CHAPTER ELEVEN

HERE in the city new sights surrounded Goldmund, and another life spread out before him. As this countryside, gay with its river and villages, had drawn him on and on with its enticements, so too the city had many promises. Though, deep in his heart, his grief and wisdom were untouched, life, with all her colours, tickled his senses, captivating the surface of his mind. Round him, with all her arts, lay the Bishop's city, rich in a hundred pastimes, with women to love, while ever-increasing skill sharpened his senses. With the Master's help he found a lodging in the Fish-Market, in a guilder's house, from whom, as from Nicholas himself, he learned the craft of working in wood and stucco, colour, varnish, and gold-leaf.

Goldmund was not one of those luckless artificers who, though they bear within them the highest gifts, can find no right craft by which to express them. There are many such who, seeing all the beauty of earth, can find no way to give it forth again, and share with others what they have seen. To him it was easy as sport to use his hands, and attain the perfect deftness of is craft; as easy, as on a feast-day evening, to pick up lute-playing from a journeyman, or dance on Sundays on village greens. He had hardships and disappointments to surmount, was force to spoil a few woodblocks, and several times cut his fingers to the bone. But these early stages were soon passed, and he had his skill, even if the Master grew impatient, and chid him somewhat as follows:

'It is good you are not my pupil and journeyman, Goldmund – good that we know you are come from the forests, and that one day you will certain go back to them. Any man who did not know this of you, that you are no honest craftsman and citizen, but only a strolling gipsy of the high road, might be tempted to set you such tasks as any other Master asks of his men. You are a good enough workman when it pleases you: but last week you idled for three whole days, and yesterday, in the Castle workshop, where I sent you to polish the two angels, you lay and snored half the day.'

Such reproaches were just, and Goldmund always heard him in silence, without a word in his own excuse. He knew well he was no dependable, busy workman. For so long as any work held his mind, with such obstacles to surmount as could give him the joyous sense of his own skill, he was expert and zealous at his craft. But heavy drudging he always loathed, and those many tasks which go to the making of a craftsman, which, though not heavy in themselves, require great pains and finnicking patience. These were an unsupportable burden. Often he wondered at himself. Had a few years on the roads been enough to make an idler of him? Was the nature he inherited from his mother beginning to master him altogether? Or what did he lack? He thought of his first years in the cloister, when he had been such an industrious, fervent scholar. Why had he been so patient in those days, so willing to give up his mind to Latin syntax and master all those strings of Greek aorists for which, at heart, he cared so little? He would often ponder this enigma, and his answer had been that it was love which steeled his will, and gave his industry such wings. His diligence had all been nothing save the deep longing to satisfy Narziss, whose esteem, he felt, was only to be gained by grateful industry. Then he would toil for days and hours together to earn one smile of recognition, and this, when it came, had been ample recompense. Narziss had been his friend: yet strangely it had been this learned Narziss who had shown him his ineptitude for learning and conjured up a beloved mother-image in his mind. So that, instead of learning, virtue and monasticism, the strongest primal urge in his nature had mastered him – lechery and carnal love, the longing to depend on none, and to wander. Then came Master Nicholas' sorrowful Virgin, to reveal to him an artist in himself, with a new way of life, and fetters again. How were things with him now? Where would life carry him in the end? Whence came these obstacles in his mind?

At first he could not understand himself, could only perceive that, deeply as he admired Master Nicholas' skill, he felt for him nothing at all of the love which he had borne Narziss – that indeed he sometimes delighted to bait and cross him. Images from Nicholas' hand, or the best among them, were to Goldmund the summit of all achievement; but Nicholas himself he did not reverence.

Beside this artist who had carved such a blessed Mother of God, with all the pain and loveliness of earth in her face – in the heart of this seer and sage, whose hands transformed to visible shape the deepest perception and experience, there dwelt a second Master Nicholas, the strict and sober father of a family, the widower, and Master in his guild, living a retired, narrowish life, with his daughter and ugly serving-wench; a man forever on his guard against the deepest urge in Goldmund, a master-craftsman, with the thoughts of a snug, prosperous citizen.

