyes on the floor. Then he stopped in front of his friend. "Let that be," he said softly. "You know only too well that my affection for you has not come to an end."

With doubt in his eyes he studied his friend. Then he began pacing once more, back and forth; again he stopped and looked at Goldmund, his eyes firm in the taut, haggard face. His voice was low, but hard and firm, when he said: "Listen, Goldmund! Our friendship has been good; it had a goal and the goal has been reached; you've been awakened, I would like it not to be over; I would like it to renew itself once more, renew itself again and again, and lead to new goals. For the moment there is no goal. Yours is uncertain, I can neither lead you nor accompany you. Ask your mother, ask her image, listen to her! But my goal is not uncertain, it lies here, in the cloister, it claims me at every hour. I can be your friend, but I cannot be in love. I am a monk, I have taken the vows. Before my consecration I shall ask to be released from my teaching duties and withdraw for many weeks to fast and do exercises. During that period I'll not speak of worldly matters, nor with you either."

Goldmund understood. Sadly he said: "So you're going to do what I would have done too, if I had joined the order. And after your exercises are over and you have fasted and prayed and waked enough—then what will be your goal?"

"You know what it is," said Narcissus.

"Well, yes. In a few years you'll be the novicemaster, head of the school perhaps. You'll improve the teaching methods; you'll enlarge the library. Perhaps you'll write books yourself. No? All right, you won't. But what is your goal?"

Narcissus smiled faintly. "The goal? Perhaps I'll die head of the school, or abbot, or bishop. It's all the same. My goal is this: always to put myself in the place in which I am best able to serve, wherever my gifts and qualities find the best soil, the widest field of action. There is no other goal."

Goldmund: "No other goal for a monk?"

Narcissus: "Oh, there are goals enough. One monk may find his life's goal in learning Hebrew, another in annotating Aristotle, or embellishing the cloister church, or secluding himself in meditation, or a hundred other things. For me those are no goals. I neither want to increase the riches of the cloister, nor reform the order, nor the church. I want to serve the mind within the framework of my possibilities, the way I understand the mind; no more. Is that not a goal?"

Goldmund thought for a long while before he answered.

"You're right," he said. "Did I hinder you much on the road toward your goal?"

"Hinder me! Oh Goldmund, no one furthered me as much as you did. You created difficulties for me, but I am no enemy of difficulties. I've learned from them, I've partly overcome them."

Goldmund interrupted him. Half laughingly, he said: "You've overcome them wonderfully well! But, tell me: when you aided me, guided and delivered me, and healed my soul—were you really serving the mind? In so doing you've probably deprived the cloister of an eager, well-intentioned novice, maybe you've raised an enemy of the mind, someone who'll strive for, think and do the exact opposite of what you deem good!"

"Why not?" said Narcissus in deep earnest. "Dear friend, how little you know me still! Perhaps I did ruin a future monk in you, but in exchange I cleared the path inside you for a destiny that will not be ordinary. Even if you burned down our rather handsome cloister tomorrow, or preached a mad doctrine of error to the world, I would not for an instant regret that I helped you on the road toward it."

With a friendly gesture he laid both hands on his friend's shoulders.

"See here, little Goldmund, this too is part of my goal: whether I be teacher, abbot, father confessor, or whatever, never do I wish to find myself in the position of meeting a strong, valuable human being and not know what he is about, not further him. And let me say this to you: whatever becomes of either of us, whether we go this way or that, you'll never find me heedless at any moment that you call me seriously and think that you have need of me. Never."

It sounded like a farewell; it was indeed a foretaste of farewell. Goldmund stood looking at his friend, the determined face, the goal-directed eyes; he had the unmistakable feeling that they were no longer brothers, colleagues, equals; their ways had already parted. The man before him was not a dreamer; he was not waiting for fate to call to him. He was a monk who had pledged his life, who belonged to an established order, to duty; he was a servant, a soldier of religion, of the church, of the mind. Goldmund now knew he did not belong here; this had become clear to him today. He had no home; an unknown world awaited him. His mother had known the same fate once. She had left house and home, husband and child, community and order, duty and honor, to go out into uncertainty; she had probably long since perished in it. She had had no goal, and neither had he. Having goals was a privilege he did not share with others, Oh, how well Narcissus had recognized all this long ago; how right he had been!

Shortly after the day of their conversation, Narcissus seemed to have disappeared, to have become suddenly inaccessible. Another instructor was teaching his courses; his lectern in the library stood vacant. He was still present, he was not altogether invisible, one saw him walk through the arcade occasionally, heard him murmur in one of the chapels, kneeling on the stone floor; one knew that he had begun the great exercise, that he was fasting, that he rose three times each night to exercise. He was still present, but he had crossed over into another world; he could be seen, although not often, but he could not be reached. Nothing could be shared with him; one could not speak with him. Goldmund knew: Narcissus would reappear, he would be standing at his lectern again, sit in his chair in the refectory, he would speak again—but nothing of what had been would be again; Narcissus would belong to him no longer. As he thought about this, it became clear to him that Narcissus alone had made the cloister, the monkish life, grammar and logic, learning and the mind seem important and desirable to him. His example had tempted him; to become like Narcissus had been his ideal. True, there was also the Abbot, whom he had venerated; he had loved him, too, and thought him a high example. But the others, the teachers and classmates, the dormitory, the dining hall, the school, exercises, mass, the entire cloister no longer concerned him without Narcissus. What was he still doing here? He was waiting, standing under the cloister roof like a hesitant wanderer caught in the rain who stops under any roof, a tree, just to wait, for fear of the inhospitality of the unknown. Goldmund's life, during this span, was nothing but hesitation and bidding farewell. He visited the different places that had become dear and meaningful to him. He was surprised that there were so few persons and faces it would be hard for him to leave. Brother Narcissus and old Abbot Daniel and good dear Father Anselm, the friendly porter maybe, and their jovial neighbor, the miller—but even they had already become unreal. Harder than that would be saying farewell to the tall stone madonna in the chapel, to the apostles of the portal. For a long time he stood in front of them, in front of the beautiful carvings of the choir pews, of the fountain in the cloister garden, the column with the three animal heads; he leaned against the linden trees in the courtyard, against the chestnut tree. One day, all of this would be memory to him, a small picturebook in his heart. Even now, while he was still in its midst, it started to fade away from him, lose its reality, change phantomlike into something that no longer was. He went in search of herbs with Father Anselm, who liked to have him around; he watched the men at work in the cloister mill; every so often he let himself be invited to a meal of wine and baked fish; but already it felt strange to him, half like a memory. In the twilight of the chapel and the penitence of his cell, his friend Narcissus was pacing, alive, but to him he had become a shadow. The cloister now seemed to be drained of reality, and appeared autumnal and transient.

Only the life within him was real, the anguished beating of his heart, the nostalgic sting of longing, the joys and fears of his dreams. To them he belonged; to them he abandoned himself. Suddenly, in the middle of a page or a lesson, surrounded by his classmates, he'd sink into himself and forget everything, listening only to the rivers and voices inside himself which drew him away, into deep wells filled with dark melodies, into colorful abysses full of fairy-tale deeds, and all the sounds were like his mother's voice, and the thousands of eyes all were his mother's eyes.

6

One day Father Anselm called Goldmund into his pharmacy, his pretty herb pantry full of wondrous smells. Goldmund knew his way around there. The monk showed him a dried plant, neatly preserved between two sheets of paper, and asked him if he knew its name and could describe it accurately, the way it looked outside in the fields. Yes, Goldmund could; the plant was John's-wort. He was asked for a precise description of its characteristics. The old man was satisfied and gave his young friend the mission of gathering a good bundle of these plants during the afternoon, in the plant's favorite spots, which he indicated to Goldmund.

"In exchange you'll have the afternoon off from your classes, my boy. You'll have no objection to that, and you won't lose anything by it. Because knowledge of nature is a science, too—not only your silly grammar."

Goldmund thanked him for the most welcome assignment to pick flowers for a couple of hours rather than sit in the classroom. To make his joy complete, he asked the stablemaster to let him take the horse Bless, and soon after lunch he led the animal from the stable. It greeted him enthusiastically; he jumped on and galloped, deeply content, into the warm, glowing day. He rode about for an hour or more, enjoying the air and the smell of the fields, and most of all the riding itself, then he remembered his errand and searched for one of the spots the father had described to him. He found it, tethered the horse in the shade of a maple, talked to it, fed it some bread, and started looking for the plants. There were a few strips of fallow land, overgrown with all kinds of weeds. Small, wizened poppies with a last few fading petals and many ripe seed pods stood among withering vetch and sky-blue chicory and discolored knotweed. The heaps of stones between the two fields were inhabited by lizards, and there, too, stood the first, yellow-flowered stalks of John's-wort; Goldmund began to pick them. After he had gathered a sizable bunch, he sat down on a stone to rest. It was hot and he looked longingly toward the shadowy edge of the distant forest, but he didn't want to go that far from the plants and from his horse, which he could still see from where he sat. So he stayed where he was, on the warm heap of stones, keeping very still to see the lizards who had fled come out again; he sniffed at the John's-wort, held one of its small leaves to the light to study the hundred tiny pin pricks in it.

Strange, he thought, each of these thousand little leaves has its own miniature firmament pricked into it, like a delicate embroidery. How strange and incomprehensible everything was, the lizards, the plants, even the stones, everything. Father Anselm, who was so fond of him, was no longer able to pick his John's-wort himself; his legs bothered him. On certain days he could not move at all, and his knowledge of medicine could not cure him. Perhaps he would soon die, and the herbs in his pantry would continue to give out their fragrance, but the old father would no longer be there. But perhaps he would go on living for a long time still, for another ten or twenty years perhaps, and still have the same thin white hair and the same funny wrinkle-sheaves around the eyes; but what would have become of him, Goldmund, in twenty years?

Oh, how imcomprehensible everything was, and actually sad, although it was also beautiful. One knew nothing. One lived and ran about the earth and rode through forests, and certain things looked so challenging and promising and nostalgic: a star in the evening, a blue harebell, a reed-green pond, the eye of a person or of a cow. And sometimes it seemed that something never seen yet long desired was about to happen, that a veil would drop from it all; but then it passed, nothing happened, the riddle remained unsolved, the secret spell unbroken, and in the end one grew old and looked cunning like Father Anselm or wise like Abbot Daniel, and still one knew nothing perhaps, was still waiting and listening.

He picked up an empty snail house, it made a faint tinkling sound among the stones and was warm with sun. Absorbed, he examined the windings of the shell, the notched spiral, the capricious dwindling of its little crown, the empty gullet with its shimmer of mother-of-pearl. He closed his eyes and felt the shape with probing fingers, which was a habit and a game with him. He turned the shell between loose fingers, slidingly retracing its contours, caressingly, without pressure, delighted with the miracle of form, the enchantment of the tangible. One of the disadvantages of school and learning, he thought dreamily, was that the mind seemed to have the tendency to see and represent all things as though they were flat and had only two dimensions. This, somehow, seemed to render all matters of the intellect shallow and worthless, but he was unable to hold on to this thought; the shell slid from his hand; he felt tired and drowsy. His head sank over the herbs, which smelled stronger and stronger as they wilted, he fell asleep in the sun. Lizards ran over his shoes; the plants wilted on his knees; under the maple, Bless waited and grew impatient.

From the distant forest someone came walking, a young woman in a faded blue skirt, with a red kerchief tied around black hair, and a tanned summer face. The woman came closer; she was carrying a bundle; a fire-red gillyflower shone between her lips. She noticed the sitting man, watched him from afar for a long while, curious and distrustful, saw that he was asleep, tiptoed closer on naked brown feet, stood in front of Goldmund and looked at him. Her suspicions vanished; this fine young sleeper did not look dangerous; he pleased her greatly—what had brought him out here to these fallow fields? With a smile she saw that he had been picking flowers; they were already wilted.

Goldmund opened his eyes, returning from a forest of dreams. His head was bedded softly; it was lying in a woman's lap. Strangely close, two warm brown eyes were looking into his, which were sleepy and astonished. He felt no fear; no danger shone in those warm brown stars; they looked friendly. The woman smiled at his astonishment, a very friendly smile, and slowly he, too, began to smile. Her mouth came down on his smiling lips; they greeted each other with a gentle kiss, and Goldmund remembered the evening in the village and the little girl with the braids. But the kiss was not over yet. The woman's mouth lingered, began to play, teased and tempted, and finally seized his lips with greed and violence, set fire to his blood, made it throb in his veins; in slow, patient play the brown woman gave herself to the boy, teaching him gently, letting him seek and find, setting him afire and stilling the flames. The exalted, brief joy of love vaulted above him, burned with a golden glow, sank down and died. He lay with eyes closed, his face against the woman's breast. Not a word had been said. The woman didn't move, softly she stroked his hair, gave him time to come to himself. Finally he opened his eyes.

"You!" he said. "You! But who are you?"

"I'm Lise," she said.

"Lise," he repeated after her, tasting her name. "Lise, you are sweet."

She brought her mouth close to his ear and whispered into it: "Tell me, was this the first time? Did you never love anyone before me?'

He shook his head. Abruptly he sat up and looked across the fields and up into the sky.

"Oh!" he cried, "the sun is almost down. I must get back."

"Where to?"

"To the cloister, to Father Anselm."

"To Mariabronn? Is that where you belong? Don't you want to stay with me a little longer?"

"I'd like to."

"Well, stay then!"

"No, that would not be right. And I must pick more of these herbs."

"Do you live in the cloister?"

"Yes, I'm a student. But I'll not stay there. May I come to you, Lise? Where do you live, where is your home?"

"I live nowhere, dear heart. But won't you tell me your name? —Ah, Goldmund is what they call you. Give me another kiss, little Goldmouth, then you may go."

"You live nowhere? But where do you sleep?"

"If you like, in the forest with you, or in the hay. Will you come tonight?"

"Oh, yes. But where? Where will I find you?"

"Can you screech like a barn owl?"

"I've never tried."

"Try."

He tried. She laughed, satisfied.

"All right, come out of the cloister tonight and screech like a barn owl. I'll be close by. Do you like me, little Goldmouth, my darling?"

"Oh, Lise, I do like you. I'll come. Now go with God, I must hurry."

It was twilight when Goldmund returned to the cloister on his steaming horse, and he was glad to find Father Anselm occupied. A brother had been wading barefoot in the brook and cut himself on a shard of crockery.

Now it was important to find Narcissus. He asked one of the lay brothers who waited at table in the refectory. No, he was told, Narcissus would not be down for supper; this was his fasting day; he'd probably be asleep now since he held vigils during the night. Goldmund hurried off. During the long exercises, his friend slept in one of the penitents' cells in the inner cloister. Goldmund ran there without thinking. He listened at the door; there wasn't a sound. He entered softly. That it was strictly forbidden made no difference now.

Narcissus was lying on the narrow cot. In the half light he looked like a corpse, rigid on his back, with pale, pointed face, his hands crossed on his chest. His eyes were open; he was not asleep. He looked at Goldmund without speaking, without reproach, but without stirring, so obviously elsewhere, absorbed in a different time and world, that he had difficulty recognizing his friend and understanding his words.

"Narcissus! Forgive me, dear friend, forgive me for disturbing you. I'm not doing it lightly. I realize that you ought not to speak to me, but do speak to me, I beg you with all my heart."

Narcissus reflected, his eyes blinked violently for a moment as though he were struggling to come awake.

"Is it necessary?" he asked in a spent voice.

"Yes, it is necessary. I've come to say farewell."

"Then it is necessary. You shall not have come in vain. Here, sit with me. I have fifteen minutes before the first vigil."

Haggard, he sat on the bare sleeping plank. Goldmund sat down beside him.

"Please forgive me!" he said guiltily. The cell, the bare cot, Narcissus's strained face, drawn with lack of sleep, his half-absent eyes—all this showed plainly how much he disturbed his friend.

"There is nothing to forgive. Don't worry about me; there's nothing amiss with me. You've come to take leave, you say? You're going away then?"

"I'm going this very day. Oh, I don't know how to tell you! Suddenly everything has been decided."

"Has your father come, or a message from him?"

"No, nothing. Life itself has come to me. I'm leaving without father, without permission. I'm bringing shame upon you, you know; I'm running away."

Narcissus looked down at his long white fingers. Thin and ghostlike, they protruded from the wide sleeves of the habit. There was no smile in his severe, exhausted face, but it could be felt in his voice as he said: "We have very little time, dear friend. Tell me only the essentials, tell me clearly and briefly. Or must I tell you what has happened to you?"

"You tell me," Goldmund begged.

"You've fallen in love, little boy, you've met a woman."

"How do you always know these things?"

"You're making it easy for me. Your condition, amicus meus, shows all the signs of that drunkenness called being in love. But speak now, please."

Timidly Goldmund touched his friend's shoulder.

"You have just said it. Although this time you didn't say it well, Narcissus, not accurately. It is altogether different. I was out in the fields, and I fell asleep in the heat, and when I woke up, my head was resting on the knees of a beautiful woman and I immediately felt that my mother had come to take me home. I did not think that this woman was my mother. Her eyes were brown and her hair was black; my mother had blond hair like mine. This woman didn't look in the least like her. And yet it was my mother, my mother's call, a message from her. It was as though an unknown beautiful woman had suddenly come out of the dreams of my own heart and was holding my head in her lap, smiling at me like a flower and being sweet to me. At her first kiss I felt something melt inside me that hurt in an exquisite way. All my longings, all my dreams and sweet anguish, all the secrets that slept within me, came awake, everything was transformed and enchanted, everything made sense. She taught me what a woman is and what secrets she has. In half an hour she aged me by many years. I know many things now. I also suddenly knew that I could no longer remain in this house, not for another day. I'm going as soon as night falls."

Narcissus listened and nodded.

"It happened suddenly," he said, "but it is more or less what I expected. I shall think of you often. I'll miss you, amicus. Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Yes, if you can, please say a word to our Abbot, so that he does not condemn me completely. He is the only person in this house, besides you, whose thoughts about me are not indifferent to me. His and yours."

"I know. Is there anything else?"

"Yes, one thing, please. Later, when you think of me, will you pray for me from time to time? And—thank you."

"For what, Goldmund?"

"For your friendship, your patience, for everything. Also for listening to me today, when it was hard for you. And also for not trying to hold me back."

"How could I want to hold you back? You know how I feel about it. —But where will you go, Goldmund? Have you a goal? Are you going to that woman?"

"Yes, I'm going with her. I have no goal. She is a stranger—homeless, it seems; perhaps a gypsy."

"Well, all right. But do you know, my dear Goldmund, that your road with her will be extremely short? I don't think you should count on her too much. Perhaps she has relatives, a husband perhaps; who knows what kind of reception awaits you there."

Goldmund leaned against his friend.

"I know," he said, "although I had not thought of it yet. As I told you, I have no goal. This woman who was so very sweet to me is not my goal, I'm going to her, but I'm not going because of her. I'm going because I must, because I have heard the call."

He sighed and was silent. They sat shoulder to shoulder, sad and yet happy in the feeling of their indestructible friendship. Then Goldmund continued: "Do not think that I'm completely blind and naive. No. I'm happy to go, because I feel that it has to be, and because something so marvelous happened to me today. But I'm not imagining that I'll meet with nothing but joy and mirth. I think the road will be hard. But it will also be beautiful, I hope. It is extremely beautiful to belong to a woman, to give yourself. Don't laugh if I sound foolish. But to love a woman, you see, to abandon yourself to her, to absorb her completely and feel absorbed by her, that is not what you call 'being in love,' which you mock a little. For me it is the road to life, the way toward the meaning of life. Oh, Narcissus, I must leave you! I love you, Narcissus, and thank you for sacrificing a moment of sleep to me today. I find it hard to leave you. You won't forget me?"

"Don't make us both sad! I'll never forget you. You will come back, I ask it of you, I expect it. If you are in need some day, come to me, or call to me. Farewell, Goldmund, go with God!"

He had risen. Goldmund embraced him. Knowing his friend's aversion of caresses, he did not kiss him; he only stroked his hands.

Night was falling. Narcissus closed the cell behind him and walked over to the church, his sandals slapping the flagstones. Goldmund followed the bony figure with loving eyes, until it vanished like a shadow at the end of the corridor, swallowed by the darkness of the church door, claimed by exercises, duties, and virtues. How extraordinary, how infinitely puzzling and confusing everything was! This, too—how strange and frightening: to have come to his friend with his heart overflowing, drunk with blossoming love, at the very moment his friend was in meditation, devoured by fasting and vigils, crucifying his youth, his heart, his senses—all offered up in sacrifice; at the very moment his friend was subjecting himself to the most rigorous obedience, pledging to serve only the mind, to become nothing but a minister verbi divini! There he had lain, tired unto death, extenuated, with his pale face and bony hands, corpselike, and yet he had listened to his friend, lucid and sympathetic, had lent his ear to this love-drunken man with the smell of a woman still on him, had sacrificed his few moments of rest between penances. It was strange and divinely beautiful that there was also this kind of love, this selfless, completely spiritualized kind. How different it was from today's love in the sunny field, the reckless, intoxicated play of the senses. And yet both were love. Oh, and now Narcissus had gone from him, after showing him once again, clearly, at the last moment, how utterly different and dissimilar they were from one another.

Now Narcissus was bent down in front of the altar on tired knees, prepared and purified for a night of prayer and contemplation that permitted him no more than two hours' sleep, while he, Goldmund, was running off to find his Lise somewhere under the trees and play those sweet animal games with her once more. Narcissus would have said remarkable things about that. But he was Goldmund, not Narcissus. It was not for him to go to the bottom of these beautiful, terrifying enigmas and mazes and to say important things about them. For him there was only giving himself and loving, loving his praying friend in the night-dark church as much as the beautiful warm young woman who was waiting for him.

As he tiptoed away under the lime trees in the courtyard and out through the mill, his heart beating with a hundred conflicting emotions, he had to smile at the memory of that evening with Konrad when he had left the cloister once before by the same secret path, when they were "going to the village." How excited and secretly afraid he had been, setting out on that little forbidden escapade, and today he was leaving for good, taking far more forbidden, dangerous roads and he was not afraid, not thinking about the porter, the Abbot, the teachers.

This time there were no planks beside the brook; he had to cross without a bridge. He pulled off his clothes and tossed them to the opposite bank, then he waded naked through the deep, swirling stream, up to his chest in the cold water.

While he dressed again on the other side, his thoughts returned to Narcissus. With great lucidity that made him feel ashamed, he realized that he was merely executing now what the other had known all along, toward which he had guided him. Very distinctly he saw Narcissus's intelligent, slightly mocking face, listening to him speak so much foolishness, the man who had once, at a crucial moment, painfully opened his eyes. Again he clearly heard the few words Narcissus had said to him at that time: "You sleep at your mother's breast; I wake in the desert. Your dreams are of girls; mine of boys."

For an instant his heart froze. He stood there, utterly alone in the night. Behind him lay the cloister, a home only in appearance, yet a home he had loved and to which he had grown accustomed.

But at the same time he had another feeling: that Narcissus had ceased to be his cautioning, superior guide and awakener. Today he felt he had entered a country in which he must find his own roads, in which no Narcissus could guide him. He was glad that he realized this. As he looked back, the days of his dependence seemed shameful and oppressive to him. Now he had become aware; he was no longer a child, a student. It was good to know this. And yet—how hard it was to say farewell! To know that his friend was kneeling in the church back there and not be able to give him anything, to be of no help, to be nothing to him. And now he would be separated from him for a long time, perhaps forever, and know nothing of him, hear his voice no longer, look into his noble eyes no longer.

He tore himself away and followed the stony little road. A few hundred steps from the cloister walls he stood still, took a deep breath, and uttered the owl call as best he could. A similar call answered in the distance downstream.

"Like animals we call to each other," was the thought that came to him as he remembered the hour of love in the afternoon. Only now it occurred to him that no words had been exchanged between him and Lise, except at the very end, after the caresses were over, and then only a few and they had been insignificant. What long conversations he had had with Narcissus! But now, it seemed, he had entered a wordless world, in which one called to one another like owls, in which words had no meaning. He was ready for it. He had no more need for words today, or for thoughts; only for Lise, only for this wordless, blind, mute groping and searching, this sighing and melting.

Lise was there; she came out of the forest to meet him. He reached out to feel her, framed her head with tender, groping hands, her hair, her neck and throat, her slender waist, her firm hips. One arm about her, he walked on with her, without speaking, without asking where to. She walked with sure step in the dark forest. He had trouble keeping up with her. Like a fox or a marten, she seemed to see with night eyes, walked without stumbling, without tripping. He let himself be led into the night, into the forest, into the blind secret wordless, thoughtless country. He was no longer thinking: not of the cloister he had left behind, not of Narcissus.

Like two mutes they moved through the dark forest, sometimes on soft moss upholstery, sometimes on hard root ribs. Sometimes the sky shone light through sparse high treetops; at other times the darkness was complete. Branches slapped his face; brambles held him back. Everywhere she knew her way and found a passage; she seldom stopped, seldom hesitated. After a long time they arrived in a clearing of solitary pines that stood far apart. The pale night sky opened wide before them. The forest had come to an end; a meadow valley welcomed them with a sweet smell of hay. They waded through a small, soundless creek. Out here in the open the silence was still greater than in the forest: no rustling bushes, no startled night beast, no crackling twigs.

Lise stopped in front of a big haystack.

"We'll stay here," she said.

They sat down in the hay, taking deep breaths at first and enjoying the rest; they were both a little tired. They lay back, listening to the silence, feeling their foreheads dry and their faces gradually cool off. Goldmund crouched, pleasantly tired. Playfully he bent his knees and stretched them straight again, took deep breaths of the night air and the smell of hay, and thought neither backward nor forward. Slowly he let himself be drawn and enticed by the scent and warmth of the woman beside him, replied here and there to her caressing hands and felt joy when she began to burn and pushed herself closer and closer to him. No, here neither words nor thoughts were needed. Clearly he felt all that was important and beautiful, the youthful strength, the simple, healthy beauty of the female body, felt it grow warm, felt its desire; he also felt clearly that, this time, she wished to be loved differently from the first time, that she did not want to guide and teach him this time, but wanted to wait for his attack, for his greed. Quietly he let the streams flow through him; happily he felt the boundless fire grow, felt it alive in both of them, turning their little lair into the vital, breathing center of all the quiet night.

He bent over Lise's face and began to kiss her lips in the darkness. Suddenly he saw her eyes and forehead shine with a gentle light. He looked in surprise, watched the glow grow brighter, more intense. Then he knew and turned his head: the moon was rising over the edge of the long black stretch of forest. He watched the white gentle light miraculously inundate her forehead, her cheeks, slide over her round, limpid throat. Softly, delighted, he said: "How beautiful you are!"

She smiled as though a present had been made her. He sat up; gently he pulled the gown off her shoulders, helped her out of it, peeled her until her shoulders and breasts shone in the cool light of the moon. Completely enraptured, he followed the delicate shadows with eyes and lips, looking and kissing; she held still as though under a spell, with eyes cast down and a solemn expression as though, even to her, her beauty was being discovered and revealed for the first time.

7

It grew cool over the fields. The moon climbed higher by the hour. The lovers lay on their softly lighted bed, absorbed in their games, dozing off together, turning toward each other anew upon awakening, kindling each other, entangled once more, falling asleep once more. They lay exhausted after their last embrace. Lise had nestled deep into the hay, breathing heavily. Goldmund was stretched out on his back, motionless; for a long time he stared into the moon-pale sky; a deep sadness rose in both, which they escaped in sleep. They slept profoundly, desperately, greedily, as though for the last time, as though they had been condemned to stay awake forever and had to drink in all the sleep in the world during these last hours.

When Goldmund awoke, he saw Lise busy with her black hair. He watched her for a while, absent-minded, still half asleep.

"You're awake?" he said finally.

Her head turned with a start.

"I've got to go now," she said, embarrassed and somewhat sad. "I didn't want to wake you."

"Well, I'm awake now. Must we move on so soon? After all, we're homeless."

