CHAPTER TWELVE

NEXT day Goldmund could not make up his mind to work. He loitered about the streets in which he had spent so many unwilling days, watched serving-women and dames on their way to market, stood long by the Fish-Market brook, where vendors, with their lusty wives beside them, hawking and pricing their wares, clutched the cool silver fish out of their tubs, and flourished them at every passer-by.

The terrified fish, with open gills and gold-filmed eyes, surrendered to death, or struggled and slithered in anguish to escape it, and, as often before, his heart was filled with pity for these fish and gloomy detestation of human beings. Why were those people so brutish, so raw, so unbelievably slow-witted. Had nobody eyes, neither men nor fish-wives, nor the cheapening burgesses around them? Why had they never seen these anguished gills, these eyes glazed, with the agony of death, these tail-fins, beating the air so wildly – or felt the bitter, desperate horror of this slithering fight against extinction, this last unbearable transformation of lovely and mysterious fish, as a shiver ran along their dying bodies, and they lay, exhausted and limp, pitiful meals for the table of some gluttonous burgess? There people were all blind; nothing ever spoke to them or moved them. A poor, beautiful beast might die in front of them, or a master, in some saint's face, have revealed all the pain, the thought, the noble hopes, the dark, clutching fear in a human life, making of it a visible shudder – it all meant nothing; they could not see.

They were all so busy or amused, fussing and scurrying; bawling, cackling, belching in one another's faces, clattering with pails, cracking their jokes, falling out over a couple of pfennigs: so glossy with civic pride, pleased with their own well-ordered lives, satisfied with themselves and the whole world. Swine! But no, far worse and lower than swine. Well, although his life had seemed so pleasant here, he had lived long enough with them and their kind, slept with their wives and daughters, and made many a jolly meal of good baked fish with them. Again and again, with all the suddenness of a charm, his peace and satisfaction had fallen away. The glib illusions had been defeated, the smooth self-esteem and fatness of soul. Something kept urging him off into solitude, to long meditation and vagrancy, to the sight of grief and pain and death, and the doubtful issue of all men's striving; something had made him long to stare into the gulf.

Often in his blackest desolation at this glimpse of vanity and terror, sudden delight had flowered in his heart; a violent impulse to make love, draw, strike up a song; or else, as he smelt a flower or played with a cat, his boy's acceptance of life had all come back to him. This time, too, it would all come back, if not today tomorrow, or the day after, and the world be as goodly as ever before. Yes, till the blackness came again, the heavy, solitary pondering, his hopeless, stifling love of dying fish or withered flowers, his hatred of the swinish lethargy, the dull, ugly gapings of human beings! Always, at such times as these, he would be forced, with shuddering curiosity, to remember Victor the travelling scholar, between whose ribs he had thrust his jackknife, whom he had left stretched out on leaves, dripping blood. Then he had to think it all out afresh, wonder what Victor looked like now. Had the foxes eaten him all up yet? Could any traces still be left of him? Yes, there would be something strewn there still – the bones, and then perhaps a handful of hair. But bones? What happened to bones? How long did it take, years or decades, till bones lost their form and became earth?

Ah, he was forced to think of Victor now, as, sick at heart, he watched these fish, hating the market burghers and their dames. He was full of hatred of the world, hatred and pain within himself. Perhaps they had found Victor and buried him. If they had, had the flesh come off him yet? Was it still rotting away, bit by bit? Or had the worms got their bellyful? Was there any hair still on the skull? Were there eyebrows still above the eyes? And Victor's life, so full of histories and adventures, fantastic games and japes and bawdry – how much remained of it now? Did anything save the few shabby thoughts still haunting his murderer's mind, live on of him? Yet, as the world goes, this life had been no ordinary one. Was there still any Victor in women's dreams? No, it was past and done with, and such must be the fate of each and all; we come to swift blossom and shrivel up, and then the snow hides us away. How his whole being had seemed to flower as, two years back, in restless longing to learn a craft, he had hurried along the high-road to this town, to lay his heart at the feet of Master Nicholas. Had anything of that still life in it? Nothing – no more life today than the long, spare carcass of that poor guzzler. Had somebody told him of a day when he would treat Master Nicholas as his equal, and demand his patent from the Guild, he would have felt he had all the joy of the world in his hands. Now it was stale and joyless as withered flowers.