Much as he might honour this teacher, never judge, never let himself question a stranger, a year in his service had been enough to show Goldmund all there was to be known of him, down to the minutest detail. This meant so much: he both loved and hated him, never let him out of his thoughts, forced his way with eagerness and mistrust, alert and thirsty after knowledge, into the secret places of his life. He observed how Nicholas kept neither apprentice nor journeyman in his house, although there was room enough for both; saw how very rarely he went forth, and as rarely visited any guests. He watched his jealous passion for his daughter, how he strove to hide her from all other men – knew the living urge and desire, lurking behind this widower's seeming continence, his strictness, and premature old age; knew that when a commission caused him to travel, he could, in the space of a few days' journey, be marvellously transfigured and renewed. And once, in a little neighbouring town where they went to set up a carved angel, he had seen how, one night on the sly, Nicholas crept out to visit a whore, and then for days was restless and ill-humoured.

With these, at times, besides his eagerness to learn carving, one other conjecture kept Goldmund closely watching his master, and it filled his thoughts. It was Lisbeth, the pretty daughter, that engrossed him. He could very seldom get a sight of her since she never showed her face inside the workshop. Nor could he decide if her prudish shrinking away from men were a quality implanted by her father in her, or verily a part of her nature. It was not to be blinked that Master Nicholas had never invited Goldmund to a meal. He did his best to surround his daughter with obstacles. Lisbeth was a dainty sheltered maid. There could be no hope of loving her out of wedlock: more, whoever wanted her as his bride must be the son of rich parents, a member of one of the higher guilds, and if possible own gear and a house.

Lisbeth's beauty, so different from that of vagrant women and peasants' wives, had drawn Goldmund's eyes to her that first day. There was something in her he never fathomed, an aloofness and mystery drawing him powerfully to her, and yet arousing all is mistrust. There was a deeply modest peace and virginity, a purity, but with nothing childlike in it, with a hint of cold reserve and pride, under all her modesty and fair breeding, so that her innocence did not move and disarm him, but rather challenged and rasped his senses. No sooner had her shape begun to define itself than he felt the impulse to carve her form, not as she was, but as she might be, with awakened flesh, with desire and anguish in her face, no little virgin but a Magdalene. He would often long to see her smooth, quiet, passionless features become contorted and alive till, either in pain or pleasure, they yielded their secret.

But another face had begun to shape itself in his heart, although it was still not altogether his, a face that his whole soul longed to capture, and hold in wood, but which still eluded him and veiled itself.

This face was the face of a mother, though for years it had lost all resemblance to that vision which arose from the lost depths, at the end of his talk with Narziss. In nights of joy and days of wandering, long times of solitude and restlessness, danger and close proximity to death, this mother-face had slowly changed and renewed itself, become enriched, more set in his mind, more many-faceted. It was no longer his own dead mother that he saw, since her colouring and features, by degrees, were lost in an impersonal mother-image, a vision of Eve the mother of all mankind. As, in his Blessed Virgin, Master Nicholas had set forth the pitiful, sorrowing Mother of God, with a certainty and perfection of craftsmanship which his pupil felt he could never reach, so Goldmund hoped, when he had mastered the richness and surety of his craft, the shape an Eve, the mother of the world, as she dwelt already in the deepest sanctuary of his heart. This face within him was more than the memory of his mother, since that love was for ever developed and transmuted. Now she had something of the gipsy Lisa in her aspect, something of Lydia the knight's daughter, something of many other women, all harmonized in the one primal shape. And not only had all these faces of well-loved women gone to build up its composition, but every pang, adventure, and fresh experience completed it too, and had left in it traces of themselves. This form, if he could ever make it visible, should not be that of any creature he had known, but of life herself, the mother of all. Yet of her face and what it expressed he could have told nothing, except that in its lines he wished to realize lust and the joy of life, in their secret kinship to death and pain.

Goldmund had learned much in a year, attaining great certainty of design, and from time to time, besides his woodcarving, Nicholas would let him model in clay. His first successful work was a small clay figure, three spans high; the sweet enticing shape of Lydia's little sister, Julia. The Master, though he praised this work, refused Goldmund's wish to cast it in metal. It was too unchaste and worldly for Master Nicholas, who had no wish to be its godfather! Then came a figure of Narziss, whom Goldmund set out to carve in wood, as John the beloved disciple, since Nicholas wished, if it succeeded, to make it one of a group of the Crucifixion, commissioned for a long time past, at which his journeymen laboured unceasingly, leaving the last touches to their Master.

