Part 4

"No, Kamala, I do not fear that. Has a Samana or a Brahmin ever feared that someone might come and seize him and rob him of his learning, and his piety, and his profundity? No, for those belong to him, and he gives of them only what he wills and to whom he wills. So it is, and exactly thus is it also with Kamala, and with the joys of love. Beautiful and red is Kamala's mouth, but try to kiss it against Kamala's will, and not a drop of sweetness will you have from it, though it knows so well how to give much that is sweet! You are teachable, Siddhartha, so learn this too: love can be begged for, bought, received as a gift, found in the street, but stolen it cannot be. You have devised a false path for yourself. No, it would be a pity if a handsome youth like you were to go about it so wrongly."

Siddhartha bowed with a smile. "It would be a pity, Kamala, how right you are! Exceedingly a pity. No, not a drop of sweetness shall be lost to me from your mouth, nor from mine to you! So it remains: Siddhartha will return when he has what he still lacks: clothes, shoes, money. But speak, lovely Kamala, can you not give me one small piece of advice?"

"Advice? Why not? Who would not gladly give advice to a poor, ignorant Samana who comes from the jackals of the forest?"

"Dear Kamala, then advise me: where shall I go to find those three things most quickly?"

"Friend, many would like to know that. You must do what you have learned, and let yourself be paid for it, and receive clothes, and shoes. Otherwise a poor man does not come by money. What, then, can you do?"

"I can think. I can wait. I can fast."

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing. Yet, I can also compose verses. Will you give me a kiss for a poem?"

"I will do that, if your poem pleases me. What is it called, then?"

Siddhartha spoke, after reflecting for a moment, these verses:

Into her shaded grove stepped fair Kamala, At the grove's entrance stood the brown Samana. Deeply, when he beheld the lotus blossom, He bowed, smiling, thanked Kamala. Sweeter, thought the youth, than to offer to gods Is it to offer to fair Kamala.

Loudly Kamala clapped her hands, so that the golden bracelets rang.

"Beautiful are your verses, brown Samana, and truly, I lose nothing if I give you a kiss for them."

She drew him to her with her eyes, he bent his face to hers, and laid his mouth upon the mouth that was like a freshly split fig. Long did Kamala kiss him, and with deep astonishment Siddhartha felt how she taught him, how wise she was, how she mastered him, repelled him, enticed him, and how behind this first kiss stood a long, an ordered, a well-proven row of kisses, each different from the other, which still awaited him. Breathing deeply, he stood still, and in that moment was like a child astonished at the fullness of knowledge and of things worth learning that opened before his eyes.

"Very beautiful are your verses," cried Kamala, "were I rich, I would give you gold pieces for them. But it will be hard for you to earn with verses as much money as you need. For you need much money, if you would be Kamala's friend."

"How you can kiss, Kamala!" stammered Siddhartha.

"Yes, that I can, and therefore I lack not for clothes, shoes, bracelets, and all beautiful things. But what will become of you? Can you do nothing but think, fast, and make verses?"

"I can also sing the sacrificial hymns," said Siddhartha, "but I will sing them no more. I can also utter magic spells, but I will speak them no more. I have read the scriptures—"

"Hush," interrupted him Kamala. "Can you read? And write?"

"Certainly I can. Many can do that."

"Most cannot. I cannot either. It is very good that you can read and write, very good. You will yet find the magic spells useful too."

At that moment a maidservant came running and whispered a message into her mistress's ear.

"I am receiving a visitor," cried Kamala. "Hurry and disappear, Siddhartha, no one must see you here, mark that! Tomorrow I shall see you again."

But to the maid she gave the order to give the pious Brahmin a white upper garment. Without knowing how it happened to him, Siddhartha saw himself drawn away by the maid, taken by roundabout paths to a garden house, presented with an outer robe, led into the bushes and urgently admonished to vanish unseen from the grove at once.

Content, he did as he was told. Accustomed to the forest, he brought himself silently out of the grove and over the hedge. Content, he returned to the city, carrying the rolled-up garment under his arm. At an inn where travelers lodged, he placed himself at the door, silently begged for food, silently accepted a piece of rice cake. Perhaps tomorrow already, he thought, I shall beg no one for food.

Pride suddenly flared up in him. He was no Samana anymore, it no longer befitted him to beg. He gave the rice cake to a dog and remained without sustenance.

"Simple is the life one leads here in the world," thought Siddhartha. "It has no difficulties. Hard was everything, toilsome and in the end hopeless, when I was still a Samana. Now all is easy, easy as the lesson in kissing that Kamala gives me. I need clothes and money, nothing else; those are small, near goals, they do not disturb one's sleep."

Long since he had inquired out Kamala's town house; there he presented himself the next day.

