Narcissus and Goldmund (24 page)

They did this, and from that moment on Goldmund commanded and Robert obeyed, and both fared well for it. Robert made no more attempts to flee. He only said soothingly: “You frightened me for a moment. I didn't like your face when you came out of that house of death. I thought you had caught the plague. And even if it isn't the plague, your face has changed completely. Was it so terrible, what you saw in there?”

“It was not terrible,” Goldmund said slowly. “I saw nothing in there that does not await you and me and everybody, even if we don't catch the plague.”

As they wandered on, the Black Death was everywhere they went, reigning over the land. Some villages did not let strangers in; others let them walk unhindered through every street. Many farms stood deserted; many unburied corpses lay rotting in the fields and in the houses. Unmilked cows lowed and starved in stables; other livestock ran wild in the fields. They milked and fed many a cow and goat; they killed and roasted many a goatlet or piglet at the edge of the forest and drank wine and cider in many a masterless cellar. They had a good life. There was abundance everywhere. But it tasted only half good to them. Robert lived in constant fear of the disease, and he felt sick at the sight of the corpses. Often he was completely beside himself with fear. Again and again he thought that he had caught the plague, and held his head and hands in the smoke of their campfire for a long time, for this was supposed to be a preventative, and felt his body (even in his sleep) to see if bumps were forming on his legs or in his armpits.

Goldmund often scolded and made fun of him. He did not share his fear or his disgust. Fascinated and depressed, he walked through the stricken country, attracted by the sight of the great death, his soul filled with the autumn, his heart heavy with the song of the mowing scythe. Sometimes the image of the universal mother would reappear to him, a pale, gigantic face with Medusa eyes and a smile thick with suffering and death.

One day they came to a small town that was heavily fortified. Outside the gates defensive ramparts ran house-high around the entire city wall, but there was no sentinel standing up there or at the wide-open gates. Robert refused to enter the town, and he implored his companion not to go in either. Just then a bell tolled. A priest came out of the city gates, a cross in his hands, and behind him came three carts, two drawn by horses and one by a pair of oxen. The carts were piled high with corpses. A couple of men in strange coats, their faces shrouded in hoods, ran alongside and spurred the animals on.

Robert disappeared, white-faced. Goldmund followed the death carts at a short distance. They advanced a few hundred steps farther; there was no cemetery: a hole had been dug in the middle of the deserted heath, only three spades deep but vast as a hall. Goldmund stood and looked on as the men pulled the corpses from the carts with staffs and boat hooks and tossed them into the vast hole. He saw the murmuring priest swing his cross over them and walk away, saw the men light huge fires all around the flat grave and silently creep back into the city. No one had tried to throw any earth over the pit. Goldmund looked in: fifty or more persons lay there, piled one on top of the other, many of them naked. Stiff and accusing, an arm or a leg rose in the air, a shirt fluttered timidly in the wind.

When he came back, Robert begged him almost on his knees to flee this place. He had good reason to beg, for he saw in Goldmund's absent look the absorption in and concentration on horror, that dreadful curiosity that had become all too familiar. He was not able to hold his friend back. Alone, Goldmund walked into the town.

He walked through the unguarded gates, and at the echo of his steps many towns and gates rose up in his memory. He remembered how he had walked through them, how he had been received by screaming children, playing boys, quarreling women, the hammering of a forge, the crystal sound of the anvil, the rattling of carts and many other sounds, delicate and coarse, all braided together as though into a web that bore witness to many forms of human labor, joy, bustle, and communication. Here, under this yellow gate, in this empty street, nothing echoed, no one laughed, no one cried, everything lay frozen in deathly silence, cut by the overloud, almost noisy chatter of a running well. Behind an open window he saw a baker amid his loafs and rolls. Goldmund pointed to a roll; the baker carefully handed it out to him on a long baking shovel, waited for Goldmund to place money into the shovel, and angrily, but without cursing, closed his little window when the stranger bit into the roll and walked on without paying. Before the windows of a pretty house stood a row of earthen jars in which flowers had once bloomed. Now wilted leaves hung down over scraps of pottery. From another house came the sound of sobbing, the misery of children's voices crying. In the next street Goldmund saw a pretty girl standing behind an upper-floor window, combing her hair. He watched her until she felt his eyes and looked down, blushing, and when he gave her a friendly smile, slowly a faint smile spread over her blushing face.

