Part 7

Siddhartha stayed with the ferryman and learned to handle the boat, and when there was nothing to do at the ferry, he worked with Vasudeva in the rice field, gathered wood, picked the fruits of the banana trees. He learned to carve an oar, and learned to repair the boat, and to weave baskets, and was joyful over all that he learned, and the days and months passed swiftly by. But more than Vasudeva could teach him, the river taught him. From it he learned unceasingly. Above all he learned from it the listening, the hearkening with a quiet heart, with a waiting, opened soul, without passion, without wish, without judgment, without opinion.

Friendly he lived beside Vasudeva, and at times they exchanged words with one another, few and long-deliberated words. Vasudeva was no friend of words; seldom did Siddhartha succeed in moving him to speak.

"Have you," so he asked him once, "have you too learned from the river that secret: that there is no time?"

Vasudeva's face was overspread with a bright smile.

"Yes, Siddhartha," he spoke. "Is it not this which you mean: that the river is everywhere at once, at its source and at its mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere, at the same time, and that for it there is only the present, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?"

"This is it," said Siddhartha. "And when I had learned it, then I looked upon my life, and it too was a river, and the boy Siddhartha, the man Siddhartha, and the old man Siddhartha were separated only by shadows, not by anything real. Siddhartha's former births were also no past, and his death and his return to Brahma no future. Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has being and presence."

Siddhartha spoke with rapture; deeply had this enlightenment blessed him. Oh, was not all suffering time, was not all tormenting of oneself and all fearing time, was not all that is heavy, all that is hostile in the world gone and overcome, as soon as one had overcome time, as soon as one could think time away? Enraptured he had spoken, but Vasudeva smiled radiantly at him and nodded assent; silently he nodded, stroked his hand over Siddhartha's shoulder, and turned back to his work.

And again once, when the river was swollen in the rainy season and rushed mightily, Siddhartha said: "Is it not so, O friend, that the river has many voices, very many voices? Has it not the voice of a king, and of a warrior, and of a bull, and of a night bird, and of a woman giving birth, and of one sighing, and a thousand other voices besides?"

"It is so," nodded Vasudeva, "all voices of the creatures are in its voice."

"And do you know," Siddhartha continued, "what word it speaks, when it succeeds for you to hear all its ten thousand voices at once?"

Happily Vasudeva's face laughed; he leaned toward Siddhartha and spoke the holy Om into his ear. And this was precisely what Siddhartha had also heard.

And from time to time his smile became more like that of the ferryman, became nearly as radiant, nearly as transfigured with happiness, likewise shining out of a thousand small wrinkles, likewise childlike, likewise old. Many travelers, when they saw the two ferrymen, took them for brothers. Often they sat in the evening together on the tree trunk by the shore, were silent and both listened to the water, which for them was no water, but the voice of life, the voice of that which is, of the eternally becoming. And it happened at times that, while listening to the river, they thought of the same things, of a conversation of the day before yesterday, of one of their travelers whose face and fate occupied them, of death, of their childhood, and that both at the same moment, when the river had told them something good, looked at one another, both thinking exactly the same, both made happy by the same answer to the same question.

Something went out from the ferry and from the two ferrymen, which some of the travelers felt. It happened at times that a traveler, after gazing into the face of one of the ferrymen, began to tell his life, told of suffering, confessed evil, asked for comfort and counsel. It happened at times that one asked permission to stay an evening with them, to listen to the river. It also happened that curious people came, to whom it had been told that at this ferry lived two wise men, or magicians, or saints. The curious asked many questions, but they got no answers, and they found neither magician nor wise man; they found only two old friendly little men, who seemed silent and somewhat strange and feeble-minded. And the curious laughed, and amused themselves over how foolish and credulous the people were to spread such empty rumors.

The years went by and no one counted them. Then once monks came on pilgrimage, followers of Gotama, the Buddha, who asked to be ferried across the river, and from them the ferrymen learned that they were hastening back to their great teacher, for the news had spread that the Exalted One was mortally ill and would soon die his last human death, to enter into release. Not long after, another troop of monks came on pilgrimage, and again one, and both the monks and most of the other travelers and wanderers spoke of nothing but Gotama and his near death. And as to a campaign or to the coronation of a king men stream from everywhere and all sides and gather in swarms like ants, so they streamed, drawn as if by magic, thither where the great Buddha awaited his death, where the tremendous was to happen and the great Perfected One of an age was to enter into glory.