"It goes well," she called to him. "You are expected by Kamaswami, he is the richest merchant of this city. If you please him, he will take you into his service. Be clever, brown Samana. I have had others tell him of you. Be friendly toward him, he is very powerful. But do not be too modest! I will not have you become his servant; you shall become his equal, else I am not content with you. Kamaswami is beginning to grow old and comfortable. If you please him, he will entrust much to you."

Siddhartha thanked her and laughed, and when she learned that he had eaten nothing yesterday or today, she had bread and fruit brought and entertained him.

"You have had luck," she said at parting, "one door after another opens to you. How does that come about? Do you have a spell?"

Siddhartha said: "Yesterday I told you that I understood how to think, to wait, and to fast, but you found that good for nothing. Yet it is good for much, Kamala, you will see. You will see that the foolish Samanas in the forest learn and can do many a pretty thing that you cannot. The day before yesterday I was still a shaggy beggar, yesterday I had already kissed Kamala, and soon I shall be a merchant and have money and all these things you set store by."

"Well yes," she conceded, "but how would it stand with you without me? What would you be, if Kamala did not help you?"

"Dear Kamala," said Siddhartha and drew himself up tall, "when I came to you in your grove, I took the first step. It was my resolve to learn love from the most beautiful of women. From that very moment when I formed the resolve, I also knew that I would carry it out. I knew that you would help me, already at your first glance at the entrance of the grove I knew it."

"But if I had not willed it?"

"You willed it. See, Kamala: if you throw a stone into the water, it hurries on the swiftest path to the bottom of the water. So it is when Siddhartha has a goal, a resolve. Siddhartha does nothing, he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he passes through the things of the world like the stone through water, without doing anything, without stirring; he is drawn, he lets himself fall. His goal draws him to itself, for he lets nothing enter his soul that could oppose the goal. That is what Siddhartha learned among the Samanas. It is what fools call magic and of which they think it is wrought by demons. Nothing is wrought by demons, there are no demons. Everyone can do magic, everyone can attain his goals, if he can think, if he can wait, if he can fast."

Kamala listened to him. She loved his voice, she loved the gaze of his eyes.

"Perhaps it is so," she said softly, "as you speak, friend. But perhaps it is also so that Siddhartha is a handsome man, that his glance pleases women, and that therefore fortune comes to meet him."

With a kiss Siddhartha took his leave. "May it be so, my teacher. May my glance always please you, may fortune always come to meet me from you!"

AMONG THE CHILD-PEOPLE

Siddhartha went to the merchant Kamaswami; into a rich house was he directed, servants led him between costly carpets into a chamber where he awaited the master of the house.

Kamaswami entered, a quick, supple man with strongly greying hair, with very clever, cautious eyes, with a covetous mouth. Host and guest greeted one another friendlily.

"I have been told," began the merchant, "that you are a Brahmin, a scholar, but that you seek service with a merchant. Have you then fallen into need, Brahmin, that you seek service?"

"No," said Siddhartha, "I have not fallen into need and have never been in need. Know that I come from the Samanas, among whom I lived a long time."

"If you come from the Samanas, how should you not be in need? Are not the Samanas wholly without possessions?"

"Possessionless I am," said Siddhartha, "if that is what you mean. Certainly I am without possessions. Yet I am so of my own free will, and therefore not in need."

"But from what will you live, if you are without possessions?"

"That I have never thought of, sir. I have been without possessions for more than three years, and have never thought of what I should live on."

"So you have lived from the possessions of others."

"Presumably it is so. The merchant too lives from the goods of others."

"Well spoken. Yet he does not take what is theirs from others for nothing; he gives them his wares for it."

"So it does indeed seem to be. Each takes, each gives, such is life."

"But permit: if you are without possessions, what then will you give?"

"Each gives what he has. The warrior gives strength, the merchant gives wares, the teacher teaching, the peasant rice, the fisher fish."

"Very well. And what is it, then, that you have to give? What is it that you have learned, that you can do?"

"I can think. I can wait. I can fast."

"Is that all?"

"I believe it is all!"

"And what is it good for? For example, fasting—what is it good for?"

"It is very good, sir. When a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the wisest thing he can do. If, for example, Siddhartha had not learned to fast, he would have to accept some service today, be it with you or wherever, for hunger would force him to. But thus Siddhartha can wait calmly, he knows no impatience, he knows no plight, he can let himself be besieged by hunger for long and can laugh at it besides. To that, sir, fasting is good."

"You are right, Samana. Wait a moment."

Kamaswami went out and returned with a scroll, which he handed his guest, asking: "Can you read this?"

Siddhartha regarded the scroll, on which a trade contract was written, and began to read out its contents.