Suddenly, as he thought all this, Goldmund had the vision of a face. It came in a flash, and was gone again, one darting, quivering clarity, that vanished. It was the face of the earliest of all mothers, bent above the whirling darkness of life, looking down, with her sad, unchanging smile, all cruelty, all beauty in her eyes; smiling on births and deaths, on springing flowers and rustling autumn leaves, smiling on art, and on decay. All things were alike to this great mother; over them all her terrible, hovering smile hung like a moon. The surly meditation of a Goldmund was as dear to her as dying carp, slithering on the cobbles of the Fish-Market, dear as the cool, disdainful, Master's daughter, dear as Victor's bones, strewn in the wood, who had longed so much to steal a ducat.

Already the livid glow had died, the secret mother's face was lost again. Yet still its paleness shimmered on, in the very depths of Goldmund's being, as a surge of pain, and life, and stifling longing, swept, breaking and lashing, through his heart. No, he had no more use for the well-fed pleasure of these citizens, fish-sellers, buyers, busy owners. Let the devil take them! Ah, the white gleam of that full-lipped smile of dying summer, around whose eyes the nameless, heavy sheen of death had played like moonbeams or autumn wind!

Goldmund went to the house of Master Nicholas. It was midday or near; he waited till he heard that the Master had finished his work and gone to wash before he dined. Then he went in to him:

'Master, I have something to say to you. You can listen while you wash and change your jerkin. I am dry for a mouthful of truth, and now I have things to tell you which perhaps I can only say once, and never again. This is how it stands with me, Master. I have to speak my mind to somebody, and you may be the only one in the town who could ever understand what I mean. I do not speak to the owner of the famous workshop, who receives so many honourable commissions from every city and abbey in the land. I speak to the Master who carved the Holy Mother of God out in the cloister, the fairest virgin that I know. That is the man I love and honour, and to be his equal seems to me the highest good. I have just finished a work, my St John, and did not make it near so perfect as your Blessed Mother in that church. But let my work be what it is. I have no other waiting to be done. There is nothing in my mind that calls me, forcing me to shape it with my two hands. Or rather, no, there is another; but a very distant and holy image, that one day will constrain me to give it shape, and yet I cannot do it today. To have the power in me to make it I must know and feel far more of life. In three or four years it may be ready for me; or in ten, or longer still, or never perhaps! But, Master, until that time comes I cannot spend my days at handiwork, polishing angels, cutting rood-screens, living as a journeyman in this workshop, earning money, and growing like other workmen – no, I will not … I want to live, to wander the roads again! I want to feel summer and winter, and see all the beauty of the world, and I want to taste my fill of its pain. I must know hunger and thirst, and forget, and free my mind of all I have learnt here. One day I want to make a statue which shall move men as deeply, and be as fair, as your own Holy Mother of God. But to be as you, and live your life.... I will not.'

Nicholas had washed his hands and dried them. Now he turned and glanced at Goldmund. His eyes were sharp, but not malicious.

'You have spoken,' he said, 'and I have heard you. Let all that be! I do not expect you in the workshop, although there is so much to be done there. Nor do I consider you my journeyman. You need your freedom. I would like to discuss all this, and much besides, friend Goldmund. Not now, but a few days hence – and, meanwhile, do as you please. Listen, I am much older than you, and have seen this and that in the world. I think in a different fashion, yet I understand what you mean. In a few days I will send to fetch you, and then we will discuss your future, for which I have made many plans. Patience till then! I know well enough how it feels when one has finished a work that lay very close to the heart; I know that emptiness. It passes, believe me.'

Goldmund took his leave dissatisfied. The Master meant him well, but what did he care? He knew a place at the river's edge. There, where the water was not deep, it came rushing on, over a bed full of rubbish and offal, since, beyond the gates, the huts of the fishermen's quarter emptied every kind of waste and flotsam in it. Thither he loitered now, straddled the riverside wall, and sat looking down into the stream. Water he loved, every sheet of water drew him to it; and from here when, through running crystal threads, that rushed and mingled, a man looked down, into the dark, indefinite river's bed, he could see, here and there, some vague quick shimmer of gold gleam up at him; some half-seen thing – it might be the splinter of a dish, a sythe-blade, broken and thrown away, a shining pebble, a glazed tile: perhaps at times it was a mud eel, a fat lote or a roach, wriggling down there, catching a sunbeam for an instant on fins, scales, or glittering belly; he could never be quite certain what had glinted, and every time it was full of magic and delight, this muted sheen of buried gold, down in the wet, dark, unknown chasm.

