CHAPTER SEVEN

WHILE the moon stole on over fields, higher and higher, hour by hour, the lovers lay on their pearly bed together, lost in their games, waking and sleeping, and, as they woke, turning towards each other, ever to renew the fire between them, wreathed into one another, and so to sleep again. Their last embraces down they lay worn out, Lisa with her face deep in hay, Goldmund stretched on his back, staring up at the milky sky. A deep sadness rose in both of them, from which they turned for refuge to sleep. When he woke, Goldmund saw Lisa, busy with her long dark hair. He watched her for a while through sleepy eyes.

'Already awake?' he said at last.

She turned with a start, as though he had surprised and terrified her. 'I must leave you now,' she said in a low voice, a little guiltily. 'I did not think to wake you.'

'But now I am awake. Must we go on our way already, then? We have no home.'

'Yes, yes, we have,' said Lisa. 'You come from the cloister.'

'I shall never go back to the cloister. I am like you; I am all alone and have no home. Of course I will go along with you.'

She looked away from him.

'Goldmund, you cannot come with me. I must go to my husband. He will beat me for staying out the night. I shall tell him that I lost my way, but of course he will never believe me.'

Then Goldmund remembered how this had been predicted by Narziss. Now it was upon him.

He stood up and gave her his hand.

'I have made a mistake; I thought we should stay together always. But did you truly mean to let me sleep, and run off without another word?'

'Oh, I thought you would take it ill, and beat me perhaps. My husband beats me, but that is his right, it is in order. I did not want you to beat me.'

He kept tight hold of her hand.

'Lisa,' he said, 'I will never beat you. Neither today nor ever. Would you not rather come with me than go back to your husband who beats you?'

She pulled away from him.

'No! No! No!' she cried in a whining voice. And he, since he felt that in her heart she was already striving to be gone from him, that her husband's beatings were sweeter than his good words, let go her hand, and she started weeping. But as she wept she ran. With her hand to her wet eyes she escaped from him. He said no more, and watched her go. In his heart he pitied her, as she scurried away through new-mown meadows, drawn off and called from him by some power, an unknown power, the thought of which had set him thinking. He pitied her, and also himself, a little: his luck was out, it seemed, in this case; and he sat alone, somewhat forlorn, moping and left in the lurch. But he was still very tired and longed for sleep, never had he felt such weariness. Later there would be time for grieving: already his eyes had closed again; nor did he rouse himself up till the sun, high in the heavens, shone him awake.

Now he was rested. He sprang up and ran to the stream, washed himself in it, and drank. Then memories came upon him, pictures like flowers from a strange land, drew him back to the joyous garden of the night, sensations of tenderness and beauty. His mind followed and retraced them as he went his aimless way over fields: every joy he had felt he knew again: over and over again he touched and savoured. How many dreams this fair brown maid had given him, how many buds she had brought to flower, how much restless longing stirred, how much re-awakened!

Wood and heath lay before him; dried fallow land and dark brown wood, and beyond it there would be mills, castles, and villages, and then a walled town. Now the world lay open to him at last, waiting, ready to take him into itself, give him his share of joy and pain: he was no schoolboy now, to stare out at the world through narrow windows, his way not a summer walk whose appointed end was a return. The whole vast earth was his reality, he was part of it, in it lay his destiny, its sky was his, its weather his. He was a small thing in a great world, running over fields like a hare, speeding on his way through blue and green eternity, like a cockchafer, with no bell to drag him from his bed, and send him to church and school and dinner. How hungry he felt! Half a loaf of barley bread, a bowl of milk, and meal broth – what magic memories! His belly howled like a wolf. He had come into a cornfield, standing half-ripe: he fleshed the ears with teeth and fingers, scrunched the small, glittering fruit in ecstasy, gathered more and more, crammed all his pockets with ears of corn. Then he found hazel nuts, still very green, cracked their shells with delight, and of these, too, laid in a store.