At this Narziss-figure Goldmund worked, finding himself again, his soul and best skill in what he did, whenever he had broken away from the workshop. And this would happen very often. Love, dancing, drinking bouts with the journeymen, dice, and a brawl if he could find it, would tear him loose from the fetters of his life, till for days together he shirked his craft, or stood all day idling and dreaming.

But this figure of St John the Disciple, whose loved and pensive face emerged before him, clearer and clearer from the wood, he only touched at hours when he was ready for it, utterly self-forgetful and absorbed. Then he would be neither gay nor melancholy, think neither of lechery or the past. That first, quiet, happy gentle love with which, rejoicing in his discipleship, he had given his whole being to Narziss, returned to him again, with Narziss' image. It was not he that stood before a woodblock, hewing out a portrait with his will; far rather it was the other, was Narziss, who used the skill in his hands to draw aside from the brittle transience of time into the clear, abiding life of his essence.

Only thus, thought Goldmund, at times in terror, could any real work be brought to birth. Such had been the birth of Nicholas' unforgettable Virgin which, on many Sundays since first he saw it, he had trudged out to the cloister-church to visit. Thus, in this sacred, hidden fashion, had been carved the best of those old figures which Nicholas stored upon his landing. Thus, too, he would carve his second work, the sole and perfect shape within his heart, more reverent and secret even than this; his Eve, the Mother of all life. Ah, that such shapes alone might ever emerge from human hands; such sacred, necessary works, not blurred by any vanity or striving! But it was not so, he had long known it. Men could contrive quite different works of art – pretty figures, fashioned with intricate skill, their owners' pride, the ornaments of church and council-house – pleasant toys, yes, but never holy, never the true-born forms of the soul! Not only had he seen many such, by Nicholas and the Masters of the Guild – toys, for all the grace of their conception, the skilful labour of their design – he knew, to his own regret and shame, had felt in his own, juggling hands, how carvers will put forth such trumpery, from idle pleasure in their cunning, vanity, and finnicking ambition.

When first such realization came to Goldmund it brought with it the sadness of death. What was the use of being a carver, to make polished angels and such trash, now matter how masterly the workmanship? Others perhaps might find their pleasure in it, handymen, fat, snug, prosperous citizens, quiet little souls, easily pleased – it was not for him. For him all art and artistry were worthless unless they shone like the sun, had the might of storms in them – if they brought only pleasant, narrow happiness. He did not seek that. To gild some winsome Virgin's crown, intricate as point-lace, with gold-leaf; that was not the work he had in mind, even though it happened to be well paid. What made Nicholas take so many orders? Why did he stand for hours so attentive to the wishes of burly provosts and councillors – come to bespeak a doorway or a rood-screen – so eagerly, with his measuring rod in his hand? He did it for two shabby reasons – he had set great store on being a famous craftsman with more orders than he ever could execute; and then because he wanted to pile up money; not money for great feasts and enterprises, money for the pretty Lisbeth, long since already a well-endowed young maid, money for her costs, for brocade and points, money for her nutwood marriage-bed with its shining coverlets and fine linen. As though the smooth disdainful child could not have learned love as well in any haystack!

In hours when such things were in his mind his mother's nature rose in the depths of Goldmund, with all the pride and scorn of the homeless for those who own, and live at ease. In such hours the Master and his handicraft sickened him like a taste of cold porridge, and often he was near running away.

Nicholas, too, would angrily regret the trust he had placed in this shiftless workman, who often set his patience the sorest tests. Nor was he in any way appeased by what he heard of Goldmund's life, his spendthrift ways, his brawls, his many women. He had taken a gipsy, an idle apprentice into his shop, nor did it escape his notice with what eyes the fellow watched his daughter. If, in spite of all, he showed more patience than came easy to him, it was born of no feeling of duty or care for the wastrel, but solely because of his statue of St John the Disciple, of which he had seen the first design.