Much in this time Siddhartha thought of the dying sage, the great teacher, whose voice had admonished peoples and awakened hundreds of thousands, whose voice he too had once heard, whose holy countenance he too had once gazed upon with reverence. Friendly he thought of him, saw his path of perfection before his eyes, and remembered with a smile the words which he, a young man, had once addressed to him, the Exalted One. They had been, so it seemed to him, proud and precociously wise words; smiling he remembered them. Long since he knew himself no longer separated from Gotama, whose teaching he had nevertheless been unable to accept. No, no teaching could a truly seeking man accept, one who truly wished to find. But he who has found, he could approve of any, any teaching, any path, any goal; nothing separated him any more from all those thousand others who lived in the Eternal, who breathed the Divine.

On one of these days, when so many were pilgriming to the dying Buddha, Kamala too pilgrimed to him, once the fairest of the courtesans. Long since she had withdrawn from her former life, had given her garden to Gotama's monks, had taken refuge in the teaching, belonged to the friends and benefactresses of the pilgrims. Together with the boy Siddhartha, her son, upon the news of Gotama's near death she had set out, in simple garments, on foot. With her little son she was on the way by the river; but the boy soon grew weary, demanded to go back home, demanded to rest, demanded to eat, became defiant and tearful.

Kamala often had to rest with him; he was used to having his will prevail against her; she had to feed him, had to comfort him, had to scold him. He did not understand why he had had to undertake this toilsome and sorrowful pilgrimage with his mother, to an unknown place, to a strange man who was holy and lay dying. Might he die—what was that to the boy?

The pilgrims were not far from Vasudeva's ferry, when the little Siddhartha once more compelled his mother to a rest. She herself too, Kamala, was weary, and while the boy chewed on a banana, she crouched down on the ground, closed her eyes a little and rested. But suddenly she uttered a plaintive cry; the boy looked at her frightened and saw her face blanched with terror, and from beneath her garment there slipped out a small black snake, by which Kamala had been bitten.

Hastily they both now ran along the path, to reach people, and came near the ferry; there Kamala collapsed and could go no further. But the boy raised a pitiful cry, and between times kissed and embraced his mother, and she too joined in his loud calls for help, until the sounds reached Vasudeva's ear, who stood at the ferry. Quickly he came, took the woman in his arms, carried her to the boat; the boy ran along, and soon they all arrived at the hut, where Siddhartha stood at the hearth and was just making a fire. He looked up and saw first the face of the boy, which strangely reminded him, admonished him of something forgotten. Then he saw Kamala, whom he soon recognized, though she lay unconscious in the ferryman's arms, and now he knew that it was his own son, whose face had so strongly reminded him, and his heart stirred in his breast.

Kamala's wound was washed, but it was already black and her body swollen; a healing drink was poured into her. Her consciousness returned; she lay on Siddhartha's bed in the hut, and bending over her stood Siddhartha, who had once loved her so dearly. It seemed to her a dream; smiling she looked into her friend's face, only slowly did she recognize her situation, remembered the bite, anxiously called for the boy.

"He is with you, be without care," said Siddhartha.

Kamala looked into his eyes. She spoke with a heavy tongue, paralyzed by the poison. "You have grown old, dear," she said, "you have turned gray. But you resemble the young Samana who once came to me in the garden without clothes and with dusty feet. You resemble him much more than you resembled him then, when you left me and Kamaswami. In the eyes you resemble him, Siddhartha. Ah, I too have grown old, old—did you then still know me?"

Siddhartha smiled: "At once I knew you, Kamala, beloved."

Kamala pointed to her boy and said: "Did you know him too? He is your son."

Her eyes grew wandering and closed. The boy wept; Siddhartha took him on his knee, let him weep, stroked his hair, and at the sight of the child's face a Brahmanic prayer came to him, which he had once learned as a little boy himself. Slowly, with a singing voice, he began to speak it; from the past and childhood the words had flowed to him. And under his chanting the boy grew quiet, sobbed now and then, and fell asleep. Siddhartha laid him on Vasudeva's bed. Vasudeva stood at the hearth and cooked rice. Siddhartha threw him a glance, which he returned with a smile.

"She will die," said Siddhartha softly.

Vasudeva nodded; over his friendly face ran the firelight from the hearth.

Once more Kamala awoke to consciousness. Pain distorted her face; Siddhartha's eye read the suffering on her mouth, on her pallid cheeks. Silently he read it, attentively, waiting, sunk into her suffering. Kamala felt it; her gaze sought his eye.

Gazing at him, she said: "Now I see that your eyes too have changed. They have become quite different. Yet by what do I still recognize that you are Siddhartha? You are he, and are not he."

Siddhartha spoke not; silently his eyes looked into hers.

"Have you attained it?" she asked. "Have you found peace?"

He smiled, and laid his hand on hers.

"I see it," she said, "I see it. I too shall find peace."

"You have found it," spoke Siddhartha in a whisper.