"Excellent," said Kamaswami. "And will you write something for me on this sheet?"

He gave him a sheet and a stylus, and Siddhartha wrote and gave the sheet back.

Kamaswami read: "Writing is good, thinking is better. Wisdom is good, patience is better."

"You understand writing admirably," praised the merchant. "Much more we shall yet have to speak of together. For today I ask you, be my guest and take lodging in this house."

Siddhartha thanked him and accepted, and now lived in the house of the trader. Clothes were brought to him, and shoes, and a servant prepared his bath daily. Twice a day a plentiful meal was served, but Siddhartha ate only once a day, and ate neither flesh nor drank wine. Kamaswami told him of his trade, showed him wares and storehouses, showed him calculations. Much that was new Siddhartha came to know, he heard much and spoke little. And mindful of Kamala's words, he never subjected himself to the merchant, but compelled him to treat him as an equal, nay as more than an equal. Kamaswami conducted his business with care and often with passion, but Siddhartha regarded all this like a game, whose rules he was diligent to learn exactly, but whose substance did not touch his heart.

Not long was he in Kamaswami's house when he already took part in his host's trade. But daily at the hour she named to him, he visited the beautiful Kamala, in pretty clothes, in fine shoes, and soon brought her gifts too. Much her red, clever mouth taught him. Much her tender, supple hand taught him. He, who was still a boy in love and inclined to plunge blindly and insatiably into pleasure as into an abyss, she taught from the ground up the lesson that one cannot take pleasure without giving pleasure, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every glance, every smallest part of the body has its secret, which to awaken gives happiness to the knowing one. She taught him that lovers after a love-feast may not part without admiring one another, without being as much conquered as victorious, so that in neither of them arises surfeit and emptiness and the evil feeling of having misused or been misused. Wonderful hours he spent with the beautiful and clever artist, became her pupil, her lover, her friend. Here with Kamala lay the worth and meaning of his present life, not in Kamaswami's trade.

The merchant entrusted to him the writing of important letters and contracts, and grew accustomed to consulting him on all important matters. He soon saw that Siddhartha understood little of rice and wool, of shipping and trade, but that his hand was a lucky one, and that Siddhartha surpassed him, the merchant, in calm and equanimity, and in the art of being able to listen and to penetrate into strange people. "This Brahmin," he said to a friend, "is no proper merchant and will never become one, never is his soul with passion in the business. But he has the secret of those people to whom success comes of its own accord, be that an inborn lucky star, be it magic, be it something he learned among the Samanas. Always he seems only to play with the business, never does it wholly enter into him, never does it master him, never does he fear failure, never does a loss trouble him."

The friend advised the trader: "Give him a third of the profit from the business he conducts for you, but let the same share of the loss befall him, should loss arise. Then he will become more eager."

Kamaswami followed the advice. But Siddhartha cared little for it. If profit befell him, he accepted it with equanimity; if loss befell him, he laughed and said: "Well, see, this then went badly!"

It seemed in truth as if the business were indifferent to him. Once he traveled to a village to buy there a great rice harvest. When he arrived, however, the rice had already been sold to another trader. Yet Siddhartha remained in that village many days, entertained the peasants, gave their children copper coins, celebrated a wedding with them and returned exceedingly content from the journey. Kamaswami reproached him that he had not turned back at once, that he had wasted time and money. Siddhartha answered: "Leave off the scolding, dear friend! Never yet was anything achieved by scolding. If loss has arisen, then let me bear the loss. I am very content with this journey. I have come to know many kinds of people, a Brahmin has become my friend, children have ridden on my knees, peasants have shown me their fields, no one took me for a trader."

"Very pretty is all this," cried Kamaswami unwillingly, "but in fact you are nevertheless a trader, should I think! Or did you travel only for your pleasure?"

"Certainly," laughed Siddhartha, "certainly I traveled for my pleasure. What else for? I have come to know people and regions, I have enjoyed friendliness and trust, I have found friendship. See, dear one, if I had been Kamaswami, then as soon as I saw my purchase thwarted, I would have returned at once, full of anger and in haste, and time and money would indeed have been lost. But thus I have had good days, have learned, have enjoyed joy, have harmed neither myself nor others through anger and through hastiness. And if I ever come there again, perhaps to buy a later harvest, or for whatever purpose, then friendly people will receive me friendly and cheerful, and I will praise myself for having shown neither haste nor ill-humor then. So let it be, friend, and do not harm yourself by scolding! If the day comes when you will see: this Siddhartha brings me harm, then speak a word, and Siddhartha will go his way. Until then, but let us be content one with the other."