Something he would only half-acknowledge, a kind of love and spiritual kinship, stayed Nicholas' hand as he watched this spielmann off the highroads fashion in wood his figure from that drawing, at once so clumsy and so beautiful, so sensitive in its own queer fashion, for whose sake he had taken the fellow as his man – a carving only worked on by fits and starts, slowly and moodily, yet insistently. One day, Master Nicholas never doubted it, in spite of all these whimsies and obstacles, it would be finished, and would be such a work as the greatest masters can put forth only once or twice in a lifetime. In spite of all that riled him in his pupil, no matter how he stormed and chided, no matter how this gipsy's ways displeased him – he never said a word of his St John.

Gradually in these last years the freshness of Goldmund's pleasant youth, that boyish grace that had won him so much favour on the roads, had faded and gone from him for ever. He was a strong, handsome man, coveted by every woman he met, and so not beloved of other men. His turn of mind and inward aspect had also ripened since the years when Narziss had roused him from the slumbering innocence of the cloister. Vagrancy and the world had shaped his spirit. Another Goldmund had long replaced the delicate, well-loved boy. Narziss had awakened him into life, women had given him their wisdom, vagrancy had brushed off his bloom. He had no friends, his heart was all for his mistresses; they could win him easily, one longing glance was enough. He found it hard to resist, had an answer to their lightest inclination. And he, who loved all gentle beauty, longing most of all for those women who came to him in the first sap of their spring, could still be held and stirred by the less beautiful, by women no longer lovely, or very young. Sometimes, on village greens, he would stay at the side of some old timid spinster, desired of none, who had won his heart by way of gentleness, and not of gentleness only, but an ever re-awakened curiosity. When once he had yielded to a woman – though his love might last for days or only hours – she became a beauty in his eyes, and to her he surrendered his whole heart. And soon experience had taught him that every woman is beautiful and worth loving; that those least flaunting, the scorned of men, possess undreamed of ardour and self-forgetfulness, that withered virgins bear within them a tenderness as great as any mother, a sweet, confiding gentleness of their own – so that every woman in the world has her own magic, her own secret, which to read will bring happiness to a man.

In this all women were alike. Every lack of youth or beauty found its recompense in some special gesture or tone of voice.

But not all could hold him equally long. To the youngest, freshest of them all, he showed himself no whit more loving, no whit more grateful, than to the ugly ones. Although he could never love by halves there were women who only rendered up their secret after three or ten nights in his arms, others who in a single night were fully known, and so forgotten. Desire and love seemed to him the only satisfactions which can warm life, or give it any price. Of ambition he knew nothing; beggar and cardinal were alike to him. He despised all ownership, would not offer such things the smallest sacrifice, and threw his money away with both hands, now that he often earned as much as he would. Women and the game of the senses – these seemed to him the highest goods on earth, while the core of his days of brooding sadness, of every disgust and weariness of mind, was his knowledge of the passing of desire.

The quick delighted flame of a passion, its short, wasting fire and sudden extinction – these seemed to him to contain the heart of all knowledge. To him they were the pattern of worth, of every joy in human life. He could let their sadness sweep across his mind, with its shudder of eternal endings, and surrender to that as fully as to love, since it too was love, it too was desire. As wantonness at the summit of his glory, knows of his own end and quick oblivion, knows that he will perish in the next breath, so is the innermost sadness of this drowned solitude sure of its resurrection in desire, in a fresh awakening of the senses in the lust of the eye, the pride of life. Lust and death were the same to Goldmund. The mother of life might be called either 'Lust' or 'Love', though her other names were 'Death' and 'Corruption'. She was Eve, the fount of death and joy, for ever bearing and extinguishing. Cruelty and love were as one to her, and her form, the longer he bore it in his heart, his holiest allegory and symbol.

He knew, not in thoughts or words, with the sure, deep knowledge of the blood, that all his ways would lead him to the mother; to lust and death. The other, the father-side, of life, the intellect and will, were not his home. There dwelt Narziss, and Goldmund now, for the first time, had grasped all the reach of his friend's saying, and, in his heart, knew himself his opposite. With this new perception he carved his St John the Disciple: he might long until he wept for Narziss, dream of him the most splendid of his dreams, he would never reach him, or be as he.

