Goldmund and Lene's Love Affair

Goldmund and Lene's Love Affair is a short, tender episode of intimacy formed in the shadow of the Black Death. Goldmund rescues Lene from a dying city and shares with her a makeshift home, but their relationship cannot escape the impermanence surrounding them: she longs to remain with him, while he understands their domestic life as temporary. Her illness and death end the companionship, leaving Goldmund to burn their shelter and continue through a landscape devastated by disease and fear.

Meeting amid the plague

While travelling with Robert, Goldmund encounters Lene in a deserted city where people are dying. She is a servant among strangers, and, after he calls to her and walks away, she follows him to the gates with a small bundle. She tells him that her name is Lene and that she wants to leave because the city is horrible and everyone is dying. Their meeting grows directly from the crisis: Goldmund can offer escape, while Lene is willing to trust a stranger rather than remain in the city.

Robert objects to bringing her along, fearing that contact with someone from the plague-stricken city will put them all in danger. Goldmund lets him protest, then announces that Lene will stay with him and proposes a household for the three of them. He presents a plan for a little life of peace and health: they will find or build a hut, he will be its head, Lene its mistress, and Robert their friend. He also promises that Robert need not touch her. The arrangement is at once practical and affectionate, but its language of household roles disguises how provisional their refuge will be.

A makeshift home and unequal hopes

On the way to shelter, Goldmund sings; Lene joins him, and Robert is surprised by the ease and warmth of the moment. Goldmund openly delights in having found a pretty love and imagines that they will have a good life together, with their bodies still alive and well. The next day they find an empty log cabin in a birch forest. Goldmund assigns Robert the task of building a partition, giving Lene and himself one room and Robert and a goat the other; Goldmund and Lene gather bedding materials while Robert cuts birch posts.

Their home is assembled from whatever the landscape affords. The partition is filled with plaited juniper; they improve their beds, build a hearth, find goats and turnips, and draw water from a nearby brook. Lene gathers berries and tends the animals while Goldmund searches the surrounding country for food. Robert values the isolation as protection from infection and conflict, though it also means scarce provisions. The three work together and sing, and Lene is happy in her new life with Goldmund. Yet his tenderness coexists with an awareness that their happiness is brief: after she falls asleep in his arms, he thinks of death and of how quickly youth and happiness wither.

The difference in their expectations surfaces when Lene asks what they will do in winter. Neither Goldmund nor Robert has seriously imagined remaining in one place so long, and Lene realizes that the cabin is a wayfarers’ stop rather than a permanent home. Goldmund tells her that she may return to her parents, if they survive, or seek work as a maid after the plague passes. He emphasizes that it is still summer and that they can stay as long or as briefly as they choose. Lene objects that she does not want to leave or let Goldmund go, and that knowing their life will soon end makes happiness difficult. Goldmund answers that lasting happiness does not exist and threatens to burn the hut if she cannot accept their present arrangement. His comfort therefore offers affection in the moment, but no promise of a shared future.

Crisis and care

Before summer has fully ended, Goldmund and Lene’s life together is disrupted by an attack on her while she gathers berries. Goldmund intervenes and kills the assailant. The episode brings their fragile household abruptly into contact with the violence of the surrounding world. Robert is eager to hear about the fight, but Goldmund does not wish to recount it; afterward, he is troubled by the fact that this is the second man he has killed. He is also struck by Lene’s expression as she watches him, a look of pride and triumph mingled with horror. It prompts in him the wish to draw what he has seen, while deepening his unease about the violence that has entered their refuge.

The following day Lene falls ill, and Goldmund discovers the signs of plague. Robert, afraid of infection, withdraws from the hut. Goldmund angrily rejects his flight and keeps the goat with him, then assures Lene that he will stay. She, in turn, tells him not to come too close or risk catching the disease. She says she would rather die than wake to find that he has left her. Her fear of abandonment makes explicit what Goldmund’s earlier assurances could not settle: even in a temporary shelter, she has become deeply attached to him and wants his presence at the end.

Goldmund remains with her. As she weakens, he gives her water and watches over her, despite his impulse to leave and resume wandering. He has little food beyond the milk, which he drinks when Lene can no longer swallow. Her face changes with the progress of the illness; she speaks only occasionally, addressing him as Goldmund or lover. She dies the following night without complaint. Goldmund stays beside her for a time, then lets the goat out and sleeps outside until morning.

The end of the affair

After returning to the hut once more to look at Lene’s body, Goldmund decides that he cannot leave her there. He gathers dry wood and brush, sets the hut alight, and watches the flames consume the shelter they had built together. He takes only the flint. Although he knows he could kill the goat for food before setting out, he cannot bring himself to do so; instead, he drives it into the heath and walks away. The destruction of the hut closes the domestic interlude as decisively as Lene’s death: Goldmund leaves behind both their shared home and the life he had briefly made there.

The affair is intimate but not presented as a lasting partnership. Lene’s wish to stay with Goldmund and her plea that he not leave her meet his impulse to keep moving and his conviction that their arrangement can last only as long as circumstances allow. Nevertheless, when illness comes, he does not abandon her. His vigil and the burning of the hut mark the difference between the temporary nature he assigns to their life and the care he gives her at its end. Her death becomes one of the losses carried into his continuing journey through the plague-ravaged country.