Narcissus and Goldmund (33 page)

This praise made Goldmund blush with embarrassment, and also with pleasure. In order to change the subject, he interrupted his friend: “I've been able to understand most of what you wanted to tell me. But there is one thing I still can't get through my head: the thing you call ‘pure thinking.' I mean your so-called thinking without images, and the use of words with which one cannot imagine anything.”

“Well, you'll be able to understand it with an example. Think of mathematics. What kind of images do figures contain? Or the plus and minus signs? What kind of images does an equation contain? None. When you solve a problem in arithmetic or algebra, no image will help you solve it, you execute a formal task within the codes of thought that you have learned.”

“That's right, Narcissus. If you give me a row of figures and symbols, I can work through them without using my imagination, I can let myself be guided by plus and minus, square roots, and so on, and can solve the problem. That is—I once could, today I could no longer do it. But I can't imagine that solving such a formal problem can have any other value than exercising a student's brain. It's all right to learn how to count. But I'd find it meaningless and childish if a man spent his whole life counting and covering paper with rows of figures.”

“You are wrong, Goldmund. You assume that this zealous problem-solver continuously solves problems a teacher poses for him. But he can also ask himself questions; they can arise within him as compelling forces. A man must have measured and puzzled over much real and much fictitious space mathematically before he can risk facing the problem of space itself.”

“Well, yes. But attacking the problem of space with pure thought does not strike me as an occupation on which a man should waste his work and his years. The word ‘space' means nothing to me and is not worth thinking about unless I can imagine real space, say the space between stars; now, studying and measuring star space does not seem an unworthy task to me.”

Smilingly, Narcissus interrupted: “You are actually saying that you have a rather low opinion of thinking, but a rather high one of the application of thought to the practical, visible world. I can answer you: we lack no opportunities to apply our thinking, nor are we unwilling to do so. The thinker Narcissus has, for instance, applied the results of his thinking a hundred times to his friend Goldmund, as well as to each of his monks, and does so at every instant. But how would he be able to ‘apply' something if he had not learned and practiced it before? And the artist also constantly exercises his eye and imagination, and we recognize this training, even if it finds realization only in a few good works. You cannot dismiss thinking as such and sanction only its ‘application'! The contradiction is obvious. So let me go on thinking and judge my thoughts by their results, as I shall judge your art by your works. You are restless now and irritable because there are still obstacles between you and your works. Clear them out of the way. Find or build a workshop for yourself and get to work! Many problems will be solved automatically that way.”

Goldmund wished nothing better.

Beside the courtyard gate he found a shed that was both empty and suitable for a workshop. He ordered a drawing board and other tools from the carpenter, all to be made after precise plans he drew himself. He made a list of the materials which the cloister carters were to bring him from nearby cities, a long list. He inspected all the felled timber at the carpenter's and in the forest, chose many pieces and had them carried to the grassy lot behind his workshop, where he piled them up to dry under a roof he built with his own hands. He also had much work to do with the blacksmith, whose son, a dreamy young man, was completely charmed and won over by him. Together they stood half the day at the forge, over the anvil, by the cooling trough or the whetstone, making all the bent or straight cutting knives, the chisels, drills, and planes he needed for his work. The smith's son, Erich, an adolescent of almost twenty, became Goldmund's friend. He helped him with everything and was full of glowing interest and curiosity. Goldmund promised to teach him to play the lute, which he fervently desired, and he also allowed him to try his hand at carving. If at times Goldmund felt rather useless and depressed in the cloister and in Narcissus's presence, he was able to recover in the presence of Erich, who loved him timidly and admired him immensely. He often asked him to tell him about Master Niklaus and the bishop's city. Sometimes Goldmund was glad to tell stories. Then he would be suddenly astonished to find himself sitting like an old man, talking about the travels and adventures of the past, when his true life was only now about to begin.

