Narcissus and Goldmund

by Hermann Hesse

  The pursuit lasted two days. Whenever Agnes came out of the castle, the blond stranger was standing at the gates, looking admiringly into her eyes. Agnes rode around the ramparts and the stranger watched her from under the elms. Agnes visited a jeweler and, as she left the shop, she met the stranger. Light sparkled out of her masterful eyes; her nostrils quivered slightly. The next morning, when she again found him standing in readiness at her first ride, she smiled her challenge at him. He also saw the count, the governor, who looked bold and imposing. He had to be taken seriously, but there was gray in his beard and worry in his face, and Goldmund felt superior to him.

  These two days made him happy; he was radiant with recovered youth. It was beautiful to show himself to this woman and to offer her combat. It was beautiful to lose his freedom to this beauty; beautiful and deeply exciting to gamble his existence on a single throw.

  On the morning of the third day, Agnes rode out through the castle gates, accompanied by a groom on horseback. Immediately her eyes searched for the pursuer, ready for combat and a trifle concerned. There he was, and she sent the groom off on an errand. Slowly she rode ahead alone, out to the bridge gate and across the bridge. Only once did she look back, and saw the stranger following her. She waited for him on the road to the pilgrim's shrine of St. Vitus, which was deserted at this hour. She had to wait for half an hour, as the stranger walked slowly and did not want to arrive out of breath. Fresh and smiling he came walking up, a little twig with a bright red haw on it in his mouth. She had dismounted and tethered her horse and stood leaning against the ivy of the steep buttressing wall, gazing at her pursuer. He came up to her, looked her in the eye, and raised his cap.

  "Why are you running after me?" she asked. "What do you want from me?"

  "Oh," he said, "I'd much rather make you a present than accept one. I'd like to offer myself to you as a present, beautiful woman, to do with me as you will."

  "All right, I'll see what can be done with you. But if you think that here is a little flower you can pluck without risk, you've made a mistake. I can only love men who risk their life if necessary."

  "You may command me."

  Slowly she detached a thin gold chain from her neck and handed it to him.

  "What is your name?"

  "Goldmund."

  "Good, Goldmund; I shall have a taste of your golden mouth. Listen carefully: toward evening you'll take this chain to the castle and say that you found it. But don't let it out of your hands; I want to receive it directly from you. Come as you are, let them take you for a beggar. If one of the servants scolds you, remain calm. I have only two people in the castle who are trustworthy: the stable groom Max and my chambermaid Berta. You must reach one of these two and let them lead you to me. With all others in the castle, including the count, conduct yourself carefully; they are enemies. You've been warned. It may cost your life."

  She held out her hand. He took it smilingly, kissed it gently, softly rubbed his cheek against it. Then he put the chain away and walked off downhill toward the river and the city. The vineyards were already bare; one yellow leaf after another floated from the trees. Laughingly, Goldmund shook his head and, looking down into the city, he found it friendly and lovable. Only a few days ago he had been sad, even sad that misery and suffering passed. And now indeed it had already passed, fluttered down like the golden leaf from a branch. It seemed to him that love had never shone so brightly for him as it did from this woman, whose tall figure and blond joyful energy reminded him of the image of his mother as he had once, as a boy in Mariabronn, carried it in his heart. Two days ago he would not have thought possible that the world would laugh so gaily in his eyes, that he would once more feel the stream of life, of joy, of youth running so fully and urgently through his veins. What a joy to be still alive, to have been spared by death during all these gruesome months!

  In the evening he went to the castle. There was a great bustle in the courtyard: horses were being unsaddled; messengers were scurrying about; servants were conducting a small procession of priests and church dignitaries through the inner door and up the stairs. Goldmund wanted to go after them, but the porter held him back. He pulled out the gold chain and said he had been ordered to hand it to no one but the lady herself or her chambermaid. He was given the escort of a servant and was made to wait for a long time in the corridors. Finally, a pretty, nimble woman appeared, walked past him, and asked in a low voice: "Are you Goldmund?" She motioned him to follow her. Quietly she vanished through a door, reappeared after a while, and motioned him in.

