So much of his forgotten childhood surged up during these mother dreams, so many small flowers of memory bloomed from the endless depth of forgetfulness, golden-faced premonition-scented memories of childhood emotions, of incidents perhaps, or perhaps of dreams. Occasionally hed dream of fish, black and silver, swimming toward him, cool and smooth, swimming into him, through him, coming like messengers bearing joyous news of a more gracious, more beautiful reality and vanishing, tails flipping, shadowlike, gone, having brought new enigmas rather than messages. Or hed dream of swimming fish and flying birds, and each fish or bird was his creature, depended on him, could be guided like a breath, radiated from him like an eye, like a thought, returned to him. Or hed dream of a garden, a magic garden with fabulous trees, huge flowers, and deep blue-dark caves; the eyes of unknown animals sparkled in the grass, smooth-muscled serpents slid along the branches; giant moist-glistening berries hung from vine or bush, hed pick them and theyd swell in his hand and leak warm juices like blood, or they had eyes which theyd move with cunning seduction; groping, hed lean against a tree, reach for a branch, and see and feel between trunk and branch a curling nest of thick tousled hair like the hair in the pit of an arm. Once he dreamed of himself, or of his name-saint, he dreamed of Goldmund of Chrysostom, who had a mouth of gold, who spoke words with his golden mouth, and the words were small swarms of birds that flew off in fluttering groups.
"I do appreciate them greatly," Narcissus said sadly. "Those are magic letters, demons can be exorcised with them. But for the pursuit of science they are, of course, unsuitable. The mind favors the definite, the solid shape, it wants its symbols to be reliable, it loves what is, not what will be, what is real and not what is possible. It does not permit an omega to change to a serpent or a bird. The mind cannot live in nature, only against nature, only as its counterpart. Do you believe now that youll never be a scholar, Goldmund?"
Narcissus: "Oh, there are goals enough. One monk may find his lifes goal in learning Hebrew, another in annotating Aristotle, or embellishing the cloisterchurch, or secluding himself in meditation, or a hundred other things. For me those are no goals. I neither want to increase the riches of the cloister, nor reform the order, nor the church. I want to serve the mind within the framework of my possibilities, the way I understand the mind; no more. Is that not a goal?"
Shortly after the day of their conversation, Narcissus seemed to have disappeared, to have become suddenly inaccessible. Another instructor was teaching his courses; his lectern in the library stood vacant. He was still present, he was not altogether invisible, one saw him walk through the arcade occasionally, heard him murmur in one of the chapels, kneeling on the stone floor; one knew that he had begun the great exercise, that he was fasting, that he rose three times each night to exercise. He was still present, but he had crossed over into another world; he could be seen, although not often, but he could not be reached. Nothing could be shared with him; one could not speak with him. Goldmund knew: Narcissus would reappear, he would be standing at his lectern again, sit in his chair in the refectory, he would speak again—but nothing of what had been would be again; Narcissus would belong to him no longer. As he thought about this, it became clear to him that Narcissus alone had made the cloister, the monkish life, grammar and logic, learning and the mind seem important and desirable to him. His example had tempted him; to become like Narcissus had been his ideal. True, there was also the Abbot, whom he had venerated; he had loved him, too, and thought him a high example. But the others, the teachers and classmates, the dormitory, the dining hall, the school, exercises, mass, the entire cloister no longer concerned him without Narcissus. What was he still doing here? He was waiting, standing under the cloister roof like a hesitant wanderer caught in the rain who stops under any roof, a tree, just to wait, for fear of the inhospitality of the unknown. Goldmunds life, during this span, was nothing but hesitation and bidding farewell. He visited the different places that had become dear and meaningful to him. He was surprised that there were so few persons and faces it would be hard for him to leave. Brother Narcissus and old Abbot Daniel and good dear Father Anselm, the friendly porter maybe, and their jovial neighbor, the miller—but even they had already become unreal. Harder than that would be saying farewell to the tall stone madonna in the chapel, to the apostles of the portal. For a long time he stood in front of them, in front of the beautiful carvings of the choir pews, of the fountain in the cloister garden, the column with the three animal heads; he leaned against the linden trees in the courtyard, against the chestnut tree. One day, all of this would be memory to him, a small picturebook in his heart. Even now, while he was still in its midst, it started to fade away from him, lose its reality, change phantomlike into something that no longer was. He went in search of herbs with Father Anselm, who liked to have him around; he watched the men at work in the cloister mill; every so often he let himself be invited to a meal of wine and baked fish; but already it felt strange to him, half like a memory. In the twilight of the chapel and the penitence of his cell, his friend Narcissus was pacing, alive, but to him he had become a shadow. The cloister now seemed to be drained of reality, and appeared autumnal and transient.
