Narcissus and Goldmund Page 10

  That autumn the leaves stayed late on the tall ash in the courtyard and there were still asters in the garden, and roses. One day visitors arrived. A neighbor with his wife and horseman came riding in; the mildness of the day had tempted them to travel farther than usual. Now they were there and asked shelter for the night. They were courteously received; Goldmund's bed was moved out of the guest room into the writing room; his room was made up for the visitors, chickens were killed, servants ran to the millpond to get fish. With pleasure Goldmund took part in the festivities and the excitement; he immediately felt the unknown lady's awareness of him. And as soon as he noticed her interest in him and her desire, by a certain something in her voice and in her eyes, he also noticed with growing interest how changed Lydia was, how silent and remote she became and how she sat watching him and the unknown lady. During the elaborate dinner the lady's foot came to play with Goldmund's under the table; he took great delight in this game, but still greater delight in the brooding, silent tension with which Lydia watched it, with inquisitive, burning eyes. Finally he dropped a knife on purpose, bent down to reach for it under the table and touched the lady's foot and calf with a caressing hand. He saw Lydia turn pale and bite her lip as he continued to tell anecdotes from his cloister days and felt the unknown lady listen intently, not so much to his stories as to the wooing in his voice. The others, too, sat listening, his master with benevolence, the guest with a stony face, although he, too, was affected by the fire that burned in the young man. Lydia had never heard him speak this way. He had blossomed, lust hung in the air, his eyes shone, ecstasy sang in his voice, love pleaded. The three women felt it, each in her own fashion: little Julie with violent resistance and rejection, the knight's wife with radiant satisfaction, and Lydia with a painful commotion in her heart, a mixture of deep longing, soft resistance, and the most violent jealousy, which made her face look narrow and her eyes burn. Goldmund felt all these waves. Like secret answers to his courtship they came flooding back to him. Like birds, thoughts of love fluttered about him, giving in, resisting, fighting each other.

  After the meal Julie withdrew; night had long since fallen; with her candle in a clay candlestick, she left the hall, frigid as a little cloister woman. The others stayed up for another hour, and while the two men discussed the harvest, the emperor, and the bishop, Lydia listened ardently to the idle chatter that was being spun between Goldmund and the unknown lady, among the loose threads of which a thick sweet net of give and take, of glances and intonations and small gestures had come into being, each one overcharged with meaning, overheated with desire. Greedily the girl drank in the atmosphere, but also felt disgust when she saw, or sensed, Goldmund touch the unknown lady's knee under the table. She felt the contact on her own flesh and gave a start. Afterwards she could not fall asleep and lay listening half the night, with pounding heart, sure that the two would come together. In her imagination she performed what was denied them, saw them embrace, heard their kisses, trembling with excitement all the while, wishing as much as fearing that the betrayed knight might surprise the lovers and sink his knife into the odious Goldmund's heart.

  The next morning the sky was overcast, a wet wind blew, the guests declined all urging to stay longer and insisted on immediate departure. Lydia stood by while the guests mounted. She shook hands and spoke words of farewell, but she was not aware of what she was doing. All her senses were focused in her eyes as she watched the knight's wife place her foot in Goldmund's proffered hands, watched his right hand wrap around the shoe, wide and firm, and clutch the woman's foot forcefully for an instant.

  The strangers had ridden off; Goldmund was in the study, working. Half an hour later he heard Lydia's voice giving orders under the window, heard a horse being led from the stable. His master stepped to the window, looking down, smiling, shaking his head. Then both watched Lydia ride out of the courtyard. They seemed to be making less progress in their Latin composition today. Goldmund was distracted; with a friendly word, his master released him earlier than usual.

  No one saw Goldmund sneak a horse out of the courtyard. He rode against the cool wet wind into the discolored landscape, galloping faster and faster; he felt the horse grow warm under him, felt his own blood catch fire. He rode through the gray day, across stubble fields, heath, and swampy spots overgrown with shave grass and reeds, breathed deeply, crossed small valleys of alder, rotting pine forest, and once again brownish, bare heath.

