Narcissus and Goldmund (25 page)

“Silly little girl,” he said, “have you already forgotten the ghouls and the abandoned houses, and the big hole outside the gates where the fires burn? You should be happy not to be lying in that hole with the rain falling on your little nightshirt. Think of what you escaped, be glad that your dear life is still in your veins, that you can still laugh and sing.”

She was still not satisfied.

“But I don't want to go away again,” she complained. “Nor do I want to let you go. How can one be happy when one knows that soon all will be finished and over with!”

Once more Goldmund answered her, in a friendly tone but with a hidden threat in his voice.

“About that, little Lene, the wise men and saints have wracked their brains. There is no lasting happiness. But if what we now have is not good enough for you, if it no longer pleases you, then I'll set fire to this hut this very minute and each of us can go his way. Let things be as they are, Lene; we've talked enough.”

She gave in and that's where they left it, but a shadow had fallen over her joy.

14

B
EFORE
summer had wilted completely, life in the hut came to an end in a way they had not imagined. One day Goldmund was roaming about the area with a slingshot, hoping to wing a partridge or some other fowl; their food had grown rather scarce. Lene was not far away, gathering berries, and from time to time he'd pass near her and see her head, her brown neck rising out of her linen shirt, or hear her sing. Once he stole a few of her berries; then he wandered off and lost sight of her for a while. He thought about her, half tenderly, half annoyed, because she had again mentioned autumn and the future. She said that she thought she was pregnant and she could not let him go off again. Now it will soon be over, he thought. Soon I'll have had enough and wander on alone. I'll leave Robert, too. I'll try to get back to the big city when the cold begins, to Master Niklaus. I'll spend the winter there and next spring I'll buy myself a new pair of shoes and walk and walk until I reach our cloister in Mariabronn and say hello to Narcissus. It must be ten years since I last saw him, and I must see him again, if only for a day or two.

An unfamiliar sound roused him from his thoughts, and suddenly he realized that all his thoughts and desires were already far away from here. He listened intently. The sound of fear repeated itself; he thought he recognized Lene's voice and followed it, irritated that she was calling him. Soon he was close enough—yes, it was Lene's voice. She was calling his name as though in great distress. He ran faster, still somewhat annoyed, but pity and worry gained the upper hand as her screaming continued. When he was finally able to see her, she was kneeling in the heather, her blouse completely torn, screaming and wrestling with a man who was trying to rape her. Goldmund ran forward with long leaps. All his pent-up anger, his restlessness, his sorrow broke out in a howling rage against the unknown attacker. He surprised the man as he tried to pin Lene to the ground. Her naked breasts were bleeding, and avidly the stranger held her in his grip. Goldmund threw himself upon him, his furious fingers grabbing the man's throat. It felt thin and stringy, covered with a woolly beard. With glee Goldmund pressed the throat until the man let go of the girl and hung limply between his hands; still throttling him, Goldmund dragged the exhausted, half-dead man along the ground to a few gray ribs of rock protruding from the earth. He raised the defeated man, heavy though he was, twice, three times in the air and smashed his head against the sharp-edged rocks, broke his neck, and threw the body down. His anger was still not fully vented; he would have liked to mangle the man further.

Radiant, Lene sat and watched. Her breasts were bleeding; she was still trembling all over and panting, but she soon gathered herself together. With a forlorn look of lust and admiration she watched her powerful lover dragging the intruder through the heather, throttling him, breaking his neck, and throwing his corpse down. Like a dead snake, limp and distorted, the body lay on the ground, the gray face with unkempt beard and thinning hair falling pitifully to one side. Triumphant Lene sat up and fell against Goldmund's heart, but suddenly she turned pale. Fright was still in her; she felt sick. Exhausted, she sank into the blueberry bushes. But soon she was able to walk to the hut with Goldmund. He washed her breasts; one was scratched and the other bore a bite wound from the marauder's teeth.

The adventure excited Robert enormously. Hotly he asked for details of the combat. “You broke his neck, you say? Magnificent! Goldmund, you are a terrifying man.”

But Goldmund did not feel like talking about it any more; he had cooled off. As he walked away from the dead man, poor boasting Viktor had come to his mind. This was the second person who had died at his hand. In order to shut Robert up, he said: “Now you might do something too; go over and get rid of the corpse. If it's too difficult to dig a hole for it, then drag it over to the reeds, or else cover it up with stones and earth.” But Robert turned down the proposal. He wanted no commerce with corpses; you could never be sure they weren't infested with the plague.