At least Goldmund seemed to be healed. Not only had the fainting spell been without evil consequences, but all that was unformed and unauthentic in Goldmunds character had somehow melted away, his mistaken vocation to monkhood, his belief that he was obliged to render particular service to God. The young man seemed to have grown younger and older all at once. He owed it all to Narcissus.
"You know what it is," said Narcissus.
Yes, Goldmund had long since begun to believe it, resigned himself to it.
"Nor need you," said Narcissus. "Youll find out where your road will lead you. It began by leading you back to your mother, and it will bring you closer to her still. As for your father, Im not judging him too harshly. Would you want to go back to him?"
"No, my dear Goldmund, you cannot. Some people are capable of learning a great deal, but you are not one of them. Youll never be a student. And why should you be? You dont need to. You have other gifts. You are more gifted than I, you are richer and you are weaker, your road will be more beautiful and more difficult than mine. There were times when you refused to understand me, you often kicked like a foal, it wasnt always easy, I was often forced to hurt you. I had to waken you, since you were asleep. Recalling your mother to your memory hurt at first, hurt you very much; you were found lying in the cloister garden as though dead. It had to be. No, dont stroke my hair! No, dont! I dont like it."
The adolescent would sink deeply into these dreams, into these many-threaded webs of soul-inhabited senses. Enchantingly they resurrected not only the beloved past: childhood and mother love, the radiantly golden morning of life; but in them also the future swung, menacing, promising, beckoning, dangerous. At times these dreams, in which mother, Virgin, and mistress all fused into one, seemed horrendous crimes to him afterwards, blasphemies, deadly, unpardonable sins; at other times he found in them nothing but harmony and release. Life stared at him, filled with secrets, a somber, unfathomable world, a rigid forest bristling with fairy-tale dangers—but these were mother secrets, they came from her, led to her, they were the small dark circle, the tiny threatening abyss in her clear eye.
But Narcissus was now conducting himself with a strange caution toward his friend. He looked upon him with great modesty, no longer in the least condescending or instructing, while Goldmund admired him more than ever. He saw Goldmund fed from secret sources to which he, himself, had no access; he had been able to further their growth, but had no part in them. Though he was glad to see his friend freeing himself of his guidance, he also felt sad. He saw that this friendship, which had meant so much to him, was nearing its end. He still knew more about Goldmund than Goldmund knew about himself. Goldmund had rediscovered his soul and was ready to follow its call, but he did not know where it would lead him. Narcissus knew this and felt powerless; his favorites path led to regions in which he himself would never travel.
This was the tale Goldmunds father told of his lost wife, although he preferred not to speak of her. He had hinted at it to the Abbot the day he brought Goldmund to the cloister. It was all known to the son as a terrible legend, but he had learned to push it aside and had almost forgotten it. The real image of his mother had been completely forgotten and lost, an altogether different image that was not made of his fathers and the servants tales and dark wild rumors. He had forgotten his own true living mother-memory. And now this image, the star of his earliest years, had risen again.
Goldmund: "No other goal for a monk?"
Goldmunds eagerness to learn had decreased considerably, as had his desire to argue with his friend. Shamefacedly he remembered some of their former discussions. Meanwhile Narcissus began to feel the need for seclusion; either because he had completed the novitiate or because of his experience with Goldmund, he felt drawn to fasting and long prayers, frequent confessions, voluntary penitence, and Goldmund understood this, could almost share in it. Since his cure, his instincts had been sharpened. Although he had no inkling of where his future would lead him, he did feel strongly, often with anguishing clarity, that his destiny was shaping itself, that this respite of innocence and calm was coming to an end, that all within him was taut and ready. These premonitions were often blissful, kept him awake half the night like a sweet infatuation; at other times they were full of darkness and suffocation. His long-lost mother had come back to him: that was deep happiness. But where was her enticing call leading him? Into uncertainty and entanglement, into need, perhaps into death. It did not lead to quiet, mildness, security, to the monks cell, to collective cloister life. Her call had nothing in common with his fathers orders, which he had for so long confused with his own wishes. Goldmunds piety fed on this emotion; it was often as strong and burning as a violent physical sensation. He would repeat long prayers to the holy Mother of God, letting flow the excessive feelings that drew him toward his own mother. But often his prayers would end in those strange, magnificent dreams of which he had so many now: day-dreams, with half-awake senses, dreams of her with all his senses participating. The mother-world would spray its fragrance about him, look darkly from enigmatic eyes of love, rumble deep as an ocean, like paradise, stammer caressing, senseless endearments, or rather endearments that filled his senses with a taste of sweetness and salt and brushed his hungry lips and eyes with silken hair. His mother meant not only all that was graceful; not only were her gentle look of love and sweet, happiness-promising smile caressing consolations; but somewhere beneath this enticing exterior lay much that was frightful and dark, greedy and fearful, sinful and sorrowful, all that gave birth and all death.
Goldmund interrupted him. Half laughingly, he said: "Youve overcome them wonderfully well! But, tell me: when you aided me, guided and delivered me, and healed my soul—were you really serving the mind? In so doing youve probably deprived the cloister of an eager, well-intentioned novice, maybe youve raised an enemy of the mind, someone wholl strive for, think and do the exact opposite of what you deem good!"
He lived in this dream world more than in the real one. The real world: classroom, courtyard, library, dormitory, and chapel were only the surface, a quivering film over the dream-filled superreal world of images. The smallest incident could pierce a hole in this thin skin: a sudden hint in the sound of a Greek word during a tedious lesson, a whiff of scent from Father Anselms herb satchel, the sight of a garland of stone leaves protruding from the top of a column in a window vault—these small stimulants were enough to puncture the skin of reality, to unleash the raging abysses, streams, and milky ways of an image world of the soul that lay beneath peacefully barren reality. A Latin initial changed to his mothers perfumed face, a long note in the Ave became the gate to Paradise, a Greek letter a galloping horse, a rearing serpent that quickly slithered off through the flowers, leaving the rigid page of grammar in its place.
"Cant I learn anything then? Will I always remain stupid, a child?"
"Why not?" said Narcissus in deep earnest. "Dear friend, how little you know me still! Perhaps I did ruin a future monk in you, but in exchange I cleared the path inside you for a destiny that will not be ordinary. Even if you burned down our rather handsome cloister tomorrow, or preached a mad doctrine of error to the world, I would not for an instant regret that I helped you on the road toward it."
He rarely spoke of it, only occasionally did he give Narcissus a hint of his dream world.
With a friendly gesture he laid both hands on his friends shoulders.
Deep in thought, he stared ahead of him. Suddenly he cried out to Narcissus: "How on earth do you do it? Again and again you say words to me, or pose questions that shine a light into me and make me clear to myself. You merely asked if I wanted to go back to my father, and suddenly I knew that I didnt want to. How do you do it? You seem to know everything. Youve said so many words that I didnt quite grasp when I heard them but that became so important to me afterwards! It was you who said that I take my being from my mother, you who discovered that I was living under a spell and had forgotten my childhood! What makes you know people so well? Couldnt I learn that too?"
Narcissus smiled and shook his head.
He spoke in a joking tone, and yet he was not able to bring a happy expression to his friends face. Narcissus looked at him in silence; his look was like a caress. Then he said: "I understand you very well. Theres no need for us to quarrel ever again; you are awakened, and now you recognize the difference between us, between mother-heritage and father-heritage, the difference between soul and mind. Soon youll probably also realize that cloister life and striving for monkhood were a mistake for you, an invention of your fathers. He wanted you to atone for your mothers memory, or perhaps avenge himself on her in this way. Or do you still believe that its your destiny to remain in the cloister all your life?"