Recently he had changed greatly and aged far beyond his years, but this was visible to no one, since only one man here had known him before. The hardships of his wandering and unsettled life may already have undermined his strength, but the plague and its many horrors, and finally his captivity at the count's residence and that gruesome night in the castle cellar had shaken him to his roots, and several signs of these experiences stayed with him: gray hair in his blond beard, wrinkles on his face, periods of insomnia, and occasionally a certain fatigue inside the heart, a slackening of desire and curiosity, a gray shallow feeling of having had enough, of being fed up. During preparations for his work, during his conversations with Erich or his pursuits at the blacksmith's and at the carpenter's, he grew vivacious and young and all admired him and were fond of him; but at other times he'd sit for hours, exhausted, smiling and dreaming, given over to apathy and indifference.

The question of where to begin was very important to him. The first work he wanted to make here, and with which he wanted to pay for the cloister's hospitality, was not to be an arbitrary piece that one placed just anywhere for the sake of curiosity, no, it had to blend with the old works of the house and with the architecture and life of the cloister and become part of the whole. He would have especially liked to make an altar or perhaps a pulpit, but there was no need or room for either. He found another place instead. There was a raised niche in the refectory, from which a young brother read passages from the lives of the saints during meals. This niche had no ornament. Goldmund decided to carve for the steps to the lectern and for the lectern itself a set of wooden panels like those around a pulpit, with many figures in half-relief and others almost free-standing. He explained his plan to the Abbot, who praised and accepted it.

When finally he could begin—snow had fallen, Christmas was already over—Goldmund's life took on another form. He seemed to have disappeared from the cloister; nobody saw him any more. He no longer waited for the students at the end of classes, no longer drifted through the woods, no longer strolled under the arcades. He took his meals in the mill—it wasn't the same miller now whom he had often visited as a student. And he allowed no one but his assistant Erich to enter his workshop; and on certain days Erich did not hear a word out of him.

For this first work he had long since thought out the following design: it was to be in two parts, one representing the world, the other the word of God. The lower part, the stairs, growing out of a sturdy oak trunk and winding around it, was to represent creation, images of nature and of the simple life of the patriarchs and the prophets. The upper part, the parapet, would bear the pictures of the four apostles. One of the evangelists was to have the traits of blessed Abbot Daniel; another those of blessed Father Martin, his successor; and the statue of Luke was to eternalize Master Niklaus.

He met with great obstacles, greater than he had anticipated. And these obstacles gave him many worries, but they were sweet worries. Now enchanted and now despairing, he wooed his work as though it were a reluctant woman, struggled with it as firmly and gently as a fisherman struggling with a giant pike, and each resistance taught him and made him more sensitive. He forgot everything else. He forgot the cloister; he almost forgot Narcissus. Narcissus came a number of times, but was only shown drawings.

Then one day Goldmund surprised him with the request that he hear his confession.

“I could not bring myself to confess before,” he admitted. “I felt too small, and I already felt small enough in front of you. Now I feel bigger, now I have my work and am no longer a nobody. And since I am living in a cloister, I'd like to submit myself to the rules.”

Now he felt equal to the task and did not want to wait a moment longer. Those first meditative weeks at the cloister, the abandonment of all the homecoming, all the memories of youth, as well as the stories Erich asked him for, had allowed him to see his life with a certain order and clarity.

Without solemnity Narcissus received his confession. It lasted about two hours. With immobile face the Abbot listened to the adventures, sufferings, and sins of his friend, posed many questions, never interrupted, and listened passively also to the part of the confession in which Goldmund admitted that his faith in God's justice and goodness had disappeared. He was struck by many of the admissions of the confessing man. He could see how much he had been shaken and terrified, how close he had sometimes come to perishing. Then again he was moved to smile, touched when he found that his friend's nature had remained so innocent, when he found him worried and repentent because of impious thoughts which were harmless enough compared to his own dark abysses of doubt.