  On the high ridge of a hill, sharply outlined against the pale gray, cloudy sky, he saw Lydia's silhouette, sitting high on her slowly trotting horse. He raced toward her; she saw that he was following her and spurred her horse and fled. She would appear and then disappear, her hair flowing behind her. He gave chase as though she were a fox; his heart laughed. With brief, tender calls he encouraged his horse, scanned the landscape with happy eyes as he flew past low-crouching fields, an alder forest, maples, the clay-covered banks of ponds. Again and again his eyes returned to his target, to the beautiful, fleeing woman. Soon he would catch up with her.

  When Lydia saw that he was close, she abandoned the race and let her horse walk. She did not turn her head to look at her pursuer. Proudly, apparently casually, she trotted ahead of him as though nothing had happened, as though she were alone. He pushed his horse up to hers; the two horses walked gently side by side, but the animals and their riders were hot from the chase.

  "Lydia!" he called softly.

  There was no answer.

  "Lydia!"

  She remained silent.

  "How beautiful that was, Lydia, to watch you ride from a distance, your hair trailing after you like a golden flash of lightning. That was so beautiful! How wonderful of you to flee from me. That's when I realized that you care for me a little. I didn't know, I doubted until last night. But when you tried to flee from me suddenly, I understood. You must be tired, my beauty, my love, let's dismount."

  He jumped from his horse, seizing the reins of her horse in the same motion to keep her from galloping off once more. Her snow-white face looked down at him. As he lifted her from her saddle, she broke into tears. Carefully he led her a few steps, made her sit down in the wilted grass, and knelt beside her. There she sat, fighting her sobs. She fought bravely and overcame them.

  "Oh, why are you so bad?" she began when she was able to speak. She could hardly utter the words.

  "Am I so bad?"

  "You are a seducer of women, Goldmund. Let me forget those words you said to me; they were impudent words; it does not become you to speak to me that way. How can you imagine that I care for you? Let us forget that! But how am I to forget the things I was forced to see last night?"

  "Last night? But what did you see last night?"

  "Oh, stop pretending, don't lie like that! It was horrible and shameless, the way you played up to that woman under my eyes! Have you no shame? You even stroked her leg under the table, under our table! Before me, under my eyes! And now that she's gone, you come chasing after me. You really don't know what shame means."

  Goldmund had long since regretted the words he had said before lifting her off her horse. How stupid of him; words were unnecessary in love; he should have kept silent.

  He said no more. He knelt by her side; she looked at him, so beautiful and unhappy that her misery became his misery; he, too, felt that there was something to be deplored. But in spite of all she had said, he still saw love in her eyes, and the pain on her quivering lips was also love. He believed her eyes more than he believed her words.

  But she had expected an answer. As it was not forthcoming, Lydia's lips took on an even more bitter expression. She looked at him somewhat tearfully and repeated: "Have you really no shame?"

  "Forgive me," he said humbly. "We're talking about things that should not be talked about. It is my fault, forgive me. You ask if I have no shame. Yes, I have shame. But I also love you, and love knows nothing of shame. Don't be angry with me."

  She seemed hardly to hear him. She sat with a bit
ter mouth, looking into the distance, as though she were alone. He had never been in such a situation. This was the result of using words.

  Gently he laid his face against her knee; immediately the contact made things better. Yet he felt a little confused and sad, and she too seemed to be sad. She sat motionless, saying nothing, looking into the distance. All this embarrassment and sadness! But the knee accepted his leaning cheek with friendliness; it did not reject him. Eyes closed, his face lay on her knee; slowly it took in the knee's noble shape. With joy and emotion Goldmund thought how much this knee with its distinguished youthful form corresponded to her long, beautiful, neatly rounded fingernails. Gratefully he embraced the knee, let his cheek and mouth speak to it.