"I am," said Lise. "But you belong to the cloister."

"I no longer belong to the cloister. I'm like you, completely alone, with nowhere to go. But I'll go with you, of course."

Lise looked away.

"You can't come with me, Goldmund. I must go to my husband; he'll beat me, because I stayed out all night. I'll say I lost my way. But he won't believe me."

Goldmund remembered Narcissus's prediction. So that's how it was.

"I've made a mistake then," he said. "I had thought that you and I would stay together. —Did you really want to let me sleep and run off without saying farewell?"

"Oh, I was afraid you might get angry and beat me, perhaps. That my husband beats me, well, that's how things are, that's normal. But I didn't want you to beat me, too."

He held on to her hand.

"Lise," he said, "I won't beat you, not now, not ever. Wouldn't you rather stay with me than with your husband, since he beats you?"

She tugged to get her hand free.

"No, no, no," she said with tears in her voice. And since he could feel that her heart was pulling away from him, that she preferred the other man's blows to his good words, he let go of her hand, and now she really began to cry. At the same time she started to run. Clasping both hands over her streaming eyes, she ran off. He stood silently and watched her go. He felt sorry for her, running off across the mowed meadows, summoned and drawn by who knew what power, an unknown power that set him thinking. He felt sorry for her, and a little sorry for himself as well; he had not been lucky apparently; alone and a little stunned, he sat in the hay, abandoned, deserted. But he was still tired and eager for sleep; never had he felt so exhausted. There was time to be unhappy later. Immediately he went back to sleep and woke only when the sun stood high and made the air hot around him.

He felt rested now; quickly he got up, ran to the brook, washed, and drank. Memories came gushing forth; love images from the night exhaled their perfume like unknown flowers, evoked many gentle, tender feelings. His thoughts ran after them as he began to walk briskly. Once more he felt, tasted, smelled, touched everything over and over. How many dreams the unknown woman had fulfilled for him, all the buds she had brought to flowering, stilled so many wonderings and longings, roused so many new ones in their place!

Field and heath lay before him, dry, fallow stretches and dark forest. Beyond it might be farms and mills, a village, a town. For the first time the world lay open before him, wide and waiting, ready to receive him, to do him good or harm. He was no longer a student who saw the world through a window; his walking was no longer a stroll ending with the inevitable return. Now the wide world had become a reality, he was part of it, it contained his fate, its sky was his sky, its weather his weather. He was small in this large world, no bigger than a horse, an insect; he ran through its blue-green infinity. No bell called him out of bed, to mass, to class, to meals.

Oh, how hungry he was! Half a loaf of corn bread, a bowl of milk, some gruel soup—what delicious memories! His stomach had come awake. He passed a cornfield, with half-ripe ears. He stripped them with fingers and teeth; avidly he chewed the tiny, slimy kernels, plucked more and still more, stuffed his pockets with ears of corn. Later he found hazelnuts. They were still quite green, but he bit into them joyfully, cracked their shells, and put a handful in his pocket.

As he entered the forest, he saw pines and an occasional oak or ash, and soon he found blueberries in unending abundance. He rested and ate and cooled off. Blue harebells grew in the sparse, hard forest grass; brown, sunny butterflies rose and vanished capriciously in ragged flight. Saint Genevieve had lived in a forest like this; he had always loved her story. How much he would have liked to meet her. Or he might find a hermitage in the forest, with an old, bearded father in a cave or a bark hut. Or perhaps peat diggers lived in the forest; he would have liked to speak to them. Or even robbers; they would probably not harm him. It would be pleasant to meet somebody, anybody. But he was well aware that he could walk in the forest for a long time, today, tomorrow, several days more, without meeting anyone. That, too, had to be accepted, if it was his destiny. It was better not to think too much, to take things as they came.

He heard a woodpecker tapping and tried to find it. For a long time he tried in vain to catch sight of the bird. At last he succeeded and watched it for a while: the bird glued to the trunk of the tree, all alone, tap-tap-tapping, turning its busy head this way and that. What a pity that one couldn't speak to animals. It would have been pleasant to call a greeting up to the woodpecker, to say a friendly word and learn something about its life in the trees perhaps, about its work and its joys. Oh, if one could only transform oneself!

He remembered how he used to draw sometimes, during his hours of leisure, how he used to draw figures with the stylus on his writing tablet, and flowers, leaves, trees, animals, people's heads. He'd amuse himself that way for hours. Sometimes he had created creatures of his own imagination, like a small God, had drawn eyes and a mouth into the chalice of a flower, shaped figures into a cluster of leaves sprouting on a branch, placed a head on top of a tree. For whole hours those games had made him happy, spellbound, able to perform magic, drawing lines that often surprised him—a figure he had started suddenly turned into a leaf or a tree, the snout of a fish, a foxtail, someone's eyebrow. That's how one ought to be able to transform oneself, he thought, the way he had been able to transform the playful lines on his tablet. Goldmund longed to become a woodpecker for a day perhaps, or a month; he would have lived in the treetops, would have run up the smooth trunks and pecked at the bark with his strong beak, keeping balance with his tail feathers. He would have spoken woodpecker language and dug good things out of the bark. The woodpecker's hammering sounded sweet and strong among the echoing trees.

Goldmund met many animals on his way through the forest. There were quite a number of hares; at his approach they'd bound out of the underbrush, stare at him, turn and run off, ears folded back, white under the tail. He found a long snake lying in a clearing. It didn't move; it was not a live snake, only an empty skin. He picked it up and examined it carefully: a beautiful gray and brown pattern ran down the back; the sun shone through it; it was cobweb thin. He saw blackbirds with yellow beaks; frightened, they'd look at him from stiff, narrow eyeballs, fly off close to the ground. There were many red robins and finches. He came to a hole, a puddle filled with thick green water, on which long-legged spiders ran in eager, frenzied confusion, absorbed in an incomprehensible game. Above flew several dragonflies with deep-blue wings. And once, toward nightfall, he saw something—or rather, he saw nothing except frantic leaves, branches breaking, clumps of mud slapping the ground. A large, barely visible animal came bursting through the underbrush with enormous impact—a stag perhaps, or a boar; he couldn't tell. For a long time he stood panting with fright. Terrified, he listened in the direction the animal had taken, was still listening with pounding heart long after everything had grown silent again.

He couldn't find his way out of the forest; he was forced to spend the night there. He picked a sleeping place and built a bed of moss, trying to imagine what it would be like if he never found his way out of the forest, if he had to stay in it forever. That would surely be a great misfortune. Living on berries was after all not impossible, nor was sleeping on moss. Besides, he would doubtless manage to build a hut for himself eventually, perhaps even to make a fire. But living alone forever and ever, among the quietly sleeping tree trunks, with animals that ran away, with whom one could not speak—that would be unbearably sad. Not to see people, not to say good morning and good night to anyone; no more faces and eyes to look into; no more girls and women to look at, no more kisses; never again to play the lovely secret game of lips and legs, that would be unthinkable! If this were his fate, he thought, he would try to become an animal, a bear or a stag, even if it meant forsaking the salvation of his soul. To be a bear and love a she-bear would not be bad, would at least be much better than to keep one's reason and language and all that, and vegetate alone, sad and unloved.

Before falling asleep in his bed of moss, he listened to the many incomprehensible, enigmatic night sounds of the forest, with curiosity and fear. They were his companions now. He had to live with them, grow accustomed to them, compete with them, get along with them; he belonged to the foxes and the deer, to pine and fir. He had to live with them, share air and sunshine with them, wait for daybreak with them, starve with them, be their guest.

Then he fell asleep and dreamed of animals and people, was a bear and devoured Lise amid caresses. In the middle of the night he awoke with a deep fear he couldn't explain, suffered infinite anguish in his heart and lay thinking for a long time, deeply disturbed. He realized that yesterday and today he had gone to sleep without saying his prayers. He got up, knelt beside his moss bed, and said his evening prayer twice, for yesterday and today. Soon he was asleep again.

In the morning he looked about the forest with surprise; he had forgotten where he was. Now his fear of the forest began to dwindle. With new joy he entrusted himself to the life around him; and all the while he continued to walk, taking his direction from the sun. At one point he came to a completely smooth stretch in the forest—hardly any underbrush, nothing but very thick old straight pines. After he had walked around these columns for a while, they began to remind him of the columns in the main cloister church, the very same church into which he had watched his friend Narcissus disappear through the dark portal the other day—how long ago? Was it really only two days ago?

It took him two days and two nights to reach the end of the forest. Joyfully he recognized signs of human habitation: cultivated land, strips of field with barley and oats, meadows through which a narrow footpath had been trodden; he could see sections of it here and there. Goldmund pulled out a few stalks of barley and chewed on them. With friendly eyes he looked at the tilled land; everything felt warm and human to him after the long wilderness of the woods: the little footpath, the oats, the wilted, bleached cornflowers. Soon he would meet people. After a short hour he came to a crucifix at the edge of a field; he knelt and prayed to the feet. Coming around the protruding nose of a hill, he suddenly found himself in front of a shady lime tree. Delighted, he heard the music of a well from which water ran through a wooden pipe into a long wooden trough. He drank cold delicious water and noticed with joy a couple of thatched roofs seemingly coming out of the elderberry trees; the berries were already dark. The lowing of a cow touched him still more than all these signs of friendliness; it sounded so pleasantly warm and hospitable, like a greeting that had come to meet him, a welcome.

He investigated a bit and then approached the hut from which the lowing had come. Outside the door, in the mud, sat a small boy with reddish hair and light-blue eyes. An earthen pot was beside him, filled with water, and with its mud and water he was making a dough. His bare legs were already smeared with it. Happy and earnest, he kneaded the wet mud between his hands, watched it squish through his fingers, made it into balls, used one knee for pressing and shaping.

"God bless you, little boy," Goldmund said in a very friendly voice. The little boy looked up, saw the stranger, opened his mouth, puckered his plump face, and ran bawling, on all fours, through the door. Goldmund followed him and came into a kitchen; it was so dark after the bright noon glare, he could not see anything at first. He said a Christian greeting, just in case, but there was no reply; but the screaming of the frightened child was finally answered by a thin old voice that comforted the boy. Finally, a tiny old woman stood up in the darkness and came closer; she held a hand to her eyes and looked at the stranger.

"God bless you, mother," Goldmund cried. "May all the dear saints bless your kind face; I haven t seen a human being in three days."

The little old woman gaped at him, a bit simple, from farsighted eyes, not understanding.

"What is it you want?" she asked suspiciously.

Goldmund took her hand and stroked it lightly.

"I want to say God bless you, little grandmother, and rest awhile, and help you make the fire. And I won't refuse a piece of bread if you offer me one, but there's time for that."

He saw a bench built into the wall and sat down on it, while the old woman cut off a piece of bread for the boy, who was now staring at the stranger with interest and curiosity, but still ready to cry and run off at any moment. The old woman cut a second piece from the loaf and brought it over to Goldmund.

"Thank you," he said. "May God reward you."

"Is your belly empty?" asked the woman.

"Not really. It's full of blueberries."

"Well, eat then. Where do you come from?"

"From Mariabronn, from the cloister."

"Are you a preacher?"

"No. I'm a student. I'm traveling."

She looked at him, half chiding, half simple, and shook her head a little on her long, wrinkled neck. She let Goldmund take a few bites and led the boy back outside into the sunshine. Then she came back and asked curiously: "Have you any news?"

"Not much. Do you know Father Anselm?"

"No. Why, what's with him?"

"He's ill."

"Ill? Is he going to die?"

"Who knows? He has it in the legs. He can't walk too well."

"Is he going to die?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"Well, let him die. I must cook my soup. Help me chop the kindling."

She handed him a pine log, nicely dried beside the hearth, and a knife. He cut kindling, as much as she wanted, and watched her lay it on the ashes, and bend over it, and wheeze and blow until the fire caught. According to a precise, secret system, she piled now pine, now beechwood. The fire shone brightly in the open hearth. A big black kettle hung in the chimney on a sooty chain; she pushed it into the flames.

At her behest Goldmund drew water from the well, skimmed the milk pail. He sat in the smoky twilight and watched the play of the flames and the bony, wrinkled face of the old woman appearing and disappearing above them in the red glow; he could hear the cow rummage and thump on the other side of the wall. He liked everything. The lime tree, the well, the flickering fire under the kettle, the snuffing and munching of the feeding cow, the dull thuds she made against the wall, the half-dark room with table and bench, the small, ancient woman's gestures—all this was beautiful and good, smelled of food and peace, of people and warmth, of home. There were also two goats, and the old woman told him that they had a pigsty in the back; the old woman was the farmer's grandmother, the great-grandmother of the little boy. His name was Kuno. Every so often he came inside; he didn't say anything and still looked a little frightened, but he was no longer crying.

The farmer arrived, and his wife; they were greatly surprised to find a stranger in the house. The farmer was all set to start cursing. Distrustfully, he gripped the young man by the arm and pulled him toward the door to see his face in the daylight. Then he laughed, gave him a well-meaning slap on the shoulder, and invited him to eat with them. They sat down; each dipped his bread into the common milk bowl until the milk was almost gone and the farmer drank up what was left.

Goldmund asked if he might stay until tomorrow and sleep under their roof. No, said the man, there wasn't enough room, but there was enough hay lying around all over the place, outside, for him to find a bed.

The farmer's wife sat with the boy by her side.

She did not take part in the conversation; but during the meal her inquisitive eyes took possession of the stranger. His curls and eyes had made an impression on her and she noticed with pleasure his lovely white neck and smooth, elegant hands with their free, beautiful gestures. How distinguished and imposing he was, and so young! But most of all she felt drawn by the stranger's voice. She fell in love with the singing undertone, the radiating warmth and gentle wooing in the young man's voice; it sounded like a caress. She would have liked to go on listening to his voice much longer.

After the meal, the farmer busied himself in the stable. Goldmund had gone outside to wash his hands under the well; he was sitting on its low edge, cooling himself and listening to the water. His mind was undecided; there was nothing for him to do here any more, yet he regretted having to move on so soon. Just then the farmer's wife came out with a bucket in her hand; she placed it under the gullet and let it run full. Half loud she said: "If you're still around here tonight, I'll bring you some food. There's hay back there, behind the long barley field; it won't be taken in before tomorrow. Will you still be there?"

He looked into her freckled face, watched her strong arms lift the bucket; her clear large eyes looked warm. He smiled at her and nodded; she was already walking away with the full bucket, disappearing in the darkness of the door. He sat, grateful and deeply content, listening to the running water. Some time later he went in, looked for the farmer, shook hands with him and with the grandmother, and thanked them. The hut smelled of fire, soot, and milk. A moment ago it had still been shelter and home; now it was already foreign territory. With a farewell, he went out.

Beyond the hut he found a chapel, and nearby a beautiful wooded area, a clump of sturdy old oaks in short grass. He remained there, in their shade, strolling among the thick trunks. How strange it was with women and loving! There really was no need for words. The farmer's wife had said only a few words, to name the place of their meeting; everything else had been said without words. Then how had she said it? With her eyes, yes, and with a certain intonation in her slightly thick voice, and with something more, a scent perhaps, a subtle, discreet emanation of the skin, by which women and men were able to know at once when they desired one another. It was strange, like a subtle, secret language; how fast he had learned that language. He was very much looking forward to the evening, filled with curiosity about this tall blond woman, the looks and sounds she'd have, what kind of body, gestures, kisses—probably altogether different from Lise. Where was Lise at this moment, with her taut black hair, her brown skin and little gasps? Had her husband beaten her? Was she still thinking of him? Or had she found a new lover, as he had found a new woman today? How fast things happened, everywhere happiness lay in one's path, how beautiful and hot it was, and how strangely transitory! This was a sin, adultery. Not so long ago he would have died rather than commit this sin. And now a second woman was waiting to come to him and his conscience was calm and serene; not so calm perhaps, but neither adultery nor lust were troubling and burdening it. Rather a feeling of guilt for some crime one had not committed but had brought along with one into the world. Perhaps this was what theology called original sin? It might well be. Yes, life itself bore something of guilt within it—why else had a man as pure and aware as Narcissus subjected himself to penance like a condemned felon? And why did he, himself, feel this guilt somewhere deep inside him? Was he not a happy, healthy young man, free as a bird in the sky? Was he not loved by women? Was it not beautiful to feel allowed to give the woman the same profound joy she gave him? Then why was he not fully, not completely happy? Why did this strange pain penetrate his young joy, as it penetrated Narcissus's virtue and wisdom, this subtle fear, this grief over the transitory? Why was he made to muse like this, every so often, to think, when he knew he was no thinker?

Still, it was beautiful to be alive. He plucked a small purple flower in the grass, held it to his eyes and peered into the tiny, narrow chalice; veins ran through it, hair-thin tiny organs lived there; life pulsated there and desire trembled, just as in a woman's womb, in a thinker's brain. Why did one know so little? Why could one not speak with this flower? But then, even human beings were hardly able to speak to each other. Even there one had to be lucky, find a special friendship, a readiness. No, it was fortunate that love did not need words; or else it would be full of misunderstanding and foolishness. Ah, how Lise's half-closed eyes had looked almost blind at the height of ecstasy; only the white had shown through the slits of twitching lids—ten thousand learned or lyrical words could not express it! Nothing, ah, nothing at all could be expressed—and yet, again and again one felt the urge to speak, the urge to think.

He studied the leaves of the tiny plant; how daintily, with what strange intelligence they were arranged around the stem. Virgil's verses were beautiful, and he loved them; still, there was more than one verse in Virgil that was not half as clear and intelligent, beautiful and meaningful as the spiraled order of those tiny leaves climbing the stem. What pleasure, what ecstasy, what a delightful, noble, meaningful task it would be for a man to be able to create just one such flower! But no man was able to do that—no hero, no emperor, no pope or saint!

When the sun had sunk low, he got up and found the place the farmer's wife had indicated. There he waited. It was beautiful to be waiting like this, knowing that the woman was on her way, bringing him so much love.

She arrived, carrying a linen cloth in which she had tied a chunk of bread and a piece of lard. She unknotted it and laid it out before him.

"For you," she said. "Eat!"

"Later," he said. "I'm not hungry for bread, I'm hungry for you. Oh, let me see the beautiful things you've brought me."

She had brought him a great many beautiful things: strong thirsty lips, strong gleaming teeth, strong arms that were red from the sun, but on the inside, below the neck and further down she was white and delicate. She didn't know many words but made a sweet, luring sound in her throat, and when she felt his hands on her, his delicate, gentle hands so full of feeling, the like of which she had never felt before, her skin shivered and her throat made sounds like the purring of a cat. She knew few games, fewer games than Lise, but she was wonderfully strong; she squeezed as though she wanted to break her lover's neck. Her love was childlike and greedy, simple and still chaste in all its strength; Goldmund was very happy with her.

Then she left, sighing. With difficulty, she tore herself away, because she could not stay. Goldmund remained alone, happy as well as sad. Only much later did he remember the bread and the lard and ate it in solitude. Now it was completely dark.

8

Goldmund had been walking for quite some time; he rarely spent two nights in the same place. Everywhere women desired him and made him happy. He was dark from the sun and thin with walking and frugal meals. Many women said farewell in the early hours of the morning, and left him, some in tears. Occasionally he thought: "Why doesn't one of them stay with me? Why, if they love me and commit adultery for the sake of a single night of love—why do they all run back to their husbands immediately afterwards, even though most of them are afraid of being beaten?" Not one had seriously begged him to stay, not one had asked him to take her along, had loved him enough to share the joys and hardships of his wandering life. Of course he had never asked that of them, had never even hinted at it to any of them, and, when he questioned his heart, he knew that he cherished his freedom. He could not remember a single woman for whom he had not stopped longing in the arms of the next. Still, it seemed a little odd and sad that love had to be so extremely short-lived wherever he went, his own love as well as that of the women, and that it was satiated as rapidly as it was kindled. Was that how it should be? Was that how it was always and everywhere? Or was it because of him: was he perhaps fashioned in such a way that women thought him desirable and beautiful but did not wish to be with him longer than the brief, wordless span in the hay or on the moss? Was it because he lived a wanderer's life, because the settled have a terror of the homeless? Or was it solely because of something in himself, because of him as a person? Did women desire him as they desired a pretty doll, to hug to their hearts, only to run back to their husbands afterwards, in spite of the beatings that awaited them? He couldn't tell.

He did not grow tired of learning from women. Actually he felt more drawn to girls, to the very young, as yet without husbands, who knew nothing. With them he could fall in love longingly. But most young girls were out of reach; they were the cherished ones, timid and well protected. But he also enjoyed learning from the women. Every one left him something, a gesture, a way of kissing, a particular play, her own special way of giving herself, of holding back. Goldmund gave in to everything; he was as insatiable and pliable as a child, open to every seduction: and only for that reason was he so seductive. His beauty alone would not have been enough to draw women to him so easily; it was his childlike openness, the inquisitive innocence of his desire, his absolute readiness for anything a woman might wish of him. Without knowing it, he was to each woman the lover she had wished for and dreamed of: delicate and patient with one, fast and greedy with another, a boy who experiences love for the first time, or again artful and knowing. He was ready to play, to wrestle, to sigh and laugh, to be chaste, to be shameless; he did nothing but what the woman desired, nothing that she did not prompt him to do. This was what any woman with intelligent senses soon perceived in him, and it made him their darling.

All the time he was learning. In a short time he learned many kinds of love, many arts of love, absorbed the experiences of many women. He also learned to see women in their multiplicity, how to feel, to touch, to smell them. His ear grew sensitive to every tone of voice; with certain women a certain tone infallibly told him the type and scope of their amorous capacities. With unending delight he observed their infinite variety: how the head was fastened to the neck, how the forehead emerged from the roots of the hair, the movement of a knee. He learned to tell one type of hair from another in the dark, eyes closed, with discreetly probing fingers, one kind of skin, of down, from another. Quite soon he began to notice that the purpose of his wandering lay, perhaps, in this distinguishing, that he was perhaps driven from woman to woman in order to learn and exercise this gift of recognizing and differentiating still more subtly, more profoundly, with greater variation. Perhaps his destiny was to learn to know women and to learn love in a thousand ways, until he reached perfection, the way some musicians were able to play not only one, but three, four, or a great number of instruments. But to what purpose he knew not, nor where it would lead him; he merely felt that this was his road. He had been able to learn Latin and logic without being particularly gifted for either—but he was gifted for love, for this game with women. Here he had no difficulty learning; he never forgot a thing. Here experience accumulated and classified itself.

Goldmund had been walking the roads for a year or two when he came to the homestead of a prosperous knight who had two beautiful young daughters. It was early autumn; soon the nights would be getting cool. He had had a taste of cold weather during the last autumn and winter and he was worried about the months ahead; wandering was difficult in winter. He asked for food and a bed for the night, was received with courtesy, and when the knight heard that he had studied Greek, he called him away from the servants' table and over to his own and treated him almost as an equal. The daughters kept their eyes cast down. The older was eighteen; the younger just sixteen: Lydia and Julie.

The next day Goldmund wanted to continue on his road. He could not hope to win one of these beautiful blond young ladies, and there were no other women who might have enticed him to stay. But after breakfast the knight drew him aside and led him to a room furnished for a special purpose. Modestly the old man told the young one of his weakness for learning and books, and showed him a small chest filled with scrolls he had collected, a writing desk he had had built for himself, and a stock of the most exquisite paper and parchment. By and by Goldmund learned that this pious knight had been a scholar in his youth but had completely abandoned his studies for the sake of warfare and worldly affairs until, during a grave illness, God had prompted him to go on a pilgrimage and repent the sins of his youth. He had traveled as far as Rome and Constantinople, had found his father dead upon his return, the house empty, had settled down then and married, lost his wife, raised his daughters, and now, at the beginning of old age, he had begun to write a detailed account of his long-past pilgrimage. He had written several chapters, but—as he confessed to the young man—his Latin was somewhat faulty; it held him up constantly. He offered Goldmund new clothes and free shelter if he agreed to correct and copy out all that had been written so far, and also to help him complete the book.

Goldmund knew the realities of wandering in the cold, nor were new clothes to be scorned either. But most of all the young man enjoyed the prospect of staying in the same house with the two beautiful sisters for many months to come. Without another thought, he said yes. A few days later the housekeeper was asked to unlock the wardrobe, and in it they found a bolt of fine brown cloth, from which a suit and cap were ordered for Goldmund. The knight had fancied black, a kind of scholar's gown, but his guest would not hear of it and knew how to coax until a handsome-looking outfit, half that of a page, half that of a huntsman, was made for him. It suited him well.

His Latin was not too rusty either. Together they went over all that had been written. Goldmund not only corrected the many imprecise, faulty expressions; he also rounded out the knight's clumsy, short sentences here and there and made them into pleasing Latin constructions, with solid grammar and neat, consecutive tenses. It gave the knight great pleasure and he was not stingy with praise. Every day they worked at least two hours.

Goldmund had no trouble passing his time in the castle—which was in reality a spacious, fortified farmhouse. He went hunting, and huntsman Heinrich taught him how to use a crossbow; he made friends with the dogs and was allowed to ride as much as he pleased. He was rarely alone; he'd either be talking to a dog, or a nag, or to Heinrich, or Lea, the housekeeper, a fat old woman with a man's voice who liked a laugh and a jest, or the kennel boy, or a shepherd. It would have been easy for him to start a love intrigue with the miller's wife who lived close by, but he held himself aloof and played innocent.

He took great joy in the knight's two daughters. The younger was the more beautiful, but so prim she hardly spoke to Goldmund. He treated both of them with great respect and courtesy, but both felt his presence to be a continuous courtship. The younger one shut herself off completely, stubborn with shyness. Lydia, the older, found a special tone for him, treated him with a mixture of respect and mockery, as though he were a monster of learning. She asked him many curious questions, and also about his life in the cloister, but there was always a slight irony in her tone, and the superiority of the lady. He gave in to everything, treated Lydia like a lady and Julie like a little nun, and whenever his conversation detained the girls a little longer than usual at the table after meals, or if Lydia spoke to him outside the house, in the yard or in the garden, and permitted herself to tease him, he was content and felt that he was making progress.

That autumn the leaves stayed late on the tall ash in the courtyard and there were still asters in the garden, and roses. One day visitors arrived. A neighbor with his wife and horseman came riding in; the mildness of the day had tempted them to travel farther than usual. Now they were there and asked shelter for the night. They were courteously received; Goldmund's bed was moved out of the guest room into the writing room; his room was made up for the visitors, chickens were killed, servants ran to the millpond to get fish. With pleasure Goldmund took part in the festivities and the excitement; he immediately felt the unknown lady's awareness of him. And as soon as he noticed her interest in him and her desire, by a certain something in her voice and in her eyes, he also noticed with growing interest how changed Lydia was, how silent and remote she became and how she sat watching him and the unknown lady. During the elaborate dinner the lady's foot came to play with Goldmund's under the table; he took great delight in this game, but still greater delight in the brooding, silent tension with which Lydia watched it, with inquisitive, burning eyes. Finally he dropped a knife on purpose, bent down to reach for it under the table and touched the lady's foot and calf with a caressing hand. He saw Lydia turn pale and bite her lip as he continued to tell anecdotes from his cloister days and felt the unknown lady listen intently, not so much to his stories as to the wooing in his voice. The others, too, sat listening, his master with benevolence, the guest with a stony face, although he, too, was affected by the fire that burned in the young man. Lydia had never heard him speak this way. He had blossomed, lust hung in the air, his eyes shone, ecstasy sang in his voice, love pleaded. The three women felt it, each in her own fashion: little Julie with violent resistance and rejection, the knight's wife with radiant satisfaction, and Lydia with a painful commotion in her heart, a mixture of deep longing, soft resistance, and the most violent jealousy, which made her face look narrow and her eyes burn. Goldmund felt all these waves. Like secret answers to his courtship they came flooding back to him. Like birds, thoughts of love fluttered about him, giving in, resisting, fighting each other.

