CHAPTER SIX

ONE day Pater Anselm called Goldmund into his pharmacy, a little sweet-smelling room, where he felt at home. The old man showed him a dried plant, neatly laid up between two sheets of parchment, and asked if he knew its name, and could describe it, as it looked out there, growing in the fields. Yes, said Goldmund, he knew it well, and the name of the plant was John's Wort. He was asked for an account of all its particulars, and the old monk seemed satisfied with his answers. He therefore commanded the scholar to go out that afternoon, and gather him an armful of these simples, giving him exact direction of the places where they most delight to grow. 'You will have half a play-day for your pains, and so lose nothing by your trouble, and I think you have nothing to say against it. It takes some study to know herbs as well as all your silly grammar books.'

Goldmund thanked him for such a pleasant errand to spend a few hours plucking flowers, instead of fidgeting on a bench: then, that his pleasure might be complete, he begged for the loan of Bless, his horse, from the brother-ostler, and, after dinner, led it from its stall. It neighed him greetings, he jumped on its back, and galloped off, through the warm summer's day, rejoicing. He rode here and there for more than an hour, sniffing the fresh air and scent of the fields, and very pleased to be on horseback. Then he remembered his commission, and sought a place which Pater Anselm had described to him. This found, he tethered his horse in the shade of a maple tree, talked to him for a while and gave him bread to eat, and so set out to gather simples. Here were some strips of fallow land, grown about with every sort of herb, little wizened poppy-stalks, with their last faded petals still upon them; and already many ripening seed-pods stood there among the withered vetch, and wild succory, blue as the sky, and spotted knot weed: green lizards ran in out upon the heap of stones between two fields, and there, too, already, stood the first yellowing clumps of flowering John's Wort, and these Goldmund started to gather.

When he had a good armful he sat down to rest, on the heap of stones. It was hot, and he looked with longing at the deep blue shade that edged a far-off wood, though he did not care to stray so far from his plants, and from Bless, his horse, whom he still could see, from where he sat. So there he stayed, on his heap of stones, sitting very still, in the hope that a lizard would run his way, sniffing his John's Wort, and holding its little petals against the light, to see the hundred pin-points in each.

'How wonderful,' he thought, 'that each of these thousand tiny leaves should have a whole starry heaven hidden in it.' It was all a miracle and a mystery; the lizards, plants, stones, all of it together! Pater Anselm, who liked him so well, had grown too stiff to come out gathering leaves: the rheum took him in his legs, and now there were many days when he could not stir, though none of his own simples would heal him. Perhaps he would soon be dead, and the herbs in his closet still give out their fragrance, though old Pater Anselm was gone for ever. But he might live many years yet, another ten or twenty years, still with the same thin white hair and criss-crossed wrinkles under his eyes: and what would Goldmund be in twenty years? Oh, it was all hard to understand, and all sad, although it was so beautiful. Nobody really knew anything. People lived; they went here and there about the earth and rode through forests; so much seemed to challenge or to promise, and so many sights to stir our longing: an evening star, a blue harebell, a lake half-covered in green reeds, the eyes of beasts and human eyes; and always it was as though something would happen, something never seen and yet sighed for, as though a veil would be pulled back off the world; rill the feeling passed, and there had been nothing. The riddle was still unsolved, the hidden magic unrevealed, so that, in the end, people grew old, and looked comic, like old Father Anselm, or wise like old Abbot Daniel, though really perhaps they still knew nothing, still waited, pricking up their ears.

He picked up an empty snail-shell; it had rolled, with a tinkle, off a stone, and was warmed through and through by the sun. Sunk deep in thought, he stared at the notched spirals, the curious twist of the little crown, the frail, empty house, in which light was pearly. He shut his eyes, to know it with his fingers only. That was an old game he often played with himself: holding the shell gently between his fingers, he stroked it lightly round and round, not pressing it, rejoicing in all shape, all magic of corporeal things. It seemed to him that, with our minds, we are inclined to see and think of everything as though it were flat, and had only height and breadth. Somehow or other, he felt, this denoted the lack and worthlessness of all learning, yet he could not seize his thought, and define it. The snail-shell slipped through his fingers: he felt very drowsy, and longed to sleep. His head fell forward over his plants, which gave out a powerful scent as they started to wither, and so he fell asleep in the sunshine. Over his shoes swarmed ants; the bundle of fading herbs lay on his knees. Bless champed and whinnied under the maple.