Every real secret, he thought, all the true-born pictures of the mind, were like this one small secret of water. They had no form, no clear, accomplished shape, would never let themselves be perceived, save as far-off lovely possibility: they were veiled and had many meanings. As there, out of the green river twilight, in tiny flashes, some indefinite gold or silver thing shone for an instant and was gone again, so could the passing outline of a face, half-seen from behind, become the herald of endless grace or endless sorrow: or as, under a loaded wagon at night, a lantern swung, and the giant turning shadows of the spokes spread out their dance over a wall, these, in any one of their movements, might be as full of pictures and histories as Virgil. Of this same flimsy, magic stuff our dreams were woven in the night – nothing, with all the pictures of the world in it; a water in whose crystal the forms of all things, of angels, devils, men and beasts, lived as eternal possibility.

His thought returned to the water; abstractedly, through the rushing, purling river, he saw formless shimmerings in the bed; shaped kings' crowns, and women's naked shoulders. In Mariabronn once, he remembered, he had dreamed such magic, ever changing form into the shape of a Greek or Latin letter. Had he not spoken to Narziss of it? Ah, how long ago was that, how many centuries ago! Alas, Narziss! To see him now, and talk an hour with him, holding his hand and listening to his quiet, level voice, he would willingly have given two gold ducats. What made all these things so beautiful, these glittering mysteries and shadows, all these unreal, enchanted forms – what made them all so unbelievably fair, since, in themselves, they were the opposite of any beauty craftsmen make? If the beauty of these dim, unnameable things enthralled him only by its vagueness, it was all the other way with the works of craftsmen. These were all form, speaking with the clearness of perfection. Nothing was more inexorably clear than the lines of a well-drawn head, or a carved mouth. Precisely as he had seen them, to a hair, he could have shaped again the eyes or underlip of Nicholas' statue of the Virgin. There, there was nothing vague, tricking, impermanent.

Though Goldmund pondered the matter long, in the end he could still see no good reason why these clearest, most defined of forms should work on our spirit in just the fashion of these vaguest, least definite of all. But one thing was clear to him. He could see now why so many faultless works, fashioned by the masters in their crafts, displeased him utterly; why, in spite of a certain beauty in their design, they wearied him so he almost hated them. Workshops, churches, and palaces were full of such fatal works of art; he himself had helped to make a few. Their bitterest deception lay in this: that they roused men's longing for beauty, and left it unsatisfied, since, in themselves, they lacked its essence – a secret. Dreams and the greatest works both had their mystery.

And Goldmund thought: 'The think I love and hanker for is mysterious. I am on its track. I have seen it in flashes several times and, as a carver, when I can so so, I mean to shape it till it reveals itself. Its form shall be the form of the mother of all things. Her beauty, unlike that of other figures, shall not consist in any particular, no special roundness or slenderness, plainness of decorated form, winsomeness of strength, but in this – that in her the furthest opposites shall be reconciled, living together in my work: birth and death, pleasure and pain, life and destruction; all which, outside her, could never make peace in the world. Had I taken her form from out of my mind, she would have been no more than any craftsman's whim, and so my vanity would be worthless. I could see her faults, and forget her. But this primal mother is not my thought, since I have never known her with my mind. I saw her! She lives within me. Again and again I have met her shape. I saw it first in that village on a winter's night, as I held my torch over the bed of a peasant-woman in labour, and, from that day on, she has been part of me. I lose her often, and then I seem to have forgotten her, till suddenly her image flashes up again, as it came today. That dearest of all my thoughts, the thought of my mother, has transformed itself. It has given life to this new shape, and informs it, like the kernel in a cherry.'

Now he could feel most clearly how matters stood with him, and his heart beat now, as it had at no other turning-point in his life. Today, no less than on the night when he bade farewell to Narziss and the cloister, his feet were set on a new road. This mother called: one day perhaps he would transform her into a work for all to see. He could not tell. But this was certain – to follow her, be forever on his way to her, feel her calling, leading him on, was good. That was his life. Perhaps he might never carve what he had seen; it would remain a vision to the end, a lure, the gleam of hidden, sacred treasure. However that might be, he must follow it; to her he gave himself, she was his comfort.

So that now the decision was upon him, and everything settled in his mind. Art was a very fine thing no doubt, but art was no goddess, no final aim. He had not to follow art, but his mother's voice. What use would it be to make his fingers more and more skilful? Master Nicholas had shown him where that led a man. It led to a craftsman's fame, to money, and a dull, snug life; to a withering and stunting of that essence by which alone the secret yields itself up. It led to carving petty, costly toys for every rich council-house and altar, St Sebastians, and neatly lacquered cherubs, gilded at four thalers the piece. The gold in a carp's eyes, the lovely flicker of silver, round the edges of a butterfly's wing, were endlessly more beautiful, more alive, more precious than roomfuls of such work.