  Now he felt her hand posing itself bird-light and fearful on his hair. Dear hand, he could feel her softly, childishly stroke his hair. Many times before, he had examined her hand in great detail and admired it; he knew it almost as well as his own, the long, slender fingers with their long, beautifully rounded pink nails. Now the long, delicate fingers were having a timid conversation with his curls. Their language was childlike and fearful, but it was love. Gratefully he nestled his head into her hand, feeling her palm with his neck, with his cheeks.

  Then she said: "It's time, we must go."

  He raised his head and looked at her tenderly. Gently he kissed her slender fingers.

  "Please, get up," she said. "We must go home."

  He obeyed instantly. They stood up, mounted, rode.

  Goldmund's heart was filled with joy. How beautiful Lydia was, how like a child, pure and delicate! He had not even kissed her, and yet he felt so showered with gifts by her, and fulfilled. They rode briskly.

  Only at their arrival a few yards before the entrance to the court she grew fearful and said: "We shouldn't have both come back at the same time. How foolish we are!" And at the last moment, while they dismounted and a servant came running, she whispered quickly and hotly in his ear: "Tell me if you were with that woman last night!" He shook his head many times and began unsaddling the horse.

  In the afternoon, after her father had gone out, she appeared in the study.

  "Is it really true?" she asked at once and with passion. He knew what she meant.

  "But then, why did you play with her like that, in that disgusting fashion, and make her fall in love with you?"

  "That was for you," he said. "Believe me, I would have a thousand times rather caressed your foot than hers. But your foot never came to me under the table; it never asked me if I loved you."

  "Do you really love me, Goldmund?"

  "Yes, indeed."

  "But what will happen?"

  "I don't know, Lydia. Nor do I worry about it. It makes me happy to love you. I don't think of what will happen. I am happy when I see you ride, and when I hear your voice, and when your fingers caress my hair. I'll be happy when you'll allow me to kiss you."

  "A man is only allowed to kiss his bride, Goldmund. Have you never thought of that?"

  "No, I've never thought of that. Why should I? You know as well as I that you cannot become my bride."

  "That's true. And since you cannot become my husband and stay with me forever, it was very wrong of you to speak to me about love. Did you think that you would be able to seduce me?"

  "I thought and believed nothing, Lydia. I think much less than you imagine. I wish nothing except that you might wish to kiss me. We talk so much. Lovers don't do that. I think you don't love me."

  "This morning you said just the opposite."

  "And you did the opposite!"

  "I? What do you mean?"

  "First you fled before me when you saw me. That's when I thought that you loved me. Then you cried, and I thought that was because you loved me. Then my head lay on your knee and you caressed me, and I thought that was love. But now you're not behaving in a loving manner with me."

  "I'm not like that woman whose foot you stroked yesterday. You seem to be accustomed to women like that."

  "No, thank God you're much more beautiful and refined than she is."

  "That's not what I meant."

  "Oh, but it's true. Don't you know how beautiful you are?"

  "I have a mirror."

  "Have you ever looked at your forehead in the mirror, Lydia? And at your shoulders, at your fingernails, at your knees? And have your ever noticed how each part blends into and rhymes with each part, how they all have the same shape, an elongated, taut, firm, very slender shape? Have you noticed that?"

  "The way you talk! I've never noticed that, actually, but now that you say it, I do know what you mean. Listen, you really are a seducer. Now you're trying to make me vain."

  "What a shame that I can do nothing right with you. Why should I be interested in making you vain? You're beautiful and I'd like to try to show you that I'm grateful for your beauty. You force me to tell you with words; I could say it a thousand times better without words. With words I can give you nothing! With words I can't learn from you, nor you from me."

  "What is there for me to learn from you?"

  "For me from you, Lydia, and for you from me. But you don't want to. You only want to love the man whose bride you'll be. He'll laugh when he discovers that you haven't learned anything, not even how to kiss."

