The Abbot stepped up to the bed, bent over the sick boy, and gently drew back one of the eyelids.
Narcissus remained firm: "Part of your thought I consider a childs thought. Remember what we said earlier: an intelligent child need not be less intelligent than a learned scholar. But when the child wants to assert its opinion in matters of learning, then the scholar doesnt take it seriously."
"I wouldnt rule that out. Do we know anything? Has he had a shock perhaps? News of someones death? A violent dispute, an insult? That would certainly explain it."
Narcissus: "Very good. True, in the view of dogma, one man is exactly like another, but not in life. Take Our Saviours favorite disciple, John, on whose breast he rested his head, and that other disciple who betrayed him—you hardly can say that they had the same destiny."
Narcissus looked at him gravely: "I take you seriously when you are Goldmund. But youre not always Goldmund. I wish nothing more than to see you become Goldmund through and through. You are not a scholar, you are not a monk—scholars and monks can have a coarser grain. You think youre not learned or logical or pious enough for me. On the contrary, you are not enough yourself."
"About Goldmund? Yes, gentle father, I just heard that he has been taken ill or has had an accident and has been carried in."
Never had Narcissus pleased the Abbot less than today. And yet—how well this thinker had guessed; how well he really did seem to know Goldmund.
"Those are strange conversations," he said, forcing himself to remain calm. "What you have just described to me is a conversation that might be called interference with another soul, what I might call a confessors conversation. But youre not Goldmunds confessor. You are no ones confessor; you have not been ordained. How is it that you discussed matters with a pupil, in the tone of an adviser, that concern no one but his confessor? As you can see, the consequences have been harmful."
It had been a rather unsatisfactory day for Abbot Daniel. Two of the older monks had come to him, foaming with excitement, full of accusations, bringing up petty old jealousies, squabbling furiously. He had listened to them altogether too long, had unsuccessfully admonished them, and dismissed them severely with rather heavy penances. With a feeling of futility in his heart, he had withdrawn for prayer in the lower chapel, prayed, and stood up again, unrefreshed. Now he stepped out into the court a moment for some air, attracted by thesmell of roses. There he found the pupil Goldmund lying in a faint on the stones. He looked at him with sadness, frightened by the pallor and remoteness of the usually winsome face. It had not been a good day, and now this to top it all! He tried to lift the young man, but was not up to the effort. With a deep sigh the old man walked away to call two younger brothers to carry Goldmund upstairs and to send Father Anselm to him, the cloister physician. He also sent for Brother Narcissus, who soon appeared before him.
Narcissus: "Perhaps it can. Not that science is more intelligent than the child, but it has more patience; it remembers more than just the most obvious characteristics."
Goldmund: "Thats easy enough to understand. But you dont speak only of our difference in character; you often speak also of the differences in fate, in destiny. Why, for instance, should your destiny be different from mine? We are both Christians, we are both resolved to lead the life of the cloister, we are both children of our good Father in heaven. Our goal is the same: eternal bliss. Our destiny is the same: the return to God."
Narcissus: "But when peasant and king are dressed alike, the child can no longer tell one from the other."
He had kept a small pitcher of hot wine in readiness.
"I thought you probably had the colic, Goldmund. You dont then. Lets see your tongue. Well, fine, your old Anselms proved his ignorance once again. Tomorrow youll stay in bed and Ill come and take a look at you. Already through with your wine? Fine, may it do you good. Lets see if there is more. Half a mug each, if we share and share alike.—You really gave us a scare, Goldmund! Lying in the court like a childs corpse. And you really have no stomach ache?"
He asked a final question about the days occurrences, and Narcissus said: "I had not intended to upset Goldmund so violently. I reminded him that he does not know himself, that he had forgotten his childhood and his mother. Something I said must have struck him and penetrated the darkness I have been fighting so long. He seemed beside himself; he looked at me as though he no longer knew himself or me. I have often told him that he was asleep, that he was not really awake. Now he has been awakened, I have no doubt about that."
Narcissus hesitated before he answered. His voice was clear and hard when he said: "Yes, that is why. I take only you seriously, dear Goldmund; youll have to get used to that. Believe me, there isnt an intonation in your voice, not a gesture, not a smile that I dont take seriously. But your thoughts I take less seriously. I take seriously all that I find essential and necessary in you. Why do you want particular attention paid to your thoughts, when you have so many other gifts?"