After the meal Julie withdrew; night had long since fallen; with her candle in a clay candlestick, she left the hall, frigid as a little cloister woman. The others stayed up for another hour, and while the two men discussed the harvest, the emperor, and the bishop, Lydia listened ardently to the idle chatter that was being spun between Goldmund and the unknown lady, among the loose threads of which a thick sweet net of give and take, of glances and intonations and small gestures had come into being, each one overcharged with meaning, overheated with desire. Greedily the girl drank in the atmosphere, but also felt disgust when she saw, or sensed, Goldmund touch the unknown lady's knee under the table. She felt the contact on her own flesh and gave a start. Afterwards she could not fall asleep and lay listening half the night, with pounding heart, sure that the two would come together. In her imagination she performed what was denied them, saw them embrace, heard their kisses, trembling with excitement all the while, wishing as much as fearing that the betrayed knight might surprise the lovers and sink his knife into the odious Goldmund's heart.

The next morning the sky was overcast, a wet wind blew, the guests declined all urging to stay longer and insisted on immediate departure. Lydia stood by while the guests mounted. She shook hands and spoke words of farewell, but she was not aware of what she was doing. All her senses were focused in her eyes as she watched the knight's wife place her foot in Goldmund's proffered hands, watched his right hand wrap around the shoe, wide and firm, and clutch the woman's foot forcefully for an instant.

The strangers had ridden off; Goldmund was in the study, working. Half an hour later he heard Lydia's voice giving orders under the window, heard a horse being led from the stable. His master stepped to the window, looking down, smiling, shaking his head. Then both watched Lydia ride out of the courtyard. They seemed to be making less progress in their Latin composition today. Goldmund was distracted; with a friendly word, his master released him earlier than usual.

No one saw Goldmund sneak a horse out of the courtyard. He rode against the cool wet wind into the discolored landscape, galloping faster and faster; he felt the horse grow warm under him, felt his own blood catch fire. He rode through the gray day, across stubble fields, heath, and swampy spots overgrown with shave grass and reeds, breathed deeply, crossed small valleys of alder, rotting pine forest, and once again brownish, bare heath.

On the high ridge of a hill, sharply outlined against the pale gray, cloudy sky, he saw Lydia's silhouette, sitting high on her slowly trotting horse.

He raced toward her; she saw that he was following her and spurred her horse and fled. She would appear and then disappear, her hair flowing behind her. He gave chase as though she were a fox; his heart laughed. With brief, tender calls he encouraged his horse, scanned the landscape with happy eyes as he flew past low-crouching fields, an alder forest, maples, the clay-covered banks of ponds. Again and again his eyes returned to his target, to the beautiful, fleeing woman. Soon he would catch up with her.

When Lydia saw that he was close, she abandoned the race and let her horse walk. She did not turn her head to look at her pursuer. Proudly, apparently casually, she trotted ahead of him as though nothing had happened, as though she were alone. He pushed his horse up to hers; the two horses walked gently side by side, but the animals and their riders were hot from the chase.

"Lydia!" he called softly.

There was no answer.

"Lydia!"

She remained silent.

"How beautiful that was, Lydia, to watch you ride from a distance, your hair trailing after you like a golden flash of lightning. That was so beautiful! How wonderful of you to flee from me. That's when I realized that you care for me a little. I didn't know, I doubted until last night. But when you tried to flee from me suddenly, I understood. You must be tired, my beauty, my love, let's dismount."

He jumped from his horse, seizing the reins of her horse in the same motion to keep her from galloping off once more. Her snow-white face looked down at him. As he lifted her from her saddle, she broke into tears. Carefully he led her a few steps, made her sit down in the wilted grass, and knelt beside her. There she sat, fighting her sobs. She fought bravely and overcame them.

"Oh, why are you so bad?" she began when she was able to speak. She could hardly utter the words.

"Am I so bad?"

"You are a seducer of women, Goldmund. Let me forget those words you said to me; they were impudent words; it does not become you to speak to me that way. How can you imagine that I care for you? Let us forget that! But how am I to forget the things I was forced to see last night?"

"Last night? But what did you see last night?"

"Oh, stop pretending, don't lie like that! It was horrible and shameless, the way you played up to that woman under my eyes! Have you no shame? You even stroked her leg under the table, under our table! Before me, under my eyes! And now that she's gone, you come chasing after me. You really don't know what shame means."

Goldmund had long since regretted the words he had said before lifting her off her horse. How stupid of him; words were unnecessary in love; he should have kept silent.

He said no more. He knelt by her side; she looked at him, so beautiful and unhappy that her misery became his misery; he, too, felt that there was something to be deplored. But in spite of all she had said, he still saw love in her eyes, and the pain on her quivering lips was also love. He believed her eyes more than he believed her words.

But she had expected an answer. As it was not forthcoming, Lydia's lips took on an even more bitter expression. She looked at him somewhat tearfully and repeated: "Have you really no shame?"

"Forgive me," he said humbly. "We're talking about things that should not be talked about. It is my fault, forgive me. You ask if I have no shame. Yes, I have shame. But I also love you, and love knows nothing of shame. Don't be angry with me."

She seemed hardly to hear him. She sat with a bitter mouth, looking into the distance, as though she were alone. He had never been in such a situation. This was the result of using words.

Gently he laid his face against her knee; immediately the contact made things better. Yet he felt a little confused and sad, and she too seemed to be sad. She sat motionless, saying nothing, looking into the distance. All this embarrassment and sadness! But the knee accepted his leaning cheek with friendliness; it did not reject him. Eyes closed, his face lay on her knee; slowly it took in the knee's noble shape. With joy and emotion Goldmund thought how much this knee with its distinguished youthful form corresponded to her long, beautiful, neatly rounded fingernails. Gratefully he embraced the knee, let his cheek and mouth speak to it.

Now he felt her hand posing itself bird-light and fearful on his hair. Dear hand, he could feel her softly, childishly stroke his hair. Many times before, he had examined her hand in great detail and admired it; he knew it almost as well as his own, the long, slender fingers with their long, beautifully rounded pink nails. Now the long, delicate fingers were having a timid conversation with his curls. Their language was childlike and fearful, but it was love. Gratefully he nestled his head into her hand, feeling her palm with his neck, with his cheeks.

Then she said: "It's time, we must go."

He raised his head and looked at her tenderly. Gently he kissed her slender fingers.

"Please, get up," she said. "We must go home."

He obeyed instantly. They stood up, mounted, rode.

Goldmund's heart was filled with joy. How beautiful Lydia was, how like a child, pure and delicate! He had not even kissed her, and yet he felt so showered with gifts by her, and fulfilled. They rode briskly.

Only at their arrival a few yards before the entrance to the court she grew fearful and said: "We shouldn't have both come back at the same time. How foolish we are!" And at the last moment, while they dismounted and a servant came running, she whispered quickly and hotly in his ear: "Tell me if you were with that woman last night!" He shook his head many times and began unsaddling the horse.

In the afternoon, after her father had gone out, she appeared in the study.

"Is it really true?" she asked at once and with passion. He knew what she meant.

"But then, why did you play with her like that, in that disgusting fashion, and make her fall in love with you?"

"That was for you," he said. "Believe me, I would have a thousand times rather caressed your foot than hers. But your foot never came to me under the table; it never asked me if I loved you."

"Do you really love me, Goldmund?"

"Yes, indeed."

"But what will happen?"

"I don't know, Lydia. Nor do I worry about it. It makes me happy to love you. I don't think of what will happen. I am happy when I see you ride, and when I hear your voice, and when your fingers caress my hair. I'll be happy when you'll allow me to kiss you."

"A man is only allowed to kiss his bride, Goldmund. Have you never thought of that?"

"No, I've never thought of that. Why should I? You know as well as I that you cannot become my bride."

"That's true. And since you cannot become my husband and stay with me forever, it was very wrong of you to speak to me about love. Did you think that you would be able to seduce me?"

"I thought and believed nothing, Lydia. I think much less than you imagine, I wish nothing except that you might wish to kiss me. We talk so much. Lovers don't do that. I think you don't love me."

"This morning you said just the opposite."

"And you did just the opposite!"

"I? What do you mean?"

"First you fled before me when you saw me. That's when I thought that you loved me. Then you cried, and I thought that was because you loved me. Then my head lay on your knee and you caressed me, and I thought that was love. But now you're not behaving in a loving manner with me."

"I'm not like that woman whose foot you stroked yesterday. You seem to be accustomed to women like that."

"No, thank God you're much more beautiful and refined than she is."

"That's not what I meant."

"Oh, but it's true. Don't you know how beautiful you are?"

"I have a mirror."

"Have you ever looked at your forehead in the mirror, Lydia? And at your shoulders, at your fingernails, at your knees? And have you ever noticed how each part blends into and rhymes with each part, how they all have the same shape, an elongated, taut, firm, very slender shape? Have you noticed that?"

"The way you talk! I've never noticed that, actually, but now that you say it, I do know what you mean. Listen, you really are a seducer. Now you're trying to make me vain."

"What a shame that I can do nothing right with you. Why should I be interested in making you vain? You're beautiful and I'd like to try to show you that I'm grateful for your beauty. You force me to tell you with words; I could say it a thousand times better without words. With words I can give you nothing! With words I can't learn from you, nor you from me."

"What is there for me to learn from you?"

"For me from you, Lydia, and for you from me. But you don't want to. You only want to love the man whose bride you'll be. He'll laugh when he discovers that you haven't learned anything, not even how to kiss."

"So you wish to give me kissing lessons, you learned man?"

He smiled at her. He didn't like her words, but he could sense her girlhood from behind her slightly brusque, false-ringing talk, could sense desire taking possession of her and fear fighting against it.

He gave no answer. He smiled at her, caught her restless glance in his eyes, and while she surrendered to the spell, not without resistance, he slowly brought his face close to hers until their lips met. Gently he brushed her mouth; it answered with a little childlike kiss and opened, as though in painful surprise, when he did not let it go. Gently courting, he followed her retreating mouth until it hesitatingly came back to meet his and then he taught the spellbound girl without violence the receiving and giving of a kiss, until, exhausted, she pressed her face against his shoulder. There he let it rest, smelled with delight her thick blond hair, murmured tender, calming sounds into her ear and remembered how he, an ignorant pupil, had once been introduced to the secret by Lise, the gypsy. How black her hair had been, how brown her skin, how the sun had burned down on him, how the wilting John's-wort had smelled! And how far back it was, from what distance it came flashing across his memory. That was how fast everything wilted, it had hardly time to bloom!

Slowly Lydia stood up straight, her face was transformed, her loving eyes looked large and earnest.

"Let me go, Goldmund," she said. "I've stayed with you so long, my love."

Every day they found their secret hour, and Goldmund let himself be guided in everything by her. This girlish love touched and delighted him most wonderfully. Sometimes she'd only hold his hand in hers for a whole hour and look into his eyes and depart with a child's kiss. Other times, on the contrary, she'd kiss him insatiably but would not permit him to touch her. Once, deeply blushing and struggling with herself, she let him see one of her breasts, with the intention of giving him a great joy; timidly she brought the small white fruit out of her dress; he knelt and kissed it and she carefully covered it up again, still blushing all the way down to her neck. They also spoke, but in a new way, differently than on the first day. They invented names for each other; she liked to tell him about her childhood, her dreams and games. She also often said that her love was wrong since he could not marry her; sadly and with resignation she spoke of it and draped her love with the secrecy of this sadness as with a black veil.

For the first time Goldmund felt not only desired by a woman but loved.

Once Lydia said: "You are so handsome and you look so happy. But deep inside your eyes there is no gaiety, there is only sorrow, as though your eyes knew that happiness did not exist and that all that is beautiful and lovely does not stay with us long. You have the most beautiful eyes of anyone I know, and the saddest. I think that that's because you're homeless. You came to me out of the woods, and one day you'll go off again and sleep on moss and walk the roads. —But where is my home? When you go away, I'll still have my father and my sister and my room and a window where I can sit and think of you; but I'll no longer have a home."

He'd let her talk. Sometimes he'd smile at her words, and sometimes he'd grow sad. He never consoled her with words, only with gentle caresses, only by holding her head against his chest, humming soft, meaningless, magic sounds that nurses hum to comfort children when they cry. Once Lydia said: "I'd really like to know what will become of you, Goldmund. I often think about it. You'll have no ordinary life, and it won't be easy. Oh, I hope you'll do well! Sometimes I think you ought to become a poet, a man who has visions and dreams and knows how to describe them beautifully. Ah, you'll wander over the whole world and all women will love you, and yet you'll always remain alone. You'd better go back to the cloister to your friend of whom you've told me so much! I'll pray for you that you will not be made to die alone in the forest."

She'd speak that way, in deep earnest, with lost eyes. But then again she'd ride laughingly with him across the late-autumn land or ask him funny riddles, or throw dead leaves and shiny acorns at him.

One night Goldmund was lying in his bed in his room, waiting for sleep. His heart was heavy with a soft pain; full and heavy it was beating in his chest, brimming over with love, and with grief; he didn't know what to do. He heard the November wind rattle at the roof; he had grown accustomed to lying like that for quite some time before falling asleep; sleep would not come. Softly, as was his custom in the evening, he intoned a chant to the Virgin:

tu advocata peccatorum!

et macula originalis non est in te.

Tu laetitia Israel,

tu advocata peccatorum!

With its soft music the song sank into his soul, but at the same time the wind sang outside, a song of strife and wandering, of wood, autumn, of the life of the homeless. He thought of Lydia and of Narcissus and of his mother. Full and heavy was his restless heart.

Suddenly he started and stared, not believing. The door of his room had opened, in the dark a figure in a long white gown came in; soundlessly Lydia came walking on bare feet across the stone floor, gently closed the door, and sat down on his bed.

"Lydia," he whispered, "my little doe, my white flower! Lydia, what are you doing?"

"I've come to you only for an instant," she said. "Just once I wanted to see my Goldmund in his bed, my goldheart."

She lay down beside him, they didn't move, their hearts were beating heavily. She let him kiss her, let his admiring hands play with her body, but more was not permitted. After a short while she gently pushed his hands away, kissed him on the eyes, got up soundlessly, and vanished. The door creaked, the wind tinkled and thumped in the attic. Everything was under a spell, full of secrecy and anguish, promise and menace. Goldmund did not know what he was thinking, what he was doing. When he woke again after a troubled slumber, his pillow was wet with tears.

A few nights later she came back, the sweet white ghost, lay down beside him for fifteen minutes, as she had the last time. In whispers she spoke into his ear as she lay folded in his arms. She had much to tell, much to complain about. Tenderly he listened; she was lying on his left arm; his right hand caressed her knees.

"Little Goldmouth," she said in a completely muffled voice near his cheek, "it is so sad that I may never belong to you. Our small happiness won't last much longer, our small secret. Julie is already suspicious; soon she'll force me to tell her. Or my father will notice. If he found me here in your bed, my little golden bird, your Lydia would fare ill; with tear-swollen eyes she would stand and look up to the trees to see her lover hang high up there, swaying in the wind. Oh, you had better run away, right now would be best, rather than let my father have you bound and hanged. I saw a man hanged once, a thief. I could not bear to see you hanged. You had better run away and forget me; I don't want you to die, my golden one, I don't want the birds to hack out your blue eyes! Oh no, my treasure, you must not go away. Ah, what am I to do if you leave me all alone?"

"Won't you come with me, Lydia? We'll flee together, the world is wide!"

"That would be wonderful," she sighed, "oh, so wonderful to wander into the world with you! But I can't. I can't sleep in the forest and be homeless and have straw in my hair, I can't do that. Nor can I bring such shame upon my father. No, don't speak, that's not just my imagination. I can't. I couldn't do it any more than eat off a dirty plate or sleep in a leper's bed. Ah, everything good and beautiful is forbidden us, we were both born for sadness. My golden one, my poor little boy, I should have to see you hanged after all. And I, I'll be locked up in my room and later sent to a convent. You must leave me, sweetheart, and sleep with the gypsies again and the peasant women. Oh, leave, go before they catch you and bind you! We'll never be happy, never!"

Softly he stroked her knee, touched her sex very delicately, and begged: "My little flower, we could be so very happy. Won't you let me?"

Not angrily but firmly she pushed his hand aside and drew away slightly.

"No," she said, "no, I won't let you. It is forbidden me. Perhaps you can't understand that, you little gypsy. I am doing wrong, I'm a bad girl, I'm bringing shame upon the whole house. But somewhere inside my soul I still have pride, and nobody may enter there. You must let me keep that, or else I can never again come to your room."

He would never have ignored an interdiction, a wish, a hint from her. He himself was surprised that she had so much power over him. But he was suffering. His senses remained stirred up, often his heart fought violently against his dependence. Sometimes he made efforts to free himself. Sometimes he'd court little Julie with elaborate flattery, and it was indeed most important to remain on good terms with this powerful person and to dupe her if possible. He had a strange relationship with this little Julie, who often behaved like a child and often seemed omniscient. She really had more beauty than Lydia, an extraordinary beauty which, combined with her somewhat precocious child-innocence, was a great attraction for Goldmund; he was often deeply in love with Julie. In this strong attraction he felt for the little sister, he recognized with surprise the difference between loving and desiring. In the beginning he had looked at both sisters with the same eyes, had found both desirable, but Julie more beautiful and seductive, had courted both equally, always kept an eye on both. And now Lydia had gained this power over him! Now he loved her so much that he had even renounced full possession of her, out of love. Her soul had become familiar and dear to him. In its childlike tenderness and inclination to sadness it seemed similar to his own. He was often deeply astonished and delighted to see how much her own soul corresponded to her body; she'd do something, say something, express a wish or an opinion, and her words and the attitude of her soul were molded in the same shape as the slant of her eyes and the form of her fingers.

These instants during which he thought he recognized the basic forms and laws that constituted her being, her soul as well as her body, had more than once roused in Goldmund the desire to retain something of this form and to re-create it. On a few sheets of paper that he kept most secret, he had made several attempts to draw from memory the outline of her head with the strokes of a pen—the line of her eyebrows, her hand, her knee.

With young Julie the situation was becoming rather difficult. She obviously sensed the wave of love in which her older sister was swimming, and her senses turned toward this paradise with curiosity and greed, while her stubborn mind refused to admit it. She treated Goldmund with exaggerated coolness and dislike. Yet, during moments of forgetfulness, she'd watch him with admiration and desiring curiosity. With Lydia she was often most tender, and occasionally even came to visit her in her bed, to breathe in the atmosphere of love and sex with wordless greed, purposely brushing against the forbidden and longed-for secret. Then again she'd make clear with almost offensive brusqueness that she knew of Lydia's secret transgression and felt contempt for it.

Attractive and disturbing, the beautiful, capricious child flittered between the two lovers, tasted of love's secrecy in thirsty dreams, played innocent, and then again dangerously knowing. The child rapidly gained a kind of power over them. Lydia suffered from it more than Goldmund, who rarely saw the younger sister except during meals. And Lydia also realized that Goldmund was not insensitive to Julie's charms; sometimes she'd see his appreciative, delighted eyes gazing at her. She could not say anything about it, everything was so complicated, so filled with danger. Julie must especially not be offended or angered; alas, any day, any hour the secret of her love could be discovered and an end put to her heavy, anguished bliss, perhaps a dreadful end.

Sometimes Goldmund asked himself why he had not left long ago. It was difficult to live the way he was now living: loved, but without hope for either a sanctioned, lasting happiness, or the easy fulfillments to which his love desires had been accustomed until now. His senses were constantly excited and hungry, never stilled; moreover, he lived in permanent danger. Why was he staying and accepting it all, all these entanglements and confused emotions? These were experiences, emotions, and states of mind for the sedentary, the lawful, for people in heated rooms. Had he not the right of the homeless, of the nonpossessing, to extricate himself from these delicate complications and to laugh at them? Yes, he had that right, and he was a fool to look for a kind of home here and to be paying for it with so much suffering, so much embarrassment. And yet he did. He not only put up with it, but was secretly happy to do so. It was foolish, difficult, a strain to live this way, but it was also wonderful. The darkly beautiful sadness of his love was wonderful, in its foolishness and hopelessness; his sleepless, thought-filled nights were beautiful; it was all as beautiful and delectable as the fold of suffering on Lydia's lips, or like the lost, resigned tone of her voice when she spoke of her love and sorrow. In a few weeks, lines of suffering had appeared on Lydia's young face. It seemed so beautiful and so important to him to retrace the lines of this face with a pen, and he felt he himself had become another person in these few weeks: much older; not more intelligent, yet more experienced; not happier, yet much more mature, much richer in his soul. He was no longer a boy.

In her gentle, lost voice Lydia said to him: "You mustn't be sad, not because of me; I want to bring you only joy, to see you happy. Forgive me, I've made you sad, I've infected you with my fears and my grief. I have such strange dreams at night: I'm always walking in a desert, it is vast and dark, I can't tell you how vast and dark, and I walk there, looking for you, but you're not there and I know that I have lost you and that I will have to walk like that forever and ever, alone like that. Then I wake up and think: oh, how good, how wonderful that he's still here, that I'll see him, perhaps for many weeks more, or days, it doesn't matter, it only matters that he's still here!"

One morning Coldmund awoke shortly after dawn and continued to lie in his bed for a while, musing. Images from a dream hovered about him, disconnected. He had dreamed of his mother and of Narcissus; he could still see both figures clearly. As he extricated himself from the strands of the dream, a peculiar light caught his attention, a strange kind of brightness was filtering through the small window. He jumped up, ran to the window, and saw that the windowsill, the roof of the stable, the gate to the courtyard, the entire landscape beyond was shimmering bluish-white, covered by the first snow of winter. He was struck by the contrast between his agitated heart and the quiet, resigned winter landscape: how quiet, how gracefully and piously field and forest, hill and heath gave in to sun, wind, rain, draft and snow, how beautifully and gently maple and ash bore the burden of winter! Could one not become as they, could one learn nothing from them? Deep in thought, he walked out to the courtyard, waded in the snow, touched it with his hands, went into the garden and looked over the high, snow-covered fence at the snow-bent rose branches.

As they ate their gruel for breakfast, everybody mentioned the first snow. Everyone—even the girls—had already been outside. Snow had come late this year, Christmas was not far off. The knight spoke about the lands to the south that were strangers to snow. But the event that made this first winter day unforgettable for Goldmund occurred long after nightfall.

The two sisters had quarreled during the day, but Goldmund knew nothing of it. At night, after the house had grown quiet and dark, Lydia came to his room in accord with her custom. Wordlessly she lay down beside him, leaned her head against his chest to hear his heartbeat and to console herself with his nearness. She was sad and full of apprehension; she feared that Julie might betray her; yet she could not make up her mind to speak to her lover about it and to cause him sorrow. She was lying quietly against his heart, listening to the tender words he whispered to her from time to time, feeling his hand in her hair.

But suddenly—she had not been lying there for very long—she had a terrible shock and sat up, her eyes growing wide. Goldmund was also greatly frightened when he saw the door of his room open and a figure enter. His shock kept him from recognizing immediately who it was. Only when the apparition stood close beside his bed and bent over it did he recognize with anguish in his heart that it was Julie. She slipped out of the coat she had thrown over her nightgown and let it drop to the floor. With a cry of pain, as though cut by a knife, Lydia sank back and clung to Goldmund.

In a mocking, triumphant, though shaking voice Julie said: "I don't enjoy being in my room by myself all the time. Either you take me in with you, and we lie together all three of us, or I go and wake father."

"Well, come in then," said Goldmund, folding back the cover. "You'll freeze your feet off there." She climbed in and he had trouble making room for her in the narrow bed, because Lydia had buried her face in the pillow and was lying motionless. Finally, all three were in the bed, a girl on each side of Goldmund. For a second he could not resist the thought that not so long ago this situation corresponded to his most secret wishes. With strange anguish and secret delight, he felt Julie's hip against his side.

"I just had to see," she began again, "how it feels to lie in your bed, since my sister enjoys coming here so much."

In order to calm her, Goldmund softly rubbed his cheek against her hair and caressed her hip and knee with a quiet hand, the way one caresses a cat. Silent and curious she surrendered to his probing hand, felt the magic with curious reverence, offered no resistance. But while he cast his spell, he also took pains to comfort Lydia, hummed soft, familiar love sounds into her ear and finally made her lift her face and turn it toward him. Soundlessly he kissed her mouth and eyes, while his hand kept her sister spellbound on the other side. He was aware how embarrassing and grotesque the whole situation was; it was becoming almost unbearable.

It was his left hand that taught him the truth: while it explored the beautiful, quietly waiting body of Julie, he felt for the first time not only the deep hopelessness of his love for Lydia, but how ridiculous it was. While his lips were with Lydia and his hand with Julie, he felt that he should either force Lydia to give in to him, or he should leave. To love her and yet renounce her had been wrong, had been nonsense.

"My heart," he whispered into Lydia's ear, "we are suffering unnecessarily. How happy all three of us could be now! Let us do what our blood demands!"

She drew back, shrinking, and his desire fled to the other girl. His hand was doing such pleasing things to Julie that she answered with a long quivering sigh of lust.

Lydia heard the sigh and her heart contracted with jealousy, as though poison had been dropped into it. She sat up abruptly, tore the cover off the bed, jumped to her feet and cried: "Julie, let's leave!"

Julie was startled. The thoughtless violence of Lydia's cry, which might betray them all, showed her the danger. Silently she got up.

But Goldmund, offended and betrayed in all his senses, quickly put his arms around Julie as she sat up, kissed her on each breast, and hotly whispered into her ear: "Tomorrow, Julie, tomorrow!"

Barefoot, in her nightgown, Lydia stood on the stone floor, her feet blue with cold. She picked up Julie's coat and hung it around her sister with a gesture of suffering and submission that did not escape Julie in spite of the darkness; it touched and reconciled her. Softly the sisters vanished from the room. With conflicting emotions, Goldmund listened intently and breathed with relief as the house remained deathly quiet.

The three young people were forced to meditate in solitude over their strange and unnatural association. The two sisters found nothing to say to each other, after they hurried back to their bedroom. They lay awake in their respective beds, each alone, silent, and stubborn. A spirit of grief, contradiction, nonsense, alienation, and innermost confusion seemed to have taken hold of the house. Goldmund did not fall asleep until after midnight; Julie not until the early hours of morning. Lydia lay torturously awake until the pale day rose over the snow. Then she got up, dressed, knelt for a long time in prayer before the small wooden Saviour in her room, and as soon as she heard her father's step on the stairs went out and asked him to hear her. Without trying to distinguish between her fears for Julie's virginity and her own jealousy, she had decided during the night to put an end to the matter. Goldmund and Julie were still asleep when the knight was informed of everything Lydia had decided to tell him. She did not mention Julie's part in the adventure.

When Goldmund appeared in the writing room at the usual hour that morning, he found the knight in boots, vest, and girdled sword, instead of the slippers and housecoat he usually wore while they wrote. At once he knew the meaning of this.

"Put on your cap," said the knight. "I have a walk to take with you."

Goldmund took his cap from the nail and followed his master down the stairs, across the courtyard, and out the gate. Their soles made crunching noises on the slightly frozen snow; the sky was still red with dawn. The knight walked ahead in silence; the young man followed. Several times he looked back at the house, at the window of his room, at the steep, snow-covered roof, until all disappeared and there was nothing more to see. He would never see that roof, those windows again, never again the study, the bedroom, the two sisters. He had so often toyed with the thought of sudden departure. Now his heart contracted with pain, and it hurt bitterly to leave this way.

For an hour they walked in this fashion, the master going on ahead. Neither spoke, and Goldmund began to think about his fate. The knight was armed; perhaps he would kill him. But he did not believe that he would. The danger was small; he'd only have to run and the old man would stand there helpless with his sword. No, his life was not in danger. But this silent walking behind the offended, solemn man, this being led away wordlessly pained him more with every step. Finally the knight halted.