Then someone came from the far-off wood, a young peasant woman, in a pale-blue, faded gown, with a scarlet kerchief bound round her dark hair, and her face tanned brown by the summer, a red gillyflower gleaming between her lips, and paused in her stride to watch the sleeper. For long she stood some distance away, to examine him, curious, and full of mistrust: then, convinced he was asleep, came cautiously nearer, on bare feet. Her fear of him melted away. This pretty sleeper pleased her well, and now he did not seem to her dangerous. How did he come to be out here in the fields? He had been plucking flowers, she saw with a smile, and already his flowers were almost faded.

Goldmund opened his eyes, returning from a forest of dreams. Now his head was pillowed on softness, since it lay in a woman's lap; down over his sleepy, wondering eyes, two strange eyes bent, warm and brown. He did not start, there was no danger, the two warm, brown stars shone down on him. The woman smiled at his astonishment, and in her smile he saw such gentleness that suddenly he, too, began to smile. Down to his smiling lips she bent her mouth, and, in a flash, as their lips joined, Goldmund remembered again that night in the village, and thought of the little maid, with her dark plaits. But their kiss had not ended yet; her mouth still lingered upon his, drawing out its love, enticing, stroking against him, till at last the lips fastened with greedy power, firing his blood, and sending it coursing through his body, while in a long, dumb act, the brown woman taught him to love, letting him seek her and find her, letting her love flame up in him and stilling it.

Their clear, brief transport flickered and died out between them, glowing like a swift gold flame, bending upon itself, and dying down. With closed eyes they lay thee together, his head on the peasant woman's breast. There was no word said between them: she stirred no muscle in her body, only gentle stroking his hair, letting him come slowly to himself again. At last he opened his eyes.

'You!' he said. 'Where do you come from?'

'I am Lisa,' she answered him.

'Lisa,' he said it after her, delighting in it, 'Lisa, you are very beautiful.'

She bent her mouth down to his ear:

'Did you never love before me?'

He shook his head. The suddenly sat up and stared about him, across the fields, and at the sky.

'Oh, the sun is almost down,' he cried, 'and I must get back –'

'Where then?'

'Back to the cloister. To Pater Anselm.'

'In Mariabronn? Is that your home? Oh, stay with me a little longer.'

'I would stay if I could.'

'Well, stay then.'

'No, it would not be right. And now I have to pluck some more of these –'

'But are you a brother in the cloister?'

'No. But I am a scholar. I shall not stay there. Could I come to you, Lisa? Where do you live? Where lies your house?'

'I live nowhere, my heart. But tell me your name. So, Goldmund is what they call you. Give me a kiss, little Gold-mouth. Then you may go.'

'You live nowhere? Where do you sleep, then?'

'If you like I'll sleep with you in the forest, or in the hay together. Come tonight.'

'Oh yes, I'll come. Where shall I find you?'

'Can you hoot like a little owl?'

'I never tried it.'

'Well, try it now.'

He tried. She laughed and was pleased.

'Well, come to me tonight, out of the cloister, then, and cry like an owlet, and I'll be waiting for you. Do I please you then, little Gold-mouth, pretty one?'

'Oh, Lisa, yes, you please me greatly. I will come. God keep you: I must go now.'

On his steaming horse Goldmund galloped back to the cloister, and was glad to find Pater Anselm very busy. A brother had been paddling in the mill-stream, and had cut his foot on a flint in it.

Now he must seek out Narziss. He asked of him from the lay-brother who waited at supper in the refectory. No, said the brother, Narziss would eat no supper that night. He had fasted all day long, and must be asleep, since during the night he would have a vigil. Goldmund made haste. Now, during his long penitence and retreat, his friend spent his nights in the penitents' cells, in the inner cloister, and, without thought of rules, he ran thither, stood at the door of Narziss' cell and listened. But no sound came from within. He stole in on tiptoe. He had no thought that all this was strictly forbidden him.

There, on his narrow pallet, lay Narziss, like a corpse stretched out in the twilight, stiff, on his back, his pale thin face to the ceiling, his hands crossed on his breast. But he did not sleep, his eyes were wide. He stared, without a word, at Goldmund, not angry, but with no sign of life, so wrapped, it seemed, from outer things, and sunk in contemplation beyond time. He had some pains to recognize his friend, and grasp the sense of what was said to him.