Lene was lying down. The bite in her breast hurt, but soon she felt better, got up again, made a fire and cooked the evening milk; she was cheerful, but Goldmund sent her to bed early. She obeyed like a lamb, full of admiration for him. Goldmund was somber and taciturn; Robert realized it and left him alone. Much later Goldmund went to bed. Listening, he bent over Lene. She was asleep. He was restless; he kept thinking of Viktor, felt anguish and the urge to move on; playing house had come to an end. One thing made him particularly pensive. He had caught Lene's look while he bashed the man to death and tossed him down. A strange look. He knew that he would never forget it: pride and triumph had radiated from her wide, horrified, delighted eyes, a deep passionate desire to participate in the revenge and to kill. He had never seen anything like it in a woman's face, and had never imagined such a look. Had it not been for that look, he thought, he might have forgotten Lene's face one day, after a number of years. It had made her peasant-girl face large, beautiful, and horrible. For months his eyes had not experienced anything that made him quiver with the wish: “One ought to draw that!” That look had caused this wish to quiver through him, and a kind of terror.

He could not sleep, and finally he got up and went outside. It was cool, and a light wind played in the birches. He paced in the dark, sat down on a stone, drowned in thoughts and deep sadness. He felt sorry for Viktor and for the man he had killed today. He regretted the lost innocence, the lost childlike quality of his soul. Had he gone away from the cloister, left Narcissus, offended Master Niklaus and renounced beautiful Lisbeth merely to camp in the heath, track stray cattle, and kill that poor fellow back there on those stones? Did all this make sense? Was it worth experiencing? His heart grew tight with meaninglessness and self-contempt. He let himself sink down and stared into the pale night clouds, and as he stared, his thoughts stopped; he didn't know whether he was looking into the sky or into the drab world inside him. Suddenly, just as he was falling asleep on the stone, a large pale face appeared like far-away lightning in the drifting clouds, the mother-face. It looked heavy and veiled, but suddenly its eyes opened wide, large eyes full of lust and murder. Goldmund slept until the dew fell on him.

The next day Lene was ill. They made her stay in bed, for there were many things to be done: in the morning Robert had seen two sheep in the small forest, but they had run from him. He called Goldmund, and more than half the day they hunted until they caught one of the sheep; they came back exhausted. Lene felt very sick. Goldmund examined her and found plague boils. He kept it secret, but Robert became suspicious when he heard that Lene had still not recovered. He would not stay in the hut. He'd find a sleeping place outside, he said, and he'd take the goat along too: why let it get infected.

“Go to hell,” Goldmund yelled at him in fury. “I don't want to see you ever again.” He grabbed the goat and pulled her to his side of the juniper partition. Robert disappeared without a word, without the goat. He was sick with fear: of the plague, of Goldmund, of loneliness and the night. He lay down close to the hut.

Goldmund said to Lene: “I'll stay with you, don't worry. You'll get well again.”

She shook her head.

“Be careful, love. Don't catch this sickness too; you mustn't come so close to me. Don't try so hard to console me. I'm going to die, and I'd rather die than find your bed empty one morning because you have left me. I've thought of it every morning and been afraid of it. No, I'd rather die.”

In the morning she was extremely weak. Goldmund had given her sips of water from time to time and napped a little in between. Now, in the growing light, he recognized the signs of approaching death in her face, it looked so wilted and flabby. For a moment he stepped outside to get some air and look at the sky. A few bent red fir trunks at the edge of the forest shone with the first rays of sun; the air tasted fresh and sweet; the distant hills were still shrouded in morning clouds. He walked a few steps, stretched his tired legs, and breathed deeply. The world was beautiful this morning. He'd probably soon be back on the road. It was time to say goodbye.

Robert called to him from the forest. Was she better? If it wasn't the plague, he'd stay. Goldmund shouldn't be angry with him; he had watched the sheep in the meantime.

“Go to hell, you and your sheep!” Goldmund shouted over to him. “Lene is dying, and I too am infected.”

This was a lie; he had said it to get rid of Robert. He might be a well-meaning man, but Goldmund had had enough of him. He was too cowardly for him, too petty; he had no place in this fateful, shocking scene. Robert vanished and did not return. The sun shone brightly.

When Goldmund came back to Lene, she lay asleep. He too fell asleep once more, and in his dream he saw his old horse Bless and the beautiful chestnut tree at the cloister; he felt as though he were gazing back upon his lost and beautiful home from an infinitely remote, deserted region, and when he woke, tears were running down his blond-bearded cheeks. He heard Lene speak in a weak voice. He thought she was calling out to him and sat up on his bed, but she was speaking to no one. She was stammering words, love words, curses, a little laugh, and began to heave deep sighs and swallow. Gradually she fell silent again. Goldmund got up and bent over her already disfigured face. With bitter curiosity his eyes retraced the lines that the scalding breath of death was so miserably distorting and muddying. Dear Lene, called his heart, dear sweet child, you too already want to leave me? Have you already had enough of me?