The wood began again; pine trees, with oaks and ashes here and there, and here there was abundance of bilberries; he halted, and lay down to cool. Blue harebells grew in the spare coarse tuft-grass of the wood, brown, sunny butterflies fluttered past him, and disappeared in ragged flight. In just such a wood had lived St Genevieve, a saint whose face he had loved. How he would have liked to talk to her. Perhaps here in the wood there was a hermitage, with an old bearded Pater in a hollow of the rocks or a wattle hut. There might be charcoal burners in this wood, and with these he would gladly have spent his time. They might be robbers, and yet they would do him no harm. It was good to meet men, no matter which. But he knew he might wander long in this wood – today, tomorrow, and many days to come, and meet none. This, too, he would accept, if such were his fate; too much thought was bad, it was easier to take things as they came. He heard a woodpecker tap and tried to stalk it. For long he tried in vain to get a sight of it, succeeded at last, and crouched there a while to watch it, as it bored and hammered at the trunk of its tree in solitude, preening its busy head this way and that. Why had he no speech to talk to beasts in? It would have been so pleasant to bid good morrow to this woodpecker, pass the time of day, and hear of his work among the trees, his life and his friends. Oh, if a man could change his shape! He remembered how, in many idle hours, he had cut figures on wood with a stylus, leaves and flowers, trees, beasts, and men's heads. He had often played this game with himself, sometimes, like a little God Almighty, fashioning his own creatures after his will, giving the cup of a flower eyes and mouth, turning the leaves jutting out from a twig into fingers, and setting a head on a tree. This game had kept him happy for hours, drawing a line and letting himself be surprised when it shaped into a leaf or a fish-head, a fox's tail or the eyebrow of a face. He should be able now to wander the world, he told himself, as easily as then, in his game, the lines he drew in sport had turned into shapes. Goldmund longed to be a woodpecker, perhaps for a day, perhaps for a month living high up in treetops, flying around the summits of smooth trunks, picking them with his strong, sharp beak, and balancing against them with his tail feathers. He would have spoken woodpecker's speech and dug out good things out of the bark. The hammering beak rang sweet above him.

Goldmund met many beasts on his way through the forest, many hares that shot like arrows out of the ferns as he approached them, stared at him, turned and scurried off, their ears down, white under their scuts. Once, in a little clearing, he came upon a long coiled snake, but it did not slither away, it was no living snake, only an empty skin, which he took and examined. Beautiful pattern ran along it, brown and green; the sun shone through; the skin was as frail as a spider's web. He saw ouzels with yellow beaks, staring at him through round, black, scared little eyes, and they darted off in a flock, close to the ground. There were many redbreasts and finches; at one place in the forest there was a pool, a deep stagnant puddle of green, thick water, over which ran industrious, busy spiders, chasing one another as though possessed, deep in some mysterious sport, and over them a pair of dragonflies, darting here and there, on dark blue wings.

Once, as night came on, he saw something – or rather there was nothing there to see, only a scurry and stir through the undergrowth; he could hear a crackling of twigs, a thudding of scraped-up earth, and a huge, half-invisible beast, grunting and hurtling through the leaves, perhaps a stag, perhaps a wild boar, he could not tell. He stood a long while, panting with fright, his ears strained with panic, listening to the thudding, scurrying feet and, when all had long been still again, remained quiet and tense, with a thumping heart.

He could not find his way out of the wood, so there he had to spend the night. As he looked about him for a sleeping-place, and plucked up heaps of moss for his bed, he tried to think how it would be if he never found his way out of forests, but were forced to live on in them for ever. It seemed to him that this would be terrible. In the end he might grow used to living on berries; he could sleep on moss if he chose, and no doubt he would soon manage to build a hut, or even, perhaps, to make a fire. But to be alone for ever and ever, housed between the quiet, sleeping tree-trunks, with beasts as his only companions, who would scurry off at the sight of him, and with whom he could never exchange a word – that would be unbearably sad. Never to see another man; never to say good night or good morrow; not to be able to look again into human faces and human eyes, not to see a maid or woman, feel her kiss, and play the joyous, secret game of lips and limbs with her – oh, it was an unbearable thought. If such were to be his lot, he told himself, he would have to strive to change into a beast, a bear or a stag, even though he should lose his immortal soul by it. To be a bear and love a she-bear, that would not be such a bad life, and would, at least, be a far better one than to keep his reason and his thoughts, with all the rest that made him human, and yet live on alone, unloved, in sadness.