'Narziss, Narziss! Forgive me for having roused you. But I did not do it in idleness. I know it is forbidden you to speak to me, but I beg you to forget that, and answer.'

Narziss raised himself up, blinking a minute in astonishment, as though it cost him an effort to come to life.

'Is it necessary?' he asked in a dead voice.

'Yes, very necessary. I am come to bid you farewell.'

'Yes, then it is necessary. And you shall not have come to me for nothing. Come now, sit here beside me. A quarter of an hour will be enough, and then the first vigil will have begun.'

He sat, thin and haggard, on his plank: Goldmund came over to his side.

'Forgive me,' he said, in a guilty voice. This cell, the pallet, Narziss' face, worn with concentration and lack of sleep, his eyes, half-conscious of the world, all told him clearly that he was troublesome.

'There is nothing to forgive. Don't heed me. I lack for nothing. You say that you come to take your leave of me. So you are going away from the cloister?'

I am; this very day. Oh, how shall I say it to you? Suddenly it has all been decided.'

'Is your father there, or any messenger from him?'

No, nothing. Life itself has come to me. I shall creep of without the abbot's leave or my father's. I shall break from the cloister, Narziss, and bring shame on you.'

Narziss stared down at his white fingers, issuing, thin as ghosts, from the wide monk's sleeve. There was no smile on his stern, exhausted face, yet a kind of smile in his voice, as he answered:

'Amice, our time is very short. Tell me all I need to know, and say it as briefly and clearly as you can. Or must I tell you what has happened to you?'

'Tell me,' begged Goldmund.

'You are in love, boy. And already you have known a woman.'

'How you always read me.'

'This is easy. Your face and bearing, o amice, show every mark of that drunkenness which men call “being in love”. But say it yourself, please.'

Goldmund shyly touched his friend's shoulder.

'You have told yourself. And yet, Narziss, this time you did not say it well or accurately. This is all quite different from drunkenness. I lay out there in the fields, and fell asleep, and when I woke my head lay on the knees of a woman, whose beauty was such that I felt my mother had come back to me, and taken me back into herself. Not that I held this woman to be my mother. She had dark brown eyes, and dark hair, and my mother's hair was gold as mine, her face was altogether different. And yet it was she. She called me, and this woman was her messenger, who cradled my head in her lap, and kissed as softly as a flower, and was gentle with me, so gentle that her first kiss made me feel as though something in me had melted, till my whole body thrilled with wonderful pain. All the longing I had ever felt in my life, all secrets and sweet fears that had lain asleep in me, came to life, transformed and renewed, with another meaning in them. In a little time she had made me older by many years. Now I know much, and of this I was suddenly quite certain: that now I can live here no longer, not another day in this cloister. I shall escape as soon as it is dark.'

Narziss listened, and nodded.

'It has come on you suddenly,' he said, 'but this is what I had always expected. I shall think of you often, and long to have you back, amice. Can I do anything to help you?'

'Yes, if you can bring yourself to do it, say a word in my excuse to our abbot, so that he does not condemn me utterly. You and he are the only two in the house for whose thoughts and good opinion I care anything. You and he.'

'I know. And is that all?'

'Yes – though I would ask this: when later you think of me, pray for me. And … thanks, Narziss....'

'For what, Goldmund?'

'For all your patience and your friendship. Also for having listened to me today, when everything outside you is so difficult. And thank you, too, for not having tried to hinder me.'

'Why should I? You know my thoughts about all this. But where will you go, my Goldmund. Have you any aim, you who are going to your woman?'

'Yes. I shall go along with her. I have no other aim apart from her. She is a wanderer, a homeless one, or so she says; perhaps a gypsy.'

'I understand. But listen, Goldmund: your way with her may be a very short one. You should not trust her too much, I think. Perhaps she has a husband and kindred. Who knows what kind of welcome they may give you!'

Goldmund bent closer to his friend.

'I know all that,' he said, 'although, till now, I had not thought it. But as I told you; I have no aim. This woman is not my aim, although she was very tender and gentle with me. Though I go to her it will not be for her sake. I go because I must; because it calls me.'