"From here on," he said in a broken voice, "you will continue alone, always in the same direction, you'll lead the wanderer's life you did before. If you ever show your face again in the neighborhood of my house, you will be killed. I have no desire to take revenge on you; I should have been more intelligent than to allow so young a man to live intimately with my daughters. But if you have the audacity to come back, your life is lost. Go now, and may God forgive you!"

As he stood in the sallow light of the snowy morning, his gray-bearded face looked almost dead. Like a ghost he stood there, and did not move until Goldmund had disappeared over the next ridge. The reddish tint in the cloudy sky had faded, the sun did not come out, and snow began to fall in thin, hesitant flakes.

9

Goldmund knew the area from many previous rides. The knight owned a barn beyond the frozen marsh, and farther on there was a farmhouse where he was known; he'd be able to rest and spend the night in one of those places. Everything else had to wait until tomorrow. Gradually, the feeling of freedom and detachment took hold of him again; he had grown unaccustomed to it. It did not have a pleasant taste on this icy, gloomy winter day; it smelled strongly of hardship, hunger, and want, and yet the vastness of it, its great expanse, its merciless harshness was almost comforting and soothing to his spoiled, confused heart.

He walked until he felt tired. My riding days are over, he thought. Oh, wide world! A little snow was falling. In the distance the edges of the forest fused with gray clouds; infinite silence stretched to the end of the world. What was happening to Lydia, that poor, anguished heart? He felt bitterly sorry for her; he thought of her tenderly as he rested under a bare, lonely ash in the middle of the deserted marshland. Finally the cold drove him on. Stiff-legged, he stood up, forced himself to a brisk pace; the meager light of the drab day already seemed to be dwindling. The slow trot across the bare fields put an end to his musing. It was not a question of thinking now, or of having emotions, no matter how delicate and beautiful; it was now a question of keeping alive, of reaching a spot for the night in time, of getting through this cold, inhospitable world like a marten or a fox, and not giving out too soon, in the open fields. Everything else was unimportant.

He thought he heard the sound of distant hoofs and looked around in surprise. Could anyone be following him? He reached for the small hunting knife in his pocket and slipped off the wooden sheath. The rider became visible; he recognized a horse from the knight's stable; stubbornly it was heading toward him. Fleeing would have been useless. He stopped and waited, without actual fear, but very tense and curious, his heart beating faster. For a second a thought shot through his head: "If I killed this rider, how well off I'd be; I'd have a horse and the world would be mine." But when he recognized the rider, the young stableboy Hans, with his light-blue, watery eyes and the good, embarrassed boy's face, he had to laugh; to murder this good dear fellow, one would have to have a heart of stone. He greeted Hans with a friendly hand and tenderly patted Hannibal, the horse, on its warm, moist neck; it recognized him immediately.

"Where are you headed, Hans?" he asked.

"To you," laughed the boy with shining teeth. "You've run a good distance. I can't stay; I'm only here to give you regards and this."

"Regards from whom?"

"From Lady Lydia. Well, you certainly gave us a nasty day, Master Goldmund, I was glad to get away for a while. But the squire must not know that I've been gone, and with an errand that could cost me my neck. Here!"

He handed him a small package; Goldmund took it.

"I say, Hans, you don't happen to have a piece of bread in one of your pockets that you might give me?"

"Bread? I might find a crust." He rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a piece of black bread. Then he wanted to ride off again.

"How is the lady?" asked Goldmund. "Didn't she give you any message? No little letter?"

"Nothing. I saw her only for a moment. There's a storm at the house, you know; the squire is pacing like King Saul. She told me to give you these things, and nothing else. I've got to get back now."

"All right, all right, just a moment more! Say, Hans, you couldn't let me have your hunting knife? I've only a small one. When the wolves come and all that—it would be better if I had something solid in hand."

But Hans would not hear of that. He'd be very sorry, he said, if something should happen to Master Goldmund. But he could not part with his jackknife, no, never, not for money, nor a swap either, no, no, not even if Saint Genevieve in person asked him for it. There, and now he had to get a move on, and he did wish him well, and he did feel sorry about everything.

They shook hands and the boy rode off. Goldmund looked after him with a strange pain in his heart. Then he unpacked the things, happy to have the strong calf's-leather cord that held them together. Inside he found a knitted undervest of thick gray wool, which apparently Lydia had made for him herself, and there was also something hard, well wrapped in the wool, a piece of ham: a small slit had been cut into the ham and a shiny gold piece had been stuck into the slit. There was no written message. He stood in the snow, undecided, holding Lydia's gifts in his hands. Then he took off his jacket and slipped into the knitted vest; it felt pleasantly warm. Quickly he put his jacket back on, hid the gold piece in his safest pocket, wound the cord around his waist, and continued his walk across the fields. It was time he reached a place to rest; he had grown very tired. But he didn't feel like going to the farmhouse, although it would have been warmer and he'd probably also have found some milk there; he didn't feel like chatting and being asked questions. He spent the night in the barn, continued on his way early the next morning, in frost and sharp wind, driven to long marches by the cold. For many nights he dreamed of the knight with his sword and of the two sisters; for many days loneliness and melancholy weighed on his heart.

The following evening he found a place for the night in a village, where the peasants were so poor they had no bread, only gruel. Here, new adventures awaited him. During the night, the peasant woman whose guest he was gave birth to a child. Goldmund was present while it happened; they had waked him in the straw to come and help, although there was nothing for him to do finally, except hold the light while the midwife went about her business. For the first time he witnessed a birth. With astonished, burning eyes he gazed at the face of the woman in labor, richer suddenly by this new experience. At any rate the expression in the woman's face seemed most remarkable to him. In the light of the torch, as he stared with great curiosity into the face of the screaming woman, lying there in pain, he was struck by something unexpected: the lines in the screaming woman's distorted face were little different from those he had seen in other women's faces during the moment of love's ecstasy. True, the expression of great pain was more violent and disfiguring than the expression of ultimate passion—but essentially it was not different, it was the same slightly grinning contraction, the same sudden glow and extinction. Miraculously, without understanding why, he was surprised by the realization that pain and joy could resemble each other so closely.

And yet another experience awaited him in that village. The morning after the birth, he ran into the neighbors wife, who soon replied to the amorous questioning of his eyes. He stayed a second night and made the woman very happy since it was the first time in many weeks of excitation and disappointment that his desires were finally stilled. This delay led to a new experience: he found a companion on that second day in the village, a lanky, daring fellow named Viktor, who looked half like a priest and half like a highway robber.

Viktor greeted him with scraps of Latin, claiming to be a traveling student, although he was long past his student years. He wore a pointed beard and treated Goldmund with a certain heartiness and highway humor that quickly won the younger man.

To Goldmund's questions, where he had studied and where he was headed, this strange fellow replied: "By my destitute soul, I have visited enough places of high learning. I've been to Cologne and to Paris, and few scholars have expressed deeper thoughts on the metaphysics of liverwurst than I in my dissertation at Leyden. Since then, amicus, I, poor bastard that I am, have crossed and recrossed the German Empire in all directions, my dear soul tortured by immeasurable hunger and thirst. Viktor, the peasant terror, they call me. My profession is teaching Latin to young wives and tricking sausages out of chimneys and into my belly. My goal is the bed of the mayor's wife, and if the crows don't chew me up beforehand, I'll hardly be able to avoid the obligation of dedicating myself to the tiresome profession of archbishop. It is better, my dear young colleague, to live from hand to mouth than the other way round, and, after all, a roasted hare has never felt better than in my humble stomach. The king of Bohemia is my brother, and our father in heaven feeds him as he does me, although he insists that I lend him a hand, and the day before yesterday this father, hardhearted as fathers are, tried to misuse me in order to save the life of a half-starved wolf. If I hadn't killed the beast, you, my dear colleague, would not have the honor of making my fascinating acquaintance. In saecula saeculorum, amen."

Goldmund was still unfamiliar with the gallows humor and wayfaring Latin of this wanderer. He felt a bit scared of the lanky, bristly rascal and the rasping laughter with which he applauded his own jokes, yet there was something about this hard-boiled vagrant that did please him, and he readily let himself be persuaded to continue the journey with him, because, whether the vanquished wolf was boasting or the truth, two were indisputably stronger than one and had less to fear. But before continuing the journey, brother Viktor wanted to speak a bit of Latin to the people, as he called it, and installed himself in the house of one of the poorer peasants. He did not follow the practice Goldmund had so far applied on the road, wherever he had been the guest of a farmhouse or a village; Viktor went from hut to hut, chatted with every woman, stuck his nose into every stable and kitchen, and did not seem willing to leave before each house had paid him a toll and a tribute. He told the peasants about the war in Italy and sang, beside their hearths, the song of the battle of Pavia. He recommended remedies for arthritis and loose teeth to the grandmothers; he seemed to know everything, to have been everywhere. He stuffed his shirt above the belt full to bursting with the pieces of bread, nuts, and dried pears the peasants had given him. With surprise Goldmund watched him wage his campaign, listened to him now frighten, now flatter the people, boast and win their admiration, speak broken Latin and play the scholar, and the next moment impress them with brash, colorful thieves' slang, saw how, in the middle of a tale or learned talk his sharp, watchful eyes recorded every face, every table drawer that was pulled open, every dish, every loaf of bread. He saw that this was a seasoned adventurer who had been exposed to all walks of life, who had seen and lived through much, who had starved a good deal, and shivered, and grown shrewd and impudent in the bitter struggle for a meager, dangerous existence. So this was what became of people who led a wanderer's life for a long time! Would he, too, be like that one day?

The next morning, as they moved on, for the first time Goldmund had a taste of walking in company. For three days they were on the road together, and Goldmund found this and that to learn from Viktor. Applying everything to the three basic needs of the homeless—skirting death, finding a place for the night, and a source of food—had become an instinct with Viktor. He had learned much during the many years of roaming the world. To recognize the proximity of human habitation by almost invisible signs, even in winter; at night, to inspect every nook and cranny in forest or field as a potential resting or sleeping place; to sense instantly, upon entering a room, the degree of prosperity or misery of the owner, as well as the degree of his goodheartedness, or his curiosity, or fear—these were tricks which Viktor had long since mastered. He told his young companion many instructive things. Once Goldmund replied that he would not like to approach people from such a purposeful point of view and that, although he was unfamiliar with all these tricks, he had only rarely been refused hospitality upon his friendly request. Lanky Viktor laughed and said good-humoredly: "Well sure, little Goldmund, you may not have to, you're so young and pretty, you look so innocent, your face is a good recommendation. The women like you and the men think: 'Oh Lord, he's harmless, he wouldn't hurt a fly.' But look here, little brother, a man gets older, the baby face grows a beard and wrinkles, your pants wear out and before you know it you are an ugly, unwelcome guest, and instead of youth and innocence, nothing but hunger is staring out of your eyes. At that point you've got to be hard, you've got to have learned a few things about the world; or else you'll soon find yourself lying on the dung heap and the dogs'll come and pee on you. But I don't think that you'll be running around for too long anyhow, your hands are too delicate and your curls too pretty, you'll crawl back to where life is easier, into a nice warm conjugal bed or a good fat cloister or some beautifully heated writing room. And your clothes are so fine, you could be taken for a squire."

Still laughing, he ran his hands over Goldmund's clothes. Goldmund could feel these hands grope and search along every seam and pocket; he drew back and thought of his gold piece. He told of his stay at the knight's house, that he had earned his fine clothes by writing Latin. Viktor wanted to know why he had left such a warm nest in the middle of winter, and Goldmund, who was not accustomed to lying, told him a little about the knight's two daughters. This led to their first quarrel. Viktor thought Goldmund an incomparable fool for having run off and left the castle and the ladies to the care of the good Lord. That situation had to be remedied, he'd see to that. They'd visit the castle; of course Goldmund could not be seen there, but he should leave that to him. Goldmund was to write a little letter to Lydia, saying this and that, and he, Viktor, would take it to the castle and, by the Saviour's wounds, he would not come back without a little something of this and that, money and loot. And so on. Goldmund refused and finally became violent; he did not want to hear another word about the matter, nor did he tell Viktor the name of the knight or the way to the castle.

When Viktor saw him so angry, he laughed again and played the jovial companion. "Well," he said, "don't bite your teeth out! I'm merely telling you that you're letting a good catch slip through our fingers, my boy. That's not very nice and brotherly of you. But you don't want to, you're a nobleman, you'll return to your castle on a high horse and marry the lady! Boy, your head is bursting with nonsense! Well, it's all right with me, let's walk on and freeze our toes off."

Goldmund remained grumpy and silent until evening, but since they came neither upon a house nor upon people that day, he gratefully let Viktor pick a place for the night, let him build a windbreak between two trees at the edge of the forest and make a bed with an abundance of pine branches. They ate bread and cheese from Viktor's full pockets. Goldmund felt ashamed of his anger and tried to be polite and helpful; he offered his companion his woolen jacket for the night. They agreed to take turns keeping watch against the animals, and Goldmund took over the first vigil while Viktor lay down on the pine branches. For a long time Goldmund stood quietly with his back against a fir trunk in order not to keep the other man from falling asleep. Then he felt cold and began to pace. He ran back and forth at greater and greater distances, saw the tips of firs jut sharply into the pale sky, felt the deep silence of the solemn and slightly awesome winter night, heard his warm living heart beat lonely in the cold, echoless silence, walked quietly back and listened to the breathing of his sleeping companion. More powerfully than ever he was seized by a feeling of homelessness, without a house, castle, or cloister wall between him and the great fear, running naked and alone through the incomprehensible, hostile world, alone under the cool mocking stars, among the watchful animals, the patient, steady trees.

No, he thought, he would never become like Viktor, even if he wandered for the rest of his life. He would never be able to learn Viktor's way of fighting the horror, his sly, thievish squeaking by, his loud brazen jests and wordy humor. Perhaps this shrewd, impudent man was right; perhaps Goldmund would never completely become his equal, never altogether a vagrant. Perhaps he would some day creep back behind some sort of wall. Although even then he would remain homeless and aimless, never feel really safe and protected, the world would always surround him with mysterious beauty and eeriness; again and again he would be made to listen to this silence in which his heartbeat sounded anguished and fleeting. Few stars were visible, there was no wind, but way up high the clouds seemed to be moving.

After a long time Viktor awoke—Goldmund had not felt like waking him—and called to him. "Come," he called, "your turn to catch some sleep, or you'll be no good tomorrow."

Goldmund obeyed; he stretched out on the pine bed and closed his eyes. He was extremely tired but did not fall asleep. His thoughts kept him awake, and something else besides thoughts, a feeling he did not admit to himself, an uneasiness and distrust that had to do with his companion. It was inconceivable to him now that he had told this crude, loud-laughing man, this jester and brazen beggar, about Lydia. He was angry with him and with himself and wondered how he could find a way and an opportunity to get rid of him.

After an hour or so, Viktor bent over him and again began feeling his pockets and seams; Goldmund froze with rage. He did not move, he merely opened his eyes and said disdainfully: "Go away, I have nothing worth stealing."

His words shocked the thief; he grabbed Goldmund by the throat and squeezed. Goldmund fought back and tried to get up, but Viktor pressed harder, kneeling on his chest. Goldmund could hardly breathe. Violently he writhed and jerked with his whole body, and when he could not free himself, the fear of death shot through him and made his mind sharp and lucid. He managed to slip one hand in his pocket, pull out his small hunting knife, and while the other man continued strangling him he thrust the knife several times into the body that was kneeling on him. After a moment, Viktor's hands let go; there was air again and Goldmund breathed it deeply, wildly, savoring his rescued life. He tried to sit up; limp and soft, his lanky companion sank into a heap on top of him with a ghastly sigh. His blood ran over Goldmund's face. Only now was he able to sit up. In the gray shimmer of the night he saw the long man lying in a huddle; he reached out to him and touched only blood. He lifted the man's head; it fell back, heavy and soft like a bag. Blood spilled from his chest and neck; from his mouth life ran out in delirious, weakening sighs.

"Now I have murdered a man," thought Goldmund. Again and again he thought it, as he knelt over the dying man and saw pallor spread over his face. "Dear Mother of God, I have killed a man," he heard himself say.

Suddenly he could not bear to stay a moment longer. He picked up his knife, wiped it across the woolen vest which the other man was wearing, which Lydia's hands had knitted for her beloved; he slipped the knife back into its wooden sheath and into his pocket, jumped up and ran away as fast as he could.

The death of the cheerful wayfarer lay heavy on his soul; shuddering, as the day grew light he washed away in the snow the blood he had spilled; and then he wandered about for another day and another night, aimless and anguished. Finally his body's needs shocked him out of his fear-filled repentance.

Lost in the deserted, snow-covered landscape, without shelter, without a path, without food and almost without sleep, he fell into a bottomless despair. Hunger cried in his belly like a wild beast; several times exhaustion overcame him in the middle of a field. He closed his eyes and thought that his end had come, wished only to fall asleep, to die in the snow. But again and again something forced him back on his feet. Desperately, greedily he ran for his life, delighted and intoxicated in the midst of bitter want by this insane, savage strength of will not to die, by this monstrous force of the naked drive to live. With frost-blue hands he picked tiny, dried-up berries off the snow-covered juniper bushes and chewed the brittle, bitter stuff, together with pine needles. The taste was excitingly sharp; he devoured handfuls of snow against his thirst. Breathless, blowing into his stiff hands, he sat on top of the hill for a brief rest. Avidly he looked about: nothing but heath and forest, no trace of a human being. A few crows circled above him; he looked at them angrily. No, they were not going to feed on him, not as long as there was an ounce of strength left in his legs, a spark of warmth in his blood. He got up and resumed his merciless race with death. He ran on and on, in a fever of exhaustion and ultimate effort. Strange thoughts took hold of him; he held mad conversations with himself, now silent, now loud. He spoke to Viktor, whom he had stabbed to death. Harshly and ironically he spoke to him: "Well, my shrewd brother, how is it with you? Is the moon shining through your bowels, old fellow? Are the foxes pulling your ears? You killed a wolf, you say? Did you bite him through the throat, or tear off his tail, or what? You wanted to steal my gold piece, you old guzzler! But little Goldmouth surprised you, didn't he, old friend, he tickled you in the ribs! And all the while you still had bags full of bread and sausage and cheese, you stuffed pig!" He coughed and barked mockeries; he insulted the dead man, he triumphed over him, he jeered at him because he had let himself be slaughtered, the fool, the stupid braggart!

But after a while his thoughts and words turned away from lanky Viktor. He saw Julie walking ahead of him, beautiful little Julie, as she had left him that night; he called countless endearments to her, tried to seduce her with delirious, shameless cajoleries, to make her come to him, to make her drop her nightgown, to ride up to heaven with him during this last hour before death, for a short moment before his miserable end. He implored and commanded her high little breasts, her legs, the blond kinky hair under her arms.

Trotting through the barren, snow-covered heath with stiff, stumbling legs, drunk with misery, triumphant with the flickering desire to live, he began to whisper. Now it was Narcissus to whom he spoke, to whom he communicated his recent revelations, insights, and ironies.

"Are you scared, Narcissus," he said to him, "are you shuddering, did you notice something? Yes, my respected friend, the world is full of death, full of death. Death sits on every fence, stands behind every tree. Building walls and dormitories and chapels and churches won't keep death out; death looks in through the window, laughing, knowing every one of you. In the middle of the night you hear laughter under your window and someone calls your name. Go ahead, sing your psalms, burn pretty candles at the altar, say your evening prayers and your morning prayers, gather herbs in your laboratory, collect books in your libraries. Are you fasting, dear friend? Are you depriving yourself of sleep? He'll lend you a hand, our old friend the Reaper, he'll strip you to the bones. Run, dear friend, run as fast as you can, death is giving a party in the fields, run and see that your bones stay together, they're trying to escape, they don't want to stay with us. Oh, our poor bones, our poor throat and belly, our poor little scraps of brains under our skulls! It all wants to become free, it all wants to go to the devil, the crows are sitting in the trees, those black-frocked priests."

He had long since lost all sense of direction; he didn't know where he was running, what he was saying, whether he was lying or standing. He stumbled over bushes, ran into trees; falling, he groped for snow and thorns. But the drive was strong in him. Again and again it pulled him forward, spurred his blind flight. When he collapsed for the last time, it was in the same little village in which he had met the wayfaring charlatan a few days earlier, where he had held the torch during the night for the woman who was giving birth. There he lay and people came running and stood about him and talked, yet he did not hear them. The woman whose love he had enjoyed earlier recognized him; she was shocked by the way he looked, and took pity. Let her husband scold her; she dragged the half-dead Goldmund into the stable.

It was not long before he was back on his feet. The warmth of the stable, sleep, and the goat's milk the woman gave him to drink revived him and let him recover his strength; but all recent events had been pushed back in his mind as though much time had passed since they happened. His journey with Viktor, the cold, anguished winter night under the pines, the dreadful struggle on the bed of boughs, his companion's horrible death, the days and nights lost and cold and hungry—it had all become the past. He had almost forgotten it; although it was not wiped out, it had been lived through and was nearly over. Something remained, something inexpressibly horrible but also precious, something drowned and yet unforgettable, an experience, a taste on the tongue, a ring around the heart. In less than two years he had learned all the joys and sorrows of homeless life: loneliness, freedom, the sounds of forests and beasts, wandering, faithless loving, bitter deathly want. For days he had been the guest of the summery fields, of the forest, of the snow, had spent days in fear of death, close to death. Fighting death had been the strongest emotion of all, the strangest, knowing how small and miserable and threatened one was, and yet feeling this beautiful, terrifying force, this tenacity of life inside one during the last desperate struggle. It echoed, it remained etched in his heart, as did the gestures and expressions of ecstasy that so much resembled the gestures and expressions of birth-giving and dying. He remembered how the woman had screamed that night in childbirth, distorting her face; how Viktor had collapsed, how quietly and quickly his blood had run out! Oh, and how he himself had felt death snooping around him on hungry days, and how cold he had been, how cold! And how he had fought, how he had struck death in the face, with what mortal fear, what grim ecstasy he had defended himself! There was nothing more to be lived through, it seemed to him. Perhaps he could talk about it with Narcissus, but with no one else.

When Goldmund first came to his senses on his bed of straw in the stable, he missed the gold piece in his pocket. Had he lost it during the terrible, half-unconscious stumbling march during those final days of hunger? He thought about it for a long time. He had been fond of the gold piece; he did not want to think it lost. Money meant little to him; he hardly knew its value. But this gold piece had become important to him for two reasons. It was the only gift from Lydia that was left him, since the woolen vest was lying in the forest with Viktor, soaked in Viktor's blood. And then, keeping the gold coin had been the reason for defending himself against Viktor; he had murdered Viktor because of it. If the gold piece was lost, the whole experience of that ghastly night would be useless, would have no value. After much thinking about it, he confided in the peasant woman.

"Christine," he whispered to her, "I had a gold piece in my pocket, and now it's no longer there."

"Oh, so you noticed?" she asked with a loving smile that was both sly and clever. It delighted him so much that he put his arm around her in spite of his weakness.

"What a strange boy you are," she said tenderly. "So intelligent and refined, and yet so stupid. Does one run around the world with a loose gold piece in one's open pocket? Oh, you childish boy, you darling fool! I found your gold piece as soon as I laid you down on the straw."

"You did? Where is it?"

"Find it," she laughed and let him search for quite a while before she showed him the spot in his jacket where she had sewed it. She added good motherly advice too, which he quickly forgot, but he never forgot her loving care and the sly-kind look in her peasant face, and he tried hard to show her his gratitude. Soon he was able to walk again and eager to move on, but she held him back because on that day the moon was changing and the weather would be turning milder the next. And so it was. By the time he left, the snow lay soiled and gray, the air was heavy with wetness. High up, one could hear the spring winds groan.

10

Again ice was floating down the rivers, and a scent of violets rose from under the rotten leaves. Goldmund walked through the colorful seasons: his insatiable eyes drank in the forests, the mountains, the clouds; he wandered from farm to farm, from village to village, from woman to woman. Many a cool evening he'd sit anguished, with aching heart, under a lighted window; from its rosy shimmer radiated all that was happiness and home and peace on earth, all that was lovely and unreachable for him. Everything repeated itself over and over, all the things he thought he had come to know so well; everything returned, and yet different each time: the long walks across field and heath, or along stony roads, sleeping in the summer forest, strolls through villages, trailing after bands of young girls coming home, hand in hand, from turning over the hay or gathering hops; the first shudder of autumn, the first angry frosts—everything came back: once, twice, endlessly the colorful ribbon rolled past his eyes.

Much rain, much snow had fallen on Goldmund. One day he climbed uphill through a sparse beech forest already light green with buds. From the mountain ridge he saw a new landscape lying at his feet; it gladdened his eyes and a flood of expectations, desires, and hopes gushed through his heart. For several days he had known that he was close to this region; he had been looking forward to it. Now, during this noon hour, it came as a surprise and his first visual impression confirmed and strengthened his expectations. Through gray trunks and softly swaying branches he looked down into a valley lying green and brown, furrowed by a wide river that shimmered like blue glass. He felt that his pathless roaming through landscapes of heath, forest, and solitude, with an isolated farm here and there, or a shabby village, was over for a long time. Down there the river flowed, and along the river ran one of the most beautiful and famous roads in the empire. A rich and bountiful land lay there, barges and boats sailed there, the road led to beautiful villages, castles, cloisters, and prosperous towns, and anyone who so desired could travel along that road for days and weeks and not fear that it would suddenly peter out in a forest or in humid reeds like those miserable peasant paths. Something new lay ahead and he was looking forward to it.

That evening he came to a beautiful village, wedged between the river and red vineyards along the wide highway. The pretty woodwork on the gabled houses was painted red; there were arched entranceways and narrow alleys full of stone steps. A forge threw a red fiery glow across the street; he heard the clear ringing of the anvil. Goldmund snooped about in every alley and corner, sniffed at cellar doors for the smell of wine barrels and along the riverbank for the cool fish odor of the water; he inspected church and cemetery and did not forget to look for a good barn for the night. But first he wanted to try his luck at the priest's house and ask for food. A plump, red-headed priest asked him questions and Goldmund told him the story of his life, with a few omissions and additions. Thereupon he was given a friendly reception and spent the evening in long conversation over good food and wine. The next day he continued his journey on the highway, along the river. He saw barges and rafts float by; he passed horse carts, and some of them gave him a ride for a stretch of the way. The spring days sped by, filled with color: villages and small towns received him; women smiled behind garden fences, knelt in the brown earth, planting bulbs; young girls sang in the village streets in the evening.

A young servant girl in a mill pleased him so much he spent two days in the area and tried to get to know her. She liked to laugh and chat with him; he thought he would have been happy to work at the mill and stay there forever. He sat with the fishermen; he helped the carters feed and comb their horses, was given bread and meat and a ride in exchange. The sociable world of travelers did him good after the long loneliness; with a good meal every day, after so much hunger, he gladly let himself be carried along by the joyous wave. It swept him on, and the closer he got to the bishop's city, the more crowded and joyful the highway became.

In one village he took an evening stroll along the river, with the trees already in leaf. The water ran quietly, mightily; the current sighed and gushed under the overhanging roots of trees; the moon came up over the hill, casting light on the river and shadows under the trees. He came upon a girl who was sitting there, weeping: she had quarreled with her lover; he had walked off and left her. Goldmund sat down beside her and listened to her sorrowful tale; he caressed her hand, told her about the forest and the deer, comforted her a little, made her laugh a little, and she permitted him a kiss. But at that point her young man came back looking for her; he had calmed down and regretted the quarrel. When he found Goldmund sitting beside her, he threw himself upon him and hammered at him with both fists. Goldmund had difficulty defending himself, but finally he fought the fellow off, and watched him run cursing toward the village; the girl had long since fled. But Goldmund did not trust the truce; he renounced his bed for the night and wandered on half the night in the moonlight, through a silent silver world, extremely content, glad of his strong legs, until the dew washed the white dust from his shoes and he suddenly felt tired, lay down under the next tree, and fell asleep. It was broad daylight when he was awakened by something tickling his face. He brushed it aside with a sleepy, groping hand, fell asleep again, was once more awakened by the tickling; a peasant girl was standing there, looking at him, tickling him with the tip of a willow switch. He stumbled to his feet. With a smile they nodded to each other; she led him into a shed, where the sleeping was more comfortable. There they lay together for a while, then she ran off and came back with a small pail of milk, still warm from the cow. He gave her a blue hair ribbon he had recently found in the street, and they kissed once more before he wandered on. Her name was Franziska; he was sorry to leave her.