Kamala gazed unwaveringly into his eyes. She thought that she had wished to pilgrimage to Gotama, to see the face of a Perfected One, to breathe his peace, and that instead of him she had now found him, and that it was good, just as good as if she had seen that one. She wished to tell him so, but her tongue no longer obeyed her will. Silently she looked at him, and he saw life extinguish itself in her eyes. When the last pain filled her eye and broke, when the last shudder ran over her limbs, his finger closed her eyelids.

Long he sat and gazed at her face in sleep. Long he regarded her mouth, her old, weary mouth with the narrowed lips, and remembered that he had once, in the spring of his years, compared this mouth to a freshly opened fig. Long he sat, read in the pale face, in the weary wrinkles, filled himself with the sight, saw his own face lying thus likewise, likewise white, likewise extinguished, and saw at the same time his face and hers young, with the red lips, with the burning eye, and the feeling of presence and simultaneity pervaded him wholly, the feeling of eternity. Deeply he felt, deeper than ever, in this hour, the indestructibility of every life, the eternity of every moment.

When he rose, Vasudeva had prepared rice for him. But Siddhartha did not eat. In the stall, where their goat stood, the two old men made themselves a bed of straw, and Vasudeva lay down to sleep. But Siddhartha went out and sat the night before the hut, listening to the river, lapped by the past, touched and embraced at once by all the times of his life. At times, however, he rose, stepped to the hut door and listened whether the boy slept.

Early in the morning, before the sun became visible, Vasudeva came from the stall and went to his friend.

"You have not slept," he said.

"No, Vasudeva. I sat here, I listened to the river. Much has it told me, deeply has it filled me with the salutary thought, with the thought of oneness."

"You have experienced suffering, Siddhartha, yet I see no sadness has come into your heart."

"No, dear one, how should I be sad? I, who was rich and happy, have now become still richer and happier. My son has been given to me."

"Welcome be your son to me also. Now but, Siddhartha, let us go to work, much is to do. On the same bed Kamala has died, on which once my wife died. On the same hill also we will build Kamala's pyre, on which I once built my wife's pyre."

While the boy still slept, they built the pyre.

THE SON

Shy and weeping the boy had attended his mother's burial; darkly and shyly he had hearkened to Siddhartha, who greeted him as his son and bade him welcome in Vasudeva's hut. Pale he sat for days on the hill of the dead, would not eat, closed his gaze, closed his heart, resisted and struggled against fate.

Siddhartha spared him and let him have his way; he honored his mourning. Siddhartha understood that his son did not know him, that he could not love him like a father. Slowly he saw and understood also that the eleven-year-old was a spoiled boy, a mother's child, and grown up in habits of wealth, used to finer foods, to a soft bed, used to command servants. Siddhartha understood that the mourner and the spoiled one could not suddenly and willingly give himself content in strangeness and poverty. He did not force him; he did many a work for him, always picked out the best morsel for him. Slowly he hoped to win him, through friendly patience.

Rich and happy he had called himself, when the boy had come to him. But as time flowed by, and the boy remained strange and dark, as he showed a proud and defiant heart, would do no work, showed no reverence to the old men, robbed Vasudeva's fruit trees, then Siddhartha began to understand that with his son not happiness and peace had come to him, but suffering and care. But he loved him, and dearer to him was suffering and care of love than happiness and joy without the boy had been to him. Since the young Siddhartha had been in the hut, the old men had divided the work. Vasudeva had taken over the office of ferryman alone again, and Siddhartha, to be with the son, the work in hut and field.

A long time, long months Siddhartha waited for his son to understand him, that he accept his love, that he perhaps return it. Long months Vasudeva waited, looking on, waited and was silent. One day, when Siddhartha's boy had again tormented his father sorely with defiance and moods and broken both rice bowls, Vasudeva took his friend aside in the evening and spoke with him.

"Forgive me," he said, "from a friendly heart I speak to you. I see that you torment yourself, I see that you have sorrow. Your son, dear one, gives you care, and me too he gives care. To another life, to another nest the young bird is accustomed. Not as you has he fled from wealth and the city out of disgust and satiety; against his will he has had to leave all that behind. I asked the river, O friend, many a time have I asked it. But the river laughs, it laughs at me, it laughs at you and me, and shakes itself at our folly. Water wants to water, youth wants to youth, your son is not at the place where he can thrive. Ask the river yourself, hearken to it yourself!"

Troubled, Siddhartha looked into the friendly face, in whose many wrinkles constant cheerfulness dwelt.

"Can I then part from him?" said he softly, ashamed. "Let me still time, dear one! See, I fight for him, I woo his heart, with love and with friendly patience will I catch it. Also to him shall the river speak one day, also he is called."

Vasudeva's smile bloomed warmer. "Oh yes, also he is called, also he is of the eternal life. But do we know then, you and I, to what he is called, to what path, to what deeds, to what sufferings? Not small will his suffering be, proud and hard is his heart, much must such ones suffer, much err, much wrong do, load much sin upon themselves. Tell me, my dear: do you not bring up your son? Do you not force him? Do you not strike him? Do you not punish him?"