  He entered a small room that smelled strongly of furs and perfume, and there were dresses and coats and ladies' hats on wooden stands, and all kinds of ladies' boots in an open chest. Here he stood and waited for half an hour perhaps. He sniffed at the scented gowns, brushed his hands over the furs, and smiled with curiosity at all the pretty stuff that hung there.

  Finally the inner door opened, and it was not the chambermaid but Agnes herself, in a light blue dress, with white fur brimming around the neck. Slowly she walked up to the waiting man, marking each step, her cool blue eyes looking earnestly at him.

  "You've had to wait," she whispered. "I think we're safe now. A committee of church officials is with the count. He is dining with them; they will probably have long discussions. Sessions with priests always last a long time. The hour is yours and mine. Welcome, Goldmund."

  She bent toward him, her demanding lips approached his, silently they greeted each other in a first kiss. Slowly he closed his hand about her neck. She led him through the door into her bedchamber, which was high and brightly lit by candles. On a table a meal stood prepared. They sat down; she served him bread and butter and a little meat and poured white wine for him into a beautiful bluish glass. They ate, both drinking from the same bluish chalice, their hands playing probingly with each other.

  "Whence have you flown, my beautiful bird?" she asked him. "Are you a warrior, or a musician, or are you just a poor wayfarer?"

  "I'm everything you want me to be," he laughed softly. "I am all yours. I'll be a musician if you like, and you are my sweet lute, and when I put my fingers around your neck and play on you, we'll hear the angels sing. Come, my heart, I am not here to eat your cakes and drink your white wine. I've come only for you."

  Gently he pulled the white fur from her neck and caressed the clothes off her body. Courtiers and priests held their sessions outside, servants crept about the halls, the thin sickle moon floated away behind the trees--the lovers knew nothing of it. For them paradise bloomed. Drawn toward each other and entangled in one another, they lost themselves in a perfumed night, saw its white flowering secrets shimmer in the darkness, plucked its longed-for fruit with tender and grateful hands. Never had the musician played on such a lute; never had the lute sounded under such strong and knowing fingers.

  "Goldmund," she whispered glowingly in his ear, "oh, what a sorcerer you are! I want to have a child by you, sweet Goldmund. And still more, I'd like to die with you. Drink me to the dregs, beloved, melt me, kill me!"

  Deep in his throat a tone of happiness sounded as he saw the harshness in her cool eyes dissolve and grow weak. Like a tender expiring shiver, the shudder in the depth of her eyes spent itself like the silver shudder on the skin of a dying fish, golden as the sparkling of those magic shimmers deep down in the river. All the happiness a human being could experience seemed to come together in this moment.

  Immediately afterward, as she lay with closed eyes, trembling, he got up and slipped into his clothes. With a sigh he spoke into her ear: "My beautiful treasure, I am leaving you. I don't feel like dying, I don't want to be killed by your count. First I want us to be as happy as we have been today. One more time, many more times."

  She lay in silence until he was dressed. Gently he pulled the cover over her and kissed her eyes.

  "Goldmund," she said, "oh, I am sorry that you must go! Do come back tomorrow! I'll let you know if there is danger. Come back, come back tomorrow!"r />
  She pulled at a bellrope. The chambermaid received him at the door to the wardrobe and led him out of the castle. He would have liked to give her a gold piece; for a moment he felt ashamed of his poverty.

  It was almost midnight when he got back to the fish market and looked up at the house. It was late, and nobody would be awake; probably he would have to spend the night outside. To his surprise he found the door open. Softly he crept inside and closed the door behind him. The way to his room led through the kitchen, which was lit. Marie sat at the kitchen table by a tiny oil lamp. She had just dozed off, after waiting for hours. When he entered, she started and sprang to her feet.

  "Oh," he said, "Marie, are you still up?"

  "I'm up," she said, "or you would have found the house locked."