With some kind of hidden intuition he also knew the secret of his artistry, his innate hankering to carve, his hatred, now and then, of all he had made. Without thoughts he could feel many comparisons. Art was the fusion of two worlds, the world of the spirit and the blood, the world of the father and the mother. Rooted in the grossest senses, she could grow to the clearest abstract thoughts, or take her origin in the rarest, incorporeal world of the intellect, to end in the solidest flesh and blood. All works that truly served their purpose – as, for instance, Master Nicholas' Sorrowful Virgin – all these legitimate, true-born works of art, not jugglers' pieces but true craftsmen's – presented this same perilous, two-faced smile, this quality both of man and woman, the living together and intermingling of desire and the clearest, passionless intellect. But more than any work yet born should he Eve set forth this double life, if ever he succeeded in carving her.

In the carver's craft there lay for Goldmund the assurance of reconciling his deepest contradictions. But art did not come as a free gift, certainly she was not to be had for the asking, she cost dear, demanding many offerings. For over three long years she had robbed him of his dearest joys, exacting the very breath of his life, all to which he clung besides desire, the freedom of his vagrant curiosity, his solitude, his dependence on no man. All had been offered up to image-making. Let others accuse him of surliness, call him sullen, feckless, disobedient, whenever he raged, and would not go to the workshop that day: for him this life was bitter slavery, chafing him, and poisoning his heart. It was not that he had a master to obey, not that he was in bondage without a future – it was art itself that riled and embittered him; art, that seeming goddess of the mind, who makes so many small exactions. She must have a roof above her head, needs carving tools, clay, woodblocks, gold-leaf, colours; exacts industry and patience. To her he had given the savage freedom of the woods, all the boundless joy of the wide earth, the tang of danger, the pride of beggary. And, with growls and clenchings of teeth, he must offer them up again and again.

Sometimes these holocausts were returned to him. He could find some slender compensation for the slavish order and discipline of his days in certain of the adventures that go with love; rivalry, and the brawls to which it leads. To be fallen on suddenly from behind, in a narrow alley on his way to a wench, or back from a dance, feel a few cudgel-blows on his shoulders, turn in a flash to attack, not to defend himself, set his teeth, and clasp his panting enemy, strike up with all his strength under a chin, fasten his fingers into hair, or feel his grip press down into a throat – all that was good, and cured his surliness for a while. And women also had their pleasure in it.

Pleasure filled up his nights abundantly, and gave some savour to his life, for as long as his work on St John lasted. The work prolonged itself, till one by one, with patient ceremony, he put the last, dainty touches to face and hands. He had carved it in a small wooden shed, built behind the journeymen's workshop. Then came the morning when it was ready. Goldmund went off to fetch a broom, swept the floor scrupulously clean, softly brushed the last traces of wood-dust from the modelled hair of his Johannes, and stood an hour or longer before him.

Deep joy awoke in his heart, the rare delight of a new, overmastering experience, something which might repeat itself once in his life, or which he might never know again. A man on his wedding-day, or the day of his knighthood, might feel this: a woman delivered of her first-born. A high dedication, a deep solemnity, with already secret terror of the instant when such strange perfection of happiness would be over, lived through, and fallen into its place, in the ordered rut of every day. There, before his eyes, stood Narziss, the friend who had led him out of his boyhood, clad in the robes and part of the fair discipline, with so quiet a look of pity and surrender, in the lines of his clear, attentive face, as might have been the bud of a smile. This lovely, radiant face, formed by the spirit, the lean, almost hovering body beneath, the long, comely hands, opened in prayer, had known pain and death, although so full of youth and inner music. But despair, disorder, rebellion, they had never known. The soul behind these radiant, gentle features might be sad or gay, it was a harmony; it suffered from no rift or discord. Goldmund stood lost in his work. His thoughts, at first all reverent devotion to this monument he had given to his youth, ended in a cloud of care and heaviness. There stood his work: this fair Johannes would remain; his gentle grace was fixed for all time. But he, the maker, had lost it. Tomorrow it would not be his, would not grow and prosper under his touch. Even now it no longer needed the love of his hands, had ceased to be his refuge and comfort, the form and purpose of his days. He stood there empty.

And so, he felt, it would be best to take his leave at once – of St John and of Master Nicholas also; of this city, and the carver's craft. There was nothing further for him here; he had no more figures ripe in his mind; his Eve, the mother of all, was still unattainable, and so she would remain for many years. Should he stay here, polishing angels' heads?

With an effort he left Narziss, and went across to the Master's workshop, entered, and stood by the door in silence, till Nicholas noticed him, and called out:

'What is it, Goldmund?'

'My St John is ready. Perhaps you will come yourself and look at it, before you go in to dinner.'

'Gladly. I'll come at once.'

They went over together, leaving the door wide-open, to have more light. For a long while now Nicholas had not seen the St John, letting Goldmund work on it undisturbed. Now he said nothing, but only carefully examined. His stern, secretive face lit up. Goldmund saw delight in the sharp blue eyes.

'It's good; very good,' said Master Nicholas. 'This is your journeyman's piece, Goldmund. You've mastered your craft. I will show this carving to the Guild, and ask that you be given your Master's patent for it. And you'll have earned it.'

Goldmund cared nothing for the Guild, but rejoiced, knowing how much recognition such words as these implied from Master Nicholas. As the Master viewed his work from every angle, walking slowly round about it, he sighed:

'This imaged is full of peace and stillness, and, although it is sad, it seems to rejoice. One might almost say that the heart of the man who made it had been all happiness and delight.'

Goldmund smiled:

'You know that in this I did not make an image of myself, but of my best friend, Master. It was he who brought the peace and light, not I. It is not really I who have shaped this figure, but he, who brought it to my soul.'

'It may be so,' said Nicholas, 'it is a secret how such figures as this are made. I am scarcely humble, but I'll say this to you: I have made many works in my time that stand far below this St John of yours, not in care and skill, but in their truth. Well, you know it yourself, such a work can never be repeated. It is a secret.'

'Yes,' said Goldmund, 'when this figure was carved I looked at it and said to myself: “You'll never do another like it.” And so, Master, I think that soon I'll go back to the roads.'

Nicholas gave him a puzzled, grudging look; his eyes were stern again.

'Later we can talk of that. This is the time when work should start for you in earnest, and truly not the moment for running off. But for today you can have a holiday, and at dinner you shall be my guest.'

Goldmund presented himself at dinner, washed and combed, in his Sunday clothes. This time he knew how rare an honour it was to be bidden to dine with Master Nicholas. Yet, as he climbed the stairs and crossed the landing, crowded with his wooden figures, there was no such joy and anxious awe in him as when last, with a thumping heart, he had entered these pleasant, peaceful rooms.

Lisbeth, too, was pranked out in her best, with a chain of jewels round her neck, and at dinner, besides their carp and wine, the Master had another favour for him: a leather purse, with two gold ducats, his wage for St John the Disciple. Today he did not sit with his mouth shut, listening to the talk of father and daughter. Both had much to say, and they all clinked glasses: his eyes were busy with the maid, and he used his chance to the full to take a long look at her pretty face, with its high-bred, smooth, disdainful beauty. She was very gracious, yet he wished she could blush and thaw a little, longing as never before to compel this smooth, still face to answer him. He took his leave soon after dinner, paused for a while to examine the statues on the landing, and then, not knowing what to do, loitered about the city streets. He had been honoured past all hope by Master Nicholas. Why should he not rejoice? What made this recompense so mean?

Yielding to a sudden whim, he hired a horse and rode out to the cloister where first he had heard the Master's name. Two years since then, and today they seemed an eternity! In the cloister-church he stood before the Sorrowful Virgin, and again her beauty caught and held him. She was a better work than his St John, equal in magic and profundity, surer far in knowledge and in skill.

Now he noted details in the craftsmanship which only a carver could perceive, softly rippling lines in the mantle, a boldness in the construction of the long thin hands and fingers, the delicate use of accidents in the grain of the wood; and yet all these beauties were as nothing in comparison to the loveliness of the whole, the inspired simplicity of the vision, only possible to some great master who had the craft at his fingertips. To present such figures a man must have more than energy in his soul; he must have both eye and hand consummately skilled. Therefore perhaps it was worthwhile to serve art for the whole of a lifetime, at the cost of freedom and all delight, if the end were one such beauty as this, not only seen and lived and conceived in joy, but carved with the last and surest mastery. It was a hard question. Goldmund came back late that night, on a tired horse, to the city. The lights still shone in a tavern, and there he ate bread, and drank some wine. Then he climbed to his room in the Fish-Market, at odds with himself, weary and restless.