To Goldmund's surprise, to his disappointment even, the father confessor did not take his actual sins too seriously, but reprimanded and punished him unsparingly because of his neglect in praying, confession, and communion. He imposed the following penance upon him: to live moderately and chastely for a month before receiving communion, to hear early mass every morning, and to say three Our Fathers and one Hail Mary every evening.

Afterwards he said to him: “I exhort you, I beg you not to take this penance lightly. I don't know if you can still remember the exact text of the mass. You are to follow it word by word and give yourself up to its meaning. I will myself say the Our Father and a few canticles with you today, and give you instructions as to the words and meanings to which you are to direct your particular attention. You are to speak and hear the sacred words not the way one speaks and hears human words. Every time you catch yourself just reeling off the words, and this will happen more often than you expect, you are to remember this hour and my exhortation, and you are to begin all over again and speak the words in such a way as to let them enter your heart, as I am about to show you.”

Whether it was a beautiful coincidence, or whether the Abbot's knowledge of souls was great enough to achieve it, a period of fulfillment and peace came for Goldmund from this confession and penance. It made him profoundly happy. Amid the many tensions, worries, and satisfactions of his work, he found himself morning and evening released by the easy but conscientiously executed spiritual exercises, relaxed after the excitements of the day, his entire being submitted to a higher order that lifted him out of the dangerous isolation of the creator and included him as a child in God's world. Although the battles of his work had to be overcome in solitude, and he had to give it all the passions of his senses, these hours of meditation let him return to innocence again and again. Still hot with the rage and impatience of his work, or moved to ecstasy, he would plunge into the pious exercises as though into deep, cool water that washed him clean of the arrogance of enthusiasm as well as the arrogance of despair.

It did not always succeed. Sometimes he did not become calm and relaxed in the evening, after burning hours of work. A few times he forgot the exercises, and several times, as he tried to immerse himself in them, he was tortured by the thought that saying prayers was, after all, perhaps only childish striving for a God who did not exist or could not help. He complained about it to his friend.

“Continue,” said Narcissus. “You promised; you must keep your promise. You are not to think about whether God hears your prayers or whether there is a God such as you imagine. Nor are you to wonder whether your exercises are childish. Compared to Him to whom all our prayers are addressed, all our doing is childish. You must forbid yourself these foolish child's thoughts completely during the exercises. You are to speak the Our Father and the canticles, and give yourself up to the words and fill yourself with them just the way you play the lute or sing. You don't pursue clever thoughts and speculations then, do you? No, you execute one finger position after another as purely and perfectly as possible. While you sing, you don't wonder whether or not singing is useful; you sing. That's how you are to pray.”

And once more it worked. Again his taut, avid ego extinguished itself in wide-vaulted order; again the venerable words floated above him like stars.

With great satisfaction, the Abbot saw Goldmund continue his daily exercises for weeks and months after his period of penance was over and after he had received the holy sacraments.

In the meantime Goldmund's work advanced. A small surging world grew from the thick spiral of the stairs: creatures, plants, animals, and people. In their midst stood Noah between grape leaves and grapes. The work was a picture book of praise for the creation of the world and its beauty, free in expression but directed by an inner order and discipline. During all these months no one but Erich saw the work; he was allowed to execute small tasks and thought of nothing but becoming an artist himself. But on certain days not even he was allowed to enter the workshop. On other days Goldmund took his time with him, showed him a few things and let him try, happy to have a believer and a disciple. If the work turned out successfully, he might ask Erich's father to release the boy and let him be trained as his permanent assistant.

He worked at the statues of the evangelists on his best days, when everything was harmonious and no doubts cast their shadows over him. It seemed to him that he was most successful with the figure that bore the traits of Abbot Daniel. He loved it very much; the face radiated kindness and purity. He was less satisfied with the statue of Master Niklaus, even though Erich admired it most of all. This figure revealed discord and sadness. It seemed to be brimming over with lofty plans for creation and yet there was also a desperate awareness of the futility of creating, and mourning for a lost unity and innocence.