  "I'm sorry that you waited, Marie. It's late. Don't be angry with me."

  "I'll never be angry with you, Goldmund. I'm only a little sad."

  "You must not be sad. Why sad?"

  "Oh, Goldmund, I'd so like to be healthy and beautiful and strong. Then you would not have to go to strange houses during the night and make love to other women. Then you would perhaps stay with me once and be a little sweet to me."

  Her mild voice sounded hopeless, but not bitter, only sad. Embarrassed, he stood in front of her. He felt sorry for her; he did not know what to say. With a cautious hand, he reached for her head and stroked her hair. She stood very still and shuddered as she felt his hand on her hair. Then she wept a little, held her head up again, and said timidly: "Go to bed now, Goldmund, I've been talking nonsense, I was so sleepy. Good night."

  16

  GOLDMUND spent a day of happy impatience roaming in the hills. If he had owned a horse, he would have ridden to his master's beautiful madonna in the cloister. He felt the urge to see her again and thought that he had dreamed of Master Niklaus that night. Well, he'd go see the madonna another time. His bliss with Agnes might be of short duration, might lead to danger perhaps--but today it was in full bloom; he did not want to miss any of it. He did not want to see people, to be distracted; he wanted to spend the mild autumn day outside, with the trees and clouds. He told Marie that he was thinking of a hike in the countryside and might be back late. He asked her to give him a good chunk of bread for the road and not wait up for him in the evening. She made no comment, stuffed his pockets full of bread and apples, ran a brush over his old coat, which she had patched the very first day, and let him go.

  He strolled across the river and climbed the steep-stepped paths through the empty vineyards, lost himself in the forest on the heights, and did not stop climbing until he had reached the last plateau. There the sun shone halfheartedly through bald trees. Blackbirds scurried before his steps; shyly they retreated into the bushes, looking at him with shiny black eyes. Far below, the river seemed a blue curve. The city looked like a toy; not a sound rose from it, except that of the bells ringing for prayers. Near him on the plateau there were small, grass-covered swellings, mounds from ancient pagan days, perhaps fortifications, perhaps tombs. He sat down in the dry, crackling autumn grass on the side of one of them. He could see the whole vast valley, the hills and mountains beyond the river, chain upon chain, all the way to the horizon, where mountains and sky merged in bluish uncertainty and could no longer be told apart. His feet had measured this sweeping distance much farther than the eye could see. All these regions, which were far away now and remembered, had once been close and present. A hundred times he had slept in those forests, eaten berries, been hungry and cold, crossed those mountain ridges, and stretches of heath, been happy or sad, fresh or fatigued. Somewhere in that distance, far out of the range of vision, lay the charred bones of good Lene; somewhere there his companion Robert might still be wandering, if the plague had not caught up with him; somewhere out there lay dead Viktor; and somewhere too, far off in the enchanted distance, was the cloister of his youth and the castle of the knight with the beautiful daughters, and poor, destitute, hounded Rebekka was still roaming there if she had not perished. So many widely scattered places, heaths and forests, towns and villages, castles and cloisters, and people alive and dead existed inside him in his memory, his love, his repentance, his longing. And if death caught him too, tomorrow, then all this would fall apart, would vanish, the whole picture book full of women and love, of summer mornings and winter nights. Oh, it was high time that he accomplished something, created something, left something behind that would survive him.

  Up to now little remained of his life, of his wanderings, of all those years that had passed since he set out in the world. What remained were the few figures he had once made in the workshop, especially his St. John, and this picture book, this unreal world inside his head, this beautiful, aching image world of memories. Would he succeed in saving a few scraps of this inner world and making it visible to others? Or would things just go on the same way: new towns, new landscapes, new women, new experiences, new images, piled one on the other, experiences from which he gleaned nothing but a restless, torturous as well as beautiful overflowing of the heart?