“Soon through combing?” he called up. Smiling, she leaned her light face out of the darkness of the window.

“Not sick yet?” he asked, and she shook her head. “Then leave this city of death with me. We'll go into the woods and live a good life.”

Her eyes asked questions.

“Don't think it over too long. I mean it,” Goldmund called up to her. “Are you with your father and mother, or are you in the service of strangers? Strangers, I see. Come along then, dear child. Let the old people die; we are young and healthy and want to have a bit of fun while there's still time. Come along, little brown hair, I mean it.”

She gave him a probing look, hesitant and surprised. Slowly he walked on, strolled through a deserted street and through another. Slowly he came back. The girl was still at the window, leaning forward, glad to see him return. She waved to him. Slowly he walked on, and soon she came running after him, caught up with him before the gates, a small bundle in her hand, a red kerchief tied around her head.

“What's your name?” he asked.

“Lene. I'll go with you. Oh, it's so horrible here in the city; everybody is dying. Let's leave. Let's leave.”

Not far from the gates Robert was crouching moodily on the ground. When Goldmund appeared, he jumped to his feet and stared when he caught sight of the girl. This time he did not give in at once. He whined and made a scene. How could a man bring a person with him from that cursed plague hole and impose her company on his companion? It was not only crazy, it was tempting God. He, Robert, was not going to stay with him any longer; his patience had come to an end.

Goldmund let him curse and lament until he found nothing more to say.

“There,” he said, “now you've sung your song. Now you'll come with us, and be glad that we have such pretty company. Her name is Lene and she stays with me. But I want to do you a favor too, Robert. Listen: for a while we'll live in peace and health and stay away from the plague. We'll find a nice place for ourselves, an empty hut, or we'll build one, and I'll be the head of the household and Lene will be the mistress, and you'll be our friend and live with us. Our life is going to be a little pleasant and friendly now. All right?”

Oh yes, Robert was delighted. As long as no one asked him to shake Lene's hand or touch her clothes …

No, said Goldmund, no one would ask him to. In fact, it was strictly forbidden to touch Lene, even with a finger. “Don't you dare!”

All three walked on, first in silence, then gradually the girl began to talk. How happy she was to see sky and trees and meadows again. It had been so gruesome in the plague-stricken city, more horrible than she could tell. And she began to clear her heart of all the sad, horrible things she had seen. She told so many awful stories: the little town must have been hell. One of the two doctors had died; the other only looked after the rich. In many houses the dead lay rotting, because nobody came to take them away. In other houses looters stole, pillaged, and whored. Often they pulled the sick from their beds, threw them onto the death carts with the corpses, and down into the pit of the dead. Many a horror tale she had to tell, and no one interrupted her. Robert listened with voluptuous terror, Goldmund silent and unruffled, letting the horrors pour out and making no comment. What was there to say? Finally Lene grew tired, the stream dried up, she was out of words.

Goldmund began to walk more slowly. Softly he began to sing, a song with many couplets, and with each couplet his voice grew fuller. Lene began to smile; Robert listened, delighted and deeply surprised. Never before had he heard Goldmund sing. He could do everything, this Goldmund. There he was singing, strange man! He sang well; his voice was pure, though muffled. At the second song Lene was humming with him, and soon she joined in with full voice. Evening was coming on. Black forests rose up far over the heath, and behind them low blue mountains, which grew bluer and bluer as though from within. Now gay, now solemn, their song followed the rhythm of their steps.

“You're in such a good mood today,” said Robert.

“Of course I'm in a good mood today, I found such a pretty love. Oh, Lene, how nice that the ghouls left you behind for me. Tomorrow we'll find a little house where we'll have a good life and be happy to have flesh and bone still together. Lene, did you ever see those fat mushrooms in the woods in autumn, the edible ones that the snails love?”