A boy came singing along the river's bank, breaking off in his song from time to time, as he bit into a loaf of white bread. Goldmund hailed him, and asked for a bit of his bread. Then he pulled out the crumb with his thumb and forefinger, and rolled little white bread pellets. Leaning over the wall, he flung his pellets, one by one, far out into the dark hurrying stream; quick fish thronged round them, until they vanished into a mouth. Pellet after pellet he saw vanish, with the same deep satisfaction for each. Then he felt hungry, and went in search of one of his mistresses, the serving-wench in a butcher's house, whom he called 'the pork and sausage maid'. He would hail her with his usual whistle, tell her, when she came to the kitchen window, that he did not care what flesh she offered him. Whatever she gave he would pocket it, and eat it in the vineyards across the river, whose flat red soil glowed with grapes, and where, in spring, there were blue sweet-smelling hyacinths.

But this seemed the day of fresh perceptions. When Katherine came smiling to the window – smiling her rather fat-faced smile – as already he raised his hand to give their signal – suddenly he remembered all her other smiles, all the other times he had stood just in this place, waiting at this window, just as today. And then, with wearisome distinctness, he saw it all before it happened: saw her answer his sign and leave the window, come round in a twice to the back door to him, with her packet of smoked meat in her hand, saw himself take it, and stroke her a little for her pains, pressing her to him – just as she expected. Suddenly it all seemed endlessly foolish, , this whole, mechanical series of oft-done things. Why call them back and play his part in them; thank her for her sausage, and kiss her lips, feel her jutting breasts thrust out against him, pressing her a little in exchange? In her good, plump face he could see a look of soullessness and habit, in her friendly laugh hear something bereft of dignity, something he had heard far too often, a clockwork sound, without any mystery in it. His smile froze; he dropped his hand. Did he still care anything at all for her? Had he ever really wanted her kisses? No, he had come here far too often, always the same, and answered it far too often – without desire. What yesterday he could have done without a thought, had suddenly, today, become impossible. The maid still stood there peeping out at him, as already he turned his back, and went his way, resolved never to enter the street again. Let some apprentice stroke those breasts of hers. Let someone else eat her good sausage! Oh how these citizens guzzled away their lives! How lazy and dainty were these provosts for whom, day after day, so many sows and calves were put to death, so many shining fish pulled out of the river. And he himself! How like the glossy fools he had become, how lazy and gluttonous! A bit of dirty crust on the moors, a dried-up sloe, tasted better than a whole Guild-banquet in this town. Ah, freedom of dark moors under the moon, traces of beasts, spied out carefully in the grey, wet grass of breaking dawns! These citizens' life was all so flat and cheap – even their love. He had had enough! Life, like a bone, was emptied of its marrow. Once it had been better, had had some meaning in it, in the days when the Master was still his pattern, and Lisbeth a princess in his eyes. Even after that it had been tolerable, while he had his St John to hold his thoughts. Now it was over, the bloom was off it, the little flower had shrivelled up. Like a wave, the sense of impermanence overwhelmed him.

Everything shrivelled, all pleasure ended in a breath, leaving nothing there but dust and bones. Yes, one thing stayed: the eternal mother. Eve the every-young, yet ever old, with the sad, cruel smile of her desire. Again for an instant, he could see her: a giantess with the stars in her hair, crouched dreaming at the edge of the world, idly plucking flower on flower, life after life, and dropping them slowly into space.

While in these days Goldmund, in a melancholy dream of farewells, watched a part of his life fade out and perish, as he strayed through the withering city streets, Master Nicholas was taking endless pains to bind down the vagabond for ever. He had made many plans for Goldmund's future, prevailed on the Guild to grant him his master's patent, thought out a scheme to hold him fast, not as his journeyman but his equal, one whom he would consult on all great orders. Together they would make the designs, and Goldmund should have a share in the gain. There were risks in this, for Lisbeth no less than for her father, since naturally the young man must be his son-in-law. But the best of all the journeymen yet hired by him could never have made the new St John, and he, the Master, was growing old, poorer in conceptions than he had been, and feared to see his famous workshop sink to the level of ordinary carvers' booths. It would not be easy with this Goldmund, but still the attempt would have to be made.

So did the Master reckon, sadly and prudently. He would have the inner workshop rebuilt, and enlarged to house his new assistant; give him the attic floor in his house and a fine new doublet and hose to attend his election to the Guild. Tenderly he sounded Mistress Lisbeth, who, since that noon when they all had dined together, expected some such proposal from her father. And behold, Lisbeth had nothing against it! If the lad could be made a guildsman and a citizen she would not say no to him for a husband. Here, too, there seemed to be no obstacle. If Master Nicholas and his craft had not quite managed to tame this gipsy, Lisbeth would soon have clipped his wings.

So it was all contrived, and the lure well-baited for the bird. And so, one day they sent for Goldmund, who had given them no news of himself, and this time too he was asked to dinner. He came as before, combed and in his Sunday clothes, sat down again, in the beautiful, rather ceremonious room, with the Master and the Master's daughter till, after dinner, Lisbeth curtsied and left them, and Nicholas made him his great offer.

'You understand,' he added, at the end of his surprising scheme, 'and I need not say that scarcely any other young man, with not even the usual apprenticeship behind him, has been made a Master as you have, and set down in such a warm nest. Your fortune's made, Goldmund!'

Surprised, and very discomforted, Goldmund sat staring at Master Nicholas. He thrust back the cup, half-full before him on the table. He had expected nothing from the Master save a few complaints for idle days, and the offer to make him his journeyman for ever. But now this! It saddened him, and filled him with embarrassment, to sit and face the man without a word. Yet he could not answer him at once.

Nicholas, already a little vexed that no humble thanks had at once requited his generosity, stood up, and continued:

'Well, this seems to take you by surprise. Perhaps you would like some time to consider it. It irks me a little that this is so. I had hoped to give you the greatest pleasure. But, for me, it's all one. Take your time.'

'Master,' said Goldmund, seeking for words, 'don't take it ill of me. I thank you with all my heart for your kindness, and even more, for the patience you have shown me, your scholar. Never shall I forget my debt to you. But I need no time to consider. I made up my mind long ago.'

'And to what?'

'I had resolved it long before you sent for me – before I had any inkling of the noble offer I have just heard. I cannot stay here. I must go on the roads again.'

Nicholas paled, and his eyes glittered.

'Master,' said Goldmund, 'believe me when I say I would not grieve you. I must leave all this. I must wander, and have my freedom. I thank you again with all my heart, and let us take our leave of each other kindly.' He held out his hand, almost in tears. Nicholas would not take it. His face was white. Now he began to pace the room, in quick, and ever quicker strides. But rage seemed to mount up through his body. Never before had Goldmund seen him thus.

'Go then! But go at once. Don't let me have to look at you again. Don't let me speak or do anything which one day I might have to be sorry for. Go!'

Again Goldmund stretched out his hand. Nicholas made as though to spit on it. Now, pale as the other, Goldmund turned, stole from the room, put on his cap on the landing, crept down the stairs, stroking the nutwood angels as he went, and out into the little wooden shed, to take a last farewell of his St John. There he stood for a while; then left the house, with a deeper sadness in his heart than ever he had felt that day in the snow, when he had gone from the castle, and poor Lydia. But this, at least, had ended quickly. At least they had wasted no words. That was his one consoling thought, as he crossed the threshold, and saw the streets take on the new look of familiar things, when our hearts have already taken leave of them. He glanced back once at the house-door … the door of a stranger's house, for ever closed to him.

Back in his room, Goldmund made ready for the roads. There there was not much to hamper him; he had little else to do but take his leave. A picture he himself had painted, a gentle Madonna, hung on the wall, and many trifles strewed the room. There was a pair of dancing-shoes, a wall of drawings, a small lute, a row of clay figures he had modelled, some wenches' gifts; a bunch of artificial flowers, a drinking-glass, stained crimson, an old, stale comfit, shaped like a heart, and more such rubbish, though every piece had its history. Once they had all meant something, now they were a tedious encumbrance. But at least he could go to the landlord, exchange the glass for a good, strong hunting-knife, and whet it on the grindstone in the yard. He could crumble the gingerbread heart, and feed the hens in the neighbour's court with it, give his Madonna to the goodwife, and get from her a useful present, an old leather wallet, crammed with food.

To this he added the two clean shirts he owned, and a couple of his smallest drawings, rolled over a piece of broomstick. The rest of the flimsy he left behind.

There were many women in the city, of whom he might have taken his leave: even last night he had slept with one of them, without saying a word to her of his plans. It was not worth the trouble of taking seriously, so he said farewell to none but his landlord, and of him took his leave overnight, in order to set out early next day.

Yet in spite of this, another was up before him, to bid him into the kitchen for a milk-broth, just as he was about to creep from the house. It was a child of fifteen, the landlord's daughter, a quiet, sickly maid, with beautiful eyes, but lamed in her hip-joint, so that she limped. Her name was Marie. With her face pale for want of sleep, but her hair carefully dressed and combed, to meet him, she set out warm milk for him in the kitchen, and bread to go with it, and seemed very sad to have him leave her. He thanked her with a farewell kiss, and pitied her. She took his kiss with half-closed eyes.