Goldmund: "So does any intelligent child. He will recognize the king by the look in his eyes, or by his bearing. To put it plainly: you learned men are arrogant, you always think everybody else stupid. One can be extremely intelligent without learning."
"I know. He is seventeen?"
"We shall see. I am not speaking of the consequences now, I am speaking of your action. What prompted you to have such conversations with Goldmund?"
Goldmund listened, wide-eyed. Narcissus spoke with a kind of rhetorical self-intoxication. Several words struck Goldmund like swords. Toward the end he grew pale and closed his eyes, and when Narcissus became aware of it and asked with sudden fear what was wrong, the deathly pale boy said: "Once I broke down in front of you and burst into tears—you remember. That must not happen again. Id never forgive myself—or you! Please go away at once and let me be alone. Youve said terrible words to me."
"His soul is ailing. As you know, he is at an age when struggles with sex begin."
This time the extreme tension in Goldmunds soul did not dissolve itself in tears. He was still, feeling deeply, desperately wounded, as though his friend had plunged a knife into his breast. He breathed heavily, with mortally contracted heart, a wax-pale face, limp hands. This was the old pain, only considerably sharper, the same inner choking, the feeling that something frightful had to be looked in the eye, something unbearable. But this time there was no relief of tears to overcome the pain. Holy Mother of God, what then could this be? Had something happened? Had he been murdered? Had he killed someone? What had been said that was so frightful?
But the love that bound him to his friend and their habit of spending much time together had not been fruitless. In spite of the vast differences of their characters, each had learned much from the other. Beside the language of reason, a language of the soul had gradually come into being between them; it was as if, branching off the main street, there are many small, almost secret lanes. Gradually the imaginative power of Goldmunds soul had tracked such paths into Narcissuss thoughts and expressions, making him understand—and sympathize with—many of Goldmunds perceptions and feelings, without need for words. New links from soul to soul developed in the warm glow of love; words came later. That is how, one holiday, in the library, there occurred a conversation between the friends that neither had expected—a conversation that touched at the core and purpose of their friendship and cast new, far-reaching lights.
The Abbot shrugged.
"You fainted, son. Hold out your hand, lets take a look at your pulse. How do you feel?"
Narcissus had talked himself into a fever; he felt that Goldmund was accepting his words more openly and willingly, that he had power over him. His success made him give in to the temptation to say more than he had intended; he let himself be carried away by his own words.
"Yes, I found him lying in the inner court, where actually he had no business to be. It was not an accident that he fainted. I dont like this. It would seem to me that you are somehow connected with it, or at least know of it, since you are so intimate. That is why I have called you. Speak."
Goldmund laughed, clinked cups, and tasted the warm wine. It was spiced with cinnamon and cloves and sweetened; he had never tasted such a drink before. He remembered his previous illness, when Narcissus had taken care of him. Now it was Father Anselm who was caring for him. It was all so pleasant and strange to be lying there in the lamplight, drinking a mug of sweet warm wine with the old father in the middle of the night.
"Is someone in the room?" Goldmund asked.
It was dark when Goldmund came to. His head felt empty, dizzy. He knew that he was lying in bed, but not where. He didnt think about that; it didnt matter. But where had he been? From what strange land of experience had he returned? He had been to some far-away place. He had seen something there, something extraordinary, something sublime, but also frightful, and unforgettable—and yet he had forgotten it. Where had it been? What was it that had appeared to him, huge, painful, blissful? That had vanished again?
When the door opened much later, and the Abbot came in, Father Anselm was still sitting beside the bed, staring into the boys face. What a dear, trusting young face this was, and all one could do was to sit beside it, wishing, but probably unable, to help. It might all be due to a colic, of course; he would prescribe hot wine, perhaps some rhubarb. But the longer he looked into the greenish-pale, distorted face, the more his suspicions leaned toward another cause, a much more serious one. Father Anselm was experienced. More than once, in the course of his long life, he had seen men who were possessed. He hesitated to formulate this suspicion even to himself. He would wait and observe. But if this poor boy had really been hexed, he thought grimly, we probably wont have to look far for the culprit, and he shall not have an easy time of it.
Narcissuss long siege had not succeeded in bringing Goldmunds secret out into the open. For a long time he had apparently labored in vain to awaken him, to teach him the language in which the secret could be told.
