Narcissus and Goldmund (12 page)

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

G
OLDMUND
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.