  "So you wish to give me kissing lessons, you learned man?"

  He smiled at her. He didn't like her words, but he could sense her girlhood from behind her slightly brusque, false-ringing talk, could sense desire taking possession of her and fear fighting against it.

  He gave no answer. He smiled at her, caught her restless glance in his eyes, and while she surrendered to the spell, not without resistance, he slowly brought his face close to hers until their lips met. Gently he brushed her mouth; it answered with a little childlike kiss and opened, as though in painful surprise, when he did not let it go. Gently courting, he followed her retreating mouth until it hesitatingly came back to meet his and then he taught the spellbound girl without violence the receiving and giving of a kiss, until, exhausted, she pressed her face against his shoulder. There he let it rest, smelled with delight her thick blond hair, murmured tender, calming sounds into her ear and remembered how he, an ignorant pupil, had once been introduced to the secret by Lise, the gypsy. How black her hair had been, how brown her skin, how the sun had burned down on him, how the wilting John's-wort had smelled! And how far back it was, from what distance it came flashing across his memory. That was how fast everything wilted, it had hardly time to bloom!

  Slowly Lydia stood up straight, her face was transformed, her loving eyes looked large and earnest.

  "Let me go, Goldmund," she said. "I've stayed with you so long, my love."

  Every day they found their secret hour, and Goldmund let himself be guided in everything by her. This girlish love touched and delighted him most wonderfully. Sometimes she'd only hold his hand in hers for a whole hour and look into his eyes and depart with a child's kiss. Other times, on the contrary, she'd kiss him insatiably but would not permit him to touch her. Once, deeply blushing and struggling with herself, she let him see one of her breasts, with the intention of giving him a great joy; timidly she brought the small white fruit out of her dress; he knelt and kissed it and she carefully covered it up again, still blushing all the way down to her neck. They also spoke, but in a new way, differently than on the first day. They invented names for each other; she liked to tell him about her childhood, her dreams and games. She also often said that her love was wrong since he could not marry her; sadly and with resignation she spoke of it and draped her love with the secrecy of this sadness as with a black veil.

  For the first time Goldmund felt not only desired by a woman but loved.

  Once Lydia said: "You are so handsome and you look so happy. But deep inside your eyes there is no gaiety, there is only sorrow, as though your eyes knew that happiness did not exist and that all that is beautiful and lovely does not stay with us long. You have the most beautiful eyes of anyone I know,
and the saddest. I think that that's because you're homeless. You came to me out of the woods, and one day you'll go off again and sleep on moss and walk the roads. --But where is my home? When you go away, I'll still have my father and my sister and my room and a window where I can sit and think of you; but I'll no longer have a home."

  He'd let her talk. Sometimes he'd smile at her words, and sometimes he'd grow sad. He never consoled her with words, only with gentle caresses, only by holding her head against his chest, humming soft, meaningless, magic sounds that nurses hum to comfort children when they cry. Once Lydia said: "I'd really like to know what will become of you, Goldmund. I often think about it. You'll have no ordinary life, and it won't be easy. Oh, I hope you'll do well! Sometimes I think you ought to become a poet, a man who has visions and dreams and knows how to describe them beautifully. Ah, you'll wander over the whole world and all women will love you, and yet you'll always remain alone. You'd better go back to the cloister to your friend of whom you've told me so much! I'll pray for you that you will not be made to die alone in the forest."

  She'd speak that way, in deep earnest, with lost eyes. But then again she'd ride laughingly with him across the late-autumn land or ask him funny riddles, or throw dead leaves and shiny acorns at him.

  One night Goldmund was lying in bed in his room, waiting for sleep. His heart was heavy with a soft pain; full and heavy it was beating in his chest, brimming over with love, and with grief; he didn't know what to do. He heard the November wind rattle at the roof; he had grown accustomed to lying like that for quite some time before falling asleep; sleep would not come. Softly, as was his custom in the evening, he intoned a chant to the Virgin: