Narcissus and Goldmund Read Online Free PDF Page B

nature. It would be hard, and the hardest was that perhaps it would make him lose his friend.
    With infinite caution he drew closer to his goal. Months went by before a serious approach became possible between the two, a deep-reaching conversation. In spite of their friendship, they were so far apart, the bowstring was so taut between them: a seeing man and a blind man, they walked side by side; the blind man’s unawareness of his own blindness was a consolation only to himself.
    Narcissus made the first breakthrough when he tried to discover what the experience had been that had driven the boy toward him at a weak moment. It turned out to be less difficult than he had expected. Goldmund had long felt the need to confess the experience of that night, but there was no one, outside the Abbot, whom he trusted enough, and the Abbot was not his confessor. And when Narcissus reminded his friend, at a moment he judged favorable, of the very beginnings of their bond and gently hinted at the secret, Goldmund immediately said, “If only you were an ordained priest and able to confess me; I would have liked to free myself of that matter in confession and I would gladly have done penance for it. But I couldn’t tell my confessor.”
    Carefully, shrewdly, Narcissus dug deeper; the vein had been found. “You remember the morning when you seemed to be ill,” he ventured. “You can’t have forgotten, since that was when we became friends. I think of it often. Perhaps you didn’t notice, but I was rather helpless that morning.”
    â€œYou helpless!” cried his friend, incredulous. “But I was the helpless one! It was I who stood there, swallowing, unable to utter a word, who finally began to weep like a child! Ugh, to this day I feel ashamed of that moment; I thought I could never face you again. You had seen me so disgracefully weak.”
    Narcissus groped ahead.
    â€œI understand,” he said. “It must have been unpleasant for you. Such a firm, courageous boy breaking into tears in front of a stranger, and a teacher at that, it was quite out of character. Well, that morning I merely thought you were ill. In the throes of a fever, even a man like Aristotle may behave strangely. But you were not ill. You had no fever! And that is why you feel ashamed. No one feels ashamed of succumbing to a fever, does he? You felt ashamed because you had succumbed to something else, to something that overpowered you? Did something special happen?”
    Goldmund hesitated a second, then he said slowly: “Yes, something special did happen. Let’s pretend you’re my confessor; sooner or later this thing must be told.”
    With bowed head, he told his friend the story of that night.
    Smilingly, Narcissus replied: “Well yes, ‘going to the village’ is of course forbidden. But one can do all kinds of forbidden things and laugh them away, or one can confess them and that is that; they need no longer concern one. Why shouldn’t you commit these little foolishnesses like other students? What is so terrible about that?”
    Angrily, without holding back, Goldmund burst out: “You do talk like a schoolmaster! You know very well what it is all about! Of course I don’t see a great sin in breaking the house rules for once, to play a student prank, although it’s not exactly part of the preparatory training for cloister life.”
    â€œJust a moment, my friend,” Narcissus called sharply. “Don’t you know that many pious fathers went through precisely that kind of preparatory training? Don’t you know that a wastrel’s life may be one of the shortest roads to sainthood?”
    â€œOh, don’t lecture!” protested Goldmund. “It wasn’t a trifling disobedience that weighed on my conscience. It was something else. It was that girl. I can’t describe the sensation to you. It was a feeling that if I gave in to the enticement, if