Narcissus was pacing vehemently, his eyes on the floor. Then he stopped in front of his friend. "Let that be," he said softly. "You know only too well that my affection for you has not come to an end."
"Oh no," cried Goldmund, "we didnt become friends to end it now! What sort of friendship would that be, that reached its goal after a short distance and then simply stopped? Are you tired of me? Have you no more affection for me?"
"No, Narcissus, certainly not. If I did, it would have to be as soon as I finished school; right now perhaps. Since Im not going to be a scholar anyhow, Ive learned enough Latin and Greek and mathematics. No, I dont want to go back to my father …"
Up to now, the few things Goldmund knew of his mother had come from what others had told him. Her image had almost faded from his memory. Of the little he thought he knew of her, he had told Narcissus next to nothing. Mother was a subject he was forbidden to mention—something to be ashamed of. She had been a dancer, a wild beautiful woman of noble, though poor, birth; Goldmunds father said that he had lifted her from poverty and shame; and since he couldnt be sure she was not a heathen, he had arranged to have her baptized and instructed in religion; he had married her and made her respectable. But after a few years of domesticated and ordered existence, she had remembered her old tricks and crafts, had started to make trouble and seduce men, had strayed from home for days and weeks at a time, had acquired the reputation of a witch, and, after her husband had gone to find her and taken her back to his house several times, she had finally disappeared forever. Her reputation had stayed alive, a wicked reputation that flickered like the tail of a comet, until it had been extinguished. Slowly her husband recovered from the years of disorder, fear, and shame, of the never ending surprises she sprang on him. In place of the unredeemed wife, he educated his little son, who greatly resembled his mother in features and build; he grew nagging and bigoted, instilling in Goldmund the belief that he must offer up his life to God to expiate his mothers sins.
"I believe," he once said, "that the petal of a flower or a tiny worm on the path says far more, contains far more than all the books in the library. One cannot say very much with mere letters and words. Sometimes Ill be writing a Greek letter, a theta or an omega, and tilt my pen just the slightest bit; suddenly the letter has a tail and becomes a fish; in a second it evokes all the streams and rivers of the world, all that is cool and humid, Homers sea and the waters on which Saint Peter wandered; or it becomes a bird, flaps its tail, shakes out its feathers, puffs itself up, laughs, flies away. You probably dont appreciate letters like that very much, do you, Narcissus? But I say: with them God wrote the world."
"There will be others to teach you. What you could learn from me, you child, you have learned."
It sounded like a farewell; it was indeed a foretaste of farewell. Goldmund stood looking at his friend, the determined face, the goal-directed eyes; he had the unmistakable feeling that they were no longer brothers, colleagues, equals; their ways had already parted. The man before him was not a dreamer; he was not waiting for fate to call to him. He was a monk who had pledged his life, who belonged to an established order, to duty; he was a servant, a soldier of religion, of the church, of the mind. Goldmund now knew he did not belong here; this had become clear to him today. He had no home; an unknown world awaited him. His mother had known the same fate once. She had left house and home, husband and child, community and order, duty and honor, to go out into uncertainty; she had probably long since perished in it. She had had no goal, and neither had he. Having goals was a privilege he did not share with others, Oh, how well Narcissus had recognized all this long ago; how right he had been!
"Well, yes. In a few years youll be the novicemaster, head of the school perhaps. Youll improve the teaching methods; youll enlarge the library. Perhaps youll write books yourself. No? All right, you wont. But what is your goal?"
"Hinder me! Oh Goldmund, no one furthered me as much as you did. You created difficulties for me, but I am no enemy of difficulties. Ive learned from them, Ive partly overcome them."
Narcissus had recently completed his novitiate and had donned the habit. His attitude toward Goldmund was strangely changed. Because Goldmund, who had often before rejected his friends hints and counsel as cumbersome superiority and pedantry, was now, since his deep experience, filled with astonished admiration of his friends wisdom. How many of his words had come true like prophecies, how deeply had this uncanny man seen inside him, how precisely had he guessed the secret of his life, his hidden wound, how deftly had he healed him!
"See here, little Goldmund, this too is part of my goal: whether I be teacher, abbot, father confessor, or whatever, never do I wish to find myself in the position of meeting a strong, valuable human being and not know what he is about, not further him. And let me say this to you: whatever becomes of either of us, whether we go this way or that, youll never find me heedless at any moment that you call me seriously and think that you have need of me. Never."