He sighed and was silent, and they sat close up to one another, sad, and yet happy together in their knowledge that their friendship would never end. Then Goldmund spoke again:

'Don't think me altogether blind and reckless. I am glad to go because I am sure I cannot stay; because today I have seen a miracle. But I do not deceive myself, or fancy that outside these walls it will be all pleasure and junketing. I can feel that my way will be rough: but, rough or smooth, I hope it will be beautiful. It is very fine to love and know a woman, and give her love. Don't laugh at me if what I say sounds crazy to you. But tell me this: to love a woman, and comfort her with my love, entwine my body with her body, and feel myself altogether hers – all which you would call “to be enamoured”, the thing you seem to scorn a little – why is it to be scorned? For me it is my path into life.

'Oh, Narziss, and now I must leave you. I love you, Narziss, and many thanks for giving up your sleep today for my sake. Now it is very hard to say farewell. Will you forget me?'

'Don't grieve yourself for that, or me either, Goldmund. I shall never forget you. You will come back to me. I will pray that you come, and I shall be waiting. And if you ever find things go hard with you, come to me, or send me your messenger. God speed and keep you, my friend.'

He had risen. Goldmund embraced him. They did not kiss, since his friend shrank from all caresses, but he stroked his hands.

Darkness had gathered. Narziss closed his cell door after him, and went along the cloister into the church, his sandals clattering on the flags. Goldmund, with love in his eyes, watched the lean figure go from him and vanish, swallowed up round a bend in the corridor by the gaping darkness of the church. How confused everything was, how infinitely glorious and unknowable. This too – how terrifying and strange: to have come upon his friend at such a moment, when, worn almost to death with fasting and long meditation, he had nailed his senses to a cross, bowed his head to the stern rule of obedience, resolute to serve only the spirit, offering his body as its sacrifice; had become, through and through, minister verbi divini. There like a corpse he had lain, half-dead from weariness, with white face and pale thin hands, yet ready to give his clear, attentive sympathy to the friend about whose hair and body there still clung the savour of a woman, ready even to sacrifice the short time of rest between two penances, in order to listen to his hopes. It was a glorious thought that there should be such love in the world, love that is all spirit and selfless joy. How different from that love in the sunny field, the drunken, reckless love of flesh and blood. And yet both were love. Alas, now Narziss had gone from him, having shown him again so clearly, in this last hour together, how far apart their natures lay. Now Narziss would be kneeling before the altar on aching knees, summoned and prepared for a night of vigil in which only two hours sleep were granted him, while he, Goldmund, would steal off and, somewhere under trees, meet Lisa, to play again the sweet game of beasts. Narziss would have found some notable things to say of it. But – he was not Narziss. It was not for him to unravel these fair and terrible enigmas, with notable sayings to explain them: he could only follow his own mad path as Goldmund, not knowing whither it would lead. All he could do was to give himself up to his own fate, and love his praying friend in the dark church no less than Lisa's tender warmth, who awaited him.

As now, in his heart a thousand conflicting longings, he stole away beneath the cloister limes, and climbed into the mill to escape, he could only smile at the sudden memory of that evening long ago with Conrad, when they had used this same secret passage out of the cloister, stealing off together 'into the village'. How scared he had been, for all his excitement, as they crept out, one by one, through the little hole! Now he would wriggle out through it for ever, onto far more forbidden, dangerous ways, yet now he felt no fear, had no thought for the abbot, had forgotten the brother-porter, the teachers.

This time there were no planks in the mill, so he had to cross without a bridge. He stripped, and flung his clothes to the opposite bank, went naked through the deep, cold, swirling mill-stream, up to his chest in icy water. As he dressed again his thoughts returned to Narziss. Now, utterly shamed, he could see clearly that he, at this moment, only did what the other had led him to and foretold for him. That clever, mocking Narziss came back, all too distinctly, into his mind, the thinker to whom he had said such foolishness, the friend who had opened his eyes at the cost of such sharp pain in an hour of destiny. He could hear again, as though Narziss were saying them, some of the things his friend had told him: 'You sleep on your mother's breast, I watch in a desert.' 'Your dreams are all of girls, mine of boys.'

For an instant his heart seemed to freeze; he stood alone in the night, and fearful: behind him the cloister, an unreal home, yet one he had loved and long inhabited.

Yet, with his fear, came another feeling: that now Narziss had ceased for ever to be his superior and guide, the friend whose eyes were used on his behalf. Today, he felt, he had strayed into a country in which he must find his way alone, through which no Narziss could ever guide him. He rejoiced to think that he knew it: it shamed him and troubled his heart to look back to the days of his discipleship. Now he could see; he had ceased to be a scholar and a child.