Vain too were the merchant's attempts to convince Siddhartha that he ate his, Kamaswami's, bread. Siddhartha ate his own bread, or rather they both ate the bread of others, the bread of all. Never had Siddhartha an ear for Kamaswami's cares, and Kamaswami had many cares. When a business was afoot which threatened failure, when a shipment of goods seemed lost, when a debtor seemed unable to pay, never could the merchant persuade his collaborator that it was useful to waste words of sorrow or of anger, to have furrows on the brow, to sleep badly. When Kamaswami once reproached him that he had learned all he understood from him, he answered: "Do not make sport of me with such jests! From you I have learned how much a basket of fish costs, and how much interest one may demand for lent money. Those are your sciences. Thinking I have not learned from you, dear Kamaswami, rather seek you to learn it from me."

In truth his soul was not in the trade. The business was good, to bring him money for Kamala, and it brought in far more than he needed. In the rest, Siddhartha's participation and curiosity were only with the people, whose business, crafts, cares, pleasures, and follies had been strange and far to him before like the moon. As easily as it succeeded for him to speak with all, to live with all, to learn from all, so very much was it brought home to him that there was something which separated him from them, and this separating thing was his Samana-nature. He saw the people live in a childlike or beastlike way, which he both loved and also despised. He saw them toil, saw them suffer and grow grey over things which seemed to him quite unworthy of this price, for money, for small pleasure, for small honor; he saw them scold and offend one another, he saw them lament over pains at which the Samana smiles, and suffer under privations which a Samana does not feel.

Open to all stood he, what these people brought him. Welcome to him was the trader who offered him linen for purchase, welcome the debtor who sought a loan, welcome the beggar who told him for an hour the story of his poverty, and who was not half so poor as any Samana. The rich foreign trader he treated no differently than the servant who shaved him, and the street-vendor from whom he let himself be cheated of small coin when buying bananas. When Kamaswami came to him to complain of his cares or to reproach him on account of a business, he listened curiously and cheerfully, wondered at him, sought to understand him, let him be a little in the right, just as much as seemed indispensable to him, and turned away from him to the next who desired him. And many came to him, many to trade with him, many to deceive him, many to sound him out, many to invoke his pity, many to hear his counsel. He gave counsel, he pitied, he gave gifts, he let himself be a little deceived, and this whole play and the passion with which all people pursued this play occupied his thoughts just as once the gods and Brahman had occupied them.

At times he sensed, deep in his breast, a dying, faint voice, which admonished softly, complained softly, scarce that he perceived it. Then for an hour it came to his consciousness that he led a strange life, that he there did only things which were a mere game, that he was indeed cheerful and at times felt joy, but that the actual life nevertheless flew past him and did not touch him. Like a ball-player plays with his balls, so he played with his business, with the people of his surroundings, watched them, found his amusement in them; with the heart, with the source of his being he was not there. The source ran somewhere, how far from him, ran and ran invisible, had nothing more to do with his life. And sometimes he was frightened by such thoughts and wished it might be granted him too, in all this childlike doing of the day, to be involved with passion and with the heart, really to live, really to do, really to enjoy and to live, instead of standing thus beside it only as a spectator. But always he came back to the beautiful Kamala, learned the art of love, practiced the cult of pleasure, in which more than anywhere else giving and taking become one, chatted with her, learned from her, gave her counsel, received counsel. She understood him better than Govinda had once understood him, she was more like him.

Once he said to her: "You are like me, you are different from most people. You are Kamala, nothing else, and within you is a stillness and refuge, into which you can enter at any hour and be at home with yourself, just as I too can. Few people have that, and yet all could have it."

"Not all people are clever," said Kamala.

"No," said Siddhartha, "that is not where it lies. Kamaswami is just as clever as I, and yet has no refuge in himself. Others have it, who in understanding are small children. Most people, Kamala, are like a falling leaf, that wafts and turns through the air, and wavers, and tumbles to the ground. Others however, few, are like stars, who go a fixed course, no wind reaches them, in themselves they have their law and their course. Among all scholars and Samanas, of whom I knew many, there was one of this kind, a perfected one, never can I forget him. It is that Gotama, the Exalted, the proclaimer of that teaching. A thousand disciples hear his teaching every day, follow his precept every hour, but they all are falling leaves, not in themselves have they teaching and law."

Kamala looked at him smiling. "Again you speak of him," she said, "again you have Samana-thoughts."

Siddhartha fell silent, and they played the game of love, one of the thirty or forty different games which Kamala knew. Her body was supple like that of a jaguar, and like the bow of a hunter; whoever had learned love from her was knowing in many lusts, many secrets. Long she played with Siddhartha, enticed him, repelled him, forced him, encompassed him: rejoiced in his mastery, until he was conquered and exhausted rested at her side.

The hetaera bent over him, looked long into his face, into his weary eyes.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”