"So we both bad a nice nap," laughed the physician. "A fine night nurse, huh, who cant keep awake. Well, were all human. Now well take a sip of this magic potion, my boy. Nothings more pleasant than a little secret drinking in the middle of the night. Prosit."
"But am I ill?" asked the boy.
"The consequences," Narcissus said in a mild but firm voice, "are not yet known to us, gentle father. I was somewhat frightened by the violence of his reaction, but I have no doubt that the consequences of our conversation will be good for Goldmund."
"We know of nothing. Make sure that no one is allowed to see him. Please stay with him until he comes to. If anything should go wrong, call me, even if its in the middle of the night."
Goldmund: "Neither can science."
"Is he in danger?"
With his usual control of bearing and speech, Narcissus gave a brief account of his conversation with Goldmund and of its surprisingly violent effect on him. The Abbot shook his head, not without ill humor.
Narcissus: "Yes. Youve hit the nail on the head. Thats it: to you, differences are quite unimportant; to me, they are what matters most. I am a scholar by nature; science is my vocation. And science is, to quote your words, nothing but the determination to establish differences. Its essence couldnt be defined more accurately. For us, the men of science, nothing is as important as the establishment of differences; science is the art of differentiation. Discovering in every man that which distinguishes him from others is to know him."
"As you know, he is my friend. I have a special fondness for him and I believe that I understand him particularly well. You say that I acted toward him like a confessor. In no way have I assumed any religious authority; I merely thought that I knew him a little better than he knows himself."
Goldmund: "Narcissus, you are a sophist. Well never come together on that kind of road."
"Im going to die any moment," he felt with terror. "Ill lose my mind and those animal snouts will devour me."
He listened deeply inside him, to that place from which something had erupted today, where something had happened—what had it been? Wild tangles of images rose before him, he saw dogs heads, the heads of three dogs, and he sniffed the scent of roses. The pain he had felt! He closed his eyes. The dreadful pain he had felt! Again he fell asleep.
Goldmund was perplexed. He bowed his head, and his face was sad.
Goldmund smiled bitterly: "Youve always considered me a child; Ive said it before."
"Fine. Thank you, Father Anselm, youre very kind. Nothings wrong with me now, Im just tired."
"Can he be roused?" he asked.
Without knowing it, Narcissus had accomplished his long-desired aim: he had named the demon by which his friend was possessed; he had called it out into the open. One of his many words had touched the secret in Goldmunds heart, which had reared up in furious pain. For a long time Narcissus wandered through the cloister, looking for his friend, but he could not find him.
Goldmund: "If you like. One man wears wooden shoes and is a peasant; another wears a crown and is a king. Those are differences, I grant you. But children can see them, too, without any science."
"I bet you are. And youll go right back to sleep. But first youll have a sip of hot wine; its all made and ready. Lets drain a mug together, my boy, to good fellowship."
"I … superior to you!" stammered Goldmund, feeling as though his whole body had been lamed.
At first the Abbot had smiled slightly at this precocious, arrogant-sounding speech; the whole matter was a troublesome chore to him. Now he began to think. He remembered Goldmunds father as a somewhat brittle, distrustful man; now, as he searched his memory, he suddenly remembered a few words the father had, at that time, uttered about Goldmunds mother. He had said that she had brought shame upon him and run away, and that he had tried to suppress the mothers memory in his young son, as well as any vices he might have inherited from her. And that he had most probably succeeded, because the boy was willing to offer his life up to God, in atonement for his mothers sins.
"Have you heard?" he asked.
They laughed together and shared what was left of the convalescent wine. The father joked; gratefully, delightedly Goldmund looked at him. His eyes were clear again. Then the old man went off to bed.
Narcissus was overcome. His words had carried him away; he had felt that he was speaking better than usual. Now he saw with consternation that some of his words had deeply affected his friend and somehow pierced him to the quick. He found it hard to leave him at that moment and hesitated a second or two, but Goldmunds frown left him no choice. Confused, he ran off to allow his friend the solitude he needed.
Narcissus: "Im serious. We are not meant to come together, not any more than sun and moon were meant to come together, or sea and land. We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the others opposite and complement."
Goldmund lay awake awhile longer. Again the images rose up inside him; his friends words flamed up again. The blond radiant woman, his mother, appeared again in his soul. Like a warm south-wind, her image swept through him: like a cloud of life, of warmth and tenderness and innermost enticement. "O my mother! How was it possible, how was I able to forget you!"
