Goldmund Stays with Lene as She Dies and Burns the Hut

Goldmund Stays with Lene as She Dies and Burns the Hut is a turning point in Goldmund’s passage through the plague-stricken countryside: after discovering a family dead in a farmhouse, he refuses to abandon Lene when she falls ill, remains at her bedside until she dies, and burns their shelter before setting out again. The episode places intimate care against epidemic fear, and joins a private farewell to the larger devastation of the Black Death.

Discovery and the threat of contagion

Goldmund and Robert first approach a village whose armed peasants drive them away. The next morning, at an isolated farm, they find an unmilked cow, an abandoned stable and barn, and a silent house. Inside, Goldmund discovers an old woman dead beside the hearth. He lights a piece of kindling and sees that the household has not simply left: five members of the family are dead, including three in a bed and a boy at the threshold. The neglected cow, the empty buildings, and the bodies make the villagers’ refusal to admit strangers intelligible: the plague is present, and the farmhouse has become a scene of death.

Robert understands the danger and panics that Goldmund may have touched the corpses. Goldmund prevents him from running off alone, arguing that if either man falls ill, they should not face death without another person present. The two continue together. Across the region they find deserted farms, unburied dead, and livestock left without care; they feed and milk some animals and take food from abandoned properties. This makes their survival possible, but does not restore ease: Robert remains terrified, while Goldmund walks through the afflicted land with a mixture of fascination and sorrow.

Lene’s illness and Goldmund’s vigil

After the pair settle in a hut with Lene, she becomes ill while Goldmund and Robert are away hunting a sheep. Goldmund examines her and finds plague boils, but keeps the diagnosis from her. Robert suspects what is wrong and says he will sleep outside, taking the goat with him to avoid infection. Goldmund angrily stops him and keeps the animal in the hut. When Robert later calls from the forest to ask whether Lene has recovered, Goldmund tells him to go away and falsely claims that he too is infected. He wants Robert out of the scene, judging his fear and smallness intolerable beside Lene’s dying.

Goldmund tells Lene that he will remain and that she will recover. She does not believe him. Instead, she warns him not to come too close and says she would rather die than wake to find that he has left her. Her words make the central conflict of the vigil plain: she fears abandonment, while he wants to comfort her without exposing himself to the sickness. Although she asks him to keep his distance, Goldmund stays. As she grows weaker, he gives her water, watches over her, and remains in the hut rather than following the impulse to flee and wander.

The illness changes Lene’s appearance with alarming speed. She speaks only occasionally, calling Goldmund by name or as her lover, and can take only a little water. Goldmund watches as the young woman’s face seems to age rapidly. He stays attentive through her sleep and waking, and, when she can no longer swallow milk, drinks it himself because there is no other food. Her decline is not presented as a cure or a struggle that he can reverse; his care consists of keeping her company, bringing her water, and witnessing what he cannot prevent.

Death and the burning of the hut

Lene dies the following night without complaint. Her death comes with only a brief movement and a final shudder. Goldmund remembers fish dying in the market, whose last movement had seemed to extinguish their life, and recognizes the same quiet ending in Lene. He kneels beside her for a while, then goes outside and sits among the bushes. He remembers the goat, returns to the hut, and lets it out; after it wanders a short distance, it lies down, and Goldmund rests beside it until daylight.

In the morning he enters the hut once more to look at Lene’s dead face. He cannot leave her body there, so he gathers dry wood and underbrush, throws it into the hut, and sets it alight. He takes nothing from the shelter except the flint. Standing outside, he watches the fire spread until the roof catches and the beams fall. The goat is frightened by the flames, but Goldmund cannot bring himself to kill it for food. He drives it into the heath and walks away alone, with the smoke following him into the forest. The burning closes his life with Lene and destroys the place that had sheltered them; the journey resumes without a companion.

Plague, care, and the wider world

The farmhouse discovery and Lene’s death belong to a larger progression of epidemic loss. As Goldmund travels, he sees empty houses, unburied bodies, neglected animals, frightened survivors, and communities unable to offer reliable protection. Some people avoid contact; others gather in desperate feasts. Fear also turns toward scapegoats: in one town, Goldmund witnesses a ghetto burned by a mob, and he later tells the story of Rebekka, whose father was among the Jews killed by order of the town authorities. The epidemic therefore brings more than illness and death; it exposes how terror can dissolve care and fuel violence against the vulnerable.

Goldmund’s response is not the same as Robert’s. He has already confronted death as a force that cannot be fought like an attacker, and he moves through the plague region without Robert’s constant fear of infection. His attention remains fixed on the dying and on the lives still caught among them. Staying with Lene is one concrete expression of that attention: though he knows she will die and wishes at times to escape into the open air and onward travel, he refuses to leave her alone. The episode makes companionship a form of care rather than a means of rescue.

The contrast extends into Goldmund’s understanding of death. A dance-of-death painting he sees elsewhere presents death as a stern power that leads people of every rank from life. Goldmund recognizes the lesson of universal mortality, but experiences death also as a maternal, intimate call. In Lene’s hut, that interpretation meets an immediate human cost: the woman he has promised to stay with dies, and his response is neither triumph nor escape, but vigil, farewell, and departure. The burning hut marks the end of their shared shelter while the plague continues beyond it, drawing Goldmund deeper into a world he has chosen to witness.