On his bed of moss before he fell asleep, he listened, curious and afraid, to the many new, incomprehensible, and eerie night-sounds of the forest. These were his comrades now, and he must house with them, become accustomed to them all, measure himself against them, and bear with them: now he was made one with deer and foxes, with pines and firs; he must live their life, take his part of sun and air with them; with them await the day, go hungry with them, and be their guest.

Then he fell asleep, and dreamed of beasts and human kind; became a bear, and ate up Lisa while he loved her. In the thick of night he woke in terror, could not tell why, felt horrible grief in his heart, and for long lay pondering uneasily. He remembered then how yesterday and tonight, he had fallen asleep without having said his prayers. He stood up, knelt beside his moss-bed, and said his evening prayer twice through, once for last night and once for this. Soon after this he fell asleep again.

At daybreak he sat up amazed, unable to remember where he was. His fear of the wild had soon grown less, and so, with new joy in his heart, he trusted to the life of the woods, though still he strove to find his pathway out of them, and strayed on and on, turning his face towards the sun. Once, he found a track through the forest, a smoothed-out path, with little undergrowth, the wood around it made of very thick and ancient pine trunks, soaring straight up into the sky. When he had gone a little way under these trees they began to remind him of the pillars of the great cloister church in Mariabronn, in which, so recently, he had seen Narziss swallowed up. When had that been? Was it really only two days ago?

For three days and nights he strayed in the forest. Then, with delight, he saw that he had come back to human kind – ploughed land, on which stood oats and barley; meadows, over which, here and there, a little further on, he could see a field-path. Goldmund plucked some rye and munched it, the tilled land welcomed him in fellowship, every sight encouraged and befriended him, after his long wanderings under trees. The little path, the he-goat, the shrivelled, silvery cornflowers. Soon he would come to men and women. In a short while he saw a ploughed field, a crucifix planted at its edge, and he knelt beneath it and said a prayer.

His path, round the bend of a hillock, led him out into the shade of a lime, where he heard, with delight, a splashing stream, its waters tumbling out through a wooden pipe into a trough: he drank of this clear, lovely water, and saw with joy a cluster of straw roofs among elder trees, the berries of which were dark already. But better far than all these friendly sights was the lowing of a cow, as warm and kind as if it had been a human welcome.

He spied about round the hut from which the cow had greeted him. There in the dust before the house door sat a little red-headed boy with light blue eyes: near him an earthen pitcher, full of water, and, with water and dust together, the boy made mud-pies, his bare legs all smeared with his mud. Happy and solemn, he kneaded mud, watched it squelch out through his fingers, and made pellets of it, using his chin to help on the work.

'God keep you, little son,' said Goldmund softly. But when the boy looked up to see a stranger he opened his mouth wide for a bellow, puckered his little face, and shinnied away through the house-door, roaring. Goldmund followed into a kitchen, where the light was so dim that he, coming from bright sunshine, could at first see nothing of it clearly. But, to be on the safe side, he gave Christian greeting to all the house. He got no answer, though above the bellowing an old, thin voice had begun to make itself heard, speaking to comfort the baby. At last a little old woman came through the dark, shading her eyes to see the stranger.

'God keep you, mother,' said Goldmund, 'and may all the saints in heaven bless your good face. For many days I have met no human kind.'

The old woman eyed him with simple cunning.

'What is it you want?' she asked uncertainly.

Goldmund gave her his hand, and stroked hers a little.

'Only to say “God keep you,” little mother, and to rest a bit here in your kitchen, helping you to build up your fire. I would not say no to a bit of bread, if you could spare it me, though you need make no haste with that.'

He saw a bench, let into the wall, and sat down to rest, while the old woman cut a bit off her loaf to give the urchin, who now, grown eager and curious, though ready still to burst into sobs and run away, stood beside her, gazing up at the stranger. She cut a second bit, and gave it to Goldmund.

'Thanks,' he said, 'God will repay you.'

'Is your belly so empty?' she asked him.

'Not that, but full of bilberries.

'Well, eat then. Where did you come from?'

'From Mariabronn; from the cloister.'

'Are you a shaveling?'

'No, but a scholar on my travels.'