"Eighteen. Well, yes, that is late enough. But these struggles are natural; everybody goes through them. That is no reason to say that he is ailing in his soul."
"I know, that is your métier. Let us hope that you did not cause any harm with it. But is Goldmund ill? I mean, is anything wrong with him? Does he feel weak? Has he been sleeping poorly? Does heeat badly? Has he some kind of pain?"
"His mother, and everything connected with her. I dont know anything about her, either. I merely know that there must lie the source of his illness. Because Goldmund knows nothing of his mother apparently, except that he lost her at an early age. I have the impression that he seems ashamed of her. And yet it must be from her that he inherited most of his gifts, because his description of his father does not make him seem a man who would have such a winsome, talented, original son. Nothing of this has been told me; I deduced it from signs."
Meanwhile Father Anselm had ordered the boy put to bed and was sitting beside him. He had not deemed it advisable to shock him back into consciousness by violent means. The boy looked altogether too sick. Out of his kind, wrinkled face, the old man looked fondly upon the adolescent. Meanwhile he checked his pulse and heartbeat. The boy must have eaten something impossible, a bunch of sorrel, or something equally silly; that kind of thing happened sometimes. The boys mouth was closed, so he couldnt check his tongue. He was fond of Goldmund but had little use for his friend, that precocious, overly young teacher. Now it had come to this. Brother Narcissus surely had something to do with this stupid mishap. Why had this charming, clear-eyed youngster, this dear child of nature, picked the arrogant scholar, the vain grammarian, who valued his Greek more highly than all living creatures of this world!
"Do you think it could be his soul?"
As he awoke from the rapidly vanishing dream world that was sliding away from him, he saw it. He rediscovered the image, and trembled with pain and joy. His eyes had been opened: he saw Her. He saw the tall, radiant woman with the full mouth and glowing hair—his mother. And at the same time he thought he heard a voice: "You have forgotten your childhood." But whose voice was that? He listened, thought, found it. Narcissuss voice. Narcissus? In a flash everything came back: he remembered. O mother, mother! Mountains of rubbish collapsed, oceans of forgetfulness vanished. The lost woman, the indescribably beloved, was again looking at him with her regal light-blue eyes.
"Have you a pain in your stomach?" the old man asked.
He lighted the lamp, its glow fell over his well-meaning, wrinkled face.
Before leaving, the old man bent once more over the sick boy. He thought of the boys father, of the day this charming blond head had been brought to him, how everyone had taken to him from the start. He, too, had been glad to see him in the cloister. But Narcissus was certainly right in one respect: nothing in the boy recalled his father. Ah, how much worry there was everywhere, how insufficient all our striving! Had he perhaps been neglectful of this poor boy? Was it right that no one in the house knew this pupil as thoroughly as Narcissus? How could he be helped by someone who was still a novice, who had not yet been consecrated, who was not yet a monk, and whose thoughts and ideas all had something unpleasantly superior about them, something almost hostile? God alone knew whether Narcissus too had not been handled wrongly all this time? Was he concealing something evil behind his mask of obedience, hedonism perhaps? Whatever these two young men would some day become would be partly his responsibility.
"He is eighteen."
They had been talking about astrology, a forbidden science that was not pursued in the cloister. Narcissus had said that astrology was an attempt to arrange and order the many different types of human beings according to their natures and destinies. At this point Goldmund had objected: "Youre forever talking of differences—Ive finally recognized a pet theory of yours. When you speak of the great difference that is supposed to exist between you and me, for instance, it seems to me that this difference is nothing but your strange determination to establish differences."
"It is I, have no fear. Ill put the light on."
"No, until today hes been healthy. In his body, that is."
"Id rather wait a bit longer. His heart is sound. We must not let anyone in to see him."
Perplexed and even hurt, Goldmund had withdrawn after this conversation. And yet a few days later he himself wished to hear more. And this time Narcissus was able to give Goldmund a picture of their different natures that he found more acceptable.
Goldmund: "Dont speak like that."