  It was shameless how life made fun of one; it was a joke, a cause for weeping! Either one lived and let one's senses play, drank full at the primitive mother's breast--which brought great bliss but was no protection against death; then one lived like a mushroom in the forest, colorful today and rotten tomorrow. Or else one put up a defense, imprisoned oneself for work and tried to build a monument to the fleeting passage of life--then one renounced life, was nothing but a tool; one enlisted in the service of that which endured, but one dried up in the process and lost one's freedom, scope, lust for life. That's what had happened to Master Niklaus.

  Ach, life made sense only if one achieved both, only if it was not split by this brittle alternative! To create, without sacrificing one's senses for it. To live, without renouncing the nobility of creating. Was that impossible?

  Perhaps there were people for whom this was possible. Perhaps there were husbands and heads of families who did not lose their sensuality by being faithful. Perhaps there were people who, though settled, did not have hearts dried up by lack of freedom and lack of risk. Perhaps. He had never met one.

  All existence seemed to be based on duality, on contrast. Either one was a man or one was a woman, either a wanderer or a sedentary burgher, either a thinking person or a feeling person--no one could breathe in at the same time as he breathed out, be a man as well as a woman, experience freedom as well as order, combine instinct and mind. One always had to pay for the one with the loss of the other, and one thing was always just as important and desirable as the other. Perhaps women had it easier in this respect. Nature had created them in such a way that desire bore its fruit automatically, that the bliss of love became a child. For a man, eternal longing replaced this simple fertility. Was the god who had created everything in this manner an evil god, was he hostile, did he laugh ironically at his own creation? No, he could not be evil; he had created the hart and the roebuck, fish and birds, forests, flowers, the seasons. But the split ran through his entire creation. Perhaps it had not turned out right or was incomplete--or did God intend this lack, this longing in human life for a special purpose? Was this perhaps the seed of the enemy, of original sin? But why should this longing and this lack be sinful? Did not all that was beautiful and holy, all that man created and gave back to God as a sacrifice of thanks spring from this very lack, from this longing?

  His thoughts depressed him. He turned his eyes toward the city, saw the marketplace, the fish market, the bridges, the churches, the town hall. And there was the castle, the proud bishop's palace, in which Count Heinrich was now ruling. Agnes lived under those towers and high roofs, his beautiful regal mistress, who looked so proud but who could nevertheless lose herself, abandon herself completely in love. He thought of her with joy, and gratefully remembered last night. To have been able to experience the happiness of that night, to have been able to make that marvelous woman happy, he had needed his entire life, all the thi
ngs women had taught him, his many journeys, his needs, wandering through the snow at night, his friendship and familiarity with animals, flowers, trees, water, fish, butterflies. For this he had needed senses sharpened by ecstasy and danger, homelessness, all his inner world of images stored up during those many years. As long as his life was a garden in which such magic flowers as Agnes bloomed, he had no reason to complain.

  He spent all day on the autumnal heights, walking, resting, eating bread, thinking of Agnes and the evening before him. Toward nightfall he was back in the city walking toward the castle. It had grown chilly; the houses stared out of quiet red window eyes; he met a small troop of singing boys carrying hollowed-out turnips with faces carved into them and candles inside. This little mummery left a scent of winter in its wake, and smiling, Goldmund looked after them. For a long time he strolled about outside the castle. The church dignitaries were still there; here and there he could see a priest silhouetted in one of the windows. Finally he was able to creep inside and find Berta, the chambermaid. Again she hid him in the little closet room until Agnes appeared and silently led him to her room. Tenderly her beautiful face received him, tenderly, but not happily; she was sad, worried, frightened. He had to try very hard to cheer her a little. Slowly his loving words and kisses restored a little of her confidence.

  "How very sweet you can be," she said gratefully. "You have such deep sounds in your throat, my golden bird, when you're tender and chirp. I'm so fond of you, Goldmund. If only we were far from here! I no longer like it here. It will soon come to an end anyhow; the count has been called away; the silly bishop will soon return. The count is angry today. The priests have had harsh words with him. Oh, my dear, he must not set eyes on you! You wouldn't live through the next hour. I'm so afraid for you."