She peered at him, half-jeering, half-simple, her head shaking a little, on her thin, wrinkled old neck. She left him to munch a couple of mouthfuls as she led out the urchin into the sun again. Then she came back, all curiosity, to ask:

'Have you any news?'

'Little news, mother. Do you know old Pater Anselm?

'No. But what of him?'

'He is sick.'

'Sick? And will he die?'

'Perhaps: who knows?'

'Well, let him die if he must. I have my broth to cook. Help me to chop up my kindling.'

She gave him a log of pine, well dried at the hearth, and a hatchet. He cut her all the kindling she needed and watched her lay it on the ashes, hunched over them, bending and wheezing, till all her sticks of firing were alight. In her own exact and secret fashion she piled up her pine-twigs on the flames; the fire burnt clear in the open hearth, and on it she set a big black pot, that hung from a rusty nail over the hearthstone.

At her orders Goldmund went to the stream for water, skimmed off the milk from her pails, and then sat down in the smoky twilight to watch the dance of flames and, over it, the old woman's bony, wrinkled face, in the red glow, coming and going. Nearby, through the wooden wall, he could hear cows, pushing and rubbing in their stalls. It all pleased him greatly. Everything here was fair and good, speaking to him of peace and a full belly: the lime-tree and the brook beside it, the leaping flames under the pot, the stir and snuffle of champing cows, and their clumsy rubbings against the wall. There were two goats besides, and a swine-stall, so the old woman told him, away on the other side of the hut. She was the master's grandam, she said, and great-grandam to the little howling boy. Cuno was his name: he wandered in and out, but would say no word, and glanced up timidly at Goldmund, though he did not bellow any more. Then came the goodman and his wife, and were all amazement to see this stranger. The man was surly at first; he gripped the scholar's arm mistrustfully, and led him forth to see his face by daylight. But then he laughed, gave him a clap on the shoulder, and bade him come in and break bread. They sat together, each dipping his bread into the milk-dish, till the milk ran low, when the goodman took the dish and drank the sops. Goldmund asked could he stay with them till morning and sleep as guest under their roof. No, said the man, there was no room for it, but out there was hay enough, and there he could easily make a bed.

The wife had her little boy beside her, and took no share in their talk. But, as she ate, her eyes grew curious, and she could not look enough at this fair young scholar: his hair and eyes alike had caught her fancy; then she saw his fine, white neck, and the noble shapeliness of his hands, as they flew so deftly here and there. This stranger was a townsman and a noble; and so young. But what drew and charmed her most was his young man's voice, which seemed to sing to her, warm in its notes, pleading gently, its sound as sweet as a caress. She would have liked to sit there long and listen to it.

Their eating done the goodman went to work in his cow-stall. Goldmund had gone outside to wash his hands in the running stream, and now he sat on the low trough's edge, cooling his face and listening to the waters. He was perplexed; he had all he needed of these folk, and yet he did not want to leave them yet. Then came the wife with her pitcher, which she set down under the jet to let it fill itself. She said in a low voice:

'If you are still around here tonight, I'll bring you out a bite for your supper. Over there, beyond the long barley-field, there lies the hay, and they won't get it in before tomorrow. Will you be there still?'

He looked into her freckled face, watched her strong arms as she raised her pitcher, and felt all the warmth in her wide, clear eyes. He laughed and nodded his head, and she was already away, with her brimming pitcher, into the doorway. He sat on for a while, glad at heart, listening to the rushing brook and thanking her: then he entered the hut, sought out the goodman, gave him and the old granny his hand, and thanked them both. The hut reeked of smoke, soot, and milk. A minute ago it had been his home and shelter, now it was already a strange place. He greeted and left them.

Away beyond the huts he found a chapel, near it a pleasant copse, and a group of strong old oaks, with turf beneath them. He lingered on in their shade, wandering in and out among thick stems. It was strange, he thought, how women loved, and truly they had no need of words. This woman had needed only one with him, to tell him the place where he should meet her, and all the rest was said without speech. How had she told it him? With eyes, and a certain note in her low voice; and then, with something else, some emanation, a tenderness shining through her body, a sign by which all men and women know without telling that they please each other. It was all as strange as some very subtle, secret tongue, and yet he had learnt it so easily. His heart leapt up to think of the coming night, longing for the time when he would know how this strong, yellow-haired woman could love, how he limbs would feel to his touch, and how she would move with him and kiss him: surely she would be very different from Lisa.