"Look," he said, "I am superior to you only in one point: Im awake, whereas you are only half awake, or completely asleep sometimes. I call a man awake who knows in his conscious reason his innermost unreasonable force, drives, and weaknesses and knows how to deal with them. For you to learn that about yourself is the potential reason for your having met me. In your case, mind and nature, consciousness and dream world lie very far apart. Youve forgotten your childhood; it cries for you from the depths of your soul. It will make you suffer until you heed it.
Goldmunds description of his home and childhood gave no clear picture. There was a shadowlife, faceless father whom he venerated, and then there was the legend of a mother who had vanished, or perished, long ago, who was nothing but a pallid name. Narcissus, the experienced reader of souls, had gradually come to recognize that Goldmund was one of those people part of whose lives have been lost; pressure of circumstances or some kind of magic power has obliterated a portion of their past. He realized that nothing would be gained by mere questioning and teaching, that he had overestimated the power of logic and spoken many useless words.
Goldmund was standing under one of the massive stone arches that led from the passageway out into the little cloister garden; on each column three animal heads, the stone-carved heads of dogs and wolves, glared down at him. Pain was raging inside him, pushing, finding no way toward the light, toward reason. Deathly fear clutched at his throat, knotted his stomach. Mechanically he looked up, saw the animal heads on the capital of one of the columns, and began to feel that those three monstrous heads were squatting, glaring, barking inside him.
"No, gentle father. That is not the only reason. But Goldmunds soul has been ailing for a long time; that is why these struggles hold more danger for him than for others. I believe that he suffers because he has forgotten a part of his past."
Goldmund had listened with astonishment, but at the words "youve forgotten your childhood" he flinched as though pierced by an arrow. Narcissus didnt notice; he often kept his eyes closed for long moments while he spoke, or hed stare straight ahead, as though this helped him to find his words. He did not see Goldmunds face twitch suddenly.
"Ah? And what part is that?"
Finally he said: "Is that why you so often dont take my thoughts seriously?"
Narcissus: "No road will bring us together."
"I dont think so. There arent any wounds, no trace of a blow or fall. He is unconscious because of a colic, perhaps. Extreme pain can cause loss of consciousness. If he had been poisoned, hed be running a fever. No, hell come to and go on living."
"No."
"Why, yes," Narcissus continued. "Natures of your kind, with strong, delicate senses, the soul-oriented, the dreamers, poets, lovers are almost always superior to us creatures of the mind. You take your being from your mothers. You live fully; you were endowed with the strength of love, the ability to feel. Whereas we creatures of reason, we dont live fully; we live in an arid land, even though we often seem to guide and rule you. Yours is the plenitude of life, the sap of the fruit, the garden of passion, the beautiful landscape of art. Your home is the earth; ours is the world of ideas. You are in danger of drowning in the world of the senses; ours is the danger of suffocating in an airless void. You are an artist; I am a thinker. You sleep at the mothers breast; I wake in the desert. For me the sun shines; for you the moon and the stars. Your dreams are of girls; mine of boys …"
"And otherwise?"
Father Anselm had dozed off in the armchair beside the bed; he awoke. He heard the sick boy stir, he heard him breathe. Gently he stood up.
"But enough of that! Being awake, as Ive already said, makes me stronger than you. This is the one point in which I am superior to you and that is why I can be useful to you. In every other respect you are superior to me, my dear Goldmund—or rather, you will be, as soon as youve found yourself."
He was dismissed, without a scolding but with an admonition not to visit the sick boy for the time being.
His body twitched; he sank down at the foot of the column. The pain was too great; he had reached the limit. He fainted; he drowned in longed-for oblivion.
He panted, pushing his breath away from him. Like a person who has been poisoned, he was bursting with the feeling that he had to free himself of something deadly, deep inside him. With the movements of a swimmer he rushed from his room, fled unconsciously to the quietest, loneliest parts of the cloister, through passages, down stairways and out into the open. He had wandered into the innermost refuge of the cloister, into the court of the cross. The sky stretched clear and sunny over the few bright flower beds; the scent of roses drifted through the cool stony air in sweet hesitant threads.
Goldmund said with violence: "You smile at me even when we dont discuss matters of learning! For instance, you always act as though all my piety, my efforts to advance my studies, my desire to become a monk were so many childish fantasies."
Narcissus: "I am glad that youre beginning to realize that. Youll soon realize, too, that I dont mean intelligence when I speak of the difference between us. I do not say, you are more intelligent, or less intelligent; better or worse. I merely say, you are different."