"No, Vasudeva, all this I do not."

"I knew it. You force him not, strike him not, command him not, because you know that soft is stronger than hard, water stronger than rock, love stronger than violence. Very good, I praise you. But is it not an error of yours, to think that you do not force him, do not punish him? Do you not bind him in bonds with your love? Do you not shame him daily, and make it still harder for him, with your goodness and patience? Do you not force him, the proud and spoiled boy, to live in a hut with two old banana-eaters, to whom rice is already a dainty, whose thoughts cannot be his, whose heart is old and still and goes another way than his? Is he not with all this forced, not punished?"

Struck, Siddhartha looked to the ground. Softly he asked: "What, think you, shall I do?"

Spoke Vasudeva: "Take him to the city, take him into his mother's house, there will still be servants, give him to them. And if none are there any more, then take him to a teacher, not for the teaching's sake, but that he come to other boys, and to girls, and into the world, which is his. Have you never thought of this?"

"You see into my heart," spoke Siddhartha sadly. "Often have I thought of it. But see, how shall I give him, who has not even a gentle heart, into this world? Will he not become wanton, will he not lose himself in lust and power, will he not repeat all the errors of his father, will he not perhaps be wholly lost in Sansara?"

Brightly beamed the ferryman's smile; he touched gently Siddhartha's arm and said: "Ask the river about this, friend! Hear it laugh about this! Do you then truly believe that you have committed your follies in order to spare them to the son? And can you then protect your son from Sansara? How so? Through teaching, through prayer, through admonition? Dear one, have you then quite forgotten that instructive story of the Brahman's son Siddhartha, which you once told me here at this spot? Who preserved the Samana Siddhartha from Sansara, from sin, from greed, from folly? Could his father's piety, his teachers' admonition, could his own knowledge, his own seeking preserve him? Which father, which teacher could protect him from living the life himself, from soiling himself with life himself, from taking guilt upon himself, from drinking the bitter draught himself, from finding his path himself?

Do you then believe, dear one, that this path is perhaps spared anyone? Perhaps your little son, because you love him, because you would gladly spare him suffering and pain and disappointment? But even if you died ten times for him, you could not thereby take the smallest part of his fate from him."

Never yet had Vasudeva spoken so many words. Friendly Siddhartha thanked him, went troubled into the hut, found long no sleep. Vasudeva had said nothing to him that he had not himself already thought and known. But it was a knowing that he could not act upon; stronger than the knowing was his love for the boy, stronger his tenderness, his fear of losing him. Had he then ever lost his heart so utterly to anything, had he ever loved any person so, so blindly, so sufferingly, so unsuccessfully, and yet so happily?

Siddhartha could not follow his friend's counsel; he could not give up the son. He let himself be commanded by the boy, let himself be disregarded by him. He was silent and waited, began daily the silent struggle of friendliness, the soundless war of patience. Also Vasudeva was silent and waited, friendly, knowing, long-suffering. In patience they were both masters.

Once, when the boy's face reminded him very much of Kamala, Siddhartha suddenly had to remember a word which Kamala, in the days of youth, had once said to him. "You cannot love," she had said to him, and he had agreed with her right and had compared himself with a star, but the child-people with falling leaves, and yet he had felt even in that word a reproach. In truth he had never been able to lose himself wholly to another person and give himself up, forget himself, commit follies of love for another's sake; never had he been able to do that, and this was, as it had seemed to him then, the great difference that separated him from the child-people. But now, since his son was there, now he too, Siddhartha, had wholly become a child-person, suffering for the sake of one person, loving one person, lost to a love, become a fool for a love's sake. Now he too felt, late, once in life, this strongest and strangest passion, suffered under it, suffered miserably, and was yet blessed, was yet renewed by something, made richer by something.

Well he felt that this love, this blind love for his son, was a passion, something very human, that it was Sansara, a turbid spring, a dark water. Yet, so he felt at the same time, it was not worthless, it was necessary, came from his own being. Also this pleasure wanted to be atoned for, also these pains wanted to be tasted, also these follies wanted to be committed.

The son, however, let him commit his follies, let him woo, let him daily humble himself before his moods. This father had nothing that delighted him, and nothing that he had feared. He was a good man, this father, a good, kind, gentle man, perhaps a very pious man, perhaps a saint—all this was not qualities which could win the boy. Tedious was this father to him, who held him captive there in his wretched hut; tedious was he to him, and that he answered every mischief with a smile, every abuse with friendliness, every malice with goodness, that precisely was the most hateful cunning of this old sneak. Much rather would the boy have been threatened by him, mishandled by him.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”