That evening he found shelter in a cloister, and the next morning he went to mass. A thousand memories welled up in his heart; the cool stone air of the dome and the flapping of sandals in the marble corridors felt movingly familiar. After mass, when the cloister church had grown quiet, Goldmund remained on his knees. His heart was strangely moved; he had had many dreams that night. He felt the urge to unburden himself of his past, to change his life somehow, he knew not why; perhaps it was only the memory of Mariabronn and of his pious youth that moved him. He felt the urge to confess and purify himself. Many small sins, many small vices had to be admitted, but most heavily he felt burdened by the death of Viktor, who had died by his hand. He found a father and confessed to him, especially the knife stabs in poor Viktor's neck and back. Oh, how long since he had been to confession! The number and weight of his sins seemed considerable to him; he was willing to do a stiff penance for them. But his confessor seemed familiar with the life of the wayfarers: he was not shocked; he listened calmly. Earnest and friendly, he reprimanded and warned without speaking of damnation.

Relieved, Goldmund stood up, prayed in front of the altar as the father had ordered and was about to leave the church when a ray of sunshine fell through one of the windows. His eyes followed it; in a side chapel he saw a statue that spoke to him so strongly and attracted him so much that he turned toward it with loving eyes and looked at it with reverence and deep emotion. It was a wooden madonna. Delicately, gently she leaned forward; the blue cloak hung from her narrow shoulders; she stretched out a delicate, girlish hand, and the expression of her eyes above the grieving mouth and the gracefully rounded forehead were so alive and beautiful, so deeply permeated with spirit that Goldmund thought he had never seen anything like it anywhere before. He could not look enough at the mouth, at the lovely angle of the inclined neck. It seemed to him that he saw something standing there that he had often seen in dreams and inklings, something he had often wished for. Several times he turned to go; again and again the statue drew him back.

When he finally turned to leave, the father confessor was standing behind him.

"Do you find her beautiful?" he asked in a friendly tone.

"Inexpressibly beautiful," said Goldmund.

"That's what some people say," said the priest. "Others say that this is no mother of God, that she is much too modern and worldly, that the whole thing is untrue and exaggerated. There is a great deal of controversy about it. So you like her; I'm glad. We've had her only for a year, a donation from a benefactor of our order. She was made by Master Niklaus."

"Master Niklaus? Who is he, where does he live? Do you know him? Tell me about him, please! What a magnificent, blessed man who can create a work like that."

"I don't know much about him. He is a carver in our bishop's city, a day's journey from here; he has a great reputation as an artist. Artists usually are no saints, he's probably no saint either, but he certainly is a gifted, high-minded man. I have seen him a few times …"

"Oh, you have seen him! What does he look like?"

"You seem completely fascinated with him, my son. Well, go to see him then, and give him regards from Father Bonifazius."

Goldmund thanked him exuberantly. The father walked off with a smile; for a long time Goldmund stood before the mysterious statue, whose bosom seemed to heave and in whose face so much pain and sweetness were living side by side that it made his heart ache.

He left the church a changed man. His feet carried him through a completely changed world. Since that moment in front of the sweet saintly wooden figure, Goldmund possessed something he had not possessed before, something he had so often mocked or envied in others: a goal! He had a goal. Perhaps he would reach it; perhaps his whole, ragged existence would grow meaningful and worthwhile. This new feeling filled him with joy and fear and gave wings to his steps. The gay, beautiful highway on which he was walking was no longer what it had been the day before, a festive playground, a cozy place to be. Now it was only a road that led to the city, to the master. Impatiently he hurried on. He arrived before evening: towers rose from behind walls; he saw chiseled escutcheons and painted signs over the city gates, entered with pounding heart, hardly noticing the noise and bustle in the streets, the knights on their horses, the carts and carriages. Neither knights nor carriages, city nor bishop mattered to him. He asked the very first person he met where Master Niklaus lived, and was deeply disappointed when the man didn't know who Master Niklaus was.

He came to a square surrounded by stately houses, many painted or decorated with images. Over the door of a house stood the figure of a lansquenet in robust, laughing colors. It was not as beautiful as the statue in the cloister church, but it had such a way of pushing out its calves and sticking its bearded chin into the world that Goldmund thought this figure might have been made by the same master. He walked into the house, knocked at doors, climbed stairs; finally he ran into a squire in a fur-trimmed velvet coat and asked him where he might find Master Niklaus. What did he want from him, the squire asked in return. Goldmund had difficulty holding himself back, to say merely that he had a message for him. Thereupon the squire told him the name of the street on which the master lived. By the time Goldmund had asked his way there, night had fallen. Anxious but happy, he stood outside the master's house, looking up at the windows; he almost ran up to the door. But it was already late, he was sweaty and dusty from the day's march. He mastered his impatience and waited. For a long time he stood outside the house. He saw a light go on in a window, and just as he was about to leave, he saw a figure step to the window, a very beautiful blond girl with the gentle shimmer of lamplight flowing through her hair from the back.

The next morning, after the city had awakened and become noisy, Goldmund washed his face and hands in the cloister where he had been a guest for the night, slapped the dust from his clothes and shoes, found his way back to the master's street and knocked at the door of the house. A servant appeared who first refused to lead him to the master, but he managed to soften the old woman's resistance, and finally she led him into a small hall. It was a workshop and the master was standing there, a leather apron around his waist: a bearded, tall man of forty or fifty, Goldmund thought. He scanned the stranger with piercing, pale blue eyes and asked curtly what he desired. Goldmund delivered Father Bonifazius's greetings.

"Is that all?"

"Master," Goldmund said with baited breath, "I saw your madonna in the cloister there. Oh, don't give me such an unfriendly look; nothing but love and veneration have brought me to you. I am not a fearful man, I have lived a wanderer's life, sampled forest, snow, and hunger; I'm not afraid of anyone, but I am afraid of you. I have only a single gigantic desire, which fills my heart to the point of pain."

"And what desire is that?"

"To become your apprentice and learn with you."

"You are not the only young man to wish that. But I don't like apprentices, and I already have two assistants. Where do you come from and who are your parents?"

"I have no parents, I come from nowhere. I was a student in a cloister, where I learned Latin and Greek. Then I ran away, and for years I have wandered the roads, until today."

"And what makes you think you should become an image carver? Have you ever tried anything similar before? Have you any drawings?"

"I've made many drawings, but I no longer have them. But let me tell you why I wish to learn this art. I have done a great deal of thinking and seen many faces and figures and thought about them, and some of these thoughts have tormented me and given me no peace. It has struck me how a certain shape, a certain line recurs in a person's structure, how a forehead corresponds to the knee, a shoulder to the hip, and how, deep down, it corresponds to the nature and temperament of the person who possesses that knee, that shoulder, that forehead, and fuses with it. And another thing has struck me: one night, as I had to hold a light for a woman who was giving birth, I saw that the greatest pain and the most intense ecstasy have almost the same expression."

The master gave the stranger a piercing look. "Do you know what you are saying?"

"Yes, Master, it is the truth. And it was that precisely that I found expressed in your madonna, to my utter delight and consternation, that is why I have come. Oh, there is such suffering in the beautiful delicate face, and at the same time all the suffering is also pure joy, a smile. When I saw that, a fire shot through me; all my year-long thoughts and dreams seemed confirmed. Suddenly they were no longer useless; I knew immediately what I had to do and where I had to go. Dear Master Niklaus, I beg you with all my heart, let me learn with you!"

Niklaus had listened attentively, without making a friendlier face.

"Young man," he said, "you know surprisingly well how to speak about art, and it puzzles me that, young as you are, you have so much to say about ecstasy and pain. I'd gladly chat with you about this some evening over a mug of wine. But look: to speak pleasantly and intelligently with each other is not the same as living and working together for a couple of years. This is a workshop. Work is carved here, not conversation. What a man may have thought up and know how to express does not count here; here only what he can make with his hands counts. You seem to mean what you say. Therefore I'll not simply send you on your way again. We'll see if you can do anything at all. Did you ever shape anything in clay or wax?"

Goldmund found himself thinking of a dream he had long ago in which he had modeled small clay figures that had stood up and grown into giants. But he did not mention it and said that he had never tried.

"Good. You'll draw something then. There is a table; you'll find paper and charcoal. Sit down and draw, take your time, you can stay till noon or evening. Perhaps that will tell me what you are good for. Now then, we have talked enough. I'll do my work; you'll do yours."

Goldmund sat in the chair Niklaus had indicated to him, in front of the drawing table. He was in no hurry to accomplish his task. First he sat, waiting and silent like an apprehensive student. With curiosity and love he stared toward the master, whose back was half turned and who continued to work at a small clay figure. Attentively he studied this man, whose stern, already slightly graying head and hard, though noble and animated artisan's hands held such graceful magic. He looked different than Goldmund had imagined: older, more modest, soberer, much less radiant and heart-winning, and not in the least happy. The merciless sharpness of his probing eyes was now concentrated on his work. Freed from it, Goldmund minutely took in the master's entire figure. This man, he thought, might also have been a scholar, a quiet earnest searcher, who has dedicated himself to a task that many predecessors have begun before him, that he will one day leave to his successors, a tenacious, long-lived never-ending work, the accumulation of the effort and dedication of many generations. At least this was what Goldmund read from the master's head: great patience, years of study and thinking, great modesty, and an awareness of the dubious value of all human undertaking, but also faith in his mission. The language of his hands was something else again; there was a contradiction between the hands and the head. These hands reached with firm but extremely sensitive fingers into the clay they were molding. They treated the clay like a lover's hands treat the willing mistress: lovingly, with tenderly swaying emotion, greedy but without distinguishing between taking and giving, filled with desire but also with piety, masterful and sure as though from the depth of ancient experience. Goldmund watched these blessed hands with delighted admiration. He would have liked to draw the master, had it not been for the contradiction between face and hands which paralyzed him.

For about an hour he watched the steadily working artist, full of searching thoughts about the secret of this man. Then another image began to form inside him, to become visible in front of his soul, the image of the man he knew best of all, whom he had loved deeply and greatly admired; and this image was without flaw or contradiction, although it too bore many lines and recalled many struggles. It was the image of his friend Narcissus. It grew more and more tangible, became an entity, a whole. The inner law of the beloved person appeared more and more clearly in his picture: the noble head shaped by the mind; the beautiful controlled mouth, tightened and ennobled by the service to the mind; the slightly sad eyes; the haggard shoulders animated with the fight for spirituality; the long neck; the delicate, distinguished hands. Not since his departure from the cloister had he seen his friend so clearly, possessed his image so completely within him.

As though in a dream, will-less and yet eager, Goldmund cautiously began to draw. With loving fingers he brushed reverently over the figure that lived in his heart; he forgot the master, himself, and the place at which he sat. He did not notice the light slowly wandering across the workshop, or the master looking over at him several times. Like a sacrificial ritual he accomplished the task that had been given him, that his heart had given him: to gather his friend's image and preserve it the way it lived in his soul today. Without thinking of it, he felt he was paying back a debt, showing his gratitude.

Niklaus stepped up to the drawing table and said: "It's noon. I'm going to eat; you can come along. Let's see—did you draw something?"

He stepped behind Goldmund and looked at the large sheet. Then he pushed him aside and carefully took the sheet in his able hands. Goldmund had come out of his dream and was now looking at the master with anxious expectation. The master stood, holding the drawing in both hands, looking at it very carefully with his sharp stern light-blue eyes.

"Who is the man you have drawn here?" he asked after a while.

"My friend, a young monk and scholar."

"Fine. Wash your hands, there's a well in the yard. Then we'll go and eat. My assistants aren't here, they're working outside the city."

Obediently Goldmund went out, found the courtyard and the well, washed his hands and would have given much to know the masters thoughts. When he came back, the master was gone; he heard him rummaging about in the adjoining room. When he reappeared, he too had washed himself and wore a beautiful cloth jacket instead of the apron; he looked solemn and imposing. He led the way, up a flight of stairs—there were small carved angels' heads on the walnut banister posts—lined with old and new statues, into a beautiful room with floor, walls, and ceiling of polished wood; a table had been in the window corner. A young girl came running in. Goldmund knew her; it was the beautiful girl of the evening before.

"Lisbeth," the master said, "bring another plate. I've brought a guest. He is—well, I don't even know his name yet."

Goldmund said his name.

"Goldmund then. Is dinner ready?"

"In a minute, Father."

She fetched a plate, ran out and soon returned with the maid, who served the meal: pork with lentils and white bread. During the meal the father spoke of this and that with the girl, Goldmund sat in silence, ate a little and felt very ill at ease and apprehensive. The girl pleased him greatly, a stately, beautiful figure, almost as tall as her father, but she sat, well-mannered and completely inaccessible as though behind glass, and did not speak to the stranger, or look at him.

When they finished eating, the master said: "I'll rest for half an hour. You go down to the workshop or stroll around a bit outside. Afterwards we'll talk."

Goldmund bowed slightly and went out. It had been an hour or more since the master had seen his drawing, and he had not said a word about it. Now he had to wait another half hour! Well, there was nothing he could do about it; he waited. He did not go into the workshop; he did not want to see his drawing again just now. He went into the courtyard, sat down on the edge of the well, and watched the thread of water trickling endlessly from the pipe into the deep stone dish, making tiny waves as it fell, always carrying a little air down with it, which kept rising up in white pearls. He saw his own face in the dark mirror of the well and thought that the Goldmund who was looking up at him from the water had long since ceased being the Goldmund of cloister days, or Lydia's Goldmund, or even the Goldmund of the forests. He thought that he, that all men, trickled away, changing constantly, until they finally dissolved, while their artist-created images remained unchangeably the same.

He thought that fear of death was perhaps the root of all art, perhaps also of all things of the mind. We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something that lasts longer than we do. Perhaps the woman after whom the master shaped his beautiful madonna is already wilted or dead, and soon he, too, will be dead; others will live in his house and eat at his table—but his work will still be standing a hundred years from now, and longer. It will go on shimmering in the quiet cloister church, unchangingly beautiful, forever smiling with the same sad, flowering mouth.

He heard the master come downstairs and ran into the workshop. Master Niklaus was pacing; several times he looked at Goldmund's drawing; finally he walked to the window and said, in his somewhat hesitant, dry manner: "It is customary for an apprentice to study at least four years, and for his father to pay for the apprenticeship." He paused and Goldmund thought the master was afraid that he could not pay him. Quick as lightning, he pulled out his knife, cut the stitches around the hidden gold piece, and held it up. Niklaus watched him in surprise and broke out laughing when Goldmund handed him the coin.

"Ah, is that what you thought?" he laughed. "No, young man, you keep your gold piece. Listen now. I told you how our guild customarily deals with apprentices. But I am no ordinary master, nor are you an ordinary apprentice. Usually an apprentice begins his apprenticeship at thirteen or fourteen, fifteen at the latest, and half of his learning years are spent running errands and playing the servant. But you are a grown man; according to your age, you could long have been journeyman or master even. Our guild has never had a bearded apprentice. Besides, as I told you before, I don't like to keep an apprentice in my house. Nor do you look like a man who lets himself be ordered about."

Goldmund's impatience was at its peak. Every new thoughtful word from the master put him on tenterhooks; it all seemed disgustingly boring and pedantic to him. Vehemently he cried: "Why do you tell me all this, if you don't want to make me your apprentice?"

Firmly the master continued: "I have thought about your request for an hour. Now you must have the patience to listen to me. I have seen your drawing. It has faults, but it is beautiful. If it were not beautiful, I would have given you half a guilder and sent you on your way and forgotten about you. That is all I wish to say about the drawing. I would like to help you become an artist; perhaps that is your destiny. But you're too old to become an apprentice. And only an apprentice who has served his time can become journeyman and master in our guild. Now you know the conditions. But you shall be allowed to give it a try. If you can maintain yourself in this city for a while, you may come to me and learn a few things. There will be no obligation, no contract, you can leave again whenever you choose. You may break a couple of carving knives in my workshop and ruin a couple of woodblocks, and if we see that you're no wood carver, you'll have to try your skill at other things. Does that satisfy you?"

Ashamed and moved, Goldmund had heard his words.

"I thank you with all my heart," he cried. "I am homeless; I'll be able to keep alive in this city as well as in the woods. I understand that you don't wish to assume responsibility for me as for a young apprentice. I consider it a great fortune to be allowed to learn from you. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for doing this for me."

11

New images surrounded Goldmund in this city; a new life began for him. Landscape and city had received him happily, enticingly, generously, and so did this new life, with joy and many promises. Although sorrow and awareness remained essentially untouched in his soul, life, on the surface, played for him in rainbow colors. The gayest and lightest period in Goldmund's life had begun. Outwardly, the rich bishop's city offered itself in all its arts; there were women, and hundreds of pleasant games and images. On the inside, his awakening craftsmanship offered new sensations and experiences. With the master's help he found lodgings in the house of a gilder at the fish market, and at the master's as well as at the gilder's he learned how to handle wood, plaster, colors, varnish, and gold leaf.

Goldmund was not one of those forsaken artists who, though highly gifted, never find the right means of expression. Quite a number of people are able to feel the beauty of the world profoundly and vastly, and to carry high, noble images in their souls, but they are unable to exteriorize these images, to create them for the enjoyment of others, to communicate them. Goldmund did not suffer from this lack. The use of his hands came easily to him; he enjoyed learning the tricks and practices of the craft, and he easily learned to play the lute with companions in the evening after work and to dance on Sundays in the village. He learned it easily; it came by itself. He worked hard at wood carving, met with difficulties and disappointments, spoiled a few pieces of good wood, and severely cut his fingers several times. But he quickly surmounted the beginnings and acquired skill. Still, the master was often dissatisfied with him and would say: "Fortunately we know that you're not my apprentice or my assistant, Goldmund. Fortunately we know that you've wandered in from the woods and that you'll go back there some day. Anybody who didn't know that you're a homeless drifter and not a burgher or artisan might easily succumb to the temptation to ask this or that of you, the things every master demands of his men. You don't work badly at all when you're in the mood. But last week you loafed for two days. Yesterday you slept half the day in the courtyard workshop, instead of polishing the two angels you were supposed to polish."

The master was right, and Goldmund listened in silence, without justifying himself. He knew he was not a reliable, hard-working man. As long as a task fascinated him, posed problems, or made him happily aware of his skill, he'd work zealously. He did not like heavy manual work, or chores that were not difficult but demanded time and application. Many of the faithful, patient parts of craftsmanship were often completely unbearable to him. It sometimes made him wonder. Had those few years of wandering been enough to make him lazy and unreliable? Was his mother's inheritance growing in him and gaining the upper hand? Or was something else missing? He thought of his first years in the cloister, when he had been such a good and zealous student. Why had he managed so much patience then? Why did he lack it now; why had he been able to learn Latin syntax and all those Greek aorists indefatigably, although, at the bottom of his heart, they were quite unimportant to him? Occasionally he'd muse about that. Love had steeled his will; love had given him wings. His life had been a constant courtship of Narcissus, whose love one could woo only by esteem and recognition. In those days he was able to slave for hours and days in exchange for an appreciative glance from the beloved teacher. Finally the desired goal had been reached: Narcissus had become his friend and, strangely enough, it had been that learned Narcissus who had shown him his lack of aptitude for learning, who had conjured up his lost mother's image. Instead of learning, monkhood, and virtue, powerful drives and instincts had become his masters: sex, women, desire for independence, wandering. Then he saw the master's madonna and discovered the artist within himself. He had taken a new road, had settled down again. Where did he stand now? Where was his road leading him? Where did the obstacles stem from?

At first he was unable to define it. He knew only this: that he greatly admired Master Niklaus, but in no way loved him as he had Narcissus, and that he took occasional delight in disappointing and annoying him. This, it seemed, was linked to the contrasts in the master's nature. The figures by Niklaus's hand, at least the best among them, were revered examples for Goldmund, but the master himself was not an example.

Beside the artist who had carved the madonna with the saddest, most beautiful mouth, beside the knowing seer whose hands knew magically how to transform deep experience and intuition into tangible forms, there was another Master Niklaus: a somewhat stern and fearful father and guildsman, a widower who led a quiet, slightly cowering life with his daughter and an ugly servant in his quiet house, who violently resisted Goldmund's strongest impulses, who had settled into a calm, moderate, orderly, respectable life.

Although Goldmund venerated his master, although he would never have permitted himself to question others about him or to judge him in front of others, he knew after a year to the smallest detail all that was to be known about Niklaus. This master meant much to him. He loved him as much as he hated him; he could not stay away from him. Gradually, with love and with suspicion, with always vigilant curiosity, the pupil penetrated the hidden corners of the master's nature and of his life. He saw that Niklaus allowed neither apprentice nor assistant to live in his house, although there would have been room enough. He saw that he rarely went out and equally rarely invited guests to his house. He observed that he loved his beautiful daughter with touching jealousy, and that he tried to hide her from everyone. He also knew that behind the strict, premature abstinence of the widower's life, instincts were still at play, that the master could strangely transform and rejuvenate himself when an order occasionally called him to travel for a few days. And once, in a strange little town where they were setting up a carved pulpit, he had also observed that Niklaus had clandestinely visited a whore one evening and that he bad been restless and ill-humored for days afterwards.

As time went on, something other than this curiosity tied Goldmund to the master's house and preoccupied his mind. The master's beautiful daughter Lisbeth attracted him greatly. He rarely got to see her; she never came into the workshop and he could not determine whether her brittleness and reserve with men was imposed by her father or was part of her own nature. He could not overlook the fact that the master never again invited him for a meal, that he tried to make any meeting with her difficult. Lisbeth was a most precious, sheltered young girl; he could not hope to have a love affair with her, or a marriage. Besides, anyone who wanted to marry her would have to come from a good family, be a member of one of the higher guilds and probably have money and a house besides.

Lisbeth's beauty, so different from that of the gypsies and peasant women, had attracted Goldmund's eyes that first day. There was something about her that he could not decipher, something strange that violently attracted him but also made him suspicious, irritated him even. Her great calm and innocence, her well-mannered purity were not childlike. Behind all her courtesy and ease lay a hidden coldness, a condescension, and for that reason her innocence did not move him, or make him defenseless (he could never have seduced a child), but annoyed and provoked him. As soon as her figure became slightly familiar to him as an inner image, he felt the urge to create a statue of her, not the way she was now, but an awakened, sensuous, suffering face, a Magdalene, not a young virgin. He often dreamed of seeing her calm, beautiful, immobile face distorted in ecstasy or pain, of seeing it unfold and yield its secret.

There was another face alive in his soul, although it did not altogether belong to him, a face he longed to capture and re-create artistically, but again and again it drew back and shrouded itself: his mother's face. It was no longer the face that had appeared to him one day, from the depths of lost memories, after his conversation with Narcissus. It had slowly changed during his days of wandering, his nights of love, during his spells of longing, while his life was in danger, when he was close to death: it had grown richer, deeper, subtler. This was no longer his own mother; her traits and colors had by and by given way to an impersonal mother image, of Eve, of the mother of men. The way some of Master Niklaus's madonnas powerfully expressed the suffering mother of God with a perfection that seemed unsurpassable to Goldmund, he hoped that one day, when he was more mature and surer of his craft, he would be able to create the image of the worldly mother, the Eve-mother, as she lived in his heart, his oldest, most cherished image; an inner image that had once been the memory of his own mother, of his love of her, but was now in constant transformation and growth. The faces of Lise, the gypsy, of the knight's daughter Lydia, of many other women had fused with that original image. Each new woman added to it, each new insight, each experience and event worked at it and fashioned its traits. The figure he hoped to be able to make visible some day was not to represent any specific woman, but the source of life itself, the original mother. Many times he thought he saw it; often it appeared in his dreams. But he could not have said anything about this Eve's face, or about what it was to express, except that he wanted it to show the intimate relationship of ecstasy to pain and death.

Goldmund learned a great deal in the course of a year. He became an able draftsman; occasionally, beside wood carving, Niklaus also let him try his hand at modeling with clay. His first successful work was a clay figure, a good two spans high. It was the sweet, seductive figure of little Julie, Lydia's sister. The master praised this work but did not fulfill Goldmund's wish to have it cast in metal; he found the figure too unchaste and worldly to become its godfather. Then Goldmund started working on a statue of Narcissus, in wood, portraying the Apostle John. If successful, Niklaus wanted to include the figure in a crucifixion group he had been commissioned to execute and on which his two assistants had been working exclusively for quite some time, leaving the final touches to the master.

Goldmund worked with profound love at the statue of Narcissus. He rediscovered himself in this work, found his skill and his soul again every time he got off the track, which happened often enough. Love affairs, dances, drinking with working companions, dice playing, and many brawls would get him violently involved; he'd stay away from the workshop for a day or more, or stand distracted and grumpy over his bench. But at his St. John, whose cherished, pensive features came to meet him out of the wood with greater and greater purity, he worked only during hours of readiness, with devotion and humility. During these hours he was neither glad nor sad, knew neither carnal longings nor the flight of time. Again he felt the reverent, light, crystal feeling in his heart with which he had once abandoned himself to his friend, happy to be guided by him. It was not he who was standing there, creating an image of his own will. It was the other man rather; it was Narcissus who was making use of the artist's hands in order to step out of the fleeting transitions of life, to express the pure image of his being.

This, Goldmund sometimes felt with a shudder, was the way true art came about. This was how the master's unforgettable madonna had been made, which he had visited in the cloister again and again on many a Sunday. The few good pieces among the old statues which were standing upstairs in the master's foyer had come into being in this secret, sacred manner. And one day that other, the unique image, the one that was even more hidden and venerable to him, the mother of men, would come about in the same manner. Ah, if only the hand of man could create such works of art, such holy, essential images, untainted by will or vanity. But it was not that way. Other images were created: pretty, delightful things, made with great mastery, the joy of art lovers, the ornament of churches and town halls—beautiful things certainly, but not sacred, not true images of the soul. He knew many such works, not only by Niklaus and other masters—works that, in spite of their delicacy and craftsmanship, were nothing but playthings. To his shame and sorrow he had already felt that in his own heart, had felt in his hands how an artist can put such pretty things in the world, out of delight in his own skill, out of ambition and dissipation.

When he realized this for the first time, he grew deathly sad. Ah, it was not worth being an artist in order to make little angel figures and similar frivolities, no matter how beautiful. Perhaps the others, the artisans, the burghers, those calm, satisfied souls might find it worthwhile, but not he. To him, art and craftsmanship were worthless unless they burned like the sun and had the power of storms. He had no use for anything that brought only comfort, pleasantness, only small joys. He was searching for other things. A dainty crown for a madonna, fashioned like lacework and beautifully goldleafed, was no task for him, no matter how well paid. Why did Master Niklaus accept all these orders? Why did he have two assistants? Why did he listen for hours to those senators and prelates who ordered a pulpit or a portal from him with their measuring sticks in their hands? He had two reasons, two shabby reasons: he wanted to be a famous artist flooded with commissions, and he wanted to pile up money, not for any great achievement or pleasure but for his daughter, who had long since become a rich girl, money for her dowry, for lace collars and brocade gowns and a walnut conjugal bed with precious covers and linens. As though the beautiful girl could not come to know love just as well in a hayloft.