Where was Lisa now, with her straight black hair, her brown skin, her quick, short sighs? Had her husband beaten her yet? How swiftly all that had come and gone; pleasure lay waiting on every highway, an ardent, passing joy, soon over. It was all sin, it was adultery, and not long since he would have killed himself rather than have such sin on his conscience. Yet here he was, awaiting his second woman, and his heart was clear, his mind at peace. Or rather, perhaps, not at peace, though it was not from lust or adultery that at times he felt uneasy and weighed down: it was something else, he could not give it a name – the feeling of some guilt he himself had done nothing to incur, some sorrow men bring into the world with them. It was perhaps what theologians define as original sin: the sin of being alive, that might be it! Yes, life itself has a kind of guilt in it; or, if not, why should so pure and wise a man as Narziss have submitted to penance like a felon? And why should he, Goldmund, even, be forced to see this guilt, deep down in him? Was he not happy? Was he not sound and young, not free as any bird in the sky? Did not women love him? Was it not fine to know that he, their lover, could give to any woman he loved the same deep joy he knew himself? Why then was he not entirely happy? Why should this strange, deep sorrow sometimes rise in him, infecting his young and careless happiness as much as ever Narziss' wisdom and chastity – this slight fear, this hankering for the past? And what was it that so often set him thinking, cudgelling his brains, although he knew well he was no thinker?

Yet it was good to love. He plucked a purple flower from the grass, held it to his eyes, and peered into the tiny narrow chalice, over which the veins ran in and out, around little pistils, fine as hairs. How life moved, trembling with desire, as much in a woman's lap as a thinker's forehead! Oh, why must men know scarcely anything? Why could he never talk to this flower? But not even two men could really talk: for each to know the other's thoughts they had need of a moment of special happiness, close friendship, and willingness to hear. No, it was fortunate indeed that love had such small need of speech, or else love itself would have been bitter, full of misunderstandings and craziness. How Lisa's eyes, half-shut in a thrill of pleasure, had seemed as though dying of their ecstasy, showing only a thin gleam of their whites through the slit in her trembling eyelids: ten thousand learned words, or words of poets would never be enough to tell that feeling. Nothing – nothing at all, could ever truly be spoken or thought of from beginning to end; and yet each of us was for ever longing to speak, each felt the never-ceasing urge to thought.

He examined the leaves of the little flower, as they rose, one over another, along the stalk, so curiously and beautifully set on it. Virgil's lines were beautiful, and he loved them, but Virgil had many lines not half so beautiful, so clearly and yet cunningly wrought, so full of meaning and delight, as this spiral of tiny leaves along a stalk. How glorious, noble, and joyful a piece of work were any human being to make such a flower. But none could do it, neither hero, emperor, pope, nor saint.

He rose when the sun was low, to seek out the place the woman had named to him. There he awaited her. It was good to wait, knowing all the while that a woman, full of love, was on her way.

She came with a linen bundle, into which she had tied a great manchet of bread and a cut of bacon. She undid the knots, and set it out.

'For you,' she said to him, 'eat.'

'Later,' he answered her, 'I am hungry for you, not for bread. Oh, show me the beauty you have brought me!'

She had brought him his fill of beauty, strong thirsty lips, and gleaming teeth, strong arms, browned by the sun, though within her clothes, down from below her neck, she was white and tender. Of words she knew little, but deep in her throat could sing with a note of clear enticement, as she felt his touch upon her skin, his hands more sensitive and gentle than anything she had known in all her life, till she shuddered with delight and purred like a cat. She had learned few sports, fewer than Lisa, but with marvellous strength she pressed her love, as though she would have crushed out his heart. She was full of greed, like a child, simple and, for all her strength, ashamed. Goldmund and she were very happy.

Then she went from him, tearing herself away with a sigh, since she dared not linger. Goldmund sat on alone, happy yet sad. It was long before he remembered his bread and bacon, and fell to alone; it was quite dark.