“Oh yes,” she laughed, “I've seen lots of them.”

“Your hair is that same mushroom brown, Lene, and it smells just as good. Shall we sing another song? Or are you hungry? I still have a few good things in my satchel.”

The next day they found what they were looking for: a log cabin in a small birch forest. Perhaps some woodcutters had built it. It stood empty, and the door was soon broken open. Robert agreed that this was a good hut and a healthy region. On the road they had met stray goats and had taken a fine one along with them.

“Well, Robert,” said Goldmund, “although you're no carpenter, you were once a cabinetmaker. We're going to live here. You must build us a partition for our castle, to make two rooms, one for Lene and me, and one for you and the goat. We don't have very much left to eat; today we must be satisfied with goat's milk, no matter how little there is. You'll build the wall, and we'll make up beds for all of us. Tomorrow I'll go out to look for food.”

Immediately everybody set to work. Goldmund and Lene went to find straw, fern, and moss for their sleeping places, and Robert sharpened his knife on a piece of flint and cut small birch posts to make a wall. But he could not finish it in one day and that evening he went outside to sleep in the open. Goldmund had found a sweet playmate in Lene, shy and inexperienced but deeply loving. Gently he took her to his bosom and lay awake for a long time, listening to her heart, long after she had fallen asleep, tired and satiated. He smelled her brown hair, nestled close to her, all the while thinking of the vast flat pit into which the hooded devils had dumped their carts of corpses. Life was beautiful, beautiful and fleeting as happiness. Youth was beautiful and wilted fast.

The partition of the hut was very pretty. All three worked at it finally. Robert wanted to show what he could do and eagerly talked about all the things he wanted to build, if only he had a planing bench and tools, a straight edge and nails. But he had only his knife and his hands and had to be satisfied with cutting a dozen small birch posts and building a coarse sturdy fence in the hut. But, he decreed, the openings had to be filled in with plaited juniper. That took time, but it became gay and pretty; everybody helped. In between, Lene went to gather berries and look after the goat, and Goldmund scoured the region for food, explored the neighborhood, and came back with a few little things. The region seemed uninhabited. Robert was especially pleased about that: they were safe from contamination as well as from quarrels; but it had one disadvantage: there was very little to eat. They found an abandoned peasant hut not far away, without corpses this time, and Goldmund proposed to move to the hut rather than stay in the log cabin, but Robert shudderingly refused. He didn't like to see Goldmund enter the empty house, and every piece he brought over had first to be smoked and washed before Robert touched it. Goldmund didn't find much—two posts, a milk pail, a few pieces of crockery, a hatchet, but one day he caught two stray chickens in the fields. Lene was in love and happy. All three enjoyed improving their small home, making it a little prettier each day. They had no bread, but they took another goat into service and also found a small field full of turnips. The days passed, the wall was finished, the beds were improved, they built a hearth. The brook was not far and had clear sweet water. They often sang as they worked.

One day, as they sat together drinking their milk and praising their settled life, Lene said suddenly in a dreamy tone: “But what will we do when winter comes?”

No one answered. Robert laughed; Goldmund stared strangely ahead of him. Eventually Lene noticed that neither of them thought of winter, that neither seriously thought of remaining such a long time in the same place, that this home was no home, that she was among wayfarers. She hung her head.

Then Goldmund said, playfully and encouragingly as though to a child: “You're a peasant's daughter, Lene; peasants always worry. Don't be afraid. You'll find your way back home once this plague period is over; it can't last forever. Then you'll go back to your parents, or to whomever is still alive, or you'll return to the city and earn your bread as a maid. But now it's still summer. Death is rampant throughout the region, but here it is pretty, and we live well. That's why we can stay here for as long or as short a time as we like.”

“And afterwards?” Lene asked violently. “Afterwards it is all over? And you go away? What about me?”

Goldmund caught her braid and pulled at it softly.