He would have liked to run away. To wander, roam, run, breathe the air, grow tired, see new images. It would have done him good; it might perhaps have got him over his deep melancholy. But he could not leave now. It was impossible for him to leave the child to lie there alone and dying. He scarcely dared go outside every few hours for a moment to breathe fresh air. Since Lene could no longer swallow any milk, he drank it himself. There was no other food. A couple of times he led the goat outside, for it to feed and drink water and move around. Once more he stood at Lene's bed, murmured tender words to her, stared incessantly into her face, disconsolate but attentive, to watch her dying. She was conscious. Sometimes she slept, and when she woke up she only half opened her eyes; the lids were tired and limp. Around eyes and nose the young girl looked older and older by the hour. A rapidly wilting grandmother face sat on her fresh young neck. She spoke only rarely, said “Goldmund,” or “lover,” and tried to wet her swollen bluish lips with her tongue; when she did, he'd give her a few drops of water. She died the following night. She died without complaining. It was only a brief quiver; then her breath stopped and a shudder ran over her. Goldmund's heart heaved mightily at the sight. He recalled the dying fish he had so often pitied in the market: they had died in just that way, with a quiver, a soft woeful shudder, that ran over their skin and extinguished luster and life. For a while he knelt beside Lene. Then he went out and sat down in the bushes. He remembered the goat and walked back into the hut and let the animal out. After straying a short distance, it lay down on the ground. He lay down beside it, his head on its flank, and slept until the day grew bright. Then he went into the hut for the last time, stepped behind the braided wall, and looked for the last time at the poor dead face. It did not feel right to him to let the dead woman lie there. He went out, filled his arms with dry wood and underbrush, and threw it into the hut. Then he struck fire. From the hut he took nothing along but the flint. In an instant the dry juniper wall burned brightly. He stood outside and watched, his face reddened by the flames, until the whole roof was ablaze and the first beams crashed in. The goat jumped with fear and whined. He knew he ought to kill the animal and roast a piece of it and eat it, to have strength for his journey. But he could not bring himself to kill the goat; he drove it off into the heath and walked away. The smoke of the fire followed him into the forest. Never before had he felt so disconsolate setting out on a journey.

And yet the things that lay in store for him were far worse than he had imagined. It began with the first farms and villages and continued to grow more terrible as he walked on. The whole region, the whole vast land lay under a cloud of death, under a veil of horror, fear, and darkening of the soul. And the empty houses, the farm dogs starved on their chains and rotting, the scattered unburied corpses, the begging children, the death pits at the city gates were not the worst. The worst were the survivors, who seemed to have lost their eyes and souls under the weight of horror and the fear of death. Everywhere the wanderer came upon strange, dreadful things. Parents had abandoned their children, husbands their wives, when they had fallen ill. The ghouls reigned like hangmen; they pillaged the empty houses, left corpses unburied or, following their whims, tore the dying from their beds before they had breathed their last and tossed them on the death carts. Frightened fugitives wandered about alone, turned primitive, avoiding all contact with other people, hounded by fear of death. Others were grouped together by an excited, terrified lust for life, drinking and dancing and fornicating while death played the fiddle. Still others cowered outside cemeteries, unkempt, mourning or cursing, with insane eyes, or sat outside their empty houses. And, worst of all, everybody looked for a scapegoat for his unbearable misery; everybody swore that he knew the criminal who had brought on the disease, who had intentionally caused it. Grinning, evil people, they said, were bent on spreading death by extracting the disease poison from corpses and smearing it on walls and doorknobs, by poisoning wells and cattle with it. Whoever was suspected of these horrors was lost, unless he was warned and able to flee: either the law or the mob condemned him to death. The rich blamed the poor, or vice versa; both blamed the Jews, or the French, or the doctors. In one town, Goldmund watched with grim heart while the entire ghetto was burned, house after house, with the howling mob standing around, driving screaming fugitives back into the fire with swords and clubs. In the insanity of fear and bitterness, innocent people were murdered, burned, and tortured everywhere. Goldmund watched it all with rage and revulsion. The world seemed destroyed and poisoned; there seemed to be no more joy, no more innocence, no more love on earth. Often he fled the overly violent feasts of the desperate dancers. Everywhere he heard the fiddle of death; he soon learned to recognize its sound. Often he participated in mad orgies, played the lute or danced through feverish nights in the glow of peat torches.