It was good to know: and yet, how hard to take his leave. How hard to remember Narziss, on his knees over there in the dark church, to have no more to give him. And to leave him for so long, for ever perhaps; not to feel him there any more, hearing his voice, seeming his clear and beautiful eyes.

He shook it off, and went on down the pebbled road. A hundred paces clear of the cloister wall he stopped, drew in a breath, and let out as good an owl-cry as he could muster. Another owl-cry answered, away down the stream, out of the distance.

'We call to each other like beasts,' was the thought that came to him, as he remembered their loves, that afternoon. Only then did he remember clearly how few had been the words that passed between them, how neither he nor Lisa had thought to speak until their sports were at an end. Even then such words as they had used had been hurried, and of no account.

What long talks he had had with Narziss! But now, it seemed, he had entered a world where words meant nothing, where they called to one another with bird-cries, and never spoke. He was ready for that, since today he had had no need of words or thoughts, only of Lisa, of her blind caresses without words, her desire and its sighing consummation.

Lisa was there already, coming towards him from the wood. He stretched forth his arms to touch her, stroked her head with gentle, feeling hands, her hair, her throat, her shoulders, her slim young body to her hips. His arm slid round her waist, and they went off together without a word, nor did he think to ask where she was leading him. Her step was sure, through the dark wood, and he had some trouble in keeping up with her, she seemed to see, like a marten or a fox, with night-eyes; went forward without once stumbling or running her head against dark branches. He let her lead him on to the thick of the wood, through the night; into blind, secret places without words, in a land without any thoughts. His had all fallen asleep, even thoughts of his home, the cloister, and thoughts of Narziss.

Without a word they sped on together through woodland darkness, over soft-springing moss and hard clusters of roots. At times between two high, sparse tree-tops, a pale glint of far-off sky, and again the darkness was pitch-black. Branches whipped his cheeks, brambles caught his clothes and held him. She, in every place, knew her way unerringly, never lost her trail, seldom stopped, seldom delayed. In a long while they came out on an open space where, over widely separated pines, a wan sky stretched away before them, and around them lay a valley clothed in meadows. They waded through a little, silently trickling stream, Here in the open it was even quieter than in the woods: no rustle among the bushes, no scurry or call of birds and beasts in the night; no crackle of twigs. Lisa stopped by a big haystack.

'We'll stay here,' she said.

They lay down together in the hay, glad at first to lay side by side and rest, stretched out to listen to the silence, with both their bodies a little tired, feeling the sweat dry slowly off their foreheads, their cheeks cool. Goldmund crouched happily weary, hunched up his knees in sport, and spread his legs again, breathed in the night, and the scent of hay, in long, deep breaths, thinking neither of past nor future. Only by slow degrees would he let himself be drawn into love by the magic warmth and odour of his beloved, repaying, little by little, her stroking hands with his caresses, suddenly happy as she too began to take fire, and wriggled up closer at his side. No, there was no need here or words or thoughts; clearly he felt whatever was needful for this delight, the young sap rising in his body, the clear, gentle loveliness of the maid, her joyous warmth and clinging greed, knowing at once that she asked of him another way of love than that which she had shown him in the sunshine: that now she would not teach or entice him, but lie there tense, to receive his onslaught and his longings. Quietly he lay, and let her current of passion flow through his body, the little, gently rising flame which, in exultation, came to dancing life in both together, making of their gipsy's sleeping-place a richly glowing canopy of splendour, set in the wide, silent night. As he bent over Lisa's face to kiss her lips in the dark, suddenly a pale, lost shimmer surrounded her eyes and forehead: he stopped in wonder, as the light glowed up to quick intensity. Then he understood, and turned his head. The creeping moon had climbed to the open sky over long, black, straggling battlements of forest. He watched the pale light flow gently onwards, down across her forehead and cheeks, over the round, warm throat, and whispered his delight in her ear: 'Oh – you are beautiful!'

She smiled, as though for a gift: he rose on his elbow and gently pulled away her garment, helping her to cast the stuff aside, and strip off her husk, till breast and shoulders lay shining in the soft, cool light. Held in enchantment, he followed the tender shadow with eyes and lips along her body, kissing and gazing. She lay like death, as if bewitched; her eyes cast down, and on her face a look of ceremony, as though in that instant, even to her, her beauty lay revealed for the first time.