Goldmund looked pensively at his friends hands. How distinguished they were, severe as well as delicate, bony and white. No one could doubt that they were the hands of an ascetic and a scholar.
"Im no longer intent on striving for a mind like yours," he said, half jokingly. "I feel about mind and learning the way I did about my father: I thought I loved him very much and wanted to become like him and swore by everything he did. But as soon as my mother reappeared, I knew the meaning of love again and my fathers image had suddenly shrunk next to hers and become joyless, almost repugnant. And now Im inclined to regard all things of the mind as father-things, as unmotherly, and mother-hostile, and to feel a slight contempt for them."
Narcissus smiled faintly. "The goal? Perhaps Ill die head of the school, or abbot, or bishop. Its all the same. My goal is this: always to put myself in the place in which I am best able to serve, wherever my gifts and qualities find the best soil, the widest field of action. There is no other goal."
"I cant understand how I could have forgotten," he said to his friend. "Never in my life have I loved anyone as much as I loved my mother, unconditionally, fervently. Never did I venerate or admire anyone as I did her; she was sun and moon to me. God only knows how it was possible to darken this radiant image in my soul, to change her gradually to the evil, pallid, shapeless witch she was to my father and to me for many years."
Once he dreamed that he was tall and adult but sat on the floor like a child, that he had clay in front of him and was modeling clay figures, like a child: a small horse, a bull, a tiny man, a tiny woman. The modeling amused him and he gave the animals and men ridiculously large genitals; it seemed wonderfully witty to him in his dream. Then he grew tired of the game and walked off and felt something alive at his back, something soundless and large that was coming nearer and when he looked around he saw with great astonishment and shock, but not without joy, that his small clay figures bad grown and come to life. Huge mute giants, they marched past him, continuing to grow, monstrous, silent; tower-high, they traveled on into the world.
Goldmund understood. Sadly he said: "So youre going to do what I would have done too, if I had joined the order. And after your exercises are over and you have fasted and prayed and waked enough—then what will be your goal?"
Goldmund thought for a long while before he answered.
With doubt in his eyes he studied his friend. Then he began pacing once more, back and forth; again he stopped and looked at Goldmund, his eyes firm in the taut, haggard face. His voice was low, but hard and firm, when he said: "Listen, Goldmund! Our friendship has been good; it had a goal and the goal has been reached; youve been awakened, I would like it not to be over; I would like it to renew itself once more, renew itself again and again, and lead to new goals. For the moment there is no goal. Yours is uncertain, I can neither lead you nor accompany you. Ask your mother, ask her image, listen to her! But my goal is not uncertain, it lies here, in the cloister, it claims me at every hour. I can be your friend, but I cannot be in love. I am a monk, I have taken the vows. Before my consecration I shall ask to be released from my teaching duties and withdraw for many weeks to fast and do exercises. During that period Ill not speak of worldly matters, nor with you either."
Only the life within him was real, the anguished beating of his heart, the nostalgic sting of longing, the joys and fears of his dreams. To them he belonged; to them he abandoned himself. Suddenly, in the middle of a page or a lesson, surrounded by his classmates, hed sink into himself and forget everything, listening only to the rivers and voices inside himself which drew him away, into deep wells filled with dark melodies, into colorful abysses full of fairy-tale deeds, and all the sounds were like his mothers voice, and the thousands of eyes all were his mothers eyes.
"I dont know," he said in the lilting, slightly hesitant voice he had recently acquired and that seemed to dwell lengthily on every sound. "I really dont know. You judge my father somewhat harshly. He has not had an easy life. But perhaps youre right in this too. Ive been in the cloister school for over three years, and hes never come to see me. He wants me to stay here forever. Perhaps that would be best, I thought I wanted it myself. Buttoday Im no longer sure what I really want and desire. Before, everything was simple, as simple as the letters in my textbook. Now nothing is simple any more, not even the letters. Everything has taken on many meanings and faces. I dont know what will become of me, I cant think about that now."
"Youre right," he said. "Did I hinder you much on the road toward your goal?"