His mother's blood stirred deeply in Goldmund in the course of such reflections; he felt the pride and disdain of the homeless for the settled, the proprietors. At times craft and master were so repulsive to him that he often came close to running away. More than once the master angrily regretted having taken on this difficult, unreliable fellow who often tried his patience to the utmost. The things he learned about Goldmund's life, about his indifference to money and ownership, his desire to squander, his many love affairs, his frequent brawls, did not make him more sympathetic; he had taken a gypsy into his house, a stranger. Nor had it escaped him with what eyes this vagrant looked at his daughter Lisbeth. If he, nevertheless, forced himself to be patient, it was not out of a sense of duty or out of fear, but because of the St. John's statue, which he watched come into being. With a feeling of love and kinship of the soul that he did not quite admit to himself, the master watched this gypsy, who had run to him out of the forest, shape his wooden disciple after the moving, beautiful, yet clumsy drawing that had made him keep Goldmund at the time. He saw how slowly and capriciously, but tenaciously, unerringly, Goldmund fashioned the wooden statue of the disciple. The master did not doubt that it would be finished some day, in spite of all Goldmund's moods and interruptions, that it would be a work the like of which not one of his assistants was able to make, a work that even great masters did not often accomplish. In spite of the many things the master disliked in his pupil, of the many scoldings he gave him, of his frequent fits of rage—he never said a word about the St. John.

During these years Goldmund had gradually lost the rest of the adolescent grace and boyishness that had pleased so many. He had become a beautiful, strong man, much desired by women, little popular with men. His mind, his inner face, had greatly changed as well since the days Narcissus awakened him from the happy sleep of his cloister years. World and wandering had molded him. From the pretty, gentle, pious, willing cloister student whom everybody liked, another being had emerged. Narcissus had awakened him, women had made him aware, the wandering had brushed the down from him. He had no friends; his heart belonged to women. They could win him easily: one longing look was enough. He found it hard to resist a woman and responded to the slightest hint. In spite of his strong sense of beauty, of his preference for the very young in the bloom of spring, he'd let himself be moved and seduced by women of little beauty who were no longer young. On the dance floor he'd sometimes end up with a discouraged elderly girl whom no one wanted, who'd win him by the pity he felt for her, and not pity alone, but also a constantly vigilant curiosity. As soon as he gave himself to a woman—whether it lasted weeks or just hours—she became beautiful to him, and he gave himself completely. Experience taught him that every woman was beautiful and able to bring joy, that a mousy creature whom men ignored was capable of extraordinary fire and devotion, that the wilted had a more maternal, mourningly sweet tenderness, that each woman had her secrets and her charms, and to unlock these made him happy. In that respect, all women were alike. Lack of youth or beauty was always balanced by some special gesture. But not every woman could hold him equally long. He was just as loving and grateful toward the ugly as toward the youngest and prettiest; he never loved halfway. But some women tied him to them more strongly after three or ten nights of love; others were exhausted after the first time and forgotten.

Love and ecstasy were to him the only truly warming things that gave life its value. Ambition was unknown to him; he did not distinguish between bishop and beggar. Acquisition and ownership had no hold over him; he felt contempt for them. Never would he have made the smallest sacrifice for them; he was earning ample money and thought nothing of it. Women, the game of the sexes, came first on his list, and his frequent accesses of melancholy and disgust grew out of the knowledge that desire was a transitory, fleeting experience. The rapid, soaring, blissful burning of desire, its brief, longing flame, its rapid extinction—this seemed to him to contain the kernel of all experience, became to him the image of all the joys and sufferings of life. He could give in to this melancholy and shudder at all things transitory with the same abandonment with which he gave in to love. This melancholy was also a form of love, of desire. As ecstasy, at the peak of blissful tension, is certain that it must vanish and die with the next breath, his innermost loneliness and abandonment to melancholy was certain that it would suddenly be swallowed by desire, by new abandonment to the light side of life. Death and ecstasy were one. The mother of life could be called love or desire; she could also be called death, grave, or decay. Eve was the mother. She was the source of bliss as well as of death; eternally she gave birth and eternally she killed; her love was fused with cruelty. The longer he carried her image within him, the more it became a parable and a sacred symbol to him.

Not with words and consciousness, but with a deeper knowledge of his blood, he knew that his road led to his mother, to desire and to death. The father side of life—mind and will—were not his home. Narcissus was at home there, and only now Goldmund felt penetrated by his friend's words and understood them fully, saw in him his counterpart, and this he also expressed in the statue of St. John and made it visible. He could long for Narcissus to the point of tears; he could dream of him wonderfully—but he could not reach him, he could not become like him.

Secretly Goldmund also sensed what being an artist meant to him, how his intense love of art could also occasionally turn to hatred. He could, not with thoughts but with emotions, make many different distinctions: art was a union of the father and mother worlds, of mind and blood. It might start in utter sensuality and lead to total abstraction; then again it might originate in pure concept and end in bleeding flesh. Any work of art that was truly sublime, not just a good juggler's trick; that was filled with the eternal secret, like the master's madonna; every obviously genuine work of art had this dangerous, smiling double face, was male-female, a merging of instinct and pure spirituality. One day his Eve-mother would bear this double face more than any other statue, if he succeeded in making her.

In art, in being an artist, Goldmund saw the possibility of reconciling his deepest contradictions, or at least of expressing newly and magnificently the split in his nature. But art was not just a gift. It could not be had for nothing; it cost a great deal; it demanded sacrifices. For over three years Goldmund sacrificed his most essential need, the thing he needed most next to desire and love: his freedom. Being free, drifting in a limitless world, the hazards of wandering, being alone and independent—all that he had renounced. Others might judge him fickle, insubordinate, and overly independent when he neglected workshop and work during an occasional furious fling. To him, this life was slavery; often it embittered him and seemed unbearable. Neither the master nor his future nor need demanded his obedience—it was art itself.

Art, such a spiritual goddess in appearance, required so many petty things! One needed a roof over one's head, and tools, woods, clay, colors, gold, effort and patience. He had sacrificed the wild freedom of the woods to this goddess, the intoxication of the wide world, the harsh joys of danger, the pride of misery, and this sacrifice had to be made again and again, chokingly, with clenched teeth.

Part of this sacrifice was recoverable. A few of his love adventures, his fights with rivals constituted a small revenge against the slavelike sedentary order of his present life. All his emprisoned wildness, all the caged-in strength of his nature steamed out of this escape valve; he became a known and feared rowdy. A sudden attack in a dark side street, on his way to see a girl or on the way home from a dance; a couple of blows from a stick, throwing himself around with lightning swiftness to pass from defense to attack, to press the panting enemy to him, to land a fist under the enemy's chin, or drag him by the hair, or throttle him mightily—all these things tasted good to Goldmund and cured his dark moods for a while. And the women liked it, too.

All this gave him plenty to do, and it all made sense as long as he was working on his St. John. It took a long time. The last delicate shapings of face and hands were done in solemn, patient concentration. He finished the statue in a small wooden shed behind the assistants' workshop. Then the hour of morning came when the work was finished. Goldmund fetched a broom, swept the shed meticulously clean, gently brushed the last sawdust from his Saint's hair, and stood in front of his statue for a long time, an hour or longer, filled with the solemn feeling of a rare and great experience which he might perhaps know one more time in the course of his life or which might remain unique. A man on the day of his wedding or on the day he is knighted, a woman after the birth of her first child might feel such emotions in the heart: a deep reverence, a great earnestness, and at the same time a secret fear of the moment when this high, unique experience would be over, classified, swallowed by the routine of the days.

He saw his friend Narcissus, the guide of his adolescent years, clad in the robe and role of the beautiful, favorite disciple, stand listening with lifted face and an expression of stillness, devotion, and reverence that was like the budding of a smile. Suffering and death were not unknown to this beautiful, pious, spiritualized face, to this slender figure that seemed to be floating, to these graceful, piously raised long hands, although they were filled with youth and inner music; but despair was unknown to them, and disorder, and rebellion. The soul of those noble traits might be gay or sad, but its pitch was pure, it suffered no discordant note.

Goldmund stood and contemplated his work. His contemplation began as a meditation in front of the monument to his youth and friendship, but it ended in a tempest of sorrow and heavy thoughts. There his work was, the beautiful disciple would remain, his delicate flowering would never end. But he, the maker, would have to part with his work; tomorrow it would no longer be his, would no longer be waiting for his hands, would grow and unfold under them no longer, was no longer a refuge to him, a consolation, a purpose in his life. He remained behind, empty. And therefore it seemed to him that it would be best to say farewell today not only to his St. John but also to the master, to the city, to art. There was nothing here for him to do any more; no images filled his soul that he might have carved. The longed-for image of images, the figure of the mother of men, was not yet accessible to him, would not be accessible for a long time. Should he go back to polishing little angel figures now and carving ornaments?

He tore himself away and walked over to the master's workshop. Softly he entered and stood at the door, until Niklaus noticed him and called out to him.

"What is it, Goldmund?"

"My statue is finished. Perhaps you'll come and take a look at it before you go up to eat."

"Gladly. I'll come right now."

Together they walked over, leaving the door open for more light. Niklaus had not seen the figure for a while; he had left Goldmund undisturbed at his work. Now he examined it with silent attention. His closed face grew beautiful and light; Goldmund saw his stern eyes grow happy.

"It is good," the master said. "It is very good. It is your assistant's piece, Goldmund. Now you have finished learning. I'll show your figure to the men at the guild and demand that they make you a master for it; you deserve it."

Goldmund did not value the guild very highly, but he knew how much appreciation the master's words meant, and he was glad.

While Niklaus walked slowly around the figure of St. John, he said with a sigh: "This figure is full of piety and light. It is grave, but filled with joy and peace. One might think that the man who made this had nothing but light and joy in his heart."

Goldmund smiled.

"You know that I did not portray myself in this figure, but my dearest friend. It is he who brought light and peace to the picture, not I. It was not really I who made the statue; he gave it into my soul."

"That may be so," said Niklaus. "It is a secret how such a work comes into being. I am not particularly humble, but I must say: I have made many works that fall far behind yours, not in craft and care, but in truth. No, you probably know yourself that such a work cannot be repeated. It is a secret."

"Yes," Goldmund said. "When the figure was finished and I looked at it, I thought: you can't make that again. And therefore I think, Master, that I'll soon go back to wandering."

Astonished and annoyed, Niklaus looked at him. His eyes had grown stern again.

"We'll speak about that. For you, work should really begin now. This is not the moment to run away. But take this day off, and at noon you'll be my guest."

At noon Goldmund appeared washed and combed, in his Sunday clothes. This time he knew how much it meant and what a rare honor it was to be invited to the master's table. As he climbed the stairs to the foyer that was crowded with statues, his heart was far from being filled with the reverence and anxious joy of the other time, that first time when he had stepped into these beautiful quiet rooms with pounding heart.

Lisbeth, too, was dressed up and wore a chain of stones around her neck, and besides carp and wine there was another surprise for dinner: the master gave Goldmund a leather purse containing two gold pieces, his salary for the finished statue.

This time he did not sit in silence while father and daughter talked. Both spoke to him, they drank toasts. Goldmund's eyes were busy. He used this opportunity to study carefully the beautiful girl with the distinguished, slightly contemptuous face, and his eyes did not conceal how much she pleased him. She treated him courteously, but he felt disappointed that she did not blush or grow animated. Again he wished fervently to make this beautiful immobile face speak, to force it to surrender its secret.

After the meal he thanked them, lingering a while before the statues in the foyer. During the afternoon he strolled through the city, an aimless idler. He had been greatly honored by the master, beyond all expectation. Why did it not make him happy? Why did all this honor have such an unfestive taste?

Heeding a whim, he rented a horse and rode out to the cloister where he had first seen work by the master and heard his name. That had been a few years ago; it seemed unthinkably longer. He visited the madonna in the cloister church and again the statue delighted and conquered him. It was more beautiful than his St. John. It was similar in depth and mystery, and superior in craft, in free, gravity-less floating. Now he saw details in the work that only an artist sees, soft delicate movements in the gown, audacities in the formation of the long hands and fingers, sensitive utilization of the grain of the wood. All these beauties were nothing compared to the whole, to the simplicity and depth of the vision, but they were there nevertheless, beauties of which only the blessed were capable, those who knew their craft completely. In order to be able to create a work like this, one had not only to carry images in one's soul; one also had to have inexpressibly trained, practiced eyes and hands. Perhaps it was after all worthwhile to place one's entire life at the service of art, at the expense of freedom and broad experience, if only in order to be able once to make something this beautiful, something that had not only been experienced and envisioned and received in love, but also executed to the last detail with absolute mastery? It was an important question.

Late at night Goldmund returned to the city on a tired horse. A tavern still stood open. There he took bread and wine. Then he climbed up to his room at the fish market, not at peace with himself, full of questions, full of doubts.

12

The next day Goldmund could not bring himself to go to work. As on many other joyless days, he roamed about the city. He saw housewives and servants go to market. He loitered around the fountain at the fish market and watched the fish venders and their burly wives praise their wares, watched them pull the cool silvery fish out of the barrels and offer them for sale, saw the fish open their mouths in pain, their gold eyes rigid with fear as they quietly gave in to death, or resisted it with furious desperation. He was gripped by pity for these animals and by a sad annoyance with human beings. Why were people so numb and crude, so unthinkably stupid and insensitive? How could those fishermen and fishwives, those haggling shoppers not see these mouths, the deathly frightened eyes and wildly flailing tails, the gruesome, useless, desperate battle, this unbearable transformation from mysterious, miraculously beautiful animals—the quiet last shiver that ran across the dying skin before they lay dead and spent—into flattened, miserable slabs of meat for the tables of those jovial paunches? These people saw nothing, knew nothing, and noticed nothing; nothing touched them. A poor, graceful animal could expire under their very eyes, or a master could express all the hope, nobility, and suffering, all the dark tense anguish of human life, in the statue of a saint with shudder-inducing tangibility—they saw nothing, nothing moved them! They were gay; they were busy, important, in a hurry; they shouted, laughed, bumped into each other, made noise, told jokes, screamed over two pennies, felt fine, were orderly citizens, highly satisfied with themselves and the world. Pigs, that's what they were, filthier and viler than pigs! Of course he had only too often been one of them, had felt happy among them, had pursued their girls, had gaily eaten baked fish from his plate without being horrified. But sooner or later, as though by magic, joy and calm would suddenly desert him; all fat plump illusions, all his self-satisfaction and self-importance, and idle peace of mind fell away. Something plunged him into solitude and brooding, made him contemplate suffering and death, the vanity of all undertaking, as he stared into the abyss. At other times a sudden joy blossomed from the hopeless depth of uselessness and horror, a violent infatuation, the desire to sing a beautiful song, to draw. He had only to smell a flower or play with a cat, and his childlike agreement with life came back to him. This time, too, it would come back. Tomorrow or the day after, the world would be good again, it would be wonderful. At least it was so until the sadness returned, the brooding, the remorse for dying fish and wilting flowers, the horror of insensitive, piglike, staring-but-not-seeing human existence. It was at such moments that Viktor always came to his mind. With torturing curiosity and deep anguish, he would think of the lanky wayfarer whom he had stabbed between the ribs and left lying on pine boughs covered with blood. And he wondered what had become of Viktor. Had the animals eaten him completely, had anything remained of him? The bones probably, and perhaps a few handfuls of hair. And what would become of the bones? How long was it, decades or just years, until bones lost their shape and crumbled into the earth?

As he watched the goings-on in the marketplace, feeling pity for the fish and disgust for the people, anguished by the melancholy in his heart and a bitter hatred against the world and himself, he once more thought of Viktor. Perhaps someone had found and buried him? And in that case, had all the flesh fallen from the bones, had it all rotted off, had the worms devoured everything? Was there still hair on the skull, and brows above the hollows of the eyes? And what had remained of Viktor's life, which had been so full of adventures and stories, the fantastic playfulness of his odd jests? Was there nothing else left alive of this human existence, which had, after all, not been ordinary, other than the few stray memories his murderer had of him? Was there still a Viktor in the dreams of women who had once loved him? Or had every vestige of him disappeared and dissolved? Thus it happened to everyone and everything: a brief flowering that soon wilted and was soon covered by snow. All the things that had flowered in him when he arrived in this city a few years ago, burning with desire for art, with deep anxious respect for Master Niklaus—what was still alive of them? Nothing, nothing more than was left of poor lanky Viktor's boastful silhouette. If somebody had told him a few years ago that the day would come when Niklaus would recognize him as an equal and demand his master's licence from the guild, he would have believed all the happiness in the world was in his hands. And now this achievement was nothing but a faded flower, a dried-up, joyless thing.

In the middle of these thoughts Goldmund suddenly had a vision. It lasted only an instant, a lightning flash: he saw the face of the universal mother, leaning over the abyss of life, with a lost smile that was both beautiful and gruesome. She was looking at birth and death, at flowers, at rustling autumn leaves, at art, at decay.

Everything had the same meaning to the universal mother. Her chilling smile hung above everything like a moon, sad and pensive. The dying carp on the cobblestones of the fish market was as dear to her as Goldmund; she was as fond of the scattered bones of the Viktor who had once tried to steal his gold as she was of his master's proud cool young daughter Lisbeth.

The lightning flash was gone; the mysterious mother face had vanished. But the pale glow continued to tremble deep in Goldmund's soul, the beat of life, of pain, of longing agitated his heart. No, no, he did not want the satiated happiness of the others, of fish venders, of burghers, of busy people. Let them go to hell. Oh, her twitching pale face, her fully ripe late-summer mouth, her heavy lips on which the immense fatal smile trembled like wind and moonlight!

Goldmund went to the master's house. It was toward noon, and he waited until he heard Niklaus leave his work and go to wash his hands. Then he went in.

"May I say a few words to you, Master, while you're washing your hands and putting on your jacket? I'm starving for a mouthful of truth. I want to say something to you that I might perhaps be able to say right now and never again. I must speak to a human being and perhaps you are the only one who can understand. I'm not speaking to the man with the famous workshop who is honored by so many assignments from great cities and cloisters, who has two assistants and a rich, beautiful house. I'm speaking to the master who made the madonna in the cloister outside the city, the most beautiful statue I know. I have loved and venerated this man; to become like him seemed to me the highest goal on earth. Now I have made a statue, my statue of St. John. It's not made as perfectly as your madonna; but that can't be helped. I have no plans for other statues, no idea that demands execution. Or rather, there is one, the remote image of a saint that I'll have to make some day, but not just yet. In order to be able to make it, I must see and experience much, much more. Perhaps I'll be able to make it in three or four years, or in ten years, or later, or never. But until then, Master, I don't want to work as an artisan, lacquering statues and carving pulpits and leading an artisan's life in the workshop. I don't want to earn money and become like other artisans. I don't want that. I want to live and roam, to feel summer and winter, experience the world, taste its beauty and its horrors. I want to suffer hunger and thirst, and to rid and purge myself of all I have lived and learned here with you. One day I would like to make something as beautiful and deeply moving as your madonna—but I don't want to become like you and lead your kind of life."

The master had washed and dried his hands. He turned and looked at Goldmund. His face was stern, but not angry.

"You have spoken," he said, "and I have listened. Don't worry now. I'm not expecting you to come to work, although there is much to be done. I don't consider you an assistant; you need freedom. I'd like to discuss a few things with you, dear Goldmund; not now, in a couple of days. In the meantime, you may spend your hours as you please. You see, I am much older than you and have learned a few things. I think differently than you do, but I understand you and what goes on in your mind. In a few days I'll send for you. We'll talk about your future; I have all kinds of plans. Until then, be patient! I know only too well how one feels when one has finished a piece of work that was important to one; I know this emptiness. It passes, believe me."

Goldmund left, dissatisfied. The master meant well, but how could he be of help? Goldmund knew a spot along the river where the water was not deep; its bed was covered with shards and all kinds of rubbish that fishermen had thrown there. He sat down on the embankment wall and looked into the water. He loved water very much; all water attracted him. From this spot, one could look through the streaming, crystal-threaded water and see the dark vague bottom, see a vague golden glitter here and there, an enticing sparkle, bits of a broken plate perhaps or a worn-out sickle, or a smooth flat stone or a polished tile, or it might be a mud fish, a fat turbot or redeye turning around down there, a ray of light catching for an instant the bright fins of its scales and belly—one could never make out what precisely was there, but there were always enchantingly beautiful, enticing, brief vague glints of drowned golden treasure in the wet black ground. All true mysteries, it seemed to him, were just like this mysterious water; all true images of the soul were like this: they had no precise contour or shape: they only could be guessed at, a beautiful distant possibility that was veiled in many meanings. Just as something inexpressibly golden or silvery blinked for a quivering instant in the twilight of the green river depths, an illusion that contained, nevertheless, the most blissful promise, so the fleeting profile of a person, seen half from the back, could sometimes promise something infinitely beautiful, something unbearably sad. In the same way a lantern hung under a cart at night, painting giant spinning shadows of wheel spokes on walls, could for a moment create a shadow play that seemed as full of incidents and stories as the work of Homer. And one's nightly dreams were woven of the same unreal, magic stuff, a nothing that contained all the images in the world, an ocean in whose crystal the forms of all human beings, animals, angels, and demons lived as ever ready possibilities.

He was absorbed in the game. With lost eyes he stared into the drifting river, saw shapeless shimmerings at the bottom, kings' crowns and women's bare shoulders. One day in Mariabronn, he recalled, he had seen similar shape-dreams and magical transformations in Greek and Latin letters. Hadn't he once talked about it with Narcissus? When had that been, how many hundred years ago? Oh, Narcissus! To be able to see him, to speak with him for an hour, hold his hand, hear his calm, intelligent voice, he would gladly have given his two gold pieces.

How could these things be so beautiful, this golden glow underneath the water, these shadows and insinuations, all these unreal, fairylike apparitions—so inexpressibly beautiful and delightful, when they were the exact opposite of the beauty an artist might create? The beauty of those undistinguishable objects was without form and consisted of nothing but mystery. This was the very opposite of the form and absolute precision of works of art. Nothing was as mercilessly clear and definite as the line of a drawn mouth or a head carved in wood. Precisely to the fraction of an inch, he could have retraced the underlip or the eyelids of Niklaus's madonna statue; nothing was indefinite there, nothing deceptive, nothing vague.

Goldmund was absorbed in his thoughts. He could not understand how that which was so definite and formal could affect the soul in the same manner as that which was intangible and formless. One thing, however, did become clear to him—why so many perfect works of art did not please him at all, why they were almost hateful and boring to him, in spite of a certain undeniable beauty. Workshops, churches, and palaces were full of these fatal works of art; he had even helped with a few himself. They were deeply disappointing because they aroused the desire for the highest and did not fulfill it. They lacked the most essential thing—mystery. That was what dreams and truly great works of art had in common: mystery.

Goldmund continued his thought: It is mystery I love and pursue. Several times I have seen it beginning to take shape; as an artist, I would like to capture and express it. Some day, perhaps, I'll be able to. The figure of the universal mother, the great birthgiver, for example. Unlike other figures, her mystery does not consist of this or that detail, of a particular voluptuousness or sparseness, coarseness or delicacy, power or gracefulness. It consists of a fusion of the greatest contrasts of the world, those that cannot otherwise be combined, that have made peace only in this figure. They live in it together: birth and death, tenderness and cruelty, life and destruction. If I only imagined this figure, and were she merely the play of my thoughts, it would not matter about her, I could dismiss her as a mistake and forget about her. But the universal mother is not an idea of mine; I did not think her up, I saw her! She lives inside me. I've met her again and again. She appeared to me one winter night in a village when I was asked to hold a light over the bed of a peasant woman giving birth: that's when the image came to life within me. I often lose it; for long periods it remains remote; but suddenly it flashes clear again, as it did today. The image of my own mother, whom I loved most of all, has transformed itself into this new image, and lies encased within the new one like the pit in the cherry.

As his present situation became clear to him, Goldmund was afraid to make a decision. It was as difficult as when he had said farewell to Narcissus and to the cloister. Once more he was on an important road: the road to his mother. Would this mother-image one day take shape, a work of his hands, and become visible to all? Perhaps that was his goal, the hidden meaning of his life. Perhaps; he didn't know. But one thing he did know: it was good to travel toward his mother, to be drawn and called by her. He felt alive. Perhaps he'd never be able to shape her image, perhaps she'd always remain a dream, an intuition, a golden shimmer, a sacred mystery. At any rate, he had to follow her and submit his fate to her. She was his star.

And now the decision was at his fingertips; everything had become clear. Art was a beautiful thing, but it was no goddess, no goal—not for him. He was not to follow art, but only the call of his mother. Why continue to perfect the ability of his hands? Master Niklaus was an example of such perfection, and where did it lead? It led to fame and reputation, to money and a settled life, and to a drying up and dwarfing of one's inner senses, to which alone the mystery was accessible. It led to making pretty, precious toys, all kinds of ornate altars and pulpits, St. Sebastians and cute, curly angels' heads at four guilders a piece. Oh, the gold in the eye of a carp, the sweet thin silvery down at the edge of a butterfly's wing were infinitely more beautiful, alive, and precious than a whole roomful of such works of art.

A boy came singing down the river road. Sometimes his singing was interrupted by a bite into a big piece of white bread he was carrying in his hand. Goldmund saw him and asked him for a small piece of bread, scratched out some of the soft crumb with two fingers, and formed tiny balls with it. He leaned over the embankment railing and threw the bread balls slowly, one by one, into the water, saw the white ball sink into the darkness, saw pushing fish heads swarm around it until it disappeared into one of the mouths. With deep satisfaction he saw ball after ball go under and disappear. Then he felt hungry and went to see one of his loves who served as a maid in a butcher's house and whom he called "My Lady of Sausages and Hams." With the usual whistle he called her to the window of her kitchen, expecting her to give him a little nourishing something to slip in his pockets and eat outdoors, high above the river on one of the vine-covered hills where thick red soil glistened healthily under the full grape leaves, where small blue hyacinths with the delicate scent of fruit blossomed in the spring.

But this seemed to be his day of decisions and realizations. As Kathrine appeared at the window, smiling down to him out of her coarsened face, as he stretched out his hand to make the habitual signal, he suddenly remembered all the other times he had stood waiting in the same manner. With boring precision he foresaw everything that would happen in the next few minutes: she would recognize his signal, step back, reappear promptly at the back door with a morsel in her hand, smoked sausages perhaps, which he would accept, and, he'd stroke her a little and press her to him as she expected of him. Suddenly it seemed infinitely stupid and ugly to provoke this whole mechanical sequence of often experienced things and play his part in it, to receive the sausage, to feel her sturdy breasts press against him, and squeeze her a little as though in payment. Suddenly he thought he saw a trait of soul-less habit in her dear coarse face, something mechanical and unmysterious in her friendly smile, something unworthy of him. His gesture froze in mid-air; the smile froze on his face. Was he still in love with her, did he really still desire her? No, he had been there too often. All too often he had seen this selfsame smile and smiled back without a prompting from his heart. What had still been all right yesterday was suddenly no longer possible today. The girl was still standing there, looking, but he had turned away, vanished from the street, determined never to go back there again. Let someone else stroke those breasts! Let someone else eat those delicious sausages! How this fat, happy city stuffed and squandered day in, day out! How lazy, spoiled, and fastidious these fat burghers were, for whom so many sows and calves were killed every day, so many poor, beautiful fish pulled from the river! And he—how spoiled and rotten he had become, how disgustingly like the fat burghers! To a wanderer in a snow-covered field, a dried-up prune or an old crust of bread tasted more delicious than a whole meal here with the prosperous guildsmen. Oh, the roaming life, freedom, the heath in the moonlight, the animal tracks peered at attentively in the gray-dewed morning grass! Here in the city, among the well-established burghers, everything was so easy and cost so little, even love. He had had enough of it. Suddenly he spat on it. Life here had lost its meaning; it was a marrowless bone. As long as the master had been an example and Lisbeth a princess, it had been beautiful, it had made sense; it had been bearable as long as he was working on his St. John. Now that it was over, the perfume was gone and the flower had wilted. He was swept up in a violent wave. A sudden awareness of impermanence washed over him, a feeling that often deeply tortured and intoxicated him. Everything was soon wilted, every desire quickly exhausted; nothing remained but bones and dust. But one thing did remain: the eternal mother, basic, ancient, forever young, with her sad, cruel smile of love. Again he saw her for an instant: a giant figure with stars in her hair. Dreamily she sat on the edge of the world, plucking flower after flower, life after life, with a playful hand, slowly dropping them into the bottomless void.

During these days, while Goldmund floated through the familiar city in a drunken depression of bidding farewell, watching a wilted piece of life fade away behind him, Master Niklaus took great pains to provide for his future and tried to make his restless guest settle down forever. He persuaded the guild to issue Goldmund a master's diploma and conceived a plan to tie Goldmund to him forever, not as a subordinate, but as an associate, with whom he would discuss and execute all important orders and share in the earnings. It might be a risk, not least because of Lisbeth, because the young man would of course soon become his son-in-law. But even the best assistant Niklaus had ever paid wages to could not have made a statue like Goldmund's St. John. Besides, he was growing old; had fewer ideas and less creative force, and he did not want to see his famous workshop sink to the level of ordinary craftsmanship. Goldmund would not be easy to handle, but he had to take the risk.

The master worried and speculated. He would enlarge the back workroom for Goldmund, give him the room in the attic and present him with beautiful new clothes for his acceptance by the guild. Carefully he sounded out Lisbeth's feelings. She had been expecting something of the sort since the meal that noon. And Lisbeth was not opposed to it. If the fellow could be persuaded to settle down and become a master of his craft, she had no objection. There were no obstacles on her side. And if Master Niklaus and his craft did not fully succeed in taming this gypsy, Lisbeth was sure she could achieve the rest.

Everything was ready, the bait had been laid appetizingly before the trap for the bird to walk in. The master sent for Goldmund, who had not shown himself of late. Once more he was invited to dinner. Again he appeared brushed and pressed; again he sat in the beautiful, somewhat oversolemn room; again he drank toasts to master and daughter, until finally the daughter left the room and Niklaus brought forth his great plan and made his offer.

"I think you've understood me," he said, concluding his surprising disclosure, "and I need not tell you that probably no young man has ever been promoted to master as rapidly, without even serving the required apprenticeship, and then placed in such a warm nest. Your fortune is made, Goldmund."

Goldmund looked at his master with embarrassed surprise, pushed the mug away although it was still half full. He had expected that Niklaus would scold him a little because of the days he had lost loafing, and then propose that he stay with him as his assistant. And now this. He felt sad and constrained, sitting across the table from this man. He could not find a ready answer.

The master's face grew slightly tense and disappointed when his honorable offer was not accepted immediately with joyful modesty. He stood up and said: "Well, my proposal comes unexpectedly. Perhaps you'd like to think about it. It does offend me a little that it should be this way; I had thought I was giving you a great joy. But never mind, take your time and think it over."

"Master," Goldmund said, fighting for words, "don't be angry with me! I thank you with all my heart for your goodwill, and even more for the patience with which you have taught me. I'll never forget how deeply indebted I am to you. But I need no time to think it over, I have long since decided."

"Decided what?"

"I had made my decision before I accepted your invitation and before I had any idea of your honorable offer. I'm not going to remain here any longer, I'm going back on the road."

Niklaus turned pale and looked at him darkly.

"Master," begged Goldmund, "I do not wish to offend you, believe me. I have told you my decision. Nothing can change it. I must leave, I must travel, I must be free. Let me thank you cordially once again, and let us bid each other a friendly farewell."

He held out his hand; he was close to tears. Niklaus did not take his hand. His face had turned white; he was pacing the room, faster and faster, his steps echoing with rage. Never had Goldmund seen him like that.

Suddenly the master stopped, made a dreadful effort to control himself, and said, looking past Goldmund, through clenched teeth: "All right, go then if you must! But go at once! Do not force me ever to see you again! I don't want to do or say anything that I might regret later. Go!"

Once more Goldmund held out his hand. The master looked as though he were going to spit at it. Goldmund turned, now also pale, and walked softly out of the room. Outside he put on his cap and crept down the stairs, letting his hand brush over the carved heads; downstairs he entered the small workshop in the courtyard, stood for a while in farewell in front of his St. John, and left the house with a pain in his heart that was deeper than when he left the knight's castle and poor Lydia.

At least it had gone quickly! At least nothing unnecessary had been said! That was his only consolation as he crossed the threshold. Suddenly street and city became transformed, had the unfamiliar face that familiar things take on when our heart has taken leave of them. He looked back at the door of the house: it had become the door to a strange house that was now closed to him.

Back in his room Goldmund began to prepare for his departure. Not much preparation was necessary; he merely had to say farewell. There was a picture on the wall that he had painted, a gentle madonna, and a few trifles that he had acquired: a Sunday hat, a pair of dancing shoes, a roll of drawings, a small lute, a number of small clay figures he had modeled; a few presents from women: a bunch of artificial flowers, a rubyred drinking glass, a hard old heart-shaped cookie, and similar odds and ends. Each piece had a meaning and a story, had been dear to him and was now only cumbersome clutter, of which he could take nothing along. He traded the ruby glass for his landlord's good strong hunting knife, which he sharpened at the whetting stone in the courtyard. He crumbled up the cookie and fed it to the chickens in the yard next door, gave the painting of the madonna to his landlady and was given a useful gift in exchange: an old leather satchel and ample provisions for the road. He packed his few shirts in the satchel with a couple of small drawings rolled over a piece of broomstick, and put in the food. Everything else had to stay behind.

There were several women in the city to whom he should have said farewell; he had slept with one of them only yesterday, without telling her of his plans. Romantic souvenirs had a way of attaching themselves to one when one wanted to move on, but they were not to be taken seriously. He said farewell to no one but the owners of the house. He did that in the evening, so he could leave very early the next morning.

And yet there was someone who got up in the morning and asked him into the kitchen for a cup of hot milk just as he was about to sneak out. It was the daughter of the house, a child of fifteen, a quiet sickly creature with beautiful eyes who had a defect of the hip that made her limp. Her name was Marie. With a sleepless face, completely pale but carefully dressed and combed, she served him hot milk and bread in the kitchen and seemed very sad to see him leave. He thanked her and out of pity kissed her goodbye on her narrow mouth. Reverently, with closed eyes, she received his kiss.

13

During the first days of his new wandering life, in the first greedy whirl of regained freedom, Goldmund had to relearn to live the homeless, timeless life of the traveler. Obedient to no man, dependent only on weather and season, without a goal before them or a roof above them, owning nothing, open to every whim of fate, the homeless wanderers lead their childlike, brave, shabby existence. They are the sons of Adam, who was driven out of Paradise; the brothers of the animals, of innocence. Out of heaven's hand they accept what is given them from moment to moment: sun, rain, fog, snow, warmth, cold, comfort, and hardship; time does not exist for them and neither does history, or ambition, or that bizarre idol called progress and evolution, in which houseowners believe so desperately. A wayfarer may be delicate or crude, artful or awkward, brave or cowardly—he is always a child at heart, living in the first day of creation, before the beginning of the history of the world, his life always guided by a few simple instincts and needs. He may be intelligent or stupid; he may be deeply aware of the fleeting fragility of all living things, of how pettily and fearfully each living creature carries its bit of warm blood through the glaciers of cosmic space, or he may merely follow the commands of his poor stomach with childlike greed—he is always the opponent, the deadly enemy of the established proprietor, who hates him, despises him, or fears him, because he does not wish to be reminded that all existence is transitory, that life is constantly wilting, that merciless icy death fills the cosmos all around.

The childlike life of the wanderer, its mother-origin, its turning away from law and mind, its openness and constant secret intimacy with death had long since deeply impregnated and molded Goldmund's soul. But mind and will lived within him nevertheless; he was an artist, and this made his life rich and difficult. Any life expands and flowers only through division and contradiction. What are reason and sobriety without the knowledge of intoxication? What is sensuality without death standing behind it? What is love without the eternal mortal enmity of the sexes?

Summer sank away, and autumn; painfully Goldmund struggled through the bitter months, wandered drunkenly through the sweet-smelling spring. Hastily the seasons fled; again and again high summer sun sank down. Years passed. Goldmund seemed to have forgotten that there were other things on earth besides hunger and love, and this silent, eerie onrush of the seasons; he seemed completely drowned in the motherly, instinctive basic world. But in his dreams or his thought-filled moments of rest, overlooking a flowering or wilting valley, he was all eyes, an artist. He longed desperately to halt the gracefully drifting nonsense of life with his mind and transform it into sense.

One day he found a companion. After his bloody adventure with Viktor he never traveled any way but by himself, yet this man surreptitiously attached himself to him and he could not get rid of him for quite some time. This man was not like Viktor. He was a pilgrim who had been to Rome, a still young man, wearing pilgrim's cloak and hat. His name was Robert and his home was on Lake Constance. Robert was the son of an artisan. For a time he had attended the school of the St. Gallus monks, and while still a boy had made up his mind to go on a pilgrimage to Rome. It was his favorite ambition and he seized the first opportunity to carry it out. This opportunity presented itself with the death of his father, in whose shop he had worked as a cabinetmaker. The old man was hardly under the ground when Robert announced to his mother and sister that nothing could stop him from setting out on his pilgrimage to Rome, to satisfy his urge and atone for his and his father's sins. In vain the women complained; in vain they scolded. He remained stubborn, and instead of taking care of them, he set out on his journey without his mother's blessing and with the curses of his sister. He was driven mainly by a desire to travel, and to this was added a kind of superficial piety, an inclination to linger in the vicinity of churches and churchly rituals, a delight in masses, baptisms, burials, incense, and burning candles. He knew a little Latin, but his childish soul was not striving for learning but rather for contemplation and quiet adoration in the shadows of church vaults. He had been a passionately zealous altar boy. Goldmund did not take him very seriously, but he liked him. He felt a slight kinship with his instinctive surrender to wandering and new places. At the time of his father's death, Robert had contentedly set out and had indeed reached Rome, where he had accepted the hospitality of cloisters and parsonages, looked at the mountains and at the south and felt very happy. He had heard hundreds of masses, prayed at all famous holy places, received the sacraments, and breathed in more incense than his small youthful sins and those of his father required. He had stayed away for a year or more, and when he finally returned and entered his father's little house, he was hardly received like the prodigal son. His sister had meantime taken over the duties and privileges of the household. She had hired and then married an industrious cabinetmaker's assistant, and ruled over house and workshop so thoroughly that the returned pilgrim soon realized he was not needed. When he mentioned setting out on new travels, no one asked him to stay. He did not take it too much to heart. His mother gave him a few pennies, and again he put on pilgrim's clothes and set out without a goal, straight through the empire, a half-priestly vagrant. Copper souvenir coins from well-known pilgrim shrines and blessed rosaries tinkled around his body.

He met Goldmund, wandered with him for a day, exchanged wayfarers' memories with him, disappeared in the next small town, reappeared here and there, and finally stayed with him, an amiable, dependable traveling companion. Goldmund pleased him greatly. He wooed his favor with small services, admired his knowledge, his audacity, his mind, and loved his health, strength, and frankness. They got used to each other, and Goldmund was also easy to get along with. There was only one thing he would not tolerate: when his melancholy and brooding moods seized him, he remained stubbornly silent and ignored the other man as though he did not exist. During these moods one could neither chat nor ask questions nor console Goldmund; one had to let him be and remain silent. Robert was not long in learning this. He had noticed that Goldmund knew a lot of Latin verses and songs by heart. He had heard him explain the stone figures outside the portals of a cathedral, had seen him draw life-size figures on an empty wall in rapid, bold strokes, and he thought his companion was a favorite of God and practically a magician. Robert also saw that Goldmund was a favorite of women and could obtain their favors with a glance and a smile; though he liked this less well, still he had to admire him for it.

One day their journey was interrupted in an unexpected manner. They were approaching a village when they were received by a small group of peasants armed with cudgels, poles, and flails. From far off the leader shouted to them that they should turn around at once and never come back, that they should run like the devil or else they'd be beaten to death. Goldmund stopped and wished to know what this was all about; the reply was a stone against his chest. He turned to Robert, but Robert had already started running. The peasants advanced threateningly, and Goldmund had no choice but to follow his fleeing companion. Trembling, Robert waited for him under a crucifix in the middle of a field.

"You ran like a hero," laughed Goldmund. "But what do those pigs have in their thick heads? Is there a war on? To place armed sentinels outside their rotten little town, refusing to let people in—I wonder what it all means."

Robert didn't know either. But certain experiences in an isolated farmhouse the next morning made them guess the secret. The farm, which consisted of a hut, a stable, and a barn surrounded by a green crop with high grass and many fruit trees, lay strangely still and asleep: there were no voices, no footfalls, no children screaming, no scythes being sharpened, not a sound. In the courtyard, a cow stood in the grass, lowing furiously. It was obviously time to milk her. They stepped up to the door, knocked, received no answer, walked into the stable; it was open and abandoned. They went to the barn. On its straw roof, light green moss glistened in the sun—but they didn't find a soul there either. They walked back to the house, astonished and depressed by the deserted homestead. Several times they hammered against the door with their fists; no answer. Goldmund tried to open it. To his surprise he found it unlocked, and he pushed and entered the pitch-dark room. "God bless you," he called loudly. "Nobody home?" The hut remained silent. Robert stayed outside. Impelled by curiosity, Goldmund advanced further. There was a bad smell in the hut, a strange, disgusting smell. The hearth was full of ash. He blew into it: sparks still gleamed at the bottom under charred logs. Then he noticed someone sitting in the half light beside the hearth. Someone was sitting there in an armchair, asleep: it looked like an old woman. Calling did no good: the house seemed to be under a spell. With a friendly tap he touched the seated woman on the shoulder, but she did not stir and he saw that she was sitting in a cobweb, with threads running from her hair to her chin. "She is dead," he thought with a slight shudder. To make sure, he tried to revive the fire, scratched and blew until a flame shot up and he was able to light a long piece of kindling. He held it up to the woman and saw a blue-black cadaver's face under gray hair, one eye still open, staring empty and leaden. The woman had died sitting in the chair. Well, she was beyond help.

With the burning stick in his hand, Goldmund searched further. In the same room, across the threshold to a back room, he found another corpse, a boy perhaps eight or nine, with a swollen, disfigured face, dressed only in a shirt. He lay with his belly across the doorsill, both hands clenched in firm furious little fists. The second one, thought Goldmund. As though in a hideous dream, he walked into the back room. There the shutters were open, the daylight pouring in. Carefully he extinguished his torch and ground the sparks out on the floor.

There were three beds in the back room. One was empty, and the straw peeked out from under coarse gray sheets. In the second bed another person, a bearded man, lay stiffly on his back, his head bent backward and his chin and beard pointing at the ceiling; it was probably the farmer. His haggard face shimmered faintly in unfamiliar colors of death, one arm dangling to the floor, where an earthen water jug had been pushed over. The water had run out and had not yet been completely absorbed by the floor; it had run into a hollow and made a small puddle. In the second bed, completely entangled in sheets and blanket, lay a big, husky woman. Her face was pressed into the bed, and coarse, straw-blond hair glistened in the bright light. With her, wrapped around her as though caught and throttled in the tousled linen, lay a half-grown girl as straw-blond as she, with gray-blue stains in her dead face.

Goldmund's eyes traveled from corpse to corpse. The girl's face was already terribly disfigured, but he could see something of her helpless horror of death. In the neck and hair of the mother, who had dug herself so deeply into the bed, one could read rage, fear, and a passionate desire to flee, especially in the wild hair, which could not resign itself to dying. The farmer's face showed stubbornness and held-in pain. He had died a hard death, but his bearded chin rose steeply, rigidly into the air like that of a warrior lying on the battlefield. His quiet, taut, stubbornly controlled posture was beautiful; it had probably not been a petty, cowardly man who had received death in this manner. Most touching was the little corpse of the boy lying on its belly across the threshold. The face told nothing, but the posture across the threshold and the clenched child fists told a great deal: incomprehensible suffering, unavailing struggle against unheard-of pain. Beside his head, a cat hole had been sawed into the door. Goldmund examined everything attentively. The sights in this hut were ghastly and the stench of the corpses dreadful; still, it all held a deep attraction for him. Everything spoke of greatness, of fate. It was real, uncompromising. Something about it stirred his heart and penetrated his soul.

Robert had begun calling him from outside, with impatience and fear. Goldmund was fond of Robert, but at this moment he thought how petty and cheap a living person could be in his childish fear and curiosity, compared to the nobility of the dead. He did not answer Robert's calls; he gave himself completely to the sight of the dead, with that strange mixture of heart-felt compassion and cold observation of the artist. He took in all the details: the sprawled-out figures, their heads and hands, the patterns in which they had frozen. How still it was in the spellbound hut, and what a strange, terrible smell! How sad and ghostlike was this small home, with the remains of the hearth fire still glowing, inhabited by corpses, completely filled with death, penetrated by death. Soon the flesh would fall off these quiet faces; rats would eat the bodies. What other people performed in the privacy of their coffins, in the graves, well hidden and invisible, the last and poorest performance, this falling apart and decaying, was performed here at home by five people in their rooms, in broad daylight, behind an unlocked door, thoughtlessly, shamelessly, vulnerably. Goldmund had seen many corpses, but never an example like this of the merciless workings of death. Deeply he studied it.

Finally Robert's yelling outside the house began to disturb him, and he went out. His companion looked at him with fright.

"What happened?" he asked in a low, fear-strangled voice. "Isn't there anyone in the house? Oh, and what eyes you have! Say something!"

Goldmund measured him coolly.

"Go in and take a look. This is a strange farmhouse all right. Afterward we'll milk the beautiful cow over there. Go ahead!"

Hesitantly Robert entered the hut, discovered the old woman sitting at the hearth, and let out a loud scream when he realized that she was dead. As he came out, he was wide-eyed with fright.

"For heaven's sake! A dead woman is sitting there by the hearth. How can it be? Why isn't anyone with her? Why don't they bury her? Oh God, she's already begun to smell."

Goldmund smiled.

"You're a great hero, Robert; but you came back out too fast. A dead old woman sitting in a chair like that is indeed a strange sight; but if you'd walked a few steps farther, you'd see something stranger still. There are five corpses, Robert. Three in bed, a dead boy lying across the threshold, and the old woman. They're all dead, the entire family. The whole household is gone. That's why nobody milked the cow."

Horrified, Robert stared at him and suddenly cried in a choking voice: "Now I understand why the peasants didn't want to let us into their village yesterday. Oh God, now it's all clear to me. The plague! By my poor soul, it's the plague, Goldmund, and you've stayed in there all this time, maybe you even touched those corpses! Get away, don't come near me, I'm sure you're infected. I'm sorry, Goldmund, but I must go, I can't stay with you."

He turned to run but was held back by his pilgrim's cloak. Goldmund looked at him sternly, with silent reprimand, and mercilessly held on to the man, who pulled and tugged.

"My dear little boy," he said in a friendly-ironic tone, "you're more intelligent than one might think, you're probably right. Well, we'll find out in the next farm or village. Yes, it's probably the plague. We'll see if we escape it safe and sound. But, little Robert, I can't let you run away now. Look, I have a soft heart, much too soft, and when I think that you might have contaminated yourself in there I cannot let you run off to lie down somewhere in a field and die, all alone, with no one to close your eyes and dig you a grave and throw a bit of earth over you. No, dear friend, that would be too sad to bear. Listen then, and pay careful attention to what I am saying, because I'm not going to say it twice: we two are in the same danger; it can hit you or it can hit me. Therefore we are staying together; we will either perish together or escape this cursed plague together. If you fall ill and die, I'll bury you; that's a promise. And if I die, then you do as you please: you can bury me or run off; I don't care. But until then, my friend, no one runs off, remember that! We need each other. And now shut your trap; I don't want to hear another word. Now go and find a bucket somewhere in the stable so that we can milk the cow."

They did this, and from that moment on Goldmund commanded and Robert obeyed, and both fared well for it. Robert made no more attempts to flee. He only said soothingly: "You frightened me for a moment. I didn't like your face when you came out of that house of death. I thought you had caught the plague. And even if it isn't the plague, your face has changed completely. Was it so terrible, what you saw in there?"

"It was not terrible," Goldmund said slowly. "I saw nothing in there that does not await you and me and everybody, even if we don't catch the plague."

As they wandered on, the Black Death was everywhere they went, reigning over the land. Some villages did not let strangers in; others let them walk unhindered through every street. Many farms stood deserted; many unburied corpses lay rotting in the fields and in the houses. Unmilked cows lowed and starved in stables; other livestock ran wild in the fields. They milked and fed many a cow and goat; they killed and roasted many a goatlet or piglet at the edge of the forest and drank wine and cider in many a masterless cellar. They had a good life. There was abundance everywhere. But it tasted only half good to them. Robert lived in constant fear of the disease, and he felt sick at the sight of the corpses. Often he was completely beside himself with fear. Again and again he thought that he had caught the plague, and held his head and hands in the smoke of their campfire for a long time, for this was supposed to be a preventative, and felt his body (even in his sleep) to see if bumps were forming on his legs or in his armpits.

Goldmund often scolded and made fun of him. He did not share his fear or his disgust. Fascinated and depressed, he walked through the stricken country, attracted by the sight of the great death, his soul filled with the autumn, his heart heavy with the song of the mowing scythe. Sometimes the image of the universal mother would reappear to him, a pale, gigantic face with Medusa eyes and a smile thick with suffering and death.

One day they came to a small town that was heavily fortified. Outside the gates defensive ramparts ran house-high around the entire city wall, but there was no sentinel standing up there or at the wide-open gates. Robert refused to enter the town, and he implored his companion not to go in either. Just then a bell tolled. A priest came out of the city gates, a cross in his hands, and behind him came three carts, two drawn by horses and one by a pair of oxen. The carts were piled high with corpses. A couple of men in strange coats, their faces shrouded in hoods, ran alongside and spurred the animals on.

Robert disappeared, white-faced. Goldmund followed the death carts at a short distance. They advanced a few hundred steps farther; there was no cemetery: a hole had been dug in the middle of the deserted heath, only three spades deep but vast as a hall. Goldmund stood and looked on as the men pulled the corpses from the carts with staffs and boat hooks and tossed them into the vast hole. He saw the murmuring priest swing his cross over them and walk away, saw the men light huge fires all around the flat grave and silently creep back into the city. No one had tried to throw any earth over the pit. Goldmund looked in: fifty or more persons lay there, piled one on top of the other, many of them naked. Stiff and accusing, an arm or a leg rose in the air, a shirt fluttered timidly in the wind.

When he came back, Robert begged him almost on his knees to flee this place. He had good reason to beg, for he saw in Goldmund's absent look the absorption in and concentration on horror, that dreadful curiosity that had become all too familiar. He was not able to hold his friend back. Alone, Goldmund walked into the town.

He walked through the unguarded gates, and at the echo of his steps many towns and gates rose up in his memory. He remembered how he had walked through them, how he had been received by screaming children, playing boys, quarreling women, the hammering of a forge, the crystal sound of the anvil, the rattling of carts and many other sounds, delicate and coarse, all braided together as though into a web that bore witness to many forms of human labor, joy, bustle, and communication. Here, under this yellow gate, in this empty street, nothing echoed, no one laughed, no one cried, everything lay frozen in deathly silence, cut by the overloud, almost noisy chatter of a running well. Behind an open window he saw a baker amid his loafs and rolls. Goldmund pointed to a roll; the baker carefully handed it out to him on a long baking shovel, waited for Goldmund to place money into the shovel, and angrily, but without cursing, closed his little window when the stranger bit into the roll and walked on without paying. Before the windows of a pretty house stood a row of earthen jars in which flowers had once bloomed. Now wilted leaves hung down over scraps of pottery. From another house came the sound of sobbing, the misery of children's voices crying. In the next street Goldmund saw a pretty girl standing behind an upper-floor window, combing her hair. He watched her until she felt his eyes and looked down, blushing, and when he gave her a friendly smile, slowly a faint smile spread over her blushing face.

"Soon through combing?" he called up. Smiling, she leaned her light face out of the darkness of the window.

"Not sick yet?" he asked, and she shook her head. "Then leave this city of death with me. We'll go into the woods and live a good life."

Her eyes asked questions.

"Don't think it over too long. I mean it," Goldmund called up to her. "Are you with your father and mother, or are you in the service of strangers? Strangers, I see. Come along then, dear child. Let the old people die; we are young and healthy and want to have a bit of fun while there's still time. Come along, little brown hair, I mean it."

She gave him a probing look, hesitant and surprised. Slowly he walked on, strolled through a deserted street and through another. Slowly he came back. The girl was still at the window, leaning forward, glad to see him return. She waved to him. Slowly he walked on, and soon she came running after him, caught up with him before the gates, a small bundle in her hand, a red kerchief tied around her head.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Lene. I'll go with you. Oh, it's so horrible here in the city; everybody is dying. Let's leave. Let's leave."

Not far from the gates Robert was crouching moodily on the ground. When Goldmund appeared, he jumped to his feet and stared when he caught sight of the girl. This time he did not give in at once. He whined and made a scene. How could a man bring a person with him from that cursed plague hole and impose her company on his companion? It was not only crazy, it was tempting God. He, Robert, was not going to stay with him any longer; his patience had come to an end.

Goldmund let him curse and lament until he found nothing more to say.

"There," he said, "now you've sung your song. Now you'll come with us, and be glad that we have such pretty company. Her name is Lene and she stays with me. But I want to do you a favor too, Robert. Listen: for a while we'll live in peace and health and stay away from the plague. We'll find a nice place for ourselves, an empty hut, or we'll build one, and I'll be the head of the household and Lene will be the mistress, and you'll be our friend and live with us. Our life is going to be a little pleasant and friendly now. All right?"

Oh yes, Robert was delighted. As long as no one asked him to shake Lene's hand or touch her clothes …

No, said Goldmund, no one would ask him to. In fact, it was strictly forbidden to touch Lene, even with a finger. "Don't you dare!"

All three walked on, first in silence, then gradually the girl began to talk. How happy she was to see sky and trees and meadows again. It had been so gruesome in the plague-stricken city, more horrible than she could tell. And she began to clear her heart of all the sad, horrible things she had seen. She told so many awful stories: the little town must have been hell. One of the two doctors had died; the other only looked after the rich. In many houses the dead lay rotting, because nobody came to take them away. In other houses looters stole, pillaged, and whored. Often they pulled the sick from their beds, threw them onto the death carts with the corpses, and down into the pit of the dead. Many a horror tale she had to tell, and no one interrupted her. Robert listened with voluptuous terror, Goldmund silent and unruffled, letting the horrors pour out and making no comment. What was there to say? Finally Lene grew tired, the stream dried up, she was out of words.

Goldmund began to walk more slowly. Softly he began to sing, a song with many couplets, and with each couplet his voice grew fuller. Lene began to smile; Robert listened, delighted and deeply surprised. Never before had he heard Goldmund sing. He could do everything, this Goldmund. There he was singing, strange man! He sang well; his voice was pure, though muffled. At the second song Lene was humming with him, and soon she joined in with full voice. Evening was coming on. Black forests rose up far over the heath, and behind them low blue mountains, which grew bluer and bluer as though from within. Now gay, now solemn, their song followed the rhythm of their steps.

"You're in such a good mood today," said Robert.

"Of course I'm in a good mood today, I found such a pretty love. Oh, Lene, how nice that the ghouls left you behind for me. Tomorrow we'll find a little house where we'll have a good life and be happy to have flesh and bone still together. Lene, did you ever see those fat mushrooms in the woods in autumn, the edible ones that the snails love?"

"Oh yes," she laughed, "I've seen lots of them."

"Your hair is that same mushroom brown, Lene, and it smells just as good. Shall we sing another song? Or are you hungry? I still have a few good things in my satchel."

The next day they found what they were looking for: a log cabin in a small birch forest. Perhaps some woodcutters had built it. It stood empty, and the door was soon broken open. Robert agreed that this was a good hut and a healthy region. On the road they had met stray goats and had taken a fine one along with them.

"Well, Robert," said Goldmund, "although you're no carpenter, you were once a cabinetmaker. We're going to live here. You must build us a partition for our castle, to make two rooms, one for Lene and me, and one for you and the goat. We don't have very much left to eat; today we must be satisfied with goat's milk, no matter how little there is. You'll build the wall, and we'll make up beds for all of us. Tomorrow I'll go out to look for food."

Immediately everybody set to work. Goldmund and Lene went to find straw, fern, and moss for their sleeping places, and Robert sharpened his knife on a piece of flint and cut small birch posts to make a wall. But he could not finish it in one day and that evening he went outside to sleep in the open. Goldmund had found a sweet playmate in Lene, shy and inexperienced but deeply loving. Gently he took her to his bosom and lay awake for a long time, listening to her heart, long after she had fallen asleep, tired and satiated. He smelled her brown hair, nestled close to her, all the while thinking of the vast flat pit into which the hooded devils had dumped their carts of corpses. Life was beautiful, beautiful and fleeting as happiness. Youth was beautiful and wilted fast.

The partition of the hut was very pretty. All three worked at it finally. Robert wanted to show what he could do and eagerly talked about all the things he wanted to build, if only he had a planing bench and tools, a straight edge and nails. But he had only his knife and his hands and had to be satisfied with cutting a dozen small birch posts and building a coarse sturdy fence in the hut. But, he decreed, the openings had to be filled in with plaited juniper. That took time, but it became gay and pretty; everybody helped. In between, Lene went to gather berries and look after the goat, and Goldmund scoured the region for food, explored the neighborhood, and came back with a few little things. The region seemed uninhabited. Robert was especially pleased about that: they were safe from contamination as well as from quarrels; but it had one disadvantage: there was very little to eat. They found an abandoned peasant hut not far away, without corpses this time, and Goldmund proposed to move to the hut rather than stay in the log cabin, but Robert shudderingly refused. He didn't like to see Goldmund enter the empty house, and every piece he brought over had first to be smoked and washed before Robert touched it. Goldmund didn't find much—two posts, a milk pail, a few pieces of crockery, a hatchet, but one day he caught two stray chickens in the fields. Lene was in love and happy. All three enjoyed improving their small home, making it a little prettier each day. They had no bread, but they took another goat into service and also found a small field full of turnips. The days passed, the wall was finished, the beds were improved, they built a hearth. The brook was not far and had clear sweet water. They often sang as they worked.

One day, as they sat together drinking their milk and praising their settled life, Lene said suddenly in a dreamy tone: "But what will we do when winter comes?"

No one answered. Robert laughed; Goldmund stared strangely ahead of him. Eventually Lene noticed that neither of them thought of winter, that neither seriously thought of remaining such a long time in the same place, that this home was no home, that she was among wayfarers. She hung her head.

Then Goldmund said, playfully and encouragingly as though to a child: "You're a peasant's daughter, Lene; peasants always worry. Don't be afraid. You'll find your way back home once this plague period is over; it can't last forever. Then you'll go back to your parents, or to whomever is still alive, or you'll return to the city and earn your bread as a maid. But now it's still summer. Death is rampant throughout the region, but here it is pretty, and we live well. That's why we can stay here for as long or as short a time as we like."

"And afterwards?" Lene asked violently. "Afterwards it is all over? And you go away? What about me?"

Goldmund caught her braid and pulled at it softly.

"Silly little girl," he said, "have you already forgotten the ghouls and the abandoned houses, and the big hole outside the gates where the fires burn? You should be happy not to be lying in that hole with the rain falling on your little nightshirt. Think of what you escaped, be glad that your dear life is still in your veins, that you can still laugh and sing."

She was still not satisfied.

"But I don't want to go away again," she complained. "Nor do I want to let you go. How can one be happy when one knows that soon all will be finished and over with!"

Once more Goldmund answered her, in a friendly tone but with a hidden threat in his voice.

"About that, little Lene, the wise men and saints have wracked their brains. There is no lasting happiness. But if what we now have is not good enough for you, if it no longer pleases you, then I'll set fire to this hut this very minute and each of us can go his way. Let things be as they are, Lene; we've talked enough."

She gave in and that's where they left it, but a shadow had fallen over her joy.

14

Before summer had wilted completely, life in the hut came to an end in a way they had not imagined. One day Goldmund was roaming about the area with a slingshot, hoping to wing a partridge or some other fowl; their food had grown rather scarce. Lene was not far away, gathering berries, and from time to time he'd pass near her and see her head, her brown neck rising out of her linen shirt, or hear her sing. Once he stole a few of her berries; then he wandered off and lost sight of her for a while. He thought about her, half tenderly, half annoyed, because she had again mentioned autumn and the future. She said that she thought she was pregnant and she could not let him go off again. Now it will soon be over, he thought. Soon I'll have had enough and wander on alone. I'll leave Robert, too. I'll try to get back to the big city when the cold begins, to Master Niklaus. I'll spend the winter there and next spring I'll buy myself a new pair of shoes and walk and walk until I reach our cloister in Mariabronn and say hello to Narcissus. It must be ten years since I last saw him, and I must see him again, if only for a day or two.

An unfamiliar sound roused him from his thoughts, and suddenly he realized that all his thoughts and desires were already far away from here. He listened intently. The sound of fear repeated itself; he thought he recognized Lene's voice and followed it, irritated that she was calling him. Soon he was close enough—yes, it was Lene's voice. She was calling his name as though in great distress. He ran faster, still somewhat annoyed, but pity and worry gained the upper hand as her screaming continued. When he was finally able to see her, she was kneeling in the heather, her blouse completely torn, screaming and wrestling with a man who was trying to rape her. Goldmund ran forward with long leaps. All his pent-up anger, his restlessness, his sorrow broke out in a howling rage against the unknown attacker. He surprised the man as he tried to pin Lene to the ground. Her naked breasts were bleeding, and avidly the stranger held her in his grip. Goldmund threw himself upon him, his furious fingers grabbing the man's throat. It felt thin and stringy, covered with a woolly beard. With glee Goldmund pressed the throat until the man let go of the girl and hung limply between his hands; still throttling him, Goldmund dragged the exhausted, half-dead man along the ground to a few gray ribs of rock protruding from the earth. He raised the defeated man, heavy though he was, twice, three times in the air and smashed his head against the sharp-edged rocks, broke his neck, and threw the body down. His anger was still not fully vented; he would have liked to mangle the man further.

Radiant, Lene sat and watched. Her breasts were bleeding; she was still trembling all over and panting, but she soon gathered herself together. With a forlorn look of lust and admiration she watched her powerful lover dragging the intruder through the heather, throttling him, breaking his neck, and throwing his corpse down. Like a dead snake, limp and distorted, the body lay on the ground, the gray face with unkempt beard and thinning hair falling pitifully to one side. Triumphant Lene sat up and fell against Goldmund's heart, but suddenly she turned pale. Fright was still in her; she felt sick. Exhausted, she sank into the blueberry bushes. But soon she was able to walk to the hut with Goldmund. He washed her breasts; one was scratched and the other bore a bite wound from the marauder's teeth.

The adventure excited Robert enormously. Hotly he asked for details of the combat. "You broke his neck, you say? Magnificent! Goldmund, you are a terrifying man."

But Goldmund did not feel like talking about it any more; he had cooled off. As he walked away from the dead man, poor boasting Viktor had come to his mind. This was the second person who had died at his hand. In order to shut Robert up, he said: "Now you might do something too; go over and get rid of the corpse. If it's too difficult to dig a hole for it, then drag it over to the reeds, or else cover it up with stones and earth." But Robert turned down the proposal. He wanted no commerce with corpses; you could never be sure they weren't infested with the plague.

Lene was lying down. The bite in her breast hurt, but soon she felt better, got up again, made a fire and cooked the evening milk; she was cheerful, but Goldmund sent her to bed early. She obeyed like a lamb, full of admiration for him. Goldmund was somber and taciturn; Robert realized it and left him alone. Much later Goldmund went to bed. Listening, he bent over Lene. She was asleep. He was restless; he kept thinking of Viktor, felt anguish and the urge to move on; playing house had come to an end. One thing made him particularly pensive. He had caught Lene's look while he bashed the man to death and tossed him down. A strange look. He knew that he would never forget it: pride and triumph had radiated from her wide, horrified, delighted eyes, a deep passionate desire to participate in the revenge and to kill. He had never seen anything like it in a woman's face, and had never imagined such a look. Had it not been for that look, he thought, he might have forgotten Lene's face one day, after a number of years. It had made her peasant-girl face large, beautiful, and horrible. For months his eyes had not experienced anything that made him quiver with the wish: "One ought to draw that!" That look had caused this wish to quiver through him, and a kind of terror.

He could not sleep, and finally he got up and went outside. It was cool, and a light wind played in the birches. He paced in the dark, sat down on a stone, drowned in thoughts and deep sadness. He felt sorry for Viktor and for the man he had killed today. He regretted the lost innocence, the lost childlike quality of his soul. Had he gone away from the cloister, left Narcissus, offended Master Niklaus and renounced beautiful Lisbeth merely to camp in the heath, track stray cattle, and kill that poor fellow back there on those stones? Did all this make sense? Was it worth experiencing? His heart grew tight with meaninglessness and self-contempt. He let himself sink down and stared into the pale night clouds, and as he stared, his thoughts stopped; he didn't know whether he was looking into the sky or into the drab world inside him. Suddenly, just as he was falling asleep on the stone, a large pale face appeared like far-away lightning in the drifting clouds, the mother-face. It looked heavy and veiled, but suddenly its eyes opened wide, large eyes full of lust and murder. Goldmund slept until the dew fell on him.

The next day Lene was ill. They made her stay in bed, for there were many things to be done: in the morning Robert had seen two sheep in the small forest, but they had run from him. He called Goldmund, and more than half the day they hunted until they caught one of the sheep; they came back exhausted. Lene felt very sick. Goldmund examined her and found plague boils. He kept it secret, but Robert became suspicious when he heard that Lene had still not recovered. He would not stay in the hut. He'd find a sleeping place outside, he said, and he'd take the goat along too: why let it get infected.

"Go to hell," Goldmund yelled at him in fury. "I don't want to see you ever again." He grabbed the goat and pulled her to his side of the juniper partition. Robert disappeared without a word, without the goat. He was sick with fear: of the plague, of Goldmund, of loneliness and the night. He lay down close to the hut.

Goldmund said to Lene: "I'll stay with you, don't worry. You'll get well again."

She shook her head.

"Be careful, love. Don't catch this sickness too; you mustn't come so close to me. Don't try so hard to console me. I'm going to die, and I'd rather die than find your bed empty one morning because you have left me. I've thought of it every morning and been afraid of it. No, I'd rather die."

In the morning she was extremely weak. Goldmund had given her sips of water from time to time and napped a little in between. Now, in the growing light, he recognized the signs of approaching death in her face, it looked so wilted and flabby. For a moment he stepped outside to get some air and look at the sky. A few bent red fir trunks at the edge of the forest shone with the first rays of sun; the air tasted fresh and sweet; the distant hills were still shrouded in morning clouds. He walked a few steps, stretched his tired legs, and breathed deeply. The world was beautiful this morning. He'd probably soon be back on the road. It was time to say goodbye.

Robert called to him from the forest. Was she better? If it wasn't the plague, he'd stay. Goldmund shouldn't be angry with him; he had watched the sheep in the meantime.

"Go to hell, you and your sheep!" Goldmund shouted over to him. "Lene is dying, and I too am infected."

This was a lie; he had said it to get rid of Robert. He might be a well-meaning man, but Goldmund had had enough of him. He was too cowardly for him, too petty; he had no place in this fateful, shocking scene. Robert vanished and did not return. The sun shone brightly.

When Goldmund came back to Lene, she lay asleep. He too fell asleep once more, and in his dream he saw his old horse Bless and the beautiful chestnut tree at the cloister; he felt as though he were gazing back upon his lost and beautiful home from an infinitely remote, deserted region, and when he woke, tears were running down his blond-bearded cheeks. He heard Lene speak in a weak voice. He thought she was calling out to him and sat up on his bed, but she was speaking to no one. She was stammering words, love words, curses, a little laugh, and began to heave deep sighs and swallow. Gradually she fell silent again. Goldmund got up and bent over her already disfigured face. With bitter curiosity his eyes retraced the lines that the scalding breath of death was so miserably distorting and muddying. Dear Lene, called his heart, dear sweet child, you too already want to leave me? Have you already had enough of me?

He would have liked to run away. To wander, roam, run, breathe the air, grow tired, see new images. It would have done him good; it might perhaps have got him over his deep melancholy. But he could not leave now. It was impossible for him to leave the child to lie there alone and dying. He scarcely dared go outside every few hours for a moment to breathe fresh air. Since Lene could no longer swallow any milk, he drank it himself. There was no other food. A couple of times he led the goat outside, for it to feed and drink water and move around. Once more he stood at Lene's bed, murmured tender words to her, stared incessantly into her face, disconsolate but attentive, to watch her dying. She was conscious. Sometimes she slept, and when she woke up she only half opened her eyes; the lids were tired and limp. Around eyes and nose the young girl looked older and older by the hour. A rapidly wilting grandmother face sat on her fresh young neck. She spoke only rarely, said "Goldmund," or "lover," and tried to wet her swollen bluish lips with her tongue; when she did, he'd give her a few drops of water. She died the following night. She died without complaining. It was only a brief quiver; than her breath stopped and a shudder ran over her. Goldmund's heart heaved mightily at the sight. He recalled the dying fish he had so often pitied in the market: they had died in just that way, with a quiver, a soft woeful shudder, that ran over their skin and extinguished luster and life. For a while he knelt beside Lene. Then he went out and sat down in the bushes. He remembered the goat and walked back into the hut and let the animal out. After straying a short distance, it lay down on the ground. He lay down beside it, his head on its flank, and slept until the day grew bright. Then he went into the hut for the last time, stepped behind the braided wall, and looked for the last time at the poor dead face. It did not feel right to him to let the dead woman lie there. He went out, filled his arms with dry wood and underbrush, and threw it into the hut. Then he struck fire. From the hut he took nothing along but the flint. In an instant the dry juniper wall burned brightly. He stood outside and watched, his face reddened by the flames, until the whole roof was ablaze and the first beams crashed in. The goat jumped with fear and whined. He knew he ought to kill the animal and roast a piece of it and eat it, to have strength for his journey. But he could not bring himself to kill the goat; he drove it off into the heath and walked away. The smoke of the fire followed him into the forest. Never before had he felt so disconsolate setting out on a journey.

And yet the things that lay in store for him were far worse than he had imagined. It began with the first farms and villages and continued to grow more terrible as he walked on. The whole region, the whole vast land lay under a cloud of death, under a veil of horror, fear, and darkening of the soul. And the empty houses, the farm dogs starved on their chains and rotting, the scattered unburied corpses, the begging children, the death pits at the city gates were not the worst. The worst were the survivors, who seemed to have lost their eyes and souls under the weight of horror and the fear of death. Everywhere the wanderer came upon strange, dreadful things. Parents had abandoned their children, husbands their wives, when they had fallen ill. The ghouls reigned like hangmen; they pillaged the empty houses, left corpses unburied or, following their whims, tore the dying from their beds before they had breathed their last and tossed them on the death carts. Frightened fugitives wandered about alone, turned primitive, avoiding all contact with other people, hounded by fear of death. Others were grouped together by an excited, terrified lust for life, drinking and dancing and fornicating while death played the fiddle. Still others cowered outside cemeteries, unkempt, mourning or cursing, with insane eyes, or sat outside their empty houses. And, worst of all, everybody looked for a scapegoat for his unbearable misery; everybody swore that he knew the criminal who had brought on the disease, who had intentionally caused it. Grinning, evil people, they said, were bent on spreading death by extracting the disease poison from corpses and smearing it on walls and doorknobs, by poisoning wells and cattle with it. Whoever was suspected of these horrors was lost, unless he was warned and able to flee: either the law or the mob condemned him to death. The rich blamed the poor, or vice versa; both blamed the Jews, or the French, or the doctors. In one town, Goldmund watched with grim heart while the entire ghetto was burned, house after house, with the howling mob standing around, driving screaming fugitives back into the fire with swords and clubs. In the insanity of fear and bitterness, innocent people were murdered, burned, and tortured everywhere. Goldmund watched it all with rage and revulsion. The world seemed destroyed and poisoned; there seemed to be no more joy, no more innocence, no more love on earth. Often he fled the overly violent feasts of the desperate dancers. Everywhere he heard the fiddle of death; he soon learned to recognize its sound. Often he participated in mad orgies, played the lute or danced through feverish nights in the glow of peat torches.

He was not afraid. He had first tasted the fear of death during that winter night under the pines when Viktor's fingers clutched at his throat, and later in the cold and hunger of many a hard day. That had been a death which one could fight, against which one could defend oneself, and he had defended himself, with trembling hands and feet, with gaping stomach and exhausted body, had fought, won, and escaped. But no one could fight death by plague; one had to let it rage and give in. Goldmund had given in long ago. He had no fear. It seemed as though he was no longer interested in life, since he had left Lene behind in the burning hut, since his endless journey through a land devastated by death. But enormous curiosity drove him and kept him awake; he was indefatigable, watching the reaper, listening to the song of the transitory. He did not go out of his way. Everywhere he felt the same quiet passion to participate, to walk through hell with wide-open eyes. He ate moldy bread in empty houses, sang and drank at the insane feasts, plucked the fast-wilting flower of lust, looked into the fixed, drunken stares of the women, into the fixed, stupid eyes of the drunk, into the fading eyes of the dying. He loved the desperate, feverish women, helped carry corpses in exchange for a plate of soup, threw earth over naked bodies for two pennies. It had grown dark and wild in the world. Death howled its song, and Goldmund heard it with burning passion.

His goal was Master Niklaus's city; that's where the voice of his heart drew him. The road was long and lined with decay, wilting, and dying. Sadly he journeyed on, intoxicated by the song of death, open to the loudly screaming misery of the world, sad, and yet glowing, with eager senses.

In a cloister he came upon a recently painted fresco. He had to look at it for a long time. A dance of death had been painted on a wall: pale bony death, dancing people out of life, king and bishop, abbot and earl, knight, doctor, peasant, lansquenet—everyone he took along with him, while skeleton musicians played on hollow bones. Goldmund's curious eyes drank in the painting. An unknown colleague had applied the lesson he too had learned from the Black Death, and was screaming the bitter lesson of the inevitable end shrilly into everyone's ear. It was a good picture, and a good sermon; this unknown colleague had seen and painted the subject rather well. A bony, ghastly echo rose from his wild picture. And yet it was not what Goldmund had seen and experienced. It was the obligation to die that was painted here, the stern and merciless end. But Goldmund would have preferred another picture. In him the wild song of death had a completely different sound, not bony and severe, but sweet rather, and seductive, motherly, an enticement to come home. Wherever the hand of death reached into life, the sound was not only shrill and warlike but also deep and loving, autumnal, satiated, the little lamp of life glowed brighter, more intensely at the approach of death. To others death might be a warrior, a judge or hangman, a stern father. To him death was also a mother and a mistress; its call was a mating call, its touch a shudder of love. After looking at the painted death dance, Goldmund felt drawn to the master and to his craft with renewed force. But everywhere there were delays, new sights and experiences. With quivering nostrils he breathed the air of death. Everywhere pity or curiosity claimed an extra hour from him, an extra day. For three days he had a small bawling peasant boy with him. For hours he carried him on his back, a half-starved midget of five or six who caused him much trouble and whom he didn't know how to get rid of. Finally a peat digger's wife took the boy in. Her husband had died, and she wanted to have a little life in the house again. For days a masterless dog accompanied him, ate out of his hand, warmed him while he slept, but one morning it too strayed off. Goldmund was sorry. He had become accustomed to speaking to the dog; for hours he'd have thoughtful conversations with the animal about the evil in people, the existence of God, about art, about the breasts and hips of a knight's very young daughter named Julie, whom he had known in his youth. Goldmund had naturally grown a trifle mad during his death journey: everyone within the plague region was a trifle mad, and many were completely insane. Perhaps young Rebekka was also a trifle insane—a beautiful dark girl with burning eyes, with whom he had spent two days.

He found her outside a small town, crouching in the fields beside a heap of rubble, sobbing, beating her face, tearing her black hair. The hair stirred his pity. It was extremely beautiful, and he caught her furious hands and held them fast and talked to her, noting that her face and figure were also of great beauty. She was mourning her father, who had been burned to ash with fourteen other Jews by order of the town's authorities. She had been able to flee but had now returned in desperation and was accusing herself for not having been burned with the others. Patiently he held on to her twisting hands and talked to her gently, murmured sympathetically, and protectively offered his help. She asked him to help her bury her father. They gathered all the bones from the still warm ashes, carried them into a hiding place farther away in the field, and covered them with earth. In the meantime evening had fallen and Goldmund looked for a place to sleep. In a small oak forest he arranged a bed for the girl and promised to watch over her and listened to her moan and sob after she lay down; finally she fell asleep. Then he, too, slept a little, and in the morning he began his courtship. He told her that she could not stay alone like this, she might be recognized as a Jew and killed, or depraved wayfarers might misuse her, and the forest was full of wolves and gypsies. If he took her along, however, and protected her against wolf and man—because he felt sorry for her and was very fond of her, because he had eyes in his head and knew what beauty was—he would never allow her sweet intelligent eyelids and graceful shoulders to be devoured by animals or burned at the stake. Dark-faced, she listened to him, jumped up, and ran off. He had to chase after her and catch her before he could continue.

"Rebekka," he said, "can't you see that I don't mean you any harm? You're sad, you're thinking of your father, you don't want to hear about love right now. But tomorrow or the day after, or later, I'll ask you again. Until then I'll protect you and bring you food and I won't touch you. Be sad as long as you must. You shall be able to be sad with me, or happy. You shall always do only what brings you joy."

But his words were spoken to the wind. She didn't want to do anything that brought joy, she said bitterly and angrily. She wanted to do what brought pain. Never again was she going to think of anything resembling joy, and the sooner the wolf ate her, the better. He should go now, there was nothing he could do, they had already talked too much.

"You," he said, "don't you see that death is everywhere, that people are dying in every house and every town, that everything is full of misery. The fury of those stupid people who burned your father is nothing but misery; it is the result of too much suffering. Look, soon death will get us too, and we'll rot in the field and the moles will play dice with our bones. Let us live a little before it comes to that and be sweet to each other. Oh, it would be such a pity for your white neck and small feet! Dear beautiful girl, do come with me. I won't touch you. I only want to see you and take care of you."

He begged for a long time. Suddenly he understood how useless it was to court her with words and arguments. He fell silent and looked at her sadly. Her proud regal face was taut with rejection.

"That's how you are," she finally said in a voice full of hatred and contempt. "That's how you Christians are! First you help a daughter bury her father whom your people have murdered and whose last fingernail was worth more than all of you together, and as soon as that is done, the daughter must belong to you and go off whoring with you. That's how you are. At first I thought perhaps you were a good man. But how could you be! Oh, you are pigs!"

As she spoke, Goldmund saw glowing in her eyes, behind the hatred, something that touched him and shamed him and went deep to his heart. He saw death in her eyes, not the compulsion to die but the wish to die, the wish to be allowed to die, wordless obedience, abandonment to the call of the universal mother.

"Rebekka," he said softly, "perhaps you are right. I am not a good person, although I meant well with you. Forgive me. Only now have I understood you."

He raised his cap and bowed to her deeply as though to a countess, and walked off with heavy heart; he had to let her perish. For a long time he was sad and felt like speaking to no one. As little as they resembled each other, that proud Jewish girl did in some ways remind him of Lydia, the knight's daughter. To love such women brought suffering. But for a while it seemed to him as though he had never loved any other women, only these two, poor fearful Lydia and the shy, bitter Rebekka.

He thought of the black glowing girl for many days and dreamed many nights of the slender-burning beauty of her body that had been destined to joy and flowering and yet was resigned to dying. Oh, that those lips and breasts should fall prey to the "pigs" and rot in the fields! Was there no power or magic to save such precious flowers? Yes, there was such a magic; they continued to live in his soul and would be fashioned and preserved by him. With terror and delight he realized that his soul was filled with images, that this long journey through the land of death had filled him with ideas for drawings and statues. Oh, how this fullness strained at him, how he longed to come to himself quietly, to let them pour out, to convert them to lasting images! He pushed on, more glowing and eager, his eyes still open and his senses still curious, but now filled with a violent longing for paper and crayon, for clay and wood, for workroom and work.

Summer was over. Many people assumed that the epidemic would cease with autumn or the beginning of winter. It was an autumn without gaiety. Goldmund passed regions in which there was no one left to harvest the fruit. It fell off the trees and rotted in the grass. At other places savage hordes from the cities came to pillage, brutally robbing and squandering.

Slowly Goldmund neared his goal, and during the last stretch he was sometimes seized with the fear that he might be caught by the plague before he got there and die in some stable. He no longer wanted to die, not before tasting the joy of standing once more in a workshop and giving himself up to creation. For the first time in his life the world was too wide for him, the German Empire too large. No pretty town could entice him to stay; no pretty peasant girl retain him longer than a night.

At one point he passed a church. On its portal stood many stone figures in deep niches supported by ornamental small columns: very old figures of angels, disciples, and martyrs, like those he had seen many times. In his cloister in Mariabronn there had been a number of figures like this. Before, as an adolescent, he had looked at them, but without passion; they had seemed beautiful and dignified to him, but a little too solemn and stiff and old-fashioned. Later, after he had been moved and delighted by Master Niklaus's sweet sad madonna at the end of his first long journey, he had found these old solemn stone figures too heavy and rigid and foreign. He had looked at them with a certain contempt and had found his master's new type of art much more lively, intense, and animated. Now, returning from a world full of images, his soul marked by the scars and tracks of violent adventures and experiences, filled with painful nostalgia for consciousness and new creation, he was suddenly touched with extraordinary power by these strict, ancient figures. Reverently he stood before the venerable images, in which the heart of long-past days continued to live on, in which, still after centuries, the fears and delights of long-since-vanished generations, frozen to stone, offered resistance to the passage of time. A feeling of admiration rose with a humble shudder in his unwieldy heart, and of horror at his wasted, burned-up life. He did what he had not done for an infinitely long time. He walked up to a confessional to confess and be punished.

There were a number of confessionals in the church, but no priests. They had died, or they lay in the hospital, or they had fled for fear of contamination. The church was empty. Goldmund's steps echoed hollow under the stone vault. He knelt before an empty confessional, closed his eyes, and whispered into the grill: "Dear God, see what has become of me. I have returned from the world. I've become an evil, useless man. I have squandered my youth like a spendthrift and little remains. I have killed, I have stolen, I have whored, I have gone idle and have eaten the bread of others. Dear Lord, why did you create us thus, why do you lead us along such roads? Are we not your children? Did your son not die for us? Are there no saints and angels to guide us? Or are they all pretty, invented stories that we tell to children, at which priests themselves laugh? I have come to doubt you, Lord. You have ill-created the world; you are keeping it in bad order. I have seen houses and streets littered with corpses. I have seen the rich barricade themselves in their houses or flee, and the poor let their brothers lie unburied, each suspicious of the other. They slaughter the Jews like cattle; I have seen many innocent people suffer and die, and many a wicked man swim in prosperity. Have you completely forgotten and abandoned us, are you completely disgusted with your creation, do you want us all to perish?"

With a sigh he stepped out through the high portal and saw the silent statues, angels and saints stand haggard and tall in their stiffly folded gowns, immobile, inaccessible, superhuman and yet created by the hand and mind of man. Strict and deaf they stood there in their narrow niches, inaccessible to any request or question. And yet they were an infinite consolation, a triumphant victory over death and despair as they stood in their dignity and beauty, surviving one dying generation of men after another. Ah, poor beautiful Rebekka should be up there too, and poor Lene who had burned with their hut, and graceful Lydia, and Master Niklaus! One day they would stand up there and endure forever. He would put them there. These figures that meant love and torture to him today, fear and passion, would stand before later generations, nameless